Richard Gibson of Elyria checks out cars at the Apple Fest classic car show Sunday morning. He said he would rather have the Corvette: “They were expensive, even back then (1966), and there weren’t many to look at because of that.” The 1964 Impala on the left is owned by Bill McChesney of Avon Lake. The 1966 Corvette Sting Ray is owned by Barry Penfound of Elyria. (Photo by Chuck Humel, The Chronicle-Telegram.)

ELYRIA – Thousands took advantage of the balmy weather to enjoy all things “apple” in Ely Square downtown this weekend, organizers of the 29th annual Apple Festival said Sunday.

“It’s busier than it’s ever been,” said festival Chairwoman Linda Brown, who roughly estimated 125,000 attended the event over the weekend. “The vendors did better than last year.”

The organizers’ crowd numbers match last years, although without ticket sales the crowd figures are just estimates.

Mayor Bill Grace said the festival was great.

“It’s probably the best weather we’ve ever had,” Grace said. “People seemed to be out in record numbers. It’s a great community gathering.”

The First Place Bank antique car show and the Apple Art Awards were draws on Sunday followed by Ronald McDonald’s magic show and live entertainment.

Cars lined Broad Street in Elyria for the Apple Festival car show. (Photo by Chuck Humel, The Chronicle-Telegram.)

Fifteen-year-old Kateisha Price, a sophomore at Elyria High School, won Best of Show for her painting of a butterfly and apple.

“I feel excited and gloriously happy,” Kateisha said, adding she first became interested in art at 7 years old.

Kateisha won a $100 savings bond for her butterfly painting and another $100 savings bond for winning first place for Best Use of Color. Money for art school?

“Quite possibly,” she said, giving kudos to her art teacher, Mel Rainey. Kateisha has won a prize three years out of the seven years the art show has been going on. The festival hands out $2,400 in savings bonds to various art show winners in addition to medals and trophies.

Funding issues put a slight damper on preparations for this year’s festival since the city wasn’t financially able to provide the police, fire, sewer, water and other workers for free as they had in years past.

Brown said for the first time, the festival had to come up with $55,000 on its own. She said that won’t slow them down preparing for next year.

“We will definitely have a 30th Apple Festival,” Brown said. “No matter what we have to do, we’ll make it.”

Runners cross the ford into Cascade Park during the Apple Festival 5-K. (Photo by Chuck Humel, The Chronicle-Telegram.)

Grace said he regrets the city couldn’t provide the “in kind” personnel to help out, but said the festival was a success so “everything worked out.”

Fifteen craft booths and 93 vendors filled the blocks around Ely Square and gentle breeze kept most of the bees at bay. Families enjoyed the impressive selection of food which including kettle corn, a wide variety of apple pastries, cotton candy, gyros, funnel cakes, steak sandwiches and everything in between.

The weather wasn’t the only nice thing about the three-day event. It was virtually problem-free, Brown said.
“We were relatively free of any issues or problems,” she said. “The people have been well-behaved.”

Elyria police and fire confirmed there were no problems during the festival.

“Everything went fairly routinely,” said Police Chief Michael Medders.

“All in all, it was a wonderful event,” Brown said. “The entire city and community people — it takes everybody to pull it off.”

Art show winners

• Semag O’Sullivan, fifth grade
• Dennae Jindra, fifth grade
• Kyle Salyan, 12th grade
• Dominick Olivo, third grade
• Antonio Brown, seventh grade
• Maliyah Parilla, fifth grade
• Megan Lescher, eighth grade
• Robyn Hardwick, fourth grade
• Micayla Tarrant, eighth grade
• Jordan Stewart, seventh grade
• Madison Dicken, fourth grade
• Julie Johnson, 12th grade
• Emily Messar, eighth grade
• Kateisha Price, 10th grade

Contact Alicia Castelli at 329-7144 or acastelli@chroniclet.com.

The Vermilion High School marching band marches in the Woollybear Parade along state Route 60 in Vermilion. (Photo by Chuck Humel, The Chronicle-Telegram.)

VERMILION — Forklore forecaster Bud Summers weathered the estimated 125,000-strong crowd’s groans of disappointment when he predicted a hard winter at the 39th annual Woollybear Festival on Sunday in Vermilion’s Exchange Park.

“Everything, as I see it, it looks like we’re gonna have a hard winter,” Summers, the festival’s third forecaster, said. “It looks to me like we’re gonna have a white Christmas.”

Brooke Yontz, 4, of Vermilion, rides Joshua, a camel at the Woollybear Festival. The camel was owned by the Hole in the Wall Farm Animal Rescue Inc. (Photo by Chuck Humel, The Chronicle-Telegram.)

Longtime meteorologist and local celebrity Dick Goddard with Fox Channel 8 hosted this year’s festival as he’s done for the past 38 years.

“So … it’s going to get cold … and then it’s going to snow,” he joked.

Folklore holds that the smaller the orange stripe on a woolly bear’s back, the harsher the winter will be.

Following the weather prediction, nine woolly bear finalists raced for the gold — a trophy, a $50 Toys “R” Us gift card and candy.

Seven-year-old Elijah Cooper came out on top with a 32-second final heat as Waffle crossed the finish line ahead of challenger Parrot who’d come all the way from Michigan.

“I feel great,” Elijah said.

Tragedy was narrowly avoided as Parrot took a 5-foot fall through the cracks of center stage, but 7-year-old Molly O’Leary of Brighton, Mich., was happy when Parrot was found a few minutes later.

Molly comes to the festival every year and visits her grandparents while in town. She was too shy to speak after the Woollybear 500, but Molly said through a family spokeswoman that she was glad Parrot was safe and sound.

Other winners Sunday included a family of three girls, 4-year-old Haiden Clark, 2-year-old Chloe Clark and 1-year-old Haylee Clark, of Vermilion, who will share the Woollybear Queen Crown for 2009.

Seven Hills brothers Shawn Kessie, 5, and Trevor Kessie, 7, will also share the crown as Woollybear King for 2009.

Four-year-old Aryssa Horne of Plymouth dressed her poodle/Pomeranian mix dog up as a scarecrow, put on a matching costume and walked away with the Best Pet Prize.

It’s this sense of family and community that brings Goddard back year after year.

“It is a family fun, free event and you can’t get many of those anymore,” Goddard said.

The festival is sponsored by Channel 8 and the Vermilion Chamber of Commerce.

It’s billed as the largest one-day festival in the state and Chamber President Pam Cooper said the 125,000 estimate of attendees is probably conservative. No one can say for sure, however, because tickets aren’t sold.

“People were parking as far away as a mile away to get here,” Cooper said. “You take a little town of 11,000 people and fill it with 125,000 and we’re bursting at the seams.”

Mayor Jean Anderson said that’s OK with her.

“I think this has been off the chart as far as the people, the activities, the parade go,” she said. “I think everybody has come to enjoy the Woollybear Festival and the events, the food and the comraderie. It’s quite a tradition.”

More than 120 vendor booths filled Exchange Park and parking was virtually nonexistent anywhere near the parade, which lasted three and a half hours and included more than 15 marching bands and floats from nonprofit groups, organizations and businesses.

“We’re proud of it,” said Chamber Director Louise Woehrle, adding their booth saw visitors from all over the state and as far away as South Africa. “It’s gone fantastically well. We’re amazed it’s getting so big.”

Cooper agreed it’s shocking how the festival has grown from around 2,000 attendees at the first festival held in Birmingham. But no one’s complaining — unless it’s about the parking.

“It’s a great event for our city,” Cooper said. “The businesses and nonprofits do great. This is one of the biggest crowds we’ve ever had.”

Contact Alicia Castelli at 329-7144 or acastelli@chroniclet.com.

ELYRIA — The Nord Center’s former chief financial officer has been indicted for alleging stealing about $95,000 during the three years she worked for the mental health organization.

Bernadette Gelb-Stitchick, 42, is charged with five counts of theft and four counts each of forgery and falsification, according to the indictment. She pleaded not guilty to the charges during a brief court appearance last week.

Gelb-Stitchick

In a settlement agreement reached earlier this month in a lawsuit filed against her by the Nord Center, Gelb-Stitchick agreed to pay back the money she is accused of stealing, although her attorney, Jack Bradley, said that’s not an admission she did anything illegal.

“It takes criminal intent to commit a crime,” he said.

Nord Center President and CEO Bill Biere said Gelb-Stitchick was fired in May after Biere couldn’t verify the college degrees she said she had when she was hired in May 2006.

Gelb-Stitchick had said during the hiring process that she had an associate degree from Kent State University, a bachelor’s degree from Cleveland State University and an MBA from Tiffin University, Biere said. While she had taken classes at both Kent and CSU, neither college had a record of her ever graduating and Tiffin had no record of her taking classes at the school, he said.

Biere said he began reviewing Gelb-Stitchick’s academic credentials because there were “concerns about work performance.”

After Gelb-Stitchick was fired, Biere said he and his staff began reviewing financial transactions and came up with four distinct incidents in which she created fake invoices from companies and organizations for work that was never performed.

“One thing leads to the fall of a house of cards, and that’s sort of what happened in this case,” Biere said.

According to an affidavit filed in the lawsuit by Nord’s attorney, Richard Panza, on Dec. 13, 2006, Gelb-Stitchick created a fake letter for “The LCCF Foundation” requesting a check for $16,900 to be made payable to a business called Corporate Consultation Works.

A check was made out to LCCF/CCW and was deposited into a bank account controlled by Gelb-Stitchick two weeks later with LCCF blacked out on the payee line, Panza wrote.

The next instance of theft came on April 22, 2007, when Gelb-Stitchick sent a fake letter from an organization called LCCFS requesting $28,900 to be made payable to CCW, Panza wrote. The check was paid after a purchase order was signed, purportedly by Biere’s predecessor, Steven Laubacher.

Gelb-Stitchick then wrote out a check to cash and used it to obtain a cashier’s check made payable to CCW, Panza wrote.

The final alleged theft discussed in Panza’s affidavit took place on Dec. 24, 2008, when Gelb-Stitchick allegedly created a fake invoice from CCW for $33,720 for “governance research,” “investigative work/background research” and “travel expenses.”

The invoice had the forged signature of Julia Ecker, a Nord Center board member, and Gelb-Stitchick wrote a check to CCW and deposited the funds into a bank account for “Bernadette Gelb-Stitchick DBA Creative Custom Woodworking,” Panza wrote.

The alleged fourth theft wasn’t detailed in the civil lawsuit documents, but Lorain County Prosecutor Dennis Will said that theft took place through two separate actions.

The lawsuit against Gelb-Stitchick accuses her of using the money she allegedly stole to pay money toward a Vermilion home as well as the purchase of multiple vehicles.

Biere said all of the money Gelb-Stitchick allegedly stole has been recovered through the lawsuit.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.