Aiming to remember a loved one

The family of Peter Didier picked a proper way to honor their loved one.

The shooting sports enthusiast would have reveled in Saturday’s sporting clays memorial tournament named for Didier at Ozaukee Fish and Game.

Nearly 60 student trap team members from across southeast Wisconsin made the trip to Saukville to compete for a $500 scholarship.

While most first-time events have their growing pains and untied loose ends, this one was different.

“Things just ran really smoothly. The weather was beautiful,” Stacy Didier, one of the organizers, said.

It helped, she said, that the event was limited to a size the volunteers could handle.

“We aimed it where we thought we could manage,” Didier said.

Athletes aimed at 100 targets divided into 10 stations. The highest overall total won. Trenton Giese of the Muskego Warriors took the title and scholarship with a score of 96.

Elliot Iczkowski from the same team was second with 92, and 12-year-old Colton Sarver of the Wilmot Panthers came in third with 87.

It was Sarver’s first competition, and he was in first place after the opening group of 30 shooters competed, Didier said.

Second and third-place winners received trophies, she said. The winning team will receive a plaque. The Muskego Warriors won with a total of 273.

The event was partially driven by Peter Didier’s family members, who decided to list Ozaukee Scholastic Sports as an option for memorials in Didier’s obituary.

Some money also came from Peter Didier’s family and friends.

“To honor him and his family for thinking of the athletes and students, we decided to put on a memorial shoot for him,” she said.

Didier said the board will meet this week to recap the event, but she is confident that it will grow.

“Next year we could invite more athletes and we could handle it,” she said.

Didier’s widow Pat loved how things went.

“It was a wonderful event of a wonderful sport in memory of a wonderful person,” she said.

Stacy Didier said she is a distant relative of Peter through marriage. Peter was a cousin of her husband Mark’s father, but she and Mark went to school with Peter’s children. She said she was thrilled to see how much fun Peter’s widow had at the event. The two were married for 53 years.

“It was overall a great day. Pat was glowing. It was great to see her get a sense of Peter’s memory. It’s all about the youths,” Stacy Didier said.

Peter Didier went sport shooting every Wednesday at the club, she said, and he often shot with Pat or his friends.

Peter, 76, died on June 19, 2022, in Brussels, Belgium, while traveling to Luxembourg with Pat.

He was a well-known Realtor and auctioneer, and he loved aviation so much he became a pilot and built a private runway on his farm in the Town of Port Washington.