Maddie Poppe draws a crowd in Elma for concert/fundraiser

To The Press

More than 1,200 people filled the ballfield in Elma Sunday night, taking in a concert featuring Maddie Poppe with opening act Danni Bilidt Johnston.

“It was a great night in so many ways,” said Joe Whitinger.

Last spring Whitinger dreamed up the idea of bringing Poppe to Elma as a 75th birthday gift for his wife, Kathy. They had been fans of the Clarksville native since Poppe won “American Idol” in 2018, and they had been to several of her concerts.

Whitinger started by writing Poppe a letter to see if she would come, and sure enough, she would. So, on Sunday night more than 100 of their friends and family celebrated Kathy’s birthday at the concert.

But in addition to the Whitingers’ birthday guests, Kathy and Joe had offered the concert up as a fundraiser for the Elma Community Complex Committee.

The committee accepted and immediately began planning the event, hoping to make it a major fundraiser for the group’s cause.

“We have great people who work hard on improving the community,” Whitinger said.

More than 70 volunteers worked the event, including firefighters directing parking, people working concessions, selling ticket and staffing the beer gardens.

“It takes a lot of people and they did awesome,” Whitinger said. “People can give their time and/or their financial support. It takes both for us to keep doing great things in our community. I am hoping others will consider sponsoring events like this in the future and/or the causes our community is working on.”

Whitinger said he could have given a donation directly to the Community Complex Committee, but he hopes by doing it this way it had a bigger impact and was more meaningful to the community.

“For us it is about giving back to the community that has been good to us and making it better for future generations,” he said.

“We weren’t the only family having a good time. It was great seeing families, young and old, local and from a distance, enjoying the concert on what ended up to be a beautiful night,” Whitinger said.

Some of the concert-goers were people who drove from a distance because they were fans. One family drove from Vinton, arrived at 10:30 a.m. and spent the day enjoying the park.

Other families were local families reuniting for the fun event on Labor Day weekend.

“Either way it made for a great opportunity for us to showcase our community,” Whitinger said.

The Elma Community Complex Committee is working toward raising $1.2 million to build a building for a medical clinic, add onto the day care, and renovate the former gymnasium into a community room, city clerk’s office and library.

The project is being done in phases as funding allows. The committee has raised $935,000 so far and is still calculating how much was raised with Sunday night’s event.

Donations can also be mailed to City of Elma-ECC, PO Box 497, Elma IA 50628.