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Who are the behind-the-scenes heroes who run the Apple Festival?

Members of the Executive Committee of the N.C. Apple Festival posing outside the festival office on Main Street are, from left, from left to right on the front row are: Vicki Gunning, Mark Shepherd, Geraldine Lamb, Renee Elrod, Josh English, Mike Elrod an

By Bill Moss, Published: August 31, 2023

With the abrupt departure of their fulltime director two months before last year’s Apple Festival, the event’s volunteer leaders received battlefield promotions to carry out the details on their own.

Committee members redoubled their already passionate commitment to North Carolina’s biggest celebration of apples and made it happen.

So when planning got under way for the 2023 festival, the committee’s first order of business would be to hire a fulltime professional leader, right? That would be a hard no. The committee cruised on, inspired by the knowledge that if they did it once they could do it again.

“We have a lot of talent on the executive board and people that have been successful for years and years and we felt very confident in their ability,” says Mark Shepherd, who is a physician assistant at Mission HCA specializing in trauma cases when he’s not leading the Apple Festival. “We would not be able to do it without our partnership with the city of Hendersonville and John Connet. When you put together a collection of very passionate volunteers, you can make anything happen.”

“This year we’ve really been focusing on how to sustain the festival as a volunteer committee,” he adds.

Festival organizers praise the partnership of the city and county, whose workers take care of everything from electrical outlets to trash pickup to traffic and public safety. They’re led by Hendersonville City Manager John Connet (left), an Apple Festival Executive Committee member, and County Manager John Mitchell. The managers are shown at last year’s opening ceremony.Thanks to the work of Renee Elrod — day job, banker — “our sponsorships are way up,” he says. “We got Summit for PR and marketing this year. They’ve done an overhaul of our website and they’re doing a complete reboot after this year’s festival.”

For Shepherd, the Apple Festival is a family enterprise. Mark’s mom, Pat, and sister, Sheraton, recruit and organize the entertainment; his dad, John, is chief organizer of the Big Apple Parade.

“It’s a sizable commitment” for committee volunteers, Mark says. “We’ve been meeting pretty regularly since last year’s festival and that tempo really speeds up in the summer. … We want to remind people that this is an all local, volunteer board that puts it on, it’s local entertainment and local vendors.”

John Shepherd, a festival volunteer for 40 years, can always be found staging floats, bands and other parade entries. He met with city police last week to make final traffic and safety plans.

“We’re going to keep (Highway) 25 open a little later this year,” he says. “We’ll have a return of the classic cars this year but they’re going to be in smaller groups, mixed in with the parade. We are sponsoring a float for the West High baseball team state champions.” Some other state champions will be aboard, too.

Largest volunteer-run festival in the state

When she’s asked what she does for the festival, Colby Creasman Buchanan’s first reaction is to laugh.

“A little bit of everything,” she says.

Colby Creasman Buchanan, an Executive Committee member who served as Apple Festival president in 2021, carries a basket of apples at Creasman Farms.An accountant for the nine months of the year that she’s not working at Creasman Farms, the family’s U-pick orchard and retail apple stand, she helps with the books, assisting Renee Elrod, who is the volunteer chief bookkeeper.

“The way I got involved on this side was when I was Apple Ambassador in 2009 and then in college I started helping the Ambassador Committee in the selection” of the ambassador, Buchanan says. “I help with the ambassador program, making sure applications go out, that we have an inclusive program, making sure scholarship information is out there and that those scholarships get paid, and making sure the ambassador is at various events to represent the apple growers and the festival.”

When David Nicholson resigned in June 2022, committee members scrambled to pick up the duties he carried out as full-time director.

“The big thing I had to do when David left is various things with our advertising and our marketing,” Buchanan says. “Since then we have hired Summit but we’re still in those beginning stages — they’re getting to know us and we’re beginning to know them — so there’s a lot of correspondence for that.”

Then she ticks off boxes to check: “making sure all the information is accurate in our brochure, that we had a logo, that we’re updating our website, that our PR is getting the advertising out, making sure all the sponsor logos go up there on the website, making sure the logos get on our stage banners. It’s a lot of tedious things like that.”

She credits Mark Shepherd, this year’s president, and English, president-elect, for leading the executive corps, and also singles out Connet, the city manager.

“We are on their turf on a holiday weekend and all those folks at public works, the trash collection, making sure we have electricity to keep our cider cold — having that participation with the city is an invaluable resource,” she says. “We realize and I hope the community realizes that without the growers you wouldn’t have the apples and without the city we wouldn’t have a place to have an Apple Festival. The amount of work that public safety does to make sure we have a safe festival, all the preplanning, the planning — again, it takes everybody.”

Behind the scenes is one more board member that Buchanan describes as the unsung MVP.

“Geraldine Lamb — she keeps this show running,” she says. “She is a fulltime farmer. She and her husband don’t have any other job.” Lamb is often working “weekends, late nights, checking email, checking the mail,” sweeping up the nitty-gritty details. “Without her, no way. The Apple Festival is the largest volunteer-run festival in the state and I feel like 80 percent of the work is done by her, maybe 90 percent. ”

Festival has endured

Asked why she devotes so much time herself to the festival, Buchanan says it’s all about preserving history and “telling our story.”

“This is a community tradition that has to stay alive,” she says. “I’ve done this since I was a young child. If I don’t do it, who else will? It’s a lot of hard work, it’s a lot of commitment but if I don’t step up and do it and all these other volunteers don’t step up, who is? What else has been going on for 77 years? We’ve had wars and depression and hurricanes and Covid — this festival has survived.”

When the four-day party arrives, Buchanan appreciates the scene like a lot of local folks do — as one big old-home weekend.

“I hope that people support the festival and support all the volunteers that put so much into making the festival what it is,” she said. “To me, it is a community family reunion.”

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Executive Committee members are Mark Shepherd, president; Josh English, president-elect; Geraldine Lamb, Vicki Gunning, Renee Elrod, Mike Elrod, John Shepherd, John Connet and Colby Creasman Buchanan. If you see them, thank them!