The Fall Fest Story
 | Author:
Matt Nelson
MT43 News Correspondent |
The Fall Fest Story
Matt Nelson
Rotary Club member Bill Kearns talks about the Townsend Fall Fest. “It originally was started by Sandy Rose. She ran the Canyon Ferry Mansion and started the Fall Fest there. She ran it by herself for three or four years. It got too big for her, so she asked if the Rotary would take it over and they have been doing it ever since, about 25 years ago. It was kind of tailored after the potato festival in Manhattan. In fact, we had those folks come here and help us get it started. They were very generous with their time and everything. The idea was to have a general vendors’ setup with music and the second day have a car show.
We have 200 to 300 sponsors and raise $50,000 to $70,000 dollars. Basically, I didn’t believe at first that we could have this kind of money. Every year the event is held free. I think that is the big thing about this. At other festivals, you have to pay to get in. The nice thing about this is that it is free to everybody.
The main money for the Rotary Club is by selling their beer and brats. The brats sell for $5.00. Plus we get sponsorships. We do get some money from the vendors, and from the car show entrants, so we make money that way, enough to run our Rotary Club for the year, and all of the money collected goes back into the community. People need to know that. It doesn’t go to the Rotarians or anything else.
Virginia Poole, Pat Plantenberg, Jeff Lagnlinais, and I were part of the original Rotary Club members who helped Sandy Rose for a while. Jeff is the General Chairman of the club.
Quoting from The MT43 News headline story on September 8th, “Townsend resident Bill Kearns received his 60-year membership pin as a Rotarian on Tuesday, August 29.” He is well known in Townsend and has a heart of gold. Several years ago my two granddaughters were helping my wife Karoline at the Food Pantry, and Bill was there. He took both girls down to the Mint and bought them ice cream. Quite a guy!
Virginia Poole was with Rotary for several years. Her daughter was awarded a Rotary Scholarship in 2000 so she decided to join the Rotary and help them out. She was president in 2007-2008. At that time she was also the chairman of Fall Fest. Quoting from Virginia:
“Initially, pop and beer was sold out of ice chests. Then Bill started going out and getting sponsors, who provided the money for the music. Bill was always really interested in the music. It is three days of non-stop music. Free – we wanted to be sure it was free. That’s how the sponsors have helped us out. We went from selling cans of beer to draft beer, which really helped us financially. Laura and Brian Obert got involved and things really started happening. She took over organizing the vendors. The vendors are a very big part of the Fall Fest organization. Even though the weather wasn’t that great people still came out.
Pat Plantenberg is a big part of the Fall Fest. Philip Knaub is the engineer and goes around and makes everything work. Jeff Lagnlinais is there all the time during Fall Fest. And, of course, the community volunteers to help out. All of the people who work in the food tent are volunteers. That’s a great, great thing too. And at the car show people have to put in hours and hours. I don’t know all of them and I hate not to mention everybody, but all of these entities have worked together and have made it just fabulous. It takes hundreds of volunteers and they work hundreds of hours to make sure the Fall Fest is successful. We couldn’t do it without them.
After the Fall Fest is over, the Rotary members sit down and start planning the next year’s event, and discuss what worked and what didn’t. How do we make it better?” They all do a great job.
Pat Plantenberg joined the Rotary in 2004 and has been involved with the Fall Fest since then. The Fall Fest has been around for about 25 years. He had this to say:
“Our local club has been very active in the community. They have done lots of things over the years. The biggest thing we are doing now is the Fall Fest. It’s our one fundraiser. We decided to have just that one event. All the local businesses were being hit up all the time for money. With the money we make during the three days of the Fall Fest, we can fund our community projects for the next fiscal year, beginning July 1st next year to June 30th the following year.”
Sandy Rose used to own the Cook Mansion and had started the Fall Fest. Rotary got it involved and took it over. The car show and the parade were added to it. This past weekend there were 183 cars at the car show. We had over 100 vendors. We want to keep it as a family event, and we have lots of activities for kids. It’s a family fun event. That’s our main focus.
The sponsors pay for all the music and all the entertainment, so we can keep the costs down so people can come to this festival free and enjoy the music and everything. With the sponsors, we also keep the costs of our Rotary food down. We can sell brats for $5.00, and the Lions of course sell their hot corn dogs for less than that. Here families can have a meal for less than twenty bucks. You can go to other places that are selling food and their food prices are from $10 to $15 each. It gets pretty pricey for a family. You know how it is just eating out at any restaurant now. You can hardly get a meal for less than $10.
On a good weekend with good weather, we can have 10,000 people come between Friday and Sunday. Over this weekend we must have been close to over 8000. The rain kept some people away on Sunday, it didn’t seem to affect the crowd at all on Friday, but Saturday I would say we had a record crowd.“
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PhotoCredit: Photo Credits: Mary Kearns Hickey
Image 1 Caption: Bill Kearns
Photo Credits: Mary Kearns Hickey
