82-year-old Lawn Rangers founder still working to put Arcola on the map
Sep. 3—ARCOLA — As Pat Monahan lined up for the Blossomtime Festival Parade in Benton Harbor, Mich., on May 1, 1982, with more than a dozen of his friends — each with one hand on a lawnmower and the other holding a broom, black masks affixed over their eyes — Pat Monahan felt a wave of uncertainty.
In front of the "World Famous Lawn Ranger Precision Lawn Mower Drill Team," as the group of mostly middle-aged men named themselves when they formed less than a year earlier, was an ornately decorated float, complete with freshly cut flowers.
"It was like a Rose Bowl float," Monahan said. "It was like, 'What are we doing here?'"
On home turf at the previous year's Broomcorn Festival in Arcola, where Monahan worked for the broom and cleaning supply company his grandfather founded, his subversive humor had landed spectacularly.
In a different setting, though, Monahan wasn't sure if the joke would work.
As they rounded the parade's first corner, though, it quickly became clear that the Lawn Rangers could please a crowd away from home. Members of the audience lining the street clapped and howled with laughter as the Lawn Rangers tossed brooms back and forth and pushed their mowers from side to side in a weaving formation, tricks that would become known as the "Cross and Toss" and "Walk the Dog."
Eventually, Monahan and his crew would take their act around the country. In 1983, they marched in Detroit's Thanksgiving Day Parade. They became regulars at parades in Chicago and performed in the Fiesta Bowl and Holiday Bowl parades multiple times. In the 1990s, they ensnared Pulitzer Prize-winning humor writer Dave Barry, and in 2009, they marched in President Barack Obama's inaugural parade.
"If you go to a parade and watch, you'll see a lot of queens, who are pretty good, but after the first 15, they look alike," Monahan said. "The high school bands are really good too, but again, there's a certain sameness about them.
"And then all of a sudden you see these guys with no talent whatsoever pushing mowers and twirling brooms, but having a great time and laughing and yelling at the crowd."
Barry's readers and parade attendees across the country came to know Arcola, but Monahan maintains he didn't have a plan of putting the Douglas County city on the map with his idea.
For Monahan, though, contributing to his hometown has always been central to his life. It's why, after earning degrees from Notre Dame and the University of Chicago, he found his way back to Arcola, where he helped his brothers run the Thomas Monahan Company while he worked to improve the town.
At 82, he's still making plans to beautify his town and attract visitors.
"Arcola raised him and his father before him and his dad," son Kevin said. "It's a really genuine passion that's paved the way for a lot of his success."
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Monahan loved his childhood in Arcola, where he fondly remembers having "100 mothers" who would keep track of his whereabouts. As a high schooler, he was a member of the 1973 Purple Riders basketball team, which went 27-3 and made the Sweet 16 as a tiny school in a one-class system.
Still, after earning his bachelor's degree from Notre Dame and his master's from the University of Chicago, he didn't plan on returning home to work for the family business. Instead of working for a company that sold technology that was invented centuries ago, he decided to forge his own path selling modern technology with IBM, a job that took him to Albuquerque, N.M., and Chicago.
The desire to live in Arcola, though, pulled him back. In 1971, he accepted a job in Decatur and moved to his hometown. A few years later, after his father died, he joined his brothers to work at The Monahan Company and eventually created his own branch of the company, Monahan Partners, which he now owns along with his kids.
"My Chicago friends said, 'Why did you go back to Arcola?'" he said. "And I say, 'The real question is: Why did I ever leave?' I don't think anyone has more fun than the people that live here."
Along with his three brothers and a large group of buddies, Monahan would dress up each Halloween and go from house to house, trick-or-treating for beer. At Christmas, they'd go from door to door singing Christmas carols, hoping for payment in the form of adult beverages.
Sometimes, Pat's brother, Tim, would slip a wrapped box under the tree and Pat, dressed as Santa Claus, would declare that the present was for Tim, who would unwrap it and take a swig from the bottle of scotch inside.
"One time, when we had been doing it for about three or four years, one guy brought a boombox with a recording of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir," Tim said. "One gal said, 'Boy, you guys have really improved. (The last few years), you guys were horrible.'
"Anyway, we have an awful lot of fun."
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For those adult trick-or-treaters, who would attach sleds to their trucks in the winter and fly down the streets, it was only natural to put on masks and Stetson hats and push their mowers down the street in formation when Monahan came up with the idea in 1981 along with his friend, John O'Halloran, who lived in LaGrange Park and dreamed of marching in the town's parade.
"We did a lot of things that people in other towns wouldn't do," Monahan said. "The Lawn Rangers probably came out of the same idea, of guys getting together and having a good time. My son said, 'You know, that's something special, because especially in these days, guys don't have outlets like that.'
"I think that's one of the reasons the Lawn Rangers are still together after 42 years," he added, "still having no talent."
Monahan's activities over the years, though, weren't limited to hijinks.
He became the president of the school board and the chamber of commerce and chaired the town's economic development and the TIF advisory committees, creating a district that funded the town's schools, parks, libraries and more.
In 2003, he helped lead fundraising efforts through the Arcola Foundation to build a 46,000-square-foot, $7 million addition to the town's elementary, junior high and high school complex. Of course, for a time, a significant percentage of kids in the Arcola school district were related to Monahan — his nine children have 21 cousins who all grew up in town.
Monahan takes pride in the fact that his town is unique and identifiable. Murals and displays around town tell stories of the creation of Raggedy Ann and Andy, a football game involving the Decatur Staleys that some claim would have been the first professional football game ever, and, of course, the Lawn Rangers, among others.
The town has two large companies that supply brooms and other cleaning equipment to people around the world. Less than a mile down the road, Libman Co. employs around 700 people. Those manufacturers attracted a large Latino population, which now makes up around 43 percent of the town. Arcola, which also has a significant Mennonite population, elected its first Latino mayor, Jesus Garza, in 2021.
"It's still a really close community," Monahan said. "It's probably one of the great examples of mixing cultures and not having any problems. We're proud of having three cultures."
In his busy life, there was one activity in which Monahan didn't participate for decades — mowing the lawn. He outsourced that job to his nine children, who were each assigned their own square of grass to cut.
"Of course, we didn't all mow on the same day," Kevin said, "so it probably didn't look very good."
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When the Broomcorn Festival Parade takes over the streets of downtown Arcola on Saturday, Monahan won't be marching with his fellow Rangers. His days of crossing and tossing ended a few years ago. He's passed off many of his duties with the group to Kevin, who also serves as president of Monahan Partners.
"I can walk a mile," he said, "but I can't walk very fast."
After years of running publicity and the beer tent, Monahan's only involvement in the Broomcorn Festival this year, he said, is "keeping an eye on the Lawn Rangers."
His civic contributions, though, haven't stopped.
Recently, he helped spearhead a project to bring to downtown Arcola a statue of Ben Franklin, who is rumored to have brought the first broomcorn seeds to the United States. The bronze figure, which sits just down the street from The Monahan Company's office, depicts Franklin holding a broom.
In his office at Monahan Partners, where he now holds the title of ambassador, he proudly shows off renderings of the Broom Palace, an idea he hatched for a 45-foot-square, two-story landmark. He's researched the successes and the pitfalls of similar buildings around the country. The ornate building, Monahan hopes, will include the Libman Co. outlet store.
For a man who peppers his speech with one-liners, many of which aren't fit for print, Monahan takes his responsibility to his community seriously.
When asked to describe his father, Kevin referred to a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln, who said: "I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him."
"That's quintessential Pat Monahan," Kevin said.
