Volume 2, No. 2. January 25, 2002
Flame out
Peter Herschend had quite a week
this month. In a seven-day span the vice chairman and co-owner of Silver Dollar
City, Inc., in Branson, Missouri, watched a friend carry the Olympic torch,
carried the torch himself and met the president of the United States.
With only 11,000 people chosen out of more than 100,000 nominated to help relay
the Olympic flame from Atlanta to Salt Lake City, Herschend was doubly honored
as nominator and nominated. A long-time fund-raiser for the National Multiple
Sclerosis Society, Herschend had nominated Robin Creemer to carry the flame.
Herschend and his wife, JoDee, were on hand on Tuesday, January 8, in St. Louis,
Missouri, when Creemer, who has MS, carried the torch two tenths of a mile (320
meters). "MS is such that you don't run," Herschend said. "She was having a
good enough MS day she was able to walk reasonably well. I don't think I have
ever seen anybody so excited."
It helped build his own level of excitement for the next day across the state
in Kansas City where Herschend himself would run the flame .2 miles down Main
Street. The "crowning moment" came when, standing at the corner of 30th Street
with torch in hand and both JoDee and Creemer in attendance, Herschend saw Kansas
City torchbearer number 106 approaching up Main Street. An Olympic flame attendant
turned on the butane gas in Herschend's torch, the two torchbearers touched
torches, and "my torch fired off," Herschend said. "I started walking and they
said, 'would you like to jog?' They were running behind." He jogged, flame held
high, to 32nd Street where he lit bearer number 108's torch.
"The excitement of that lasted a long, long time. I was pumped," said the 67-year-old
Herschend, who keeps his torch in his office. "I don't categorize events in
my life, saying this is better than that. If you made up a list and named some
memorable times in my life, personal and professional, this would be in the
top 10."
For the popular head of the Silver Dollar City chain of amusement venues, the
torch relay was very much a professional achievement. "I didn't feel that kind
of excitement where your heart is pounding out of control. (Instead) I felt
a sense of tremendous pride, pride for the men and women of our company at Silver
Dollar City. At the end of the day they were the ones responsible for my being
there. On the bottom of the torch, is inscribed the words 'Light the fire within.'
I thought to myself, 'That's really what our people do, whether they are in
Missouri, Tennessee or Georgia, they are in fact lighting a fire of memories
in their relationships with other men and women they work with and with our
guests."
It was also the successful businessman who got the call just two days after
his torch run to be one of the official southwest Missouri greeters of George
W. Bush when the president visited Aurora the following Monday. "We're shaking
hands, and he's a very, very warm guy, a look-you-in-the-eye-and-firm-handshake
sort of fella," said Herschend, who also hosted the first President Bush at
Silver Dollar City in 1992. Herschend, however, has no delusions about his relationship
with the current and former first family. "I promise you (George W.) doesn't
remember me," after their brief meeting, he said.
So how does someone finish out a week of such momentous life events? "After
meeting the president I went over to my daughter's house to fix her garbage
disposal," he said. "That is what dads do. They're fixers of things."