Lions Club Emphasizes History, Community

With two months to go, the Lions Club is gearing up for its 63rd annual Berlin Fair.  Members are focusing on family, community, and Berlin’s agricultural past this season while preparing the empty buildings and quiet grounds for the 100,000 people who visit every year.

“The fair is true New England,” said Berlin Lions Club 2nd Vice President Diane Jacobson.  “There used to be a lot of dairy farms in Berlin and now it’s hard for them to stay alive.  We have the cows and sheep and tractors and a sow with a litter every year because we want people to remember where Berlin came from.”

As Jacobson motors around the buildings in a gas-powered golf cart on a Wednesday work night, she stops in to see how the Kamenski building’s new roof looks and if the Youth building’s paint job is finished. 

“The Youth building is such a popular building that it needed a lot of work.  We do a lot of maintenance that spectators can’t notice but extend the life of our buildings and fairgrounds,” Jacobson said, pointing out the crisp coat of paint in the Youth building and the brush free line of fencing bordering Beckley Road.   

The most apparent change for the Berlin Fair will be a new picnic pavilion near the go-kart and tractor race tracks, built as a place to rest and to complement some of the more family-oriented entertainment the Lions Club is bringing in this year, like professional bull riders and a children’s circus.

Traveling through the expectant fairgrounds, Jacobson catches a glimpse of a building superintendent wielding a hammer in the late afternoon sun, and a volunteer pulling weeds and tending flowers, “so the week before the fair we’re not pulling up three foot weeds,” Jacobson said with a laugh.  

She pauses by the fair’s Agricultural Museum, where superintendent Dave Alkas shows off a new acquisition -- or rather, a very old one.  With a flip of a switch, Alkas demonstrates that a rusty antique tractor just donated to the Club still works.

Alkas restores and maintains the two dozen tractors in his care, washing and waxing each before the fair opens.  He said proudly, “They’re all running, most of them.  And 90 percent of these tractors came from the town of Berlin.  We’d be here all night if I told you the history of these tractors.”  He pats the tractor like a horse and waves Jacobson back to her golf cart, clearly pleased to show off Berlin’s past.

Heading back to her volunteers, Jacobson summed up the fair’s appeal and said, “How many kids these days have pet a cow?  Cows were just an everyday thing.  You used to be able to stop by the side of the road and pet one on your way home from school, figure out what they feel like, how big they are, how to pet them.  Now, the fair is a way for people to know their history.”

Though it’s not harvest season, the fairgrounds are alive and well cared for by the 140 Lions Club members and volunteers working to get things set for the bustling crowds.  Come September 30, the Lions Club will fulfill the goal of serving its community with friendship and good fellowship.