Lexington in July could be a boring place for a kid in the 1960s — except during the Lions Bluegrass Fair.
I always looked forward to the fair. There were rides with all the thrills that gravity, motion and speed could produce.
State Troopers in crisp uniforms manned an elaborate miniature village with little electric cars for kids to drive. Obey all the traffic rules and you went home with a Junior Trooper badge.
My brothers and I went home with a lot more, too: Super balls, stuffed animals, squirt guns and a bag of trinkets from Lexington businesses. We always hoped the souvenir yardsticks would be gone by the time we got there; otherwise, they would eventually become our parents’ disciplinary tool of last resort. I’m sure at least one Perry Lumber Co. yardstick met its end by breaking across mine.
There’s something magical about colored lights from a spinning Ferris wheel and laughter from a midway. I didn’t understand it at the time, but the whole reason for the Lions Bluegrass Fair was to help kids less fortunate than me — kids who couldn’t see those lights or hear that laughter.
The fair began its annual run Thursday at Masterson Station Park. The Lexington Lions Club is proud that, in addition to becoming a fixture of Bluegrass life, the fair has raised more than $1.4 million to support its charitable work.
The Lions Club was the brainchild of Melvin Jones, a Chicago businessman who thought community service was as important as making money. He started the first club in 1917. The organization has since grown to 1.3 million members in 202 countries.
The Lexington Lions Club was started in 1921, four years before Helen Keller spoke to the organization’s national convention and inspired its mission. She urged Lions to become ”knights of the blind in the crusade against darkness.“
Since then, much Lions Club work has focused on helping people — especially poor people and children — who have sight or hearing problems or suffer from diabetes. A key effort is stopping preventable blindness.
The Lexington Lions provide more than 800 pair of new eyeglasses each year to people in Fayette County, and they collect more than 6,000 used eyeglass frames for reuse. The club conducts more than 100 eye exams and pays for several eye surgeries, usually to remove cataracts. It pays for more than 50 hearing aids and sponsors camps and day programs for blind, deaf and diabetic children.
”We are often the resource of last resort,“ said club president Bill Moody, a retired University of Kentucky professor. ”We’ve helped many people correct vision and hearing problems, enabling them to get jobs and become taxpayers.“
Last year, the Lexington Lions’ work was funded by $100,000 in Bluegrass Fair proceeds and $40,000 in earnings from a $1 million endowment fund made possible by the fair.
The Lions Club had several early fund-raisers – including a turtle derby and a radio auction – before it started the Bluegrass Fair in 1961, according to longtime club secretary Sue Alexander. That first fair at The Red Mile cleared $800.
Some early fairs netted the club as much as $61,000. Others lost as much as $58,000. A lot depended on the weather and other forces the Lions couldn’t control.
For instance, one evening in July 1969 the fair was all but deserted. Lexingtonians were at home, glued to their television sets, watching Neil Armstrong become the first man to walk on the moon.
The fair moved to Masterson Station Park in 1976, and the Lions Club contracted with professional management in 1996. Since then, the event has been far more successful.
Club members sell tickets, manage parking and do a thousand other chores needed to accommodate the more than 75,000 visitors who will attend the fair before it closes July 20.
”We have a great group of volunteers; some are out here every night,“ said Ron Mossotti, a club member now in his 12th year as fair manager. ”I grew up a mile from the New York State Fair, and I used to sneak under the fence and go every day. So my thing is running the fair.“
On Wednesday evening, club members turned out in their gold satin vests with purple trim for a cookout to dedicate the first permanent building on the fairgrounds. The 66-by-100-foot building with a large shelter at one end will house exhibits and events during the fair – as well as provide facilities for the Lions to give free vision and hearing screenings.
The club paid for the building and gave it to the city, which owns the park, including the 24-acre fairgrounds that the club maintains. The city will rent out the building other times of the year, splitting proceeds with the Lions Club.
That building, plus another new structure paid for by the city and several agriculture groups, will allow the Bluegrass Fair to restore the livestock- and produce-judging events that stopped when the fair left The Red Mile three decades ago.
So come out to the Lions Bluegrass Fair. If livestock judging isn’t your thing, maybe you’ll like the rides, the carnival games, the horse and dog shows or the beauty pageants.
Admission is only $5, and children 6 and younger get in free. Parking is free, too, as are the magical lights of the Ferris wheel, the laughter of the midway and the satisfaction of knowing you are helping the Lions Club help people less fortunate than you.
