Original article published in the Mower County Independent, Thursday, December 11, 2025. Reprinted with permission and gratitude.
By David Phillips
When the holidays come around, Joe Bezdicek is one of the most familiar faces to shoppers at Sunshine Foods in Spring Valley.
The Spring Valley resident isn’t an employee of the grocery store picking up extra hours for the holidays, although he does help out Sunshine employees after customers are done checking out. Instead, he mostly sits in a chair, ringing a bell to draw attention to the red kettle by his side for people to donate money toward Salvation Army activities in Fillmore County.
Bezdicek isn’t the only volunteer to man the kettle, but he is the most prolific, putting in seven hours per day at times and often showing up seven days a week. Last year, he put in nearly 100 hours during the season, roughly from the week of Thanksgiving through the end of the year.
Staffing the red kettle at Sunshine Foods is a project of the Spring Valley Kiwanis Club. Bezdicek isn’t part of Kiwanis, but his wife, Rita, is a conscientious member who has been quite active throughout the years. “Rita said they need somebody to ring the bell. And I said, ‘Well, I’ll go over there and ring the bell for a while.’ And nobody relieved me, so I just kept ringing it,” said Bezdicek. That was three years ago, and he has been busy ringing ever since then. The personal interaction is what keeps him coming back.
“I see a lot of people,” he said. “I taught industrial arts here for 32 years, and so a lot of the people I see are students I had in school years ago, plus their parents. So I know quite a few of the people by name, and they know me, so it’s a pleasant situation.”
With all the hours he has spent at Sunshine Foods, he knows the employees and understands the flow of activity through the store. The store has provided a chair for him, which makes his time there more comfortable. In turn, he helps put carts away, even devising a system for keeping one row of carts without the small baskets in front to help out families that bring in their children in car seats so they can fit them in the large basket.
Kiwanis has a signup form on the Spring Valley EDA website (springvalleyeda.org), so anyone in the community can volunteer to ring the bell. However, Bezdicek just shows up each day, and if a volunteer comes in to help, “I tell them if they want to ring the bell, just come on over, and I’ll give them the bell and tell me how many hours they want to ring it. I’ll come back and relieve them when they are done.”
Bezdicek estimates that about 65 to 70 percent of the customers take out coins or bills to stuff in the red kettle before exiting the store.
“People are surprisingly very generous. I’ll see anywhere from a few coins up to a $20 bill going in there — and people that you thought probably couldn’t handle it, they’ll put a couple of dollars in there. It’s just encouraging to me for a community this size. But I know in a community like Spring Valley and Wykoff, when there’s a need, the people will come to help.”
The Spring Valley Kiwanis Club took in more than $10,000 last year, which was more than the total collected in all other Fillmore County communities combined. The local red kettle has collected more than $4,000 as of Saturday, Dec. 6, this year, by far the largest amount of any location in the county.
An annual summary by Salvation Army Secretary/Treasurer Geraldine Williams of Spring Valley shows that the Fillmore County chapter touched the lives of approximately 2,500 people in the county during the most recent fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. Funds went to items such as county care center projects, Shop with a Cop, Easter and Thanksgiving food baskets, hygiene supplies for seven elementary schools in the county, educator appreciation baskets, and emergency assistance.
Courtesy of the Mower County Independent, 135 E Main St. LeRoy, MN 55951, (507)-324-5325
