Ashley Hunter
ECB Publishing, Inc.
The Watermelon Festival became the newest causality of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak at the beginning of this week, when the local chamber of commerce's board members met and chose to pull the festival off the calendar.
On Tuesday, April 14, the Watermelon Festival Board met to discuss the festival's fate, and Katrina Richardson, the executive director at the Monticello-Jefferson Chamber of Commerce says that is was the board's decision to postpone the festival.
Richardson, along with Nancy Dodd, are the co-chairpersons of the Watermelon Festival.
“With the current situation, there was no way we could, in good conscience, move forward with it,” says Richardson. “We put it off for as long as we could.”
Typically, by this far into April, Richardson says the chairman of the festival would already be deep into ordering the flyers, putting together a schedule of events, purchasing event t-shirts and organizing the event.
Due to COVID-19, they have had to put all those activities off, and Richardson says that the board could not wait any longer.
With that announcement, the annual Jefferson County Watermelon Festival will be postponed – and the festival may not return until closer to the end of the year, around fall.
“Postponed until further notice,” were Richardson's words.
This temporary cancellation includes every event that would have taken place alongside the festival, such as the rodeo, Watermelon Queen pageant, pancake breakfast, 5K, bed race, car show and more.
While this cancellation may bring plenty of understandable disappointment to those who were looking forward to enjoying the street food, festivities, games and performances that the festival offers, this has not been the first time that Jefferson County did not have an annual Watermelon Festival.
In 1964 and 1965, there was no festivals held and no Watermelon Queens elected; since then, the annual festival has continued to stay strong. Even though this cancellation may be a deep disappointment, it is not a longterm “goodbye” to Jefferson County's largest festival.