5421 Swiss

5421 Swiss

For 42 years, mothers have been flocking to Swiss Avenue Historic District every Mother’s Day for the annual home tour. In those 42 years the event has only been rained out once — and that was this year.

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In May, spring showers flooding forced the Swiss Avenue Historic District (SAHD), which hosts the event every year, to cancel the last day of the two-day event and move the Mother’s Day brunch indoors.

Per usual the event sold thousands of tickets, and until this week SAHD was offering ticket refunds to any guest who paid $20 for a ticket but didn’t get to attend.

The numbers aren’t quite in yet because SAHD still don’t know exactly how many tickets they sold, says Robyn Schaub, the co-chair of the 2015 home tour. But they do know they only had to refund a little more than 200 tickets.

“It was a very small number considering,” she says. “Most people think of their ticket price as a donation.”

The tour supports several educational and charitable institutions in East Dallas. Proceeds from the home tour are distributed to agencies such as William Lipscomb Elementary, J.L. Long Middle School, Woodrow Wilson High School, Peak Preparatory School, Lakewood Library and others.

Also most people were able to make it to the first day of the event on Saturday, she points out.

“Sunday is usually our biggest day, so we expected that to be a big hit,” she explains. “Luckily, I think people were watching the weather forecast because we had a better than expected turnout on Saturday, which was an absolutely beautiful day. So that really helped us a lot.”

Although there have been days in the past when it has rained for an hour or two, Schaub says the home tour has never had to cancel an entire day.

“I guess we were due for a rain-out,” she figures.