Daivd “Poncho” Slepicka, a Crete Eagles Club member since the 1980s, puts his heart into decking the halls at the Eagles Club for Christmas every year.
Slepicka starts by purchasing a real tree from a tree farm in Seward, bringing it to the Eagles Club and decorating it. He then puts lights in and outside the bar and in the pool table room, the President’s Room and around the bathrooms.
He hangs lights from the ceiling, fastens them under the seats and puts them in the windows. He also places figurines and fake snow around the bar and zip ties elves with beer cans on the light fixtures.
Slepicka has replaced all the lights and decorations within the last two years, and he buys them all with his own money. Greg Hollman, an Eagles Club officer, said he and other Eagles Club members have offered to help out but Slepicka has declined.
The only thing he ever asked for was totes to store his decorations.
“We all know what that stuff costs, and it isn’t cheap,” Hollman said. “It’s a lot of money he puts into it, but there’s not a single person walking by that doesn’t notice it.”
Slepicka said decorating gives him something to do and he loves to see people enjoy the festivities.
“(I like) just seeing people smile and say ‘thank you’ and ‘it looks really good’ and stuff like that,” he said.
New this year, Slepicka put the lights on a timer so the bartenders did not have to worry about turning anything on or off. The timer is set so the lights inside the bar automatically turn on at 9:45 a.m. every day before the bar opens and the lights on the windows outside turn on at 5 p.m. All the lights shut off at 11 p.m.
Slepicka started decorating about 15 years ago when he was sitting in a bar in town and noticed it had an artificial tree. He decided it needed a real one and went out and bought one and began decorating it. He did that every year until the bar closed.
The next year, he was sitting at the Eagles Club bar and noticed it also had an old artificial tree. He knew what he had to do.
“I said, ‘It’s about time we get a real tree in here,’” Slepicka said. “We all kicked the idea around about where we were going to put it, and we decided right out in the front window. We went out and got one and have been doing it ever since.”
As a truck driver for Sysco, Slepicka typically works Sunday nights through either Friday afternoons or Saturday mornings. Over the past three weekends, he has decorated on Saturdays and took a couple of Sundays off work as part of his floating holiday time off in order to get everything finished in time.
He is now putting his final touches on the space and said he has already put more than 50 hours of work into decorating.
Hollman said everyone at the Eagles Club loves his decorations and appreciates the work Slepicka puts into them.
“The club looks so good. (Slepicka) does such a good job, and it gets everybody in the Christmas spirit,” he said. “Everybody at the club looks forward to it. They know he’s going to do it every year.”
