The Kiwanis Club of Statesboro has dedicated the 2024 Kiwanis Ogeechee Fair – which will open at 6:30 p.m. Monday after the 5 p.m. parade and fill evenings all next week – to Connie Turner Saunders – who carries on a family tradition of helping make the fair accessible and serving higher aims.
Saunders chairs the Kiwanis Club’s Spiritual Aims Committee, as once did her father, the late Rev. J.D. Turner. Last year, the committee led in directing $10,000 of the club’s proceeds to organizations such as Statesboro Food Bank and Safe Haven, among others in Bulloch and neighboring counties.
During fair week, Saunders manages the annual “Sylvia Brown Trip to the Fair,” working with High Hope and Pineland Behavioral Health/Developmental Disabilities to host youth and adults with disabilities on Wednesday, beginning in the morning, while the fair is closed to the general public.
“They get to do a couple of rides, sometimes three, and three or four of the shows are opened where they can go watch, like the acrobats, because this is their trip to the fair,” Saunders said. “A lot of them don’t get to come unless they come with that group, but there’s no one out there but them.”
This special “Trip to the Fair,” also known as “Sylvia Brown Day,” is dedicated to its previous longtime organizer, Sylvia Ann Powis Brown, the 1999 Kiwanian of the Year who died in 2018. Saunders had taken over as lead organizer at Brown’s request about 10 years ago.
Aldrich House curator
For the evenings of the fair, Saunders now curates the Aldrich House, a farm house built in 1886 that is one of the permanent Heritage Village fixtures on the Kiwanis Ogeechee Fairgrounds. Donated by Mrs. R.E. Aldrich to the Kiwanis Club of Statesboro in 1975 and relocated from Harville Road, the house has rooms furnished with artifacts to give a look back through the 20th and into the 19th century in the local past .
“I’ve tried to stage it to where when you walk in there’s a parlor, a bedroom, a dining room and a kitchen, and in the middle there are things like the cooling board, where they laid out their dead for (the undertaker) to come get them,” Saunders explained. “It’s just really interesting the stories I’ve heard that people have come through and told me who’ve lived in homes like that.”
She and her father, J.D. Turner, may have been the first father-daughter pair to be members of Statesboro Kiwanis, she said. He was involved first, and she joined later. Turner had especially loved working in the Pancake House during fair week, but he did many different things for the club, Saunders said. He died in December 2019, and the 2021 fair was dedicated to him posthumously.
‘Shocked’ by recognition
Saunders said she wasn’t surprised by that earlier dedication in memory of her father but was “shocked” when the dedication to her of the 62nd Annual Kiwanis Ogeechee Fair was announced during the club’s Thursday, Dec. 1, lunch meeting.
“I am shocked. I never thought of myself as being deserving of that,” she said. “I thought they were bringing me up so I could help them introduce somebody. I had no idea.”
But she expects to be at the fairgrounds working every day through next week. 2024 Fair Committee chair Bobby Turner, who is not related to Saunders, presented the dedication plaque.
“You’ve heard that the hardest working man in show business was James Brown. This is the hardest working lady in the Kiwanis Club right here,” Turner said afterward.
Saunders retired in 2001 as counselor at Portal Middle High School after a long career as a teacher and counselor. Diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002, she is now a 22-year cancer survivor, she noted. After retirement, she worked with the Bulloch County Schools hospital homebound program until 2019, and is the pianist at First Baptist Church of Portal. She and her husband, Larry Saunders, have two adult sons, Jamey and Christopher, and four grandchildren.
Rides and parade
Incidentally, Thursday’s menu in the Kiwanis Community Building consisted of Pancake House pancakes, sausage and cheese grits, and the fairgrounds out back were already packed with colorful rides, as people driving by on Fair Road in the daylight can’t help but notice.
Amusements of America is again providing the rides, and there are at least four new ones this year, according to Kiwanis Club organizers. Granny Bug and Runaway Train are apparently “kiddie” or “family” rides, but Viper and Top Gun are “thrill” rides, or what the company’s website calls “spectacular” rides.
Bobby Turner, who is also coordinating the parade, said around 110 to 120 units have signed up to march, ride or roll. They are expected to line up beginning at 3 p.m. Monday for the parade to start moving through downtown at 5 p.m. Bob Marsh, 2023 Kiwanian of the Year, will lead the parade as grand marshal.
“We’re looking great,” Turner said. “I think we’re going to have a bigger crowd than last year. Knock on wood, the weather’s looking great. It looks like ‘fair’ weather, and we’ve got a full moon in the middle of the week, so it will be like a crisp fall night. We’ll be eating cotton candy and candied apples and riding rides.”
Fair gates open 6:30 p.m. and close at 10 a.m. Monday, with the fair continuing until midnight for those already admitted. Tuesday through Thursday, gates open at 4 p.m. and close at 10 p.m., with the fair also closing at midnight. Friday, Oct. 18, gates open at 4 p.m. and close at 11 p.m., but the fair continues until 1 a.m.
After an 11-hour break, the gates will open at 12 noon on Saturday, Oct. 19, and close at 10 p.m., before the fair ends at midnight.
Information about the livestock shows, entertainment shows and the nightly live band performances appeared in the Kiwanis Fair Section of the Statesboro Herald’s Oct. 3 edition.
