Woollybear Festival

Last updated
Woollybear Festival
Genrefestivals
Location(s) Vermilion, Ohio
Coordinates 41°25′18″N82°21′41″W / 41.421728°N 82.361327°W / 41.421728; -82.361327
CountryUnited States
Years active50–51
Inaugurated1973 (1973)
Website www.vermilionohio.com/woollybear-festival/

The Woollybear Festival is held every Fall in downtown Vermilion, Ohio, on Lake Erie. The one-day, family event, which began in 1973, features a woolly bear costume contest in which children, even pets, are dressed up as various renditions of the woolly bear caterpillar.

Contents

The festival is held every year around October 1 on a Sunday on which the Cleveland Browns either have an away game or are not playing. [1] It is touted as the largest one-day festival in Ohio, with attendance over 100,000. [2] [3]

History

Former Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, and his wife Elizabeth, at the Woollybear Festival parade in 2008 Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich in the Woolly Bear Festival parade (2922007835) (cropped).jpg
Former Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, and his wife Elizabeth, at the Woollybear Festival parade in 2008

The festival is the brainchild of Dick Goddard, long-time weatherman at Cleveland's WJW-TV. [4] The Woolly Bear Caterpillar is similarly celebrated for its mythical association to winter forecasting. [2] After the caterpillars' eggs hatch in fall, folklore suggests the severity of an upcoming winter can be gauged by observing the amount of black versus orange in the caterpillars' bands.

Attracting 2,000 spectators in the first year, the number grew to an estimated 15,000 by the eighth festival and quickly overwhelmed the town of Birmingham. Of the 13 cities that expressed interest, organizers selected Vermilion as the new home. [2]

The "Woollybear 500" is a comedic race that starts off with Vermilion's police and fire chiefs selecting woollybears to race. The woollybears are obtained by the Vermilion Chamber and details of the training and skills of said woollybears are not divulged to the participants. The race is monitored by professionals from TV-8. No woollybears are harmed in the making of these races.[ citation needed ]

The 2020 Woollybear Festival was the first since the event's inception not to be held because of the COVID-19 pandemic. [5]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beattyville, Kentucky</span> City in Kentucky, United States

Beattyville is a home rule class city in, and the county seat of, Lee County, Kentucky, United States. The city was formally established by the state assembly as "Beatty" in 1851 and incorporated in 1872. It was named for Samuel Beatty, a pioneer settler. The population was 1,307 at the 2010 census and an estimated 1,206 in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vermilion, Ohio</span> City in Ohio, United States

Vermilion is a city in Erie and Lorain Counties in the U.S. state of Ohio, on Lake Erie. Its population was 10,659 at the 2020 census. Located about 35 miles west of Cleveland and 17 miles east of Sandusky, it is part of the Cleveland metropolitan area and Sandusky micropolitan area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WEWS-TV</span> ABC affiliate in Cleveland

WEWS-TV is a television station in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, affiliated with ABC. It has been owned by the E. W. Scripps Company since its inception in 1946, making it one of three stations that have been built and signed on by Scripps. WEWS-TV's studios are located on Euclid Avenue in Downtown Cleveland, and its transmitter is located in suburban Parma.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arctiinae</span> Subfamily of moths

The Arctiinae are a large and diverse subfamily of moths with around 11,000 species found all over the world, including 6,000 neotropical species. This subfamily includes the groups commonly known as tiger moths, which usually have bright colours, footmen, which are usually much drabber, lichen moths, and wasp moths. Many species have "hairy" caterpillars that are popularly known as woolly bears or woolly worms. The scientific name Arctiinae refers to this hairiness. Some species within the Arctiinae have the word "tussock"' in their common names because they have been misidentified as members of the Lymantriinae subfamily based on the characteristics of the larvae.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WKYC</span> NBC affiliate in Cleveland

WKYC is a television station in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Tegna Inc. Its studios are located on Tom Beres Way, and its transmitter is located in suburban Parma, Ohio.

WJW is a television station in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, affiliated with the Fox network. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, WJW maintains studios on Dick Goddard Way just northeast of downtown Cleveland near the shore of Lake Erie, and its transmitter is located in the Cleveland suburb of Parma, Ohio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WKNR</span> Sports radio station in Cleveland, Ohio

WKNR – branded as 850 ESPN Cleveland – is a commercial sports radio station licensed to Cleveland, Ohio, serving Greater Cleveland. Owned by Good Karma Brands, WKNR is the Cleveland affiliate for ESPN Radio and the AM flagship station for the Cleveland Browns Radio Network; the Cleveland affiliate for the Ohio State Sports Network, and the radio home of Je'Rod Cherry and Tony Grossi. The WKNR studios are currently located in the East Bank of The Flats in Downtown Cleveland, while the station transmitter resides in the Cleveland suburb of North Royalton. In addition to a standard analog transmission, WKNR is available online.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allie LaForce</span> American sports journalist (born 1988)

Alexandra Leigh LaForce is an American journalist, model and beauty queen who won Miss Teen USA 2005. She is a reporter for TNT Sports, covering the NBA on TNT. She was previously the lead reporter for SEC college football games, a courtside reporter for college basketball games, and the host of We Need to Talk on the CBS Sports Network. LaForce also worked as a broadcast sports anchor and reporter for the Cleveland, Ohio, FOX affiliate WJW. She won a 2011 Emmy award for anchoring FOX 8's Friday Night Touchdown high school football show. She was Miss Teen USA in 2005, and played college basketball at Ohio University.

<i>Pyrrharctia isabella</i> Species of insect

Pyrrharctia isabella, the Isabella tiger moth, whose larval form is called the banded woolly bear, woolly bear, or woolly worm, occurs in the United States and southern Canada. It was first formally named by James Edward Smith in 1797.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Big Chuck and Lil' John</span> American TV series or program

Charles "Big Chuck" Schodowski and "Lil' John" Rinaldi – together commonly known as Big Chuck and Lil' John – are a duo of entertainers who served as late-night horror hosts of The Big Chuck and Lil' John Show on television station WJW in Cleveland, Ohio from 1979 to 2007. In addition to hosting a movie with a live audience, they also performed original sketch comedy routines. At the end of each sketch was a very distinctive laugh voiced by comedian/actor Jay Lawrence, who was a disc jockey for KYW radio in Cleveland during the early 1960s.

<i>Spilosoma virginica</i> Species of moth

Spilosoma virginica is a species of moth in the subfamily Arctiinae. As a caterpillar, it is known as the yellow woolly bear or yellow bear caterpillar. As an adult, it is known as the Virginian tiger moth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Green High School (Green, Ohio)</span> Public school in Ohio, United States

Green High School is a public high school in Green, Ohio, just south of Akron, Ohio. It is the only high school in the Green Local School District. The school colors are orange and black, the athletic teams are known as the Bulldogs, and since 2015 have competed in the OHSAA's Federal League. The current facility opened in 1996.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">André Bernier (meteorologist)</span> American meteorologist

André M. Bernier is an American meteorologist, serving as the Cleveland-based WJW-TV's weekday evening meteorologist. He won two Emmy awards for his weathercasts and has been at the station since February 1988, when Cleveland's very first full-length local morning newscast began. After nearly twenty years on weekday mornings, Bernier moved to the weekday prime-time on May 28, 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dick Goddard</span> American broadcast meteorologist (1931–2020)

Richard Duane Goddard was an American television meteorologist, author, cartoonist, and animal activist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bob "Hoolihan" Wells</span> American television personality

Robert D. "Bob" Wells, known as Bob "Hoolihan" Wells, is an American former television and radio personality and actor, who is best known to Cleveland, Ohio television viewers for his appearances on the then-CBS affiliate WJW TV Channel 8 during the 1960s and 1970s as "Hoolihan the Weatherman" and one-half of the Hoolihan and Big Chuck Show movie hosting team. Wells and partner Charles "Big Chuck" Schodowski replaced the former movie host, Ernie Anderson aka "Ghoulardi," in 1966 when Anderson left for Los Angeles to pursue a free-lance announcing and acting career.

Neil Zurcher is a retired American television reporter for Fox-TV affiliate WJW-TV Channel 8 in Cleveland, Ohio. He is best known for his travel segment One Tank Trips.

The Woolly Worm Festival is an event held each October since 1978 in Banner Elk and Avery County, North Carolina. The festival celebrates the supposed weather-predicting abilities of the woolly worm, also called "woolly bear" which is a caterpillar or larvae of the isabella tiger moth. Events include a caterpillar race.

Robin Swoboda is an American television news anchor, talk show host, and actress in Cleveland, Ohio, best known for her career on various television and radio stations primarily in Cleveland, as well as hosting national television programs.

References

  1. ↑ Zurcher, Neil (2010). Tales from the Road: Memoirs from a Lifetime of Ohio Travel, Television, and More. Cleveland: Gray & Co. p. 273. ISBN   978-1598510645. One of the little-known facts about the Woollybear Festival is how its date is chosen each year. Goddard has worked for many seasons as the statistician for all home games of the Cleveland Browns. He waits until he sees the team's schedule each fall, then picks the Sunday in late September or early October that the Browns are playing out of town. That becomes Woollybear Sunday.
  2. 1 2 3 Vermilion Chamber of Commerce. "Woollybear Festival" . Retrieved 2020-08-10.
  3. ↑ Stratford, Suzanne (2012-09-25). "40th Annual Woollybear Fest Preps Underway". WJW-TV . Retrieved 2012-09-30.
  4. ↑ Crump, Sarah (2009-05-04). "Dick Goddard is most sunny when it's 70: My Cleveland". The Plain Dealer . Retrieved 2012-04-26.
  5. ↑ Coe, Sandra (2020-07-13). "Woollybear Festival goes into hibernation for 2020" (PDF) (Press release). Vermilion Chamber of Commerce.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.