The year was 1974, and the fair was exactly what one young couple needed to shake off their pre-wedding jitters.

“We jumped in my Volkswagen Super Beetle and set out for Wellington,” said Jim Strang.

Once there, Strang and his bride-to-be, Peggy, stopped under the grandstand for a couple of Oh Boys, then “ate our way around the midway,” strolled hand-in-hand through each of the animal barns and vendor buildings and signed up for every giveaway.

We were “just a couple of 20-somethings, lost in each other and trying hard not to think about the enormity of the commitment that we would formalize the next day,” Strang said.

Little did they know, they were committing not just to each other but to the fair where their young love blossomed.

“We did determine that night that we would mark our anniversary in each coming year by returning to the fair,” he said.
Thirty-five years later, the Strangs — and their Lorain County Fair tradition — are going strong.

“It’s not the giveaways that keep us coming back,” Strang said. “It’s not even the fair food, sinfully seductive though it is. The Lorain County Fair is ‘our’ place. We started there. We raised our kids and showed their 4-H projects there. We have an annual date at the Oh Boy stand there. And now the (4-H) advisers there are the kids that once Peggy helped ride to trophies and king and queen honors.”

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Lorain mayor Tony Krasienko remembers the fair food as well, but not necessarily in a good way.

He was 10 or 11 and made the mistake of eating an ice cream orange whip before going on the Rotor. Food plus a spinning ride? Yeah, that isn’t a great combination.

“Not a good move,” he said. “It is not better the second time.”

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Gordon Greene has a lifetime of fair memories — he was fair director for 45 years, starting in 1961.

But he got started long before that, participating in 4-H as a child and attending the fair with his brother.

“I can remember my brother and I said ‘We wish they’d have all the things we want to see on the same day so we’d only have to come once,’ ” he said laughing.

Once he got on the fair board, he realized that was by design.

“That’s the way we get people every day is to have something different,” he said.

His time as fair director was “a lot of fun but a lot of work,” he said.

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When you’re a kid, the Lorain County Fair is the place to be and to be seen. And when you’re a kid living in Wellington, it’s all you think about all year long, according to Avon High School boys basketball coach Jim Baker.

“Growing up, I mean, the fair was a huge deal,” said Baker, who grew up not far from the fairgrounds. “You always look forward to it and when you get a little older, as a teenager, you were at the fair all the time. It’s where everybody got together.”

His favorite memory doesn’t involve the lifelong friendships he made during those fair days and nights. Instead, his favorite memory stars something a little bigger.

“It’s the first time I ever saw a foot-long hot dog,” he said. “I was 7 years old. I remember being amazed that someone would sell a foot long. I couldn’t eat it all, and I’ll tell you anybody who knows me today would probably be shocked that I couldn’t finish a foot long considering how much I eat now.”

Baker said he also remembers fondly the time his dad bought him and his brothers cowboy hats and they wore them on one of the rides, but not for long.

“They flew right off, and my dad had to walk underneath it and pick them up,” he said.

Although he’s graduated from foot-long hot dogs to Italian sausage sandwiches with peppers and onions, Baker said he still makes time for the fair for his family.

“My wife is from Wellington, too, so we try to go back every year,” he said.

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Karen Bremke was the Lorain County Fair’s grand champion of horsemanship 33 years ago, but she isn’t sure if that’s her favorite fair memory or the one she’s made watching her children participate in the fair.

Bremke, 48, said she and her husband, Darren Bremke — who was a champion for showing dairy goats the same year, although they didn’t know each other at the time — are heavily involved in 4-H.

This year, she said, three of their teenage sons are showing lambs, steers, Boer goats and pigs at the fair.

“It’s fun to win, but just being out there with your favorite animal and meeting friends is also fun,” Bremke said.

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Junior grand champion that same year — 1976 — was Victoria Rosado, who grew up in Sheffield and now lives in Henrietta Township.

Besides her big win, Rosado fondly recalls the celebrities she’s met over the years. She and her daughter had their picture taken with Lee Ann Womack, she got Reba McEntire’s autograph, and she and her parents had box seats for Kenny Rogers “when he was in his prime.”

“We still go back to watch the judging,” Rosado said. “To watch the kids with the cows, the pigs, to see how much money the grand champion steer brings in.

“Once you have the fair experience, it’s just awesome. It’s in your blood, and it never goes away,” she said. “We go back every year for the great lemonade, breakfast at the Grange, we go to the entertainment, horse pull and the tractor pull. There’s something for everyone every day.”

Another favorite memory of Rosado’s is camping out for the week as a child.

“That was a highlight every year,” she said.

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Echoing that is Pat Leimbach, who used to write “The Country Wife” column for The Chronicle-Telegram.

“We parked a truck and slept in the back of the truck most of the week,” she said. “The most exciting thing for the kids was to be there night and morning.”

Leimbach has another memory she calls “shameful.”

The year was 1939, and she was 12. She and her two brothers all wanted to go to the fair, but with the Depression barely over, they couldn’t afford admission for three.

“My brothers decided I should drive and put them in the trunk, and we would sneak in that way,” she said. “We got through the gate where they were collecting the admission, and hardly got past the gatekeeper when I got a flat tire. I had been very seriously instructed never to drive on a flat, so I had no choice but to get out and get the boys out of the trunk and ask my older brother what to do.

Were they busted? Hardly.

“Nobody said anything, and we disappeared into the crowd,” Leimbach said.

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Boy, them city slickers don’t know the difference between an ear of corn and a corn dog, according to Avon Lake Councilman David Kos.

But that’s the fun of coming to the Lorain County Fair every year, Kos said.

“I grew up in Lorain, and — growing up as a city boy — my family would take me to the fair every year and it always amazed me seeing cows, pigs, horses and goats,” he said. “To me that was the same as seeing animals at the zoo. It had all the same magic and wonder. And you could pet them. I know it sounds silly, but that was a big thing to me.”

Now as an Avon Lake resident, he said his 6-year-old son, David Jr., has the same look of magic and wonder in his eyes when they walk toward the animal barns on the fairgrounds.

“I take my son every year and see the same reaction from him from the sounds, smell from food vendors and the same kind of childhood amazement from the animals, food and shows,” he said. “That’s my most precious memory: seeing him.”
He said his son even loves the same entertainment that he did as a child.

“I always loved going through fun houses and mazes and he does the same things,” he said. “I get to go on some of things with him and we’re running through the fun houses and mazes and I’m having more fun than he is. I’m reliving my childhood through him.”

Kos said he takes his son to the fair at least three times during fair week every year.

“We grab one of those big plates of onion rings and an elephant ear and we’re happy as can be,” he said. “It’s a tradition I hope continues and a tradition I hope I can carry on with his kids.”