Among those who attended Hot Summer Nights in Uptown Denison on Friday evening, Lucia Elmiger and Chris Willi traveled the farthest to join in the celebration. They live in the central area of Switzerland, where German is spoken. 

Actually, the two came to the United States for business and pleasure, and in Denison, they were guests of Larry and Kathy Struck. The Strucks had been the host family for Lucia back in the early 1990s.

“That was when their daughter, Libbie, was still little, and I had a great and joyful time with them,” said Lucia. 

She was with the Struck family for about 10 weeks.

Lucia is an independent consultant working in the business communication field and is also a health and lifestyle consultant along with her husband, Chris.

Chris works for a company called Trisa. Among the products the company makes are toothbrushes – one million a day.

“When you go to a store here in America and you look at a toothbrush to see where it’s made, if it says ‘Made in Switzerland,’ then we produced it,” Chris said.

Both Chris and Lucia have made a number of trips to the United States in the past, both separately before they met and then as a couple.

On this trip they flew into Memphis, Tennessee, and went to Arkansas on business. Then they drove through Missouri to get to Denison.

In Missouri they stopped to see Lucia’s host teacher when she was hosted by the Strucks. The teacher, Dorothy Dunham, taught in Dunlap.

On their trip through Arkansas and Missouri and on up to Denison, Chris and Lucia took the local highways.

“I can say that I really enjoyed these rolling hills, also all the trees,” said Chris.

He added that they took the smaller highways, “because it reminded us quite a lot of home, where we are living. Even though you don’t have the Alps, you have the rolling hills and it’s nice.”

They also like the houses and nice people.

“Everybody was helping us when we were kind of looking around and were a bit lost, and they were asking if they can help, and that’s really nice,” said Chris.

Lucia said, “It’s always good to see how people live and learn what they think.”

Chris added that taking the smaller highways through towns allowed them to see the real life, not the usual things that tourists see.

Lucia and Chris stopped along their route to visit places of interest. One of those stops was in Clarinda to see Glenn Miller’s house and museum, and they also went to an art museum.

And they saw their first baseball game Thursday night in Denison.

“We don’t really have baseball in Switzerland. We’re more into soccer,” said Lucia.

Lucia continued that Hot Summer Nights reminded them a lot of their summer festivals in Switzerland.

“I think it’s so nice and so important for people to get together and socialize and have a good time,” said Lucia.

Chris was impressed with the tables for seating at Hot Summer Nights.

“It’s so simple. You pull the truck in (with the tables) and you can sit down,” said Chris.

“We’ve never seen that before,” said Lucia.

The couple spent time with the Strucks until Monday. From Denison, Chris and Lucia went to Ankeny and then flew out of Chicago.

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