NEW VIENNA, Iowa — Following the death of Cascade native Mary Tibbott, who died of cancer in 2009, Steve Kerper was inspired. Kerper, owner of Kerper’s General Store in New Vienna and a sports enthusiast who made custom baseball bats on his lathe, fashioned a one-of-a-kind, light-pink bat to be auctioned to help offset some of the expenses the Tibbott family incurred. At the benefit fundraiser for Tibbott, Elmer Engelken bought the pale pink bat — a K28 Mary Tibbott Signature Model with “MT 33 1⁄2 ELM” etched on the knob — for $100 and donated it back.
The memorial bat lay silent for 14 years, relatively untouched in the Tibbotts’ Greeley, Iowa, home. “It sat here in my bedroom next to a chest of drawers ever since then, and that was the last thing I seen at night and the first thing I would see in the morning,” 90-year-old Merwin Tibbott said. “Hell, my kids was down there and the grandchildren were in there, and nobody even picked it up and played with it.
” And then in 2023, over 160 months after receiving the memorial bat, Tibbott had what he calls a “brainstorm.” “It sat in there all them years, and they was having a fundraiser for Lori Gearhart up at Edgewood. This one morning I just got the brainstorm, why not donate (the bat)? So, I called Bev and Liz (Tibbott’s two daughters) and they thought it would be a good idea,” he said.
“So, it took off from there.” Soon, the traveling bat was offered to others. In honor of his wife, Tibbot.