The Kiwanis Club of Statesboro has dedicated the 2024 Kiwanis Ogeechee Fair – which opens Monday at 6:30 p.m. after the 5 p.m. parade and will fill the evenings throughout next week – to Connie Turner Saunders – who is carrying on a family tradition that helping to shape the trade fair are accessible and serve higher goals.

Saunders chairs the Kiwanis Club's Spiritual Purposes Committee, as did her father, the late Rev. JD Turner. Last year, the committee directed the distribution of $10,000 of club proceeds to organizations such as the Statesboro Food Bank and Safe Haven, among others in Bulloch and neighboring counties.

During fair week, Saunders, in collaboration with High Hope and Pineland Behavioral Health/Developmental Disabilities, organizes the annual “Sylvia Brown Trip to the Fair” to host youth and adults with disabilities beginning in the morning while the fair is closed to the general public.

“They can do a few rides, sometimes three, and three or four of the shows will open where they can watch like the acrobats because that's their trip to the fair,” Saunders said. “A lot of them can’t come unless they come with this group, but there’s no one out there but them.”

This special “Trip to the Mass,” also known as “Sylvia Brown Day,” is dedicated to its former longtime organizer, Sylvia Ann Powis Brown, the 1999 Kiwanian of the Year who passed away in 2018. Saunders took over as organizer of Brown's proposal about 10 years ago.

Curator of the Aldrich House

For fair evenings, Saunders now curates the Aldrich House, a farmhouse built in 1886 that is a fixture at the Heritage Village at the Kiwanis Ogeechee Fairgrounds. The house was donated to the Kiwanis Club of Statesboro in 1975 by Mrs. R. E. Aldrich and was moved from Harville Road. It features rooms decorated with artifacts to provide a glimpse into the local past of the 20th and 19th centuries.

“I tried to stage it so that when you walk in you have a living room, 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), um to pick them up,” Saunders explained. “It’s just really interesting the stories people who have lived in houses like this have told me.”

She and her father, JD Turner, may have been the first father-daughter pair to be members of the Statesboro Kiwanis, she said. He was involved first and she came along later. Turner particularly enjoyed working at 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 Mass was posthumously dedicated to him.

“Shocked” by the recognition

Saunders said she was not surprised by this earlier dedication to her father's memory, but was “shocked” when the 62nd annual Kiwanis Ogeechee Fair's dedication to her was announced during the club's Thursday lunchtime meeting.

“I'm shocked. I never thought I deserved this,” she said. “I thought they were educating me so I could help them introduce someone. I had no idea.”

But she expects to work at the fairgrounds every day until next week. 2024 Fair Committee Chairman Bobby Turner, who is not related to Saunders, presented the dedication plaque.

“You've heard that James Brown was the hardest working man in show business. “This is the hardest working woman in the Kiwanis Club,” Turner said afterwards.

Saunders retired as a counselor at Portal Middle High School in 2001 after a long career as a teacher and counselor. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002 and has now survived cancer for 22 years, she noted. After retiring, she worked in the Bulloch County Schools Hospital homebound program until 2019 and is a 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

By the way, Thursday's menu at the Kiwanis Community Building consisted of Pancake House pancakes, sausage and cheese grits, and the fairgrounds beyond were already full of colorful rides, as people driving by on Fair Road in daylight can't help but notice.

Amusements of America is once 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 “kids” or “family” rides, but Viper and Top Gun are “thrill” rides, or what the company's website describes as “spectacular” rides.

Bobby Turner, who also coordinates the parade, said about 110 to 120 units signed up to march, ride or roll. They are expected to line up at 3 p.m. Monday for the parade to move through downtown at 5 p.m. Bob Marsh, 2023 Kiwanian of the Year, will lead the parade as grand marshal.

“We look great,” Turner said. “I think we will have a bigger audience than last year. Knock on wood, the weather looks great. It looks like the weather will be “nice” and we have a full moon in the middle of the week, so it will be like a clear fall night. We’ll eat cotton candy and candied apples and go on horseback rides.”

The trade fair gates open at 6:30 p.m. and close on Monday at 10:00 a.m. The fair lasts until midnight for visitors who have already been admitted. From Tuesday to Thursday, the gates open at 4:00 p.m. and close at 10:00 p.m., with the fair also closing at midnight. Friday, October 18, gates open at 4:00 p.m. and close at 11:00 p.m., but Mass runs until 1:00 a.m

After an 11-hour break, gates will open at 12pm and close at 10pm on Saturday, October 19, before the fair ends at midnight.

Information about the livestock shows, entertainment shows and evening live band performances appeared in the Kiwanis Fair section of the October 3 edition of the Statesboro Herald.