"A Fair to Remember" Remembered

    On April 15 the Kendal Institute presented “A Fair to Remember,” a program focused on giving Kendal residents some sense of the wide array of opportunities available to us to engage with the educational institutions serving our wider community. The fourth special event sponsored by the institute this year, the "Fair to Remember" was truly well-named.

    Display desks ringed the Amelia Room, and their colorful installations gave a festive appearance to the occasion. A student from Lakewood High School was at the keyboard. For over an hour curious residents bustled, shuffled, and ambled their way around the room, either with or against the traffic, visiting the displays that interested them. They talked with the invariably cheerful representatives who sat behind the desks and examined the brochures and hand-outs and sign-up lists that lay before them. When residents wanted to take a break, they moved toward the center of the room, where clusters of chairs invited resting, chatting, observing, and enjoying of snacks, including some wonderful ice cream bars that kept mysteriously appearing – thanks to Ye Olde Mill and the Velvet Ice Cream Company.

    The focus of the event was EDUCATION, but the planners had no intention of construing that word in any narrower sense. They saw the goal of the event to be to demonstrate how residents of Kendal could become both (and often simultaneously) senior learners and volunteers in the task of educating others.

    Institutions of formal education – the public schools, Denison University, and Central Ohio Technical College – were of course represented, offering information about both volunteering and learning opportunities. So too were the Lifelong Learning Institute and the Licking County Genealogical Society, organizations that aim at providing educational experiences to seniors. Also present were representatives of the libraries of our area, central players in the education of the citizenry of the wider community.

    Area museums had their desks. Some of these institutions were town-focused museums, repositories for the documents and artifacts that are the foundation for the work of students of local history. Others were topical in character, featuring the glass-making past of the area or the costumes and attire of earlier eras. All offered chances to learn and to volunteer.

    Finally, two major outdoor opportunities were represented: the glorious Dawes Arboretum, with one of the country’s finest public gardens; and the spectacular Newark Earthworks site, which (in conjunction with the Flint Ridge State Park site) is testimony to the impressive artistic, theological, commercial, and organizational vigor of the pre-Columbian Hopewell culture.

    Printed on the program for the event was a marvelous call to action – “Learn, Join, Volunteer, Sign Up.” There is already much evidence that many residents who visited “A Fair to Remember” accepted the invitation. We have grounds to hope therefore that the effects of the event will ripple through Kendal at Granville for years to come.