Ringle Turns 125: Why a Decades-Dormant Tradition Came Back This Year

"If it weren't for the brickyard, there would be no Ringle." Randy Ullenbrauck said it plainly, standing behind a folding table at Ringle Town Hall Park with photographs dating back to 1913 spread in front of him, next to a handful of bricks he'd pulled from his own collection of the old Ringle Brick Company's output. Rain was falling on Saturday, September 19, and it kept falling most of the afternoon. People came anyway, enough of them that organizers were calling it a strong turnout by the time the polka band packed up.

The occasion was Ringle's quasquicentennial, 125 years since the town's founding in 1901, and the timing mattered in a way that had nothing to do with the calendar. The celebration landed five months and a day after an EF-3 tornado tore through the township, the kind of anniversary a town doesn't get to plan around but has to answer to anyway.

A Party the Town Hadn't Thrown in Decades

The schedule read like a checklist pulled from a much older era. Food trucks opened at 11 a.m. The local VFW ran an opening ceremony and flag raising at noon. At 1 p.m., organizers honored past Ringle Daze queens and crowned new ones under the title "Queens for a Day," followed by a recognition ceremony for lifelong residents at 1:30. The Benaszeski Brothers played live polka through the afternoon, and Ullenbrauck's table of photographs and historic tours ran the whole time.

None of that was invented for the occasion. Coverage of the day described it as calling back to the old Ringle Daze celebrations the town had run for decades before letting the tradition lapse. Peggy Roble, one of the guests recognized as a former Ringle Daze queen, won the title back in 1972 and again in 1973. Bringing back a queen crowning and a flag ceremony the town hadn't staged in a long stretch of years is a different kind of anniversary party than booking a band and calling it a birthday. It's a town choosing to revive something specific it used to do, at a moment when a lot of what it used to have was gone.

Closing One Recovery Window as Another Opens

The tornado that shaped the timing hit on the evening of April 17. The National Weather Service confirmed it as an EF-3, with winds reaching 145 miles per hour, on the ground for 17 minutes and cutting a path 13.5 miles long across Marathon County, wide enough at points to span roughly six football fields. Early damage estimates from that first night put the number of affected homes around 75. Within a week, county officials were describing more than 100 homes destroyed or damaged. A more detailed tally later in the month put the figure at 143 homes impacted, broken down as eight destroyed, 30 with major damage, 68 with minor damage such as partial roof loss, and 31 more affected beyond that.

Recovery moved through phases most residents hadn't had to think about before. The Community Foundation of North Central Wisconsin, which had raised $260,000 across 700 donations within the first two weeks, spent that early money on food and dumpsters for debris. By midsummer the fund had shifted into a longer phase, taking applications from residents who needed help repairing roofs or garages. One piece of that effort was a deductible-coverage program that reimbursed up to $1,000 per household, meant to unlock insurance payouts that require the deductible to be paid first. Eighty-four residents applied. The deadline to do so was August 31, the same date FEMA and SBA disaster loan applications closed.

That deadline passed less than three weeks before the anniversary festival. The paperwork phase of the recovery, the part measured in applications and cutoff dates, was closing right as the town opened a celebration built around a dormant tradition and a historian's table of century-old photographs. One kind of recovery effort was wrapping up. Another kind, harder to put a deadline on, was just getting a stage.

Staying, Leaving, and Replanting

Not every household in Ringle answered that stretch of the year the same way. Ray King had built his family's home in the township 34 years earlier. After the tornado destroyed it, he and his wife Denise moved to Weston in July, a decision driven partly by the math: rebuilding a smaller home in Ringle would have cost tens of thousands of dollars more than relocating. Denise King said the new house wouldn't feel like home until she'd had time to make memories in it. Ray King said what he missed most wasn't the structure but the neighbors who'd been there for three decades.

Other residents described the opposite pull. Kirk Rux, a Ringle homeowner, said he and his wife used to joke about moving away when things got frustrating. After watching how the community rallied following the storm, he said there was no way he'd ever leave the township now. Karen Kubitz, another homeowner, called the support from neighbors and local businesses overwhelming and said so twice, back to back, like she wanted to make sure it registered.

Some of the recovery wasn't about structures at all. Dick and Mary Albright, who'd lived in Ringle more than 40 years, lost 20 trees in the storm along with siding on their house. A month after the tornado, Dick Albright had already planted two new spruces, saying he understood he might not live to see them fully grown but planted them anyway for whoever comes after him. Around the same time, the Schofield Lions Club partnered with two local establishments to raise money that went partly toward giving residents trees and plants to replace what the storm had stripped from their yards, the kind of loss homeowners insurance generally doesn't cover.

That's the texture underneath the festival. A town where one family did the math and moved to Weston, where another homeowner reversed a running joke about leaving into a promise to stay, and where a man in his seventies planted trees he might not see mature. The 125th anniversary didn't erase any of that. It gave the town a reason to stand in one park together while all of it was still true.

Ullenbrauck said before the celebration that he planned to spend part of the afternoon just walking around town, taking it in. It's a small town, he said. It wouldn't take long.

Ringle's next chapter is still being written, one repaired garage and one replanted spruce at a time. If you're keeping an eye on this part of Marathon County for reasons of your own, Joleta Sells Homes has been following towns like Ringle for years, and we're glad to talk anytime a question about the area comes up.