Boyceville Cucumber Festival Grand Marshals: Sharon and Craig Formoe

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By LeAnn R. Ralph

BOYCEVILLE — The grand marshals for this year’s Cucumber Festival are Sharon and Craig Formoe.

The 2025 Cucumber Festival is the 52nd Pickle Fest that Sharon and Craig have attended together.

The Formoes, as a married couple, have lived in Boyceville for 47 years. 

“Before we were married, we dated at Pickle Fest. It was not like it is nowadays when the kids get on their cell phones or computers,” Craig said.

“It was in the summertime. If you were dating, you were lucky to get out once a week. I grew up on the farm, so we had chores all the time and the crops. Pickle Fest was a chance to get together and see Sharon,” he said.

Craig Formoe grew up on a farm on county Highway V two miles north of Connorsville with his parents and grandparents. 

Since Craig grew up two miles north of Connorsville, “coming to town” meant going to Boyceville, or the family would go to Ridgeland, considered then as “a farm shopping town.”

“We would get groceries at the store in Glenwood, and my dad would tell my mom, ‘Marian, don’t get more than $18 worth.’ We had a ’57 Chevy, and that would fill the trunk with enough bags that it was full. The trunk would shut, but it was packed. For $18,” Craig said.

“The other thing I liked about Pickle Fest was when the Sno-Jammers used to do their barbecued chicken stand. That was always a big thing,” Sharon said.

Their duties as Grand Marshals for the Cucumber Festival will be to lead the Grand Parade and roll out the first Bingo ball. They will also crown the royalty and “just be present. Go around and greet people. And have fun,” Sharon said.

They were notified on July 24 that they had been selected as Grand Marshals. 

“It was a surprise to me,” Sharon said.

“It should be fun. We don’t have too far to go to get there. We typically watch the parade on our front porch. I guess we won’t be able to do that this year,” she said. 

Craig and Sharon Formoe live on Main Street west of the old fire station. They have lived in that house for more than 30 years. 

While Craig and Sharon will not be watching the parade from their front porch — “We will probably have family on the front porch,” Sharon noted.

First Princess

In 1972, Sharon was First Princess at the Cucumber Festival.

“Miss Boyceville at that time was Jolene Kaiser Evan. She left to go somewhere in South America as a foreign exchange student. The second runner-up and I pretty much did the responsibilities for the whole year. The Second Princess was Joanne Yamriska Olson, and she still lives in the Elk Mound area,” Sharon said.

“We will have been married 50 years next year,” Craig noted.

“We started dating in 1973, so this is our 52nd,” Sharon said.

“Years ago, they had what they called the Fall Festival, and I honestly do not know how long that ran. And I don’t know if that transitioned into the Cucumber Festival,” she said.

The cucumber station where people brought the cucumbers they raised was across the street from Craig and Sharon’s house.

Sharon remembers picking cucumbers, and then the money she received for the cucumbers was used to buy new clothes for school.

Craig remembers that his grandfather would ship a bull calf to market and put Craig’s name on it so that the check for the bull calf came in his name. 

“One of the memories I have is being there [at the Cucumber Festival] to see the beginning of The Memories band,” Craig said.

“They were the Pickle Dillies,” Sharon said.

“We went to high school with them. Being in a small community, they weren’t strangers,” Craig said.

The Boyceville High School marching band was always part of the Cucumber Festival, too. 

“Another memory I have, we had about 65 members of the (high school) band, and they would go to festivals at New Richmond and River Falls and Hudson, and they would beat the big schools. We had an awesome band,” Craig said.

Sharon recalled that their daughter was in eighth grade and played with the band. 

The band would go to Canada and would play at places like the Calgary Stampede.

“Our daughter was too young to go on the trip to Canada, but she performed with the band. So that was pretty cool,” Craig said.

BHS

Sharon Formoe graduated from Boyceville High School in 1974. She was born in Eau Claire and attended all but two grades at Boyceville. 

Sharon and her family lived in Mondovi when she was a little girl, and she attended kindergarten and first grade in Mondovi.

Sharon has lived in Boyceville since 1963.

Craig Formoe attended Connorsville Elementary, which did not have kindergarten but did have grades one to eight. 

Craig attended high school at Boyceville, a year behind Sharon. 

After high school, he attended Brown School of Broadcasting  and earned a degree in radio and television broadcasting. 

Craig celebrated his 50th class reunion this summer, and there were 36 classmates who attended.

“Twelve weren’t there because they are deceased, but you felt like you left off on the day you         graduated with them. There were hugs all around, and people were happy to see each other,” he said.

One of his cousins graduated from Brooklyn Park, and there were 930 students in the class.

His cousin said “she knew about 30 of them,” Craig said.

Sharon just had coffee with five of her classmates.

“You sit down and start talking, and it’s like you never left off,” Sharon said.

In Connorsville, Craig had 13 students in his classes all through school there. 

“There were three of us who did just about everything together,” he said.

Banking and finance

Sharon has worked in banking and finance since she was in high school.

She worked at what was the National Bank of Boyceville as a co-op student when she was a senior in high school and continued working there until she and Craig were married in 1976.

“We moved to River Falls for about a year and a half. In November of ’78 we moved back to Boyceville. At that time we had two little girls,” she said.

Sharon returned to working at National Bank, which turned into Peoples State Bank, which turned into Red Cedar Bank.

“I worked there for about 20 years, between having time off to have another baby. In 1996, I left the bank and started working for the school district. I was their financial accountant for almost 25 years, about two months short of 25 years,” Sharon said. 

She retired from the Boyceville school district in 2021. 

“Basically, my whole career, I had two jobs. I had a short job when we lived in River Falls,” she noted. 

The job of accountant for a school district carries tremendous responsibility.

Computer programs change, the laws changes, recording processes with the Department of Public Instruction change — everything changes all the time, Sharon said.

“The school doesn’t receive funding if the reporting is not done,” she noted.

Best occupation

Of all the occupations he has had, Craig says retirement is the best.

“I’m doing my best occupation right now, and that’s retirement,” Craig said with a laugh.

He retired four years ago this September.

“My occupation for the longest time, I had several other jobs, but the longest one prior to retirement was 23 years at Johnson Motors in the sales area. That’s what I retired from,” he said.

When it was noted that retirement can be a busy time, Craig agreed that he seems busier now that he is retired than he did when he was working.

Craig worked 55 to 65 hours per week for the last 23 years of his career, which did not leave much time for community activities.

“The excuse ‘I can’t because I’m working.’ You don’t have that excuse anymore when you are retired. A lot of the volunteer work we used to do before, we do a lot more, such as for the church. Now we don’t have the excuse that we don’t have time,” Craig said.

“We are active members of Trinity Lutheran Church [across from Tiffany Creek Elementary]. I’ve been on the church council almost the whole time we’ve been there. I do worship leader substitution if the pastor has vacation or for some reason isn’t able to preach on a Sunday, and then I step in,” he said. 

“You can volunteer and be all over the place. We thought we’d do our volunteer work in one place,” Sharon said.

Quilting

Sharon is an active member of Trinity Lutheran Church’s quilting group.

“There are 12 to 14 women that meet. We do quilts for WestCAP, Dunn County Hospice, overseas missions, and quilts for baptisms and confirmations at church. We do the hospice quilts, and then we do ‘care quilts’ for members of our congregation who have serious illnesses. We  keep pretty busy. We meet every Tuesday morning, and we get quite a lot accomplished every week,” Sharon said.

“It’s my hobby at home, too. I do sewing at home, and we tie the quilts at church,” she added. 

“I have donated quilts for the Luther Park auction, Octoberfest, Spirit of Boyceville — the Christmas celebration, the youth there. I donate a quilt for the auction or raffle or whatever they do,” she said.

Sharon sewed one garment when she was in high school and said she probably spent more time with the seam ripper than she did sewing. She took a class this spring and sewed a quilted jacket.

“That was probably the first garment I’ve made since, maybe, 1970. I was quite pleased with myself. I don’t think I would have attempted it on my own,” she said.

“I am also serving my first term on the school board. Which is kind of like going back to work. It’s interesting. And I feel fortunate that I do have that background. I do know what’s going on. I know the acronyms and what they are talking about, and I can maybe provide a little background information,” Sharon said. 

The Tribune Press Reporter noticed, too, that Sharon must spend quite a lot of time working in their beautifully-kept backyard that features a variety of flowers and garden ornaments. 

Craig confirmed that Sharon does spend many hours working in their backyard.

Family

Craig and Sharon raised three daughters: Amy, Lori and Sarah.

Their family now includes Amy and her husband, Josh Corr, and Lori and her husband, Dru Pelzel, with five grandchildren between them.

Amy and Josh have two sons, Rian and Nathan; Lori and Dru have three children, Owen, Asher and Ellery.

“Between the two, we have five grandchildren between the ages of 25 and 12 — four boys and one girl,” Sharon said.

“And we are going to be great-grandparents in September. So we are excited for that,” she said.

“We lost our youngest daughter, Sarah, in 2003. Our community embraced us. It was very important to be part of this community. Our family. Our church family. Our work family. They all took care of us,” Sharon said.

“It was a tragedy. It was a suicide. It was totally unexpected, not that accidents are not unexpected,” Craig said.

“It was very important and very meaningful to us that our community embraced us the way that they did,” Sharon said.

School activities

Amy and Josh live south of Boyceville on Highway K. Their sons are now in their 20s.

Lori and Dru live in Menomonie. Their children range in age from 12 to 16. Owen is 16, Asher is 15, and Ellery is 12. 

Sharon and Craig’s daughter ran Cross Country and now all of their grandchildren run Cross Country.

Sharon and Craig have attended — and do attend — as many Cross Country meets as they can.

At one point, when Rian and Nathan were “split” — that is, one was in high school and the other was in middle school — Sharon and her daughter would take turns. One would go the high school Cross Country meet and one would go to the middle school Cross Country meet.

That way, both boys would have a family member there to watch them compete, Sharon said.

Boyceville is known nationwide, too, for the Science Olympiad program, Craig noted.

Sharon and Craig were involved with Science Olympiad as volunteers because their two oldest grandsons were active.

One grandson graduated from Boyceville High School in 2018 and the other in 2021.

“Those were good times. It was a wonderful group of kids,” Sharon said.

“We’ve been places, and if you say you’re from Boyceville, people will say, ‘We know the Science Olympiad team from Boyceville,’” Craig said.

Their oldest grandson, Rian, went to college at Wichita State.

“There were some students there who were active in Science Olympiad and recognized Boyceville,” Sharon said.

This year’s Boyceville Cucumber Festival will be the time to recognize Sharon and Craig Formoe.

Be on the lookout for them.

This is, after all, their 52nd Pickle Fest together.