It has been a very busy few weeks in Callaway, with the community hosting two large bike riding tours, alumni weekend and the annual Pioneer Picnic. Add to the mix a hail storm that damaged nearly every home in town, and it creates a recipe for a lot of tired individuals. Yet the planning and events continue.

With Custer County Fair just around the corner, the Callaway Chamber helps the local 4-H kids through a program they call 4-H Boosters. “It is for those who can’t go buy a whole steer or a pig, but want to throw in some money to help the kids,” explained Chamber President Ken Pitkin. “So Chamber members and people in the community are invited to leave money at First Interstate Bank to go toward the livestock auction.”

Also just around the corner is a huge area event - the Sandhills Open Road Challenge. The Callaway Chamber hosts lunch for the drivers on Friday, Aug. 12. “If people want to see the SORC cars, they will be in Callaway from about 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. that day,” said Pitkin.

Though it is still a few weeks away, the annual Callaway Kite Flight is quickly approaching. Held each year on Labor Day weekend, this year's event is Sept. 3 and 4.

The Chamber is also planning special events in the community to welcome the new Reynolds-Love Funeral Home building, as well as introduce and welcome the new administrative team at Callaway Good Life.

While looking ahead at all of the activities to come in the next few weeks, Pitkin said the Chamber also wanted to take a moment to reflect on what all the residents of Callaway have accomplished in the past month. “I’m pretty proud of the community. And I just want to recap the results of all those efforts,” Pitkin explained. “When the vintage car tour came here they made a $600 donation to the museum. There was no entry fee so they wanted to make a contribution. Our FCCLA kids served dinner to that group as a fundraiser for their trip to nationals, and made almost $1,000 in tips. So that was a good money maker.”

Hosting BRAN also proved profitable for Callaway, as the village earned $1,500 just for being a host community. Pitkin said that money will be used to fund three $500 scholarships to Callaway graduates next year. “We also had a BRAN rider who wanted to make a donation to the community because we had the hail storm just two days before we hosted them, so she wrote a check to the community for $1,000 to help with storm recovery. We have some ideas of what we are going to do with that,” Pitkin shared. “So we ended up with $2,500 just given to us, plus the economic impact food service wise from these events.”

Callaway hosted Tour de Nebraska on June 23, and Pitkin said they were notified last week that the community was named “Best Rest Stop” community on the tour, which resulted in a $350 award for community improvement.

“Plus there were community garage sales that brought all kinds of people to town, and you throw Pioneer Picnic in that brought all kinds of people to town - the hard work of the community paid some dollar dividends on top of the goodwill it created.”