By JULIE CARLE
BG Independent News
For nearly 40 years, sisters Delores “Toot” Moore and Joni Moncrief have volunteered at the Pemberville Free Fair. The number of years they have helped at the fair is remarkable, but not necessarily unmatched. The distance, however, most likely is extraordinary.
They have logged over 30,000 miles—usually from Arkansas to Pemberville in an RV—to return to their hometown for the fair held each year during the third week of August.
“We drive all that way just to cook in the (Legion) kitchen,” Moncrief said. Though, they also sign up to help with other duties including baking and selling pies for the Pemberville American Legion Auxiliary, staffing the Sons of the Legion golf cart raffle ticket tent, watching over the quilt show for an evening, and helping in the bingo tent.
“We also get involved with the horse and pony pull, bringing in city friends who have never seen the power of those horse teams” as they pull heavy weights across the track, Moore said.
They do it because they are proud of and love the town where they grew up. “Peaceful Pemberville, where you can put your blanket and lawn chairs on the Kiddie Parade route at 6 p.m. on Wednesday and have it still there for the Grand Parade on Saturday afternoon,” Moore said.
“We also come at fair time because that is when we see people,” Moncrief added.
Volunteers are one of the reasons Pemberville can offer the free fair year after year, the sisters acknowledge. As finding people to volunteer becomes more difficult, Moore and Moncrief know assistance like theirs is important to sustaining the fair as it’s been for 77 years.
“We don’t want to see the fair die; it’s an important part of the community,” they agreed.
Their beginnings with the fair date back to their childhood, living on Maple Street with their parents Willard and Mildred Abke and brother Gerald.
“We could see the Pemberville water tower from our backyard,” Moore said.
She remembers participating in the Kiddie Parade as a sixth grader. She dressed up like Old Mother Hubbard, decorated a wagon and pulled her tiny dog in the nursery rhyme-themed category. She also was crowned Pemberville Fair Queen in 1953, an honor bestowed on the local high schooler for selling the most fair raffle tickets.
As a young mother, she decked out floats with kids and St. Bernards, and when she and her husband, Fred, owned a marine supply store, they usually participated in the Grand Parade on Saturday pulling a boat behind a pickup truck along the route.
Moncrief was (and still is) involved with the fair through the Pemberville American Legion Auxiliary.
Baking pies and working in the kitchen consumed most of her time.
“We would sell 100 pies a day by the slice,” she said. Cream pies—chocolate and coconut cream with
meringues—are still her favorites to make.
She also recalled making Kleenex flowers for floats using an unknown quantity of tissue boxes each year.
In the early 1980s, Moncrief was a regular marching in the Color Guard unit for the legion auxiliary.
Each of the sisters moved from Pemberville in the early 1980s, after which they returned each year to volunteer and catch up with family and friends.
They are proud of the commitment they and the hundreds of others provide to keep the Pemberville Fair a
free fair.
