As De Pere's Pink Flamingo Classic turns 40, the men who started it all swap stories about cold beer, missing buns and always having fun

DE PERE - Jeff Gorenc doesn’t just still have his Pink Flamingo Classic T-shirt from the softball tournament’s first year in 1984, he can still fit into it.

Not that he’s rubbing it in. Pink Flamingos don’t brag, but they sure do rib each other — relentlessly — and so when you get four of the founding members around the same picnic table in Legion Park ahead of the event’s 40th milestone this weekend, good luck holding your own.

You learn quickly it helps to know nicknames. Every Flamingo has one. Gorenc is “Iggy,” David Vande Hei is “The Godfather,” Jerry Olmsted is “The Big O” and Bruce Willems is “Pitts.”

Toss them a softball question, like asking if they all run the accompanying World’s Longest 5K Run/Walk with the Flamingos on Saturday morning, and they’ll knock it out of the park every time.

Turns out Vande Hei did run it one year.

“Was that running?” asks Olmsted, with a straight face. “I’m just asking. If that’s running, I can still run.”

When the Great Camper Incident of 1986 comes up, you get a lot of laughs but no details.

“Yeah, that’s not something we can discuss,” Vande Hei said.

For all the stories they can share from four decades as the grand poobahs of one of De Pere’s most beloved and colorful happenings, they can’t make any promises that some of the particulars won’t be a little fuzzy, either by design or by the passage of time.

“Between the four of us, one will have it half-right,” Gorenc joked.

What they can tell you is the Pink Flamingo Classic that turns 40 Friday through Sunday at Legion Park isn’t that different, at its heart, from the event they started when they were young guys, back when beer sold at the tourney had tear-away ring pull tabs and there was a pay phone next door at Legion Pool. It’s still a neighborhood block party/family reunion/feel-good fest/do-good community event cleverly disguised as a three-day invitational softball tournament.

“One of our taglines is family, food, fun, Flamingos. That kind of sums up the weekend,” Vande Hei said.

It’s easy to see where the fun comes in. It’s the Pink Flamingos themselves, the nonprofit De Pere group made up of a flock of 40 to 45 Flamingos and their families. They’ve raised $1.389 million from the Pink Flamingo Classic in its 39 years, all of which goes back into the community to local charities and projects.

In 2020, when the pandemic forced the cancellation of the tournament, along with the parade, Big Mouth & The Power Tool Horns gig and other events that go with it, the Flamingos vowed to still try to raise at least some money through an online campaign. They were blown away, and more than a little choked up, at how the community rallied around them and donated $108,257.10 — more than double any single-year amount previously raised in the event’s history.

It was an aha moment for the Flamingos, who were inspired to see just how much De Pere is invested in what they're all about and stepped up to keep the charities rolling. All without a single pitch ever thrown.

“Anyone that spends a dollar with us or does anything, they feel like they have ownership," Vande Hei said. "I think fun is contagious. We had a lot of fun way back when and we still do, and who doesn’t like fun?"

They ran out of buns the first year, neighbors helped keep beer cold

Before the Pink Flamingos became a community organization and their own brand, they were a softball team. They played only in tournaments, not in a league. They never had uniforms, but they did wear Hawaiian and tie-dye shirts, so when they were brainstorming names, Pink Flamingos seemed to fit.

“Who would you hate to get beat by? Who would you be embarrassed to get beat by?” Olmsted said of a team name that doesn't exactly put fear into opponents.

In 1984, they decided to host their own tournament.

“The joke was we couldn’t win one, so we’d have one,” Olmsted said.

The idea was to invite eight or 10 large families, create kind of a church picnic atmosphere and have some fun. VFW Park had been De Pere’s go-to site for tournaments, but the Flamingos liked all the trees in Legion Park, even if it didn’t offer the convenience of a concession stand.

The Pink Flamingo Classic was born.

The inaugural year was memorable for reasons they could never have guessed. They ran out of their entire supply of food for the weekend by Friday night. Somebody playing in the tournament worked at a meat market and was able to run out and get more burgers and hot dogs, but securing buns after they quickly blew through the 60 dozen they ordered turned into a crazy scavenger hunt.

“We went to every grocery store in De Pere and filled carts and just took every bun they had,” Vande Hei said. “We started going away from De Pere. De Pere was out of buns.”

They didn’t have refrigerated trucks to keep the beverages cold. They were all just in an extended van.

“It was like 90 degrees that weekend, so it must have been 100 in that van. Neighbors (by the park) came out of the woodwork — I didn’t know who they were even — and grabbed cases of beer and brought them to their own coolers and freezers and then brought them back to us,” Vande Hei said.

The Flamingos' arms were blue from submerging the cans in cow tanks filled with gas station ice to get them chilled before serving. A can of beer went for 75 cents, and it was someone’s job to vacuum up all the pop tops in the park.

A few hundred people showed up and they made $2,591.49 that first year, about double what most softball tournaments in De Pere were bringing in then, Olmsted said.

They were onto something, even though the intention was never to make money. That was a happy accident. Fun was the priority. They knew right then, or at least after giving themselves a couple of days to recover, they had to do it again next summer.

“We were 30 years old, so we didn’t know better. We just had a good time,” Olmsted said. “Big difference now.”

Other community groups help with booyah, sweet corn, cleanup

Now the Pink Flamingo Classic runs like a well-oiled machine. They order 700 dozen buns and go through just under 1,000 cases of beer. They’ve gone from a single 20- by 20-foot tent to three 80-footers and then some. They use 6 tons of ice, but Gorenc no longer has to break apart 450-pound blocks in the back of his pickup and haul them to the park. The days of him hijacking his bag phone from work so there would be a cellphone onsite are long gone, too.

The Flamingos have been steadfast the event stays true to its roots of family fun and fair pricing on the food. They still shake their heads over that year they were down about $12,000 at tournament’s end and could not figure out why. Vande Hei agonized over it for two weeks, until he saw a sign in his garage that wasn’t supposed to be there. That's when he realized they had accidentally hung up one of their old boards that had beer prices from 10 years ago.

“And none of us were smart enough to realize it,” Willems said.

Would you believe not a single beer drinker in the park that weekend brought it to their attention?

“That tells you about our crowd that we’re so proud of,” Gorenc said. “They’re not very trustworthy.”

As the event has grown, the Pink Flamingos have invited in other community nonprofits to lend a hand with food, including Exceptional Equestrians (sweet corn), Boy Scouts (ice cream), Rotary Club of De Pere (booyah on Saturday), De Pere and West De Pere high school booster clubs.

Each year, Vande Hei’s grandkids come from Peoria, Illinois, and sell lemonade for 50 cents a cup, with proceeds going to House of Hope homeless shelter. They raised $700 last year.

National Alliance of Mental Illness Brown County shows up at 6 a.m. each day to rake and clean the park and empty garbage. The Flamingos couldn't do it without them.

They still can't believe all the volunteers who show up early Friday morning every year to make quick work of setup.

“It’s an ant colony,” Olmsted said. “Everybody just knows what they’re doing.”

There's a waiting list for teams, a line for T-shirts and 39 pink softballs

The weekend is steeped in tradition. People plan their vacations around it, and for some, the Pink Flamingo Classic is the one time all year they get to see friends who come back home for it. Now their kids and grandkids show up, too.

Olmsted, who is group’s keeper of boxes of scrapbooks he’s filled with newspaper clippings, photos and handwritten notes, remembers an obituary that mentioned a man’s love for the Pink Flamingo Classic, right behind the Green Bay Packers and Milwaukee Brewers. A bride and groom once stopped by on their wedding day and made an appearance on the pitcher’s mound.

People line up an hour before the merchandise tent opens at 3 p.m. on Friday to get their hands on that year’s T-shirt design, knowing they always sell out. Pink Flamingos have been recognized as far away as Boston wearing one of the shirts.

There’s a waiting list of teams who want to be invited to play in the tournament if a spot opens up, but like with Packers season tickets, slots tend to get passed down to a son's team and then a grandson's team.

Some of that history will be on display in a memorabilia tent this weekend. Visitors will be able to see 600 photos play in a continuous loop on a big screen and revisit all 40 commemorative T-shirts from every year.

After the first tournament, the men painted a softball pink and wrote on it how much money they raised and how many cases of beer they sold. It has been a tradition every year since. All 39 softballs will be on view in the tent.

It’s not just the dollar amount on each one that is impressive — $75,000 last year alone — but the impact that money has had on the community. They still talk about what it felt like to give that first check, a modest amount, to Special Olympics and how appreciative the organization was to get it. Or when Willems and his mom, who had multiple sclerosis, would go together to present the check to the local MS chapter.

“People just love the good that the Flamingos do,” said Trevor “T-Rex” Ramseier, who along with Brett "Boobie" Buboltz have been among the next generation of Flamingos to step up and work alongside the longtimers to keep the event true to its beginnings but also bring it into the age of social media and marketing.

Don't think that means the original Flamingos are stepping back. You’ll find Vande Hei, Olmsted, Willems and Gorenc at the park doing what needs to get done from Friday morning setup until Monday morning takedown.

Buboltz, who was asked to be a Flamingo in 2018, tells a funny story about how the group said somebody new needed to take over the responsibility of dragging the field early in the morning. Gorenc had done it for years and was ready to be done. So Buboltz and a guy named “Pork Chop” volunteered. Be there at 7 a.m., they were told.

“I walk in at 6:50 a.m. and Iggy’s on the tractor. I’m like, ‘You just can’t give it up.’”

He would expect nothing less.

“I could sit and listen to any of the old guys, I get chills just thinking about it, when they just sit there and tell stories," said Buboltz, who grew up going to the Pink Flamingo Classic. "I could listen to them all day long."

When it's all over, a sense of pride and a wink to 'Ocean's Eleven'

When the park is cleaned up and everything taken down by 11 a.m. Monday, the Flamingos are filled with a sense of pride over a job well done (and also pretty wiped out).

“We always say if we’re not better friends after the experience then we all lost,” Vande Hei said. “That’s kind of what drives us all, to be better friends when we’re done than before we start every year.”

Then they all go have lunch together at Side Kicks Bar & Grill. When they’re finished, they depart a little like in the final scene of “Ocean’s Eleven,” where each man in Danny Ocean’s crew walks away from the fountains of the Bellagio one at a time as they go their separate ways.

“We all leave one by one. Everybody high-fives each other, and it is like holy crap, we did it again,” Ramseier said. “It is my favorite time of the entire year, not because it’s over, but because it was a team effort.”

40th Pink Flamingo Classic has Budweiser Clydesdales, fireworks

The 40th Pink Flamingo Classic is Friday through Sunday at Legion Park in De Pere. Softball games begin at 5 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, with food and beverages for sale at the park. No carry-ins. No dogs. Admission is free.

Among the special events happening:

• Pink Flamingo 5-Minute Finale Fireworks Show: After the 8 p.m. game on Friday

• 17th Annual World’s Longest 5K Run/Walk with the Flamingos: 8:30 a.m. Saturday. Registration is $25 at dpflamingos.com/flamingo-5k.

• Pink Flamingo Classic Parade: 9 a.m. Saturday. Departs De Pere High School and travels west on Merrill Street, north on Ontario Street and east on Charles Street to Legion Park. Every float has candy.

• Budweiser Clydesdales: 4-6 p.m. Saturday

• Big Mouth & The Power Tool Horns: 7 p.m. Saturday

• Championship game: 6:30 p.m. Sunday, followed by trophy presentation ceremony

More information at dpflamingos.com and facebook.com/ThePinkFlamingoClassic.

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Kendra Meinert is an entertainment and feature writer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at 920-431-8347 or kmeinert@greenbay.gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @KendraMeinert. 

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: De Pere's Pink Flamingo Classic turns 40, and oh, the stories and fun