LORAIN – Lorain’s International Festival kicks off at 8 a.m. today with the annual festival breakfast, and the festival’s 45th year promises to pack in all the fun and festivities attendees have come to love over the years.

Ralph Bruening, who coordinates the festival’s three-day weekend bazaar, said festival-goers can expect as many or more of the delectable dining options they’ve come to expect.

What they won’t see is a number of the churches and social groups that usually serve those goodies.

“We did lose a lot of our churches and social clubs this year,” Bruening said. “It’s a lack of volunteerism. The youth aren’t stepping up to the plate, so they can’t staff the booths for the food.”

Among the groups who won’t be selling food this year are Mary, Mother of God Church, St. Anthony of Padua Church, the Italian-American Veterans Club and the Lorain Lions Club.

Bruening, who said he had to be “a little creative” to fill booths this year, is taking the change in stride.

“It’s not a threat to the festival. It may become a change of direction as to where we get our vendors,” he said. “We’ve been looking outside of the area because we’ve seen this coming for a couple years now.

“I think it’s going to wind up being a commercial event. Across the country we see the same thing, festivals moving toward a commercial event.”

While feeding the throngs who flock to International Festival has proven to be a challenge, entertaining their children has not.

Credit Nina Wooldridge, who has headed up the kids area for several years.

Again this year, the festival will have a children’s area with nearly a dozen inflatable attractions.

New this year will be an educational focus.

Children can learn how to dance in Greek, Hungarian and African styles at the bazaar on Saturday, then make an international craft to take home.

But before the three-day food-and-entertainment-packed bazaar even gets here, there’s a full week of International Festival events to get through.

This year the focus will be on the Greek nationality, and the spotlight organization is the Cleveland Clinic. Twenty-two girls representing 11 nationalities will vie to preside over the weekend bazaar as queen.

The Clinic kicked off festival week with an open house Saturday, inviting residents to tour its Cooper Foster Park Road facility in Lorain.

Lorain’s Greek community is eager for its time to shine as well, according to Madelyn Matos, who along with others from St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church is spearheading that effort.

“It’s been kind of a fun ride learning all the things that are entailed in it,” Matos said.

Matos said she’s excited to help share her culture.

“I think it’s amazing because I think culture is so important,” she said. “All nationalities are proud of who they are, but we are exceptionally proud.”

The Greeks will host a cultural night Wednesday at the church, on Tower Boulevard, featuring food as well as entertainment by Sigma Greek Band and the church’s own youth and adult dance troupes.

Today’s breakfast at DeLuca’s Place in the Park will feature a keynote speech by Dr. Athanasios Thomas Dalagiannis. Dalagiannis, the chief of plastic surgery at all three major Toledo hospitals, was born in Greece, lived under apartheid in South Africa and settled in Amherst at age 11.

Ousis Greek Band will perform a free outdoor concert this evening in downtown Lorain.

Also free is the sacred music concert Tuesday evening at the Lorain Palace Theatre.

On Thursday evening the festival will crown its queen in a pageant featuring singing, dancing and instrumental music, and on Friday the real fun begins as the bazaar officially opens.

Bruening said he doesn’t expect bringing in commercial vendors to compromise the quality of the food festival-goers have come to expect.

The festival committee will hold restaurants and caterers who staff booths to the same standards as the churches and social clubs who’ve fed the masses for years, he said.

“We want authentic ethnic foods,” he said.

Bruening pointed out that the challenge has actually brought two new ethnic cuisines to the festival – Indian and Hawaiian.

Bruening has his fingers crossed for sunshine, 75- to 82-degree weather and “a nice south wind” to blow the mayflies back out to the lake.

“If it gets over 83, nobody wants to drink beer,” he said “They’ll still eat, but they’ll take more home.”

Bruening said he expects this year’s attendance to be as good or better than recent years.

“People are ready to come back out,” he said. “There’s a little more money out there. People are starting to do more, and they’re doing closer-to-home stuff.

“People are hearing about it, and they’re coming back. Everyone’s looking for a better, cheaper time.”

The children’s area, with its $3 kids meals, makes the festival even more affordable for families.

Woolridge thinks it’s important to keep children and families coming to the festival.

“The clubs are going away, so the young generation, they’re not really exposed to other nationalities anymore other than the International Festival,” Woolridge said. “It may encourage some of those kids as they grow up to become a part of their nationality group and become involved.”

Matos agrees.

“I think as the generations go on, people lose a little about how America was built,” she said. “I think when we do have something like this, it reminds us of where we came from and where we can go.”

Contact Rona Proudfoot at 371-0792 or rproudfoot@chroniclet.com.