Patch Blog: 3 Cheers for the Volunteers Who Make the Book Fest Run Smoothly

Alice Murray was a founding member of the board of the AJC Decatur Book Festival and currently serves as board president.

Whether it’s raising children or producing an event, one of my favorite phrases is, “It takes a village.” Nothing as important as raising a child or as stressful as producing an event like this week’s sixth annual AJC Decatur Book Festival Presented by DeKalb Medical (AJC DBF) can be done alone.

Certainly parents get the most credit — or blame — for raising their children. And AJC DBF leaders get to relish the accolades for putting on the largest independent book festival in the country. But no one lives in a vacuum, and it’s to the credit of our community, our sponsors, and the festival leadership — co-founders Daren Wang and Tom Bell, this year’s new program director Terra Elan McVoy, and the AJC DBF board of directors — that we all work as a team to make each festival a success.

 This week, as we prepare to raise the curtain on the keynote address Friday night at Agnes Scott College, I would like to send a shout out to the hundreds of volunteers without whom the festival could not exist. These men and women spend their Labor Day weekend making sure the hundreds of authors and tens of thousands of visitors have a great experience in Decatur.

 Volunteer! Decatur coordinator Lee Ann Harvey has assembled more than 550 volunteers for this year’s festival. That’s amazing. Think about that for a minute; 550 individuals show up on a holiday weekend to donate their time and talent.

 They may give directions, hand out bottles of water, sell festival posters and T-shirts, or do the heavy lifting of cleaning up after the festival on Sunday evening.

 One hardy group is from local Boy Scout Troop 134 led by John Ehrensperger. Each Labor Day weekend since 2006 John has brought troop members to the Square on Sunday evening to help vendors close down the street market.

 The troop does a tremendous job, LeeAnn says with admiration, praising them for their dedication and hard work.

 Then there’s stage captain coordinator Noni Ravenberg, who recruits, organizes, and trains the stage captains to run each of the venues at the festival. Each stage captain commits to at least a full day and many work both days of the festival. They are responsible for keeping the events running on schedule and coordinating the introductions, presentations, and book signings for each author at their venue.

 My neighbors, Scott and Debra Pyron, pictured here, volunteer as stage captains each year. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world” is the phrase that sums up the commitment of these extraordinary volunteers.

 LeeAnn has also recruited young adult readers to help. Among the volunteers are members of the Decatur High School Key Club and National Honor Society, the Druid Hills High School Beta Club, and the Parkview High School National English Honor Society.

 “People are very excited about the festival,” LeeAnn says of the volunteer team. “I can’t thank them enough for all the work they do to make the event a success.”

 We can be proud of our village and how members of our community jump on board to help make our AJC Decatur Book Festival one of the biggest and best in the country.

 So three cheers for our volunteers, and many thanks to each of you.