LUVERNE, Minn. (KELO) — Betty Mann of Luverne felt like treating herself, so that’s what she did.
“In 2000, I lost my husband and my oldest daughter, and that was a bad Christmas for me, and so the first Saturday in January of 2001 I was in the Cracker Barrel in Sioux Falls, and everything Christmas was half price, and I said to my daughter-in-law, I’ve always wanted a wooden nutcracker, and I had a tough Christmas: I’m buying myself a belated Christmas present,” Mann said. “And I bought this one right up here for six dollars.”
That nutcracker dressed as Santa Claus was her first nutcracker: the first of many. In 2016, she donated more than 2,500 nutcrackers to the Rock County History Center.
“I heard people say, ‘Let’s go see the museum,’” Mann said. “The next person would say, ‘If you see one museum, you’ve seen them all,’ and that bothered me. And so I went to my board and asked them if they would accept my collection. Maybe it would draw people in to the museum, and then they would see all the other great things that we have in the museum.”