Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to throw a week-long party that will be attended by thousands. You won’t know the exact number because no one will RSVP. But you will need to announce the dates well in advance, without knowing if bad weather will bring your efforts to naught.

By the way, the whole city is invited, armed with high expectations, as you continue a tradition dating back to 1865. Your activities should target an age group ranging from, say, 0 to 100.

Easy-peasy, you say? Pass you the checkbook? If we didn’t mention you had to raise the money yourself, our bad. Good luck convincing today’s recession-battered merchants with slashed marketing budgets that paying for your party makes perfect business sense.

Welcome to the Steel Days committee, the small group of volunteers headed by an American Fork mom of seven named Jean Abram, whose shoulders this gargantuan task lays on. She’s helped by her husband, a doctor and recently-called LDS bishop.

The week-long event, which takes place every July, is American Fork’s greatest celebration, where parades, car shows, fireworks, dances, picnics and concerts attract thousands. This year, over 1,500 attended the Picnic-in-the-Park, and roughly 2,000 went to the Big Show concert, featuring the Flashback Brothers and SHeDAISY. The attendance at the youth dance tripled over last year.

Brad Frost, the city councilman who oversaw the Steel Days’ committee painstaking production for months, said Ms. Abram knew how to bring people together, despite the kind of high-pressure feel that comes with organizing such a big event. “I don’t know if you can even for a minute fathom being over some kind of venue where thousands of people were showing up,” Mr. Frost said of Ms. Abram. “And you were the go-to person for that.”

As school starts and summer months are swept by cooler days, Steel Days is not on most residents’ minds in American Fork. But there is no such luxury for Ms. Abram, who had to swiftly assess what went right and wrong while memories are still fresh.

On Thursday, she stood before the city staff and members of the council, highlighting for the first time since July, the contours of an event considered by many measures a success. Moving the car show and car cruise a week ahead, for example, had been the right decision, as the car show did not interfere with the Big Show, and the police did not have to deal with three events in one day.

“We are in need of replacing our city float,” said Ms. Abram. “We would like to offer a business expo, and we need to find a place and somebody to run that; we are faced each year with huge fees of renting a stage and a sound system.”

The meeting with city officials provided a rare, behind-the-scene look into the amount of organization a seven-day celebration is asked of a city nearing 30,000 in population, the highest ever. The committee of 22 volunteers, which is tasked with seaming it all together while wrestling with challenges as business sponsors are on the decline, failing to shore up enough support to pay the bills, is a tale of extraordinary team work.

The carnival event only cost the city $2,348 but generated close to $30,000 in ticket sales, according to budget figures from Dec. 2011 to Sept. 2012 reviewed by the Citizen. The city spent $49,000 on the variety show, but sales fell short there by $12,000. Contributions and donations topped $11,000, the car show generated close to $5,000 and the parade $2,950. For a week-long celebration that ended up costing over $115,000, the total shortfall was $2,951. But Ms. Abram has plans to find more sponsors that would help pay for the prizes and games at the Picnic-in-the-Park, an event that remains free of charge to the community.

“There are many parents that come to us and are amazed that when their child does face painting or bouncy rides, they don’t have to pay for it,” said Ms. Abram. “I guess in other cities when they do these things, they do have to pay.”

Mr. Frost said he felt he had been part of a great team of volunteers, whom he couldn’t thank publicly enough for all of their work and efforts. 

“If I had a dollar for every smile that I saw that week, we would have enough to redo all our roads,” he said.