Town abuzz as Marigold Festival returns

Winterville's back in bloom
By Jennifer L. Johnson | news@onlineathens.com | Story updated at 12:01 am on 5/16/2009

WINTERVILLE - When the organizers of Winterville's Marigold Festival decided they needed a break in 2002, Donny Seagraves, the event's publicity chairwoman, felt awful.

"I felt like we were taking away Santa Claus from the kids," Seagraves said. "Winterville really loved it."

Today, after a seven-year hiatus, the festival returns, giving Wintervillians a chance to celebrate their unique city.

Friends and former neighbors used to time their visits to Athens to coincide with the festival. Members of Seagraves' family who live in Tennessee have re-established the tradition and returned for this year's festival.

"We've missed that for the past few years," Seagraves said.

Half of the people helping to revive Winterville's Marigold Festival never attended one before, but they'd heard enough stories.

Emily Eisenman, who moved from West Palm Beach, Fla., with her husband two years ago, wanted to be part of the Winterville tradition and took on the task of organizing the festival's return.

When word spread through the community about plans for 2009, Winterville began to buzz.

"I think it pleased a lot of people because they can go back and relive their memories," Seagraves said.

Marigold Festival 2009 will keep many of the features that drew people for three decades - at its peak 7,000 visitors - but the time away will allow for some changes, too.

"Not having a festival for several years is allowing us to do some things differently," Eisenman said.

Organizers, for instance, moved the date of the festival from late June to mid-May to avoid the worst of the summer heat.

"Thank God, 'cause it would get burning hot," said Lanora Pierce, a former Miss Marigold who now works as a preparator for the Georgia Museum of Art. "The festival was a big deal when I was a kid. I walked down from my house, which was on the other side of town. I loved it."

While this year's festival tries out new events like dog agility courses and alpaca petting, it is bringing back many of the traditions that make hometown festivals unique.

The Winterville Civitan Club will barbecue chicken in the Pittard Park Pavilion to raise money for an annual scholarship for a local student.

Mary Whitehead, the whose husband, Wesley, was mayor when the festival started and helped make it a community tradition, will serve as grand marshal of the festival's parade.

Glassblowers and potters will sell their wares, but art offerings will range from the work of children to professionals.

The Georgia Museum of Art contributed several sculptures on Main Street near the train Depot, large scrap-metal animals by Georgia artist Doug Makemson that will be displayed until August.

Winterville Elementary School students also created works for the festival, and Principal Deborah Holcomb Haney was looking forward to her first Marigold Festival.
"Being out with the community, mingling and seeing parents and grandparents I normally see around here in a different context is a really great thing," Haney said.

Administrators at Winterville Elementary, which was relocated to the old Gaines Elementary building on Gaines School Road while the Winterville school undergoes renovations, sent home fliers to encourage parents to support the festival.
Like many people contributing to the festival this year, Haney already is looking to the future.

"I'm hoping that next year, when we're back in our school, maybe we'll participate more in having groups sing," she said.

There will be plenty of music this year, including the first Winterville Marigold Festival performance of the town's official song, written by singer-songwriter and Winterville native Wilma.

David Blackmon, who played the fiddle at one of the early Marigold Festivals with his brother and father, will perform with The Wintervillians in their first public appearance.

Pork barbecue and ribs will be cooked up in the Depot by Ken Hodges BarBQ. Hodges' father's barbecue was a highlight at previous festivals.

"There are several things coming full circle," Seagraves said. "And I'm looking forward to the new as well as the old."


Originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Saturday, May 16, 2009