Teamwork and Hard Work Make Popcorn Truly Pop

Four years ago, we jumped into a box of popcorn soon after we launched ValpoLife.com, and each year we have appreciated, respected, and flat out enjoyed everything about the Popcorn Festival more every time.

Trying to think of the sheer volume of things that have to go right all week every year, for 34 years, with each year being bigger and better than the last is almost staggering. An entire city is transformed and engulfed, start to finish, with little and big runners...

moms and dads cheering on their kids and friends, and grandparents watching their own karate kid...

or band member walking in the parade...

...along with young and old rockers packing the downtown park singing to “Send Me on My Way”.

Every race, street crane... 

...(thanks Steindler Signs!) or rooftop view (thanks Air One!) we had the pleasure of capturing gives us the opportunity to tell one story more so than any other, and the opportunity grows year after year.

Teamwork and hard work make Popcorn Pop.

The festival creates thousands of memories, millions of individual smiles, excellent economic impact and positive visibility for the city, and it takes an army of people and organizations, along with a similar arsenal of hours, patience, planning, hustle, worry, and sweat to make it truly pop.

It all begins with the planning and prep that goes on year-round led by Tina St. Aubin of the Valparaiso Community Festivals & Events (VCFE) group.

She’s at the center of everyone from the Parade Committee led by Helen Pierce and Jill Edwards, to the safety, traffic and volunteer groups including the Valparaiso and Porter County Police, Civil Air Patrol, VHS Student Council, Washington Township Student Council, and multiple Boy Scout troops, among others.

Her team of three, along with their committees, coordinates all of the non-profit groups like the Kiwanis, who bring in $20,000 to support their programs through the beer tent, to the St. Paul Men’s Club, Valpo Rotary Club and many others that generate upwards of $15,000 through the food vendor relationships that they partner with.

Logistics Detail Committee Chair and longtime VCFE board member Ed Dykes coordinates members from most every city department, along with that army of organizations and volunteers to ensure that all those events, moving vehicles, signs, gates, and transitions throughout the week ahead and during that day go off smoothly.

The Parade Committee is working well in advance to lay out the staging area, lining up the parade, and organizing all the properties like the bus barn that are involved. They also are orchestrating the evaluation, judging, announcing, and giving out the signage for the float winners, all before the first step of the parade hits the pavement.

Jump to every volunteer who is running with the kernel kids in the race to keep from being afraid, the parents who are covered with glue and kernel dust late Friday night, to the staff from many businesses associated with the fair, who understand that Popcorn Festival is an “all hands on deck” kind of day. The thanks could go as long as the parade itself.

Our mission in Life is to find the good and celebrate it. “Good” is living in a city where the week kicks off with a photo love fest for a guy who made good popcorn pop...

...and it closes out with Valpo’s own rock-star Chad Clifford warming us all up to “Send Me on My Way” with another jam-packed memory bank of fun.

To each of you involved, and the hundreds not yet mentioned, Thank You. We enjoyed another stellar Popcorn kind of day.

Teamwork and hard work make Popcorn Pop.