From football fundraiser to county fair president

By MIKE JAMES
The Independent

COALTON August 13, 2007 12:45 am

— The expansive fairgrounds, the new buildings and barns, the growth in 4-H livestock entries — all signs point to a thriving Boyd County Fair.
It wasn’t always that way. In fact, from the 1940s to 1991 there was no fair in Boyd County.
A request for a middle-school football fundraiser changed all that.
“I was just a football mom,” said fair board president Yvonne Green, recalling her visit in 1991 to Bill Scott, who was county judge-executive at the time.
The booster club for the Boyd County Middle School football team wanted to improve the ballfield behind the school and she wanted Scott’s OK to organize a street dance.
Scott suggested a county fair instead. He remembers thinking how many years it had been since Boyd County had had a fair, and he saw the opportunity to harness all that football-mom energy.
Green and other volunteers went to work. Much of it was phone work — contacting anyone they thought could help.
“We were on the phone 12 hours a day. I felt like I’d have to have the phone surgically removed from my ear afterward,” Green said.
For instance, they called just about every business in the county with a changeable sign and asked them to post the fair’s dates and location.
The extension office, 4-H officials and others also pitched in. Real estate developer Brooks Wells was an early booster for the fair.
At first, Green remembers, there was some skepticism: “Some people said they’d believe it when they saw it... Six weeks later we held it.”
The first year, in the field across the highway from Boyd County High School, there were food vendors, carnival rides and a few cakes and quilts in a tent — but no livestock.
However, attendance was good and by the time the last ride was dismantled and driven away they were planning for the future. In its fourth year they moved to the parking lot of the Cedar Knoll Galleria mall; that lasted another four or five years, until the acquisition of the current fairgrounds in Coalton.
Every year since then they’ve added something, from a 12,500-square-foot multipurpose building to a horse arena, horse barn and two other barns.
And all of this came from a football mom wanting to help and a county judge-executive with a vision.
MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2652.

Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.