Page 6 - Lake Front News September 2018

Page 6/LAKE FRONT NEWS/September 2018
Woollybear Fest Is
An Annual Tradition! By Joseph Gilroy, Feature Writer
The legendary media personality and animal right’s advo- cate Dick Goddard will welcome everyone to his 46th annual Woollybear Festival in Vermilion on Sunday, September 23.
Vermilion’s Woollybear Parade is one of the largest pa- rades in the state of Ohio. It starts at 1:30 pm and lasts ap- proximately 2 hours. It features many radio and television personalities, including Dick Goddard and the Fox 8 News Team.
Don’t miss the “World’s Greatest Kids Race. This free event is a series of races for kids age 1-12. Events range from 5 yards (for one-year old crawlers) to 550 yards (for 12-year olds). The races are held at the Vermilion High School track on Sailor Way Drive. Registration begins at 8 a.m., Sunday September 23 at the Vermilion High School Stadium. Races are held from 9 –11 a.m. The event is sponsored by the Ver- milion YMCA.
Other activities you can expect to see at the parade will be the Woollybear kids and their pets, plenty of lo- cal marching bands, nearly 2,000 musicians, radio and TV personalities, vintage automobiles, awesome floats, animals, festival kings and queens, clowns, and much, much more!
The Woollybear Festival areas consist of enter- tainment, food booths, craft booths, and merchant sales. Woollybear T-shirts, Woollybear sweatshirts, and Woollybear hats will be available at the Vermilion Chamber of Commerce stand. Various entertainers are at the main stage throughout the day. Parade commen- tary by Dick Goddard of Fox 8 occurs at the reviewing stand.
Roads will be closed starting at 12:30 pm, so for your sanity be sure to plan to arrive early and to stay late. It will be a great chance for the family to enjoy the sunshine and the company of tens of thousands of your closest friends who love animals.
The festival, now in its fifth decade dates to 1972 when it debuted in the tiny Erie County village of Bir- mingham. The festival consisted of TV 8 personalities (Goddard’s employer at the time) and was so short that
everyone that made the line-up had to go through twice to make it appear larger than it really was. Despite the low number of participants that lined up for the parade, it reportedly drew 2,000 onlookers.
Attendance continued to grow as Goddard and compa- ny continually improved the affair until it reached 15,000 in attendance. At that time the Woollybear was no lon- ger sustainable in Birmingham. They outgrew the venue in 1981 when the directors picked Vermilion, OH to take over duties. Vermilion has hosted every year since.
Goddard has been an outspo- ken opponent of animal abuse and helped create the “Dick Goddard’s Law”, a bill to increase the severity of penalties for abusing an-
imals. All proceeds from Woollybear go back
to the local commu-
nities and to care
for animals of all kinds.
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