This Family’s Fourth of July Begins with Breakfast

CEDAR RAPIDS - Before the rockets' red glare, before spectators gather along the Cedar River, even before the sun rises this morning, a group of folks will begin a traditional breakfast in Ellis Park. It's a bacon and eggs, biscuits and gravy, sweet rolls and coffee, cereal and juice, sausage and omelets feast that began 60 years ago on Independence Day.

On that July 4 in 1952, Glen Lester with enthusiastic prodding from his wife, Pat, invited his brother, Roy, and his wife, Ann, to join them for breakfast in the park. They set the coals to burning, fried up the bacon and eggs and unknowingly kicked off an annual family gathering.

For, every year since, hot or cold, rain or shine, the Lester family and friends, as many as 100 strong, celebrate July 4.

"There were never any invitations or anything," says Mickey Lester, who married Gary Lester in 1956 before they joined the festivities in 1957 to make it six. "People just knew we were there and they started coming."

Roy and Glen, the sixth and seventh children of Jess and Jessie Lester are gone now. So is Glen's wife, Pat. But Ann, in her 80s, continues to attend. And Gary, the last of nine children, and Mickey became the patriarchs.

That the family would love the outdoors obviously comes from Jess who toted a gun while riding on horseback to tend to power lines across South Dakota and Nebraska. The family wound up in Charles City where Jess farmed until 1947 when they moved to Cedar Rapids' Time Check area to be closer to older daughter, Helen, and her husband. That's when Roy, Glen, Marie and Gary, the youngest four, came to town.

Roy and Glen became lathers and Gary a plasterer, so they remained close. In the early days, as the July 4 event became known as the Lesters' Breakfast, most of the immediate family attended. Some brought friends who were like family.

"It was never a family reunion," Gary says. "People just came for breakfast."

Through the years, they tried hog roasts and keggers. But breakfast had the staying power and it's always outdoors, despite attempts to move into a rented pavilion or beneath an event tent.

Gary often arrives by 5:30 a.m. to arrange tables and set up the special eight-burner grill - a wire grate large enough to cook from eight stacks of charcoal. Mickey scrambles five or six dozen eggs for the kids. As others arrive, they bring more and more food.

"Some people don't bring anything, others bring too much," Gary laughs. "Nobody ever goes away hungry."

"One year," Mickey recalls, "it was rainy and cold. We gave the kids juice and cold cereal. We had coffee and left."

Usually, though, breakfast becomes brunch and folks stick around until early afternoon, sharing card games, yard games and conversation before the elders clean up and the young folks adjourn for fireworks.

"I think we have had close to 100," Gary says. "Since 2002, when we started counting, we've had about 80."

That certainly seems like enough people (Jess and Jessie had 31 grandchildren) to carry on the tradition for years to come, maybe to eventually hit the century mark.

Whether that happens or not, a pair of trees along with markers - one for Pat and Glen who started the breakfast and the other for older sister, Gertrude Jenkins - in Ellis Park commemorate this family's own Fourth of July celebration.