It was 1 degree in St. Paul on Saturday morning and that was cool with the newly crowned Queen of Snows of the St. Paul Winter Carnival.
“It means we’re doing our job,” said Alison Gunter with a smile.
The 25-year-old embraces everything about her adopted hometown — including its weather and especially its festival.
“It was at the Grand Day Parade last year when I turned to my friend and said, ‘I’m going to do this next year,’” she recalls.
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It’s not her first tiara: Gunter, who grew up on a sugar beet farm in Chippewa County, was crowned Miss Clara City as a teenager in 2012. Later, she served as a 2014 Aquatennial Princess.
After graduating from the College of St. Benedict in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and communication, Gunter settled in St. Paul, where she works as a human resources representative for Ecolab. But her connections to the St. Paul Winter Carnival have roots in Clara City.
“I’ll never forget watching the news and seeing Jill Andresen from my hometown being named Queen of Snows in 2005,” Gunter says. “I was in fifth grade and I just thought it was the coolest thing because I knew her — she was my swimming instructor.”
Pretty much everybody knows each other in Clara City.
“It’s got a population of about 1,300 people,” says Gunter.
What are the odds that two of those people in such a small town would be named queen of a festival located in a big city about two hours away?
Actually …
“There’s one more queen that I know of,” said the 2005 queen, now 36 and called Jill Asche. “Carla Augst LeVander was queen before me — her dad was a pastor and so she spent a little time in Clara City.”
Asche and LeVander, who was queen in 1965, met at the Annual Queen’s Tea during Asche’s reign. Asche and the new queen spent even more time together.
“She probably doesn’t remember this,” Asche said, “but I was her Sunday school teacher, too.”
Like in any small town, news about its own spreads fast: For the third time in 54 years, a woman with ties to Clara City has been named Aurora, Queen of Snows.
“My phone blew up starting at 5 a.m.,” said Asche on Saturday, “and it’s been constantly ringing all day. I actually cried when I heard — I’m just so happy and proud.”
But Asche isn’t surprised that Clara City is a queen maker.
“Clara City is really exceptional at instilling the importance of community and heartfelt service to the community,” said Asche, “and that is what Alison is all about — I’ve known her since she was a little girl, and St. Paul couldn’t have a more genuine and giving person to represent them.”
Gunter’s connections to Carnival aren’t limited to Clara City, though.
Over on the Iron Range, Gunter’s aunt was the fourth grade teacher of Beth Pinkney, a past president and CEO of the St. Paul Festival & Heritage Foundation (which runs the carnival). And across the river in Minneapolis, Kari Boe-Schmidtz, the 1997 Queen of Snows, served as Gunter’s boss and mentor during a college internship in the Hennepin County human resources department.
“She was a rock star then and still is,” said Boe-Schmidtz.
Natalka Kramarczuk, chair of the Queen of Snows Candidate Committee, agrees with that assessment. Kramarczuk has spent the past several weeks getting to know all 14 candidates who ran for the position of the 2019 Queen of Snows — in addition to Gunter, four other women were named princesses at the coronation Friday. As a group, the candidates rallied to sell more than 2,500 official Winter Carnival buttons, raising about $12,600 for the nonprofit that produces the carnival — an all-time record for Queen candidates.
Gunter was part of that positive energy: “Alison had a way of bringing the team together with her contagious smile and genuine interest in everyone enjoying this experience,” Kramarczuk said.
Gunter, who is sponsored by Hamernick’s Interior Solutions, said she is humbled by this opportunity to spend the next year representing a 133-year-old tradition.
“I want to make St. Paul proud,” she said.
