Recently in a parking lot just off highway 65, friends, family, and strangers gathered to decorate their cars and trucks with streamers and balloons for a birthday parade. They are in high demand these days as birthday parties are canceled because of the pandemic.
Organizer Don Lenhart says taking part in one drive-by birthday party got him thinking about other kids.
“We did a huge event out here in Blaine for Gavin, and it just didn’t seem fair for only one kid to have it,” Lenhart said. “So we went home and brain-stormed and now here we are today.”
The parade for 11 year old Gavin Pritzl in early April drew hundreds of people. Since then, Don Lenhart and Hailey Liesenfeld have helped organize more than one hundred smaller parades with no signs of stopping.
“The adrenaline you get from seeing the kid at the end of the driveway or at the end of the road just smiling or shouting and just in so much pure happiness, nothing will beat that adrenaline rush at the end of the day,” says Liesenfeld.
So the two formed a group called, Cruises for a Cause. It brings strangers together to throw a party for kids who are sometimes too young to understand why their birthday can’t be celebrated as usual.
“They don’t understand what’s going on out here,” says Lenhart. “They have no idea. They just know what their parents tell them.”
But on this day, the cars and trucks lined up to honor a girl who fully understood why she was missing friends and family. Dakota Pfiffner is turning 18, but not alone. She was joined by a noisy line of cars and trucks. Many are friends and close family members, but others are strangers who just want to help out.
“It means everything to me not having, like not being able to see most of my family and then having them show up,” says Pfiffner. “It means everything.”
Hailey and Don say there are more requests than ever, and they plan to keep going.
“As long as there’s a need. As long as we can we don’t want to stop. We just want to grow,” says Hailey.
Cruises for a Cause is honoring veterans for Memorial Day. The group is organizing a convoy to Fort Snelling on the Saturday before Memorial Day to place flags in the cemetery.
