WILLOW CREEK — When Amos Homan predicted that the ice would clear from Homan’s Pond at 2:38 PM on April 3, he was not guessing. He was consulting a family archive.

The ice cleared at 2:41 PM. Three minutes off. Good enough for first place — and Amos Homan’s first Ice-Out championship.

“This is not my win,” Homan said, standing on the shore of the pond with the winner’s ribbon pinned to his jacket. “This is my father’s win. His notebook. His sixty-one years of watching this pond. I just wrote down what he taught me.”

Amos Homan, 38, has been entering the Ice-Out since he was ten years old, submitting predictions under his father Ezra’s name. He inherited the legendary spiral notebook — the worn, tape-repaired record of ice thickness, water temperature, and barometric pressure dating back to 1927 — when his father passed away in 1985.

“It took me eleven years to win,” Homan said. “My father never won in sixty-one. If he were here, he would tell me that I got lucky. And he would be right. But I will take it.”

The victory was poignant because it occurred at the pond that bears the Homan family name. Amos’s grandfather, Silas Homan, was the landowner who allowed the first mill workers to gather on his property to watch the ice in 1927. His father Ezra never missed a single Ice-Out in 61 years.

“Ezra would be proud,” said Jed Thorne, who finished 47th and has never won in more than 30 years of entering. “The Homan family and this pond go back further than any of us can remember. It is fitting that Amos should be the one to bring the championship home.”

Clara Winslow’s editorial captured the moment: “The Homan family’s relationship with the pond has produced its first champion. It will not be its last.”

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