039 Bloom Time

Pride in My Community:It’s Apple Blossom Time in Winchester, VA

It is time to get out your pink and green, the colors of the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival® - pink for the blossoms and green for spring. Held in Winchester - located in the Shenandoah Valley - each spring nearest the first weekend in May, this event has been around since 1924. 

Yes, 1924! Along the way, it has been said that coming to the Festival was to travel “along the trail of pink petals” through the valley’s orchards. This is the 88th Festival (a few years during WWII the Festival was put on hold). For all these many years, we live each year in “the land of pink and green.”

Since its beginning, the Festival has grown and now is a nationally known event. Cited by such llustrious publications as Fodor, USA Today, National Geographic, Southern Living and Time magazine, the community’s Festival reputation continues to grow. I am proud to be a part of it as I watch our small city of some 25,000 swell to ten times its size with over 250,000 visitors to who come to celebrate. 

What was a one-day event with a parade to celebrate the apple industry, the Festival is now a ten-day event with over 42 activities for all ages. Some 2000 volunteers with a love of community make all this happen. A full-time staff of four with Executive Director John Rosenberger, the Bloom (as it is affectionately known) is coordinated from the Bloom office. (Parenthetically, Rosenberger is the perfect Executive Director. He grew up with the Festival in his blood. He was a little page in the Queen’s Court in 1956. The celebrities that year included Bert Parks, Cyd Charisse and James Cagney! Not a bad start for our leader!)

The Festival has amazed me since I was little. So many memories at different ages. I remember sitting on the curb on the parade route watching the feet of the marching bands go by, gazing up at the girls on floats in “Cinderella” dresses. I might have been five years old. Oh, how I wanted to be part of it all. This was likely my first goal in my life! Be in Apple Blossom somehow, some way!

There are two parades. The Firefighters Parade and the Grand Feature Parade (Friday night and Saturday afternoon, respectively) are listed among the largest and best in the country.  


One source, Consumer Traveler, thinks the Grand Feature Parade may be the third largest in the country after the Rose Bowl and Macy’s Thanksgiving parades. (I’m thinking maybe Mardi Gras might beat us in size though not in quality – just a personal opinion.) 

So, again, working on my goal to be part of the Festival, I disastrously joined my high school marching band. I was not a great sax player, but good enough to manage my ambition. The disastrous part is that I did NOT enjoy having to play for home football games. Two years were one year too many. BUT I got to march in the parades!!

Celebrities have always been a huge part of the Festival. Gene Barry (did you know Bat Masterson is back on TV?) and Ed Sullivan are some of the first I remember as a little girl. 1964 was a banner year for me. I danced on the steps of Handley High School in the pageant presented when the Queen of the Festival was crowned. Luci Baines Johnson was the Queen and her parents were there with her. First time I shook hands with a President! Lucille Ball was the guest celebrity. Still shaking my head over what security measures the city and Festival officials had to take to pull this off – and did – without a hitch! In 1975, another Presidential visit, Gerald and Betty Ford came along to see their daughter, Susan, as Queen XLVIII.

Moving back to Winchester after college, I volunteered to do whatever I could for the Festival. Cleaning floats was actually fun. You have to start somewhere! Met a lot of great people! The community members that one might not meet otherwise became Festival friends. Some of us see each other only at Festival events, others become close friends. 

Being a chaperon for visiting groups of escorts for the princesses in the Queen’s Court was a challenge. Often the escorts were from military academies. The weekend with parties and pretty girls was a treat to be thoroughly enjoyed to the fullest by these young men. I need not elaborate. We adults stayed alert!

Entertaining during the Festival is a privilege AND a great excuse to get one’s house in order. That painting and planting one thinks about in the spring but don’t get around to doing actually gets done! We had a luncheon for the 75th Festival with past Queen’s Court maids of honor and the Queen, Katherine Luckinbill, and her parents, Larry Luckinbill and Lucie Arnez visiting as well. That was a memorable day. So many friends to see, their parents, and their children – Bloom generations get established!

There have been many famous folks in town – The Carter Family, Patsy Cline, Wayne Newton, Dan Aykroyd, Mary Tyler Moore, Brenda Lee, Pat Boone, Crystal Gayle, Whitey Ford, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and George Hamilton are ones that come readily to my mind.   May I repeat that more than names, it is the spirit in the community enjoying the midway, the smell of cotton candy, the frying onions, the antique cars and crafts, the 

 wine fest, the carnival, races (10K and a kids’ mile) and dinners and luncheons and an

apple pie baking contest and a firetruck rodeo and black tie dances and square dances and a disco party that make Apple Blossom so very special. The Festival takes over the whole community. Without the police force and sheriff’s department, the city works department, and the many volunteers we couldn’t do what we do so well. The support of businesses, individuals, the medical center, and Shenandoah University is philanthropy at its finest. Makes me a bit sentimental and a lot proud.

For specifics on this year’s events, celebrities and Queen, visit www.thebloom.com. (Hints: Natasha Bure is the Queen Designate (daughter of Candace Cameron),and Kevin Jonas, Lee Greenwood, and Marcus Allen will be in town.) Forty-plus events and ten days to enjoy it all--and we are a friendly town – “get your Bloom on” and celebrate with us in “the land of pink and green.” You are cordially invited. Please come.




[Photos/logo in this blog are from the Apple Blossom archives with the express permission of Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival®]

SavvyBroad Glenne