By SAMANTHA MCGUIRE, Staff Reporter
Northwestern Oklahoma State University rodeo team took Friday afternoon off from practice to help the Alva community.
LaDeeDa, a boutique on the square needed help moving from one location to another. Stockton Graves, head rodeo coach, set up a time the entire rodeo team could meet to help move. Students gathered at 1 p.m. on Friday, and cleared the place out in less than two hours.
Students worked together, under the instruction of Dee Wiedener, store owner, to lift large tables, boxes and other miscellaneous items into student trucks. The trucks were driven a few blocks down the street and unloaded into the new location.
Michaela Preedy, NWOSU rodeo member, was a close friend of Wiedener. “I most definitely think helping the community is important. The community is such a huge part of what keeps the rodeo team going,” Preedy said.
Graves and Wiedener coordinated over the course of a few months to put together a time the rodeo team could help. Graves estimated about 15 kids to help Wiedener move, and over 40 students showed up to help.
“I am so appreciative of [the help],” Wiedener said, “and I am choosing to make a donation to the rodeo team, and I can’t thank them enough.”
Wiedener was not only appreciative about the rodeo team’s help, but also said what a benefit Northwestern is to the community. “Northwestern is invaluable to our community,” she said. “Without the college none of us [community businesses] would probably survive.”
LaDeeDa was previously owned by Wiedener’s mother, and has been apart of the family for 35 years. The name itself is also a family trademark. “My grandmother used to say ‘ladeeda’ sarcastically when someone would do something,” Wiedener said, “and I tried to figure out a way to tie my name into [the business]. I was lying there one night and I was thinking about grandma, and she’d have said ‘well ladeeda.’”
So Wiedener used her first name for the middle and that’s where the name originated.