WENDELL — When the town’s annual Old Home Day celebration returns on Saturday, Aug. 8, organizers say attendees can expect “the same fabulousness.”
“The format is going to be completely the same fabulousness, where we have vendors set up at tents, a parade at 11,” explained Christine Texiera, who serves on the event’s all-volunteer organizing committee.
Old Home Day will begin at 10 a.m. with approximately 38 vendors. The musical lineup will start with the Wendell Community Chorus, followed by Warner Hill (with Doug Johnson and Scott Randall singing an historic Wendell song about the Depot flood and original songs), blues by Perry Howarth and the Bear Mountain Boys, and The Can Collectors. The music ends, with the event, at 5 p.m.
The Selectboard is expected to announce its Citizen of the Year at noon.
Gail Mason, now in her fourth year of organizing the Old Home Day parade, said this year’s theme is “Peace and Love.” The parade will begin at 11 a.m. and go from the end of Center Street to the town common.
There will be a huge banner reading “Peace and Love,” and depicting animals and people of all ethnicities, Mason explained. She also said children will carry balloons with the word “Peace” on them.
Mason said this theme was picked “because of everything that’s going on in the world.”
“You want to demonstrate that this little town is all about peace and love,” she said. “It’s a very important day for us in the community, Old Home Day.”
Meanwhile, the Wendell Historical Society will present “Fire: History, Tragedies & Heroes,” a retrospective look at the impact of fire on Wendell, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 10 Center St., across the street from the town common. The exhibit features a history of Wendell buildings that have been lost to fire over the past two centuries, and includes newspaper accounts and photographs.
Ed Hines, president of the Historical Society, explained that this exhibit evolved from members constantly scouring newspapers and other publications for historical research. He said this topic is particularly poignant because at least two board members have lost homes to fires, and former Wendell Fire Deputy Chief Robert Bowers‘ historic home on Wickett Pond Road caught fire on July 2.
“We discovered from an article from the Orange Enterprise and Journal from 1950 that said Wendell has more cellar holes (depressions or pits that mark where a building once stood) as a result of fires than it has actual homes,” Hines said.
He said Historical Society members are still gathering data to share on Aug. 8.
“I think this is one of the more significant projects that we’ve worked on in our … 3½ years,” Hines said. “We like doing things that matter to people.”
