Giving their time and energy

Volunteers are the backbone of the Florida Strawberry Festival and help make it a financial success, officials say.

Volunteers welcome and guide festival visitors, watch over livestock and perform a host of other duties.

"The best part is that people enjoy volunteering at the festival," festival association President Mike Sparkman said. "Volunteers are a very important part of the festival each year. With almost 3,000 volunteers it would be almost impossible to pay for their services. They are an important asset to our success, financially and otherwise. Our volunteers are great ambassadors and represent us well."

Festival General Manager Paul Davis said the festival's employees - about 23 year-round and 480 seasonal - could never go it alone. And the volunteers are dedicated to what they do, he added.

"They serve because they are passionate about their service. They love the strawberry festival and they love the community."

Lane Wetherington, an associate festival director, counts himself as a volunteer who donates his time out of love. He grew up around the festival and helps out in such areas as the livestock sale ring, parades and the Strawberry Ball gala.

Wetherington last week joined 37-year volunteer Kenny Peace, a festival director, on the festival grounds, helping make sure everything was right for the annual celebration of the area's biggest crop. Peace, who is in charge of stadium seating, said he first got involved with his father-in-law, the late John St. Martin.

Pam Warnock, an associate festival director who is in charge of volunteers who staff the information booths, said her helpers come back year after year.

"Once you get a volunteer you can't get rid of them," said Warnock, who has volunteered for about 30 years.

Some of the longest working volunteers include former festival strawberry queens, including 1948 queen Barbara Alley Bowden, 1953 queen Ruby Jean Barker Redman, 1968 queen Silvia Azorin Dodson and 1971 queen Sherrie Chambers Mueller.

Bowden is married to her high school sweetheart, Hillman Bowden. He escorted her on the night she was selected as queen 62 years ago. He has been a director at the festival for about the past 15 years, he said.

"Barbara and I have been volunteering for years," Bowden said. "We have recently been involved in coordinating the exhibitors' supper that takes place each year on the Monday prior to the opening of the festival.

"At one time many years ago I was responsible for recruiting contestants for the queen's pageant," he said. "That was when the stage was a flatbed truck decorated with paper and tree branches."

In 1953, Bowden and a few others were instrumental in getting many of the girls at Plant City High School to enter the pageant, including Redman. Kathy Hicks, another longtime volunteer at the festival, was in the pageant with Redman.

Both Kathy Hicks and her husband, Stuart, are active in the festival each year. Stuart Hicks works in the Lions Club booth. His wife has been working at St. Clement Catholic Church's make-your-own strawberry shortcake booth since 1973.

Barbara Caccamisi, the coordinator of the St. Clement booth, said at least four of the hundreds of volunteers at that booth have been there in each of the 37 years it has existed. Its customers have included former first lady Barbara Bush.

"Kathy, Joseph Herrmann, Barbara Reynolds and Judy Barta have been volunteers at the St. Clement strawberry shortcake booth since we started," Caccamisi said. "Last year we sold over 110,000 shortcakes. It is a wonderful fundraiser for the church. People come from all over the area and the country to visit us each year."

Judy Barta remembers those earlier years with a smile. "Kathy Hicks and I worked in the booth making whipped cream during the early years," Barta recalled. "The machine would throw cream everywhere. By the end of the day we were covered from head to toe.

"It was always a lot of work. But we had fun. We still do. All our volunteers look forward to the festival."

HELPING HANDS

Some of the roles volunteers fill at the Florida Strawberry Festival

•Handing out brochures at information booths

•Welcoming riders on shuttle buses from the festival parking lots

•Helping with ticket sales

•Weighing livestock and offering advice to youngsters who enter festival livestock shows

•Monitoring festival parade routes

•Arranging the seating for concerts

•Serving on the entertainment committee

•Helping reporters and providing other public relations duties