M ore than 50 years ago, Dick Neuheisel and his wife, Jane, were strolling along the picturesque streets of Vienna, Austria. Dick spotted some dresses in a shop window and suggested buying one for Jane. They were dirndls, though, she told him, the traditional dresses with a fitted bodice and full skirt that many don during Oktoberfest celebrations. She’d have nowhere to wear it in Tempe. “He said, ‘Well, let’s go home and start an Oktoberfest,’” Jane recalls. At the time, the couple, who founded Tempe Sister Cities with then-Tempe Mayor Harry Mitchell, were mulling over ideas for a fundraiser for the new nonprofit. As it turned out, their interna- tional shopping trip inspired the longest- running Oktoberfest event in the Valley. The first festival, then called the Way Out West Oktoberfest, drew about 200 people and raised roughly $800, Jane says. This weekend, the now-named Four Peaks Oktoberfest will say “prost” to 50 years of welcoming Germanophiles and revelers while raising funds for a unique nonprofit that has sent more than 1,000 students and adults around the globe. “This is a milestone and one that prob- ably a lot of people didn’t ever think we’d get to,” says Tempe Sister Cities President David Carrera. “It represents the hard work of an all-volunteer organization to make it happen.” What is Oktoberfest? The first Oktoberfest was held in Munich, Germany, on Oct. 17, 1810, to celebrate the marriage of Bavarian King Ludwig I and Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen. The five-day celebration ended with a horse race in a meadow dubbed Theresienwiese. The following year, the race was revived and the event instead celebrated the area’s agricultural achieve- ments — and introduced food and drink as a cornerstone of the festivities. The German folk festival continues on “Therese’s Green” today as a two-week celebration that begins in September. It is most recognized for its massive tents with rows of folks noshing on roasted chicken, singing and clinking large glass steins that are hauled to tables by strong, dirndl-clad waitresses. Oktoberfests began spreading to the U.S. with German immigration. The first stateside Oktoberfest was held in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in 1961. The Neuheisels are from Wisconsin and were familiar with the German-centric events. The first Tempe Oktoberfest was hosted at the old Veterans of Foreign Wars buildingon Apache Boulevard. “We invited people to come wearing jeans or lederhosen and dirndls,” Jane says. The inaugural event was particularly memorable because the pig — a roasted centerpiece of the food offerings — went missing. It turned out to be a prank, but the missing swine made headlines. “I said it was worth a million dollars of advertising,” Jane recalls. Funds benefit ‘eye-opening’ cultural exchange Four Peaks Oktoberfest has always been the primary fundraiser for Tempe Sister Cities, which was founded in 1970. The sister cities movement began in 1956, born out of during the administration of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower during the Cold War. The aim was helping people from across the globe connect to build relationships that promote peace and understanding. “President Eisenhower reasoned that people of different cultures could cele- brate and appreciate their differences and build partnerships that would lessen the chance of new conflicts,” according to Sister Cities International. The Tempe chapter’s first sister city was Skopje, North Macedonia. The relationship began in 1971 when Skopje was still behind the Iron Curtain. Today, the organization has relationships with 11 international cities and hosts exchange programs for Tempe students and professionals, including teachers, with nine of those cities, including Regensburg, Germany; Zhenjiang, China; and Cusco, Peru. “The international exchange is eye- opening; it is world-changing,” says Four Peaks Oktoberfest event producer Paul Sheard, who went to China as a student delegate in 2002. Students who are selected are sent to their sister city for five weeks during the summer and live with a host family. The Tempe students then host their sister city peers in their Arizona homes. Valley Christian High School senior Lilly Zienkewicz enjoyed trav- eling, so she applied for the exchange and found herself in Regensburg this summer. “This was my first time going overseas, so that was quite an experience,” she says. “It was a lot of fun. I got to meet a lot of new people.” While she and her new German friends found themselves pointing out silly differ- ences, like Americans driving big cars and Europeans not putting ice in drinks, she says they also realized how alike they are. Traveling alone for the first time also boosted her confidence. “Before the trip, I was pretty intro- verted,” says Zienkewicz, who adds that she wants to become a physician’s assistant after graduation. “[Now] I’m a lot more of a leader and a little more outgoing.” Sheard, a former Tempe Sister Cities president who started volunteering at Oktoberfest as a teen, says he supports the event and organization year after year because of the impact the exchange program continues to have on him. The relationship he forged with his “brother” in China and the perspective he gained abroad “are experiences that I still >> p 14 FOUR PEAKS OKTOBERFEST: 50 YEARS OF BEER, BRATS AND BENEFITING NONPROFIT. BY SARA CROCKER (Photo by Four Peaks Oktoberfest) Patrons have fun dressing up and playing games during Oktoberfest at Tempe Beach Park in 2015. (Photo by Alexdra Gaspar) (Photo by Four Peaks Oktoberfest)
