There’s an adage about the best-laid plans going awry, and that could have applied to this year’s Tipp City Mum Festival. Thanks to a Florida hurricane that took a wrong turn on September 27th, the 65th annual festival was plagued by a severe storm that threatened the festivities. However, the festival’s committee decided to follow a different adage - “Full speed ahead!”

We spoke with Festival Board President William House about the weather’s impact on the event. His responses demonstrate how far a community will go when there’s something important at stake.  

“When the storm began coming through, we kept an eye on the radar,” he said. “We could tell there would be some wind and rain Friday evening. We communicated with our vendors to let them know they could set up on Friday afternoon if they wanted to and to use their best judgment. Our thought process was to see what was happening Saturday morning. Thanks to the great job by the Tipp City Street Department on clearing things up, we were able to move forward with what we had planned for the weekend.”

Surprisingly, of all the events planned, there were only two cancelations.

“The Friday evening car show got canceled primarily because the owners, who put so much time, care, and attention into their cars, knew it was going to be a wet day and didn’t want to bring them out,” House said. “Also, the Junior Run for the Mums was canceled. While the weather was better by then, we knew the parents wouldn’t want their children going out in it. Aside from those, everything else went off as planned.”

“A few vendors decided not to come out because of the weather,” he continued. “Some would typically set up on Friday but set up on Saturday morning instead. There were some who were aware of the weather but wanted to come out anyway because they’d been there so many years. Talking to vendors at the end of the festival, some did as well as they did every other year, but there were some vendors that the weather affected more than others.”

One of the longtime vendors in attendance was Cynthia Carver, representing Bookwyrm Authors.

“For having the hurricane hit Friday night, the Saturday festival was still good,” she said. “The committee, especially Kathy and Michelle, did a great job working with us on Saturday. I chose to set up on Friday and was very pleased with the security and how they watched our tents when we weren’t there. It was not nearly as crowded as past events, but in spite of the hurricane and rain, we had sales. A lot of people were busy cleaning up after the storm.” 

The overcast weather didn’t seem to dampen the enthusiasm of the crowd. According to House, it was still a respectable showing.

“I don’t think the storm on Friday night per se had an impact, but anytime you have a festival of any sort, it does tend to impact how many people attend. Some people just don’t like to come out in rainy weather. Our overall numbers as a whole were down, but there were still quite a few vendors and quite a few people who came out over the two days.”

Situations like this call for creative problem-solving, fast thinking, and cool heads. Everyone involved stepped up to meet the challenge.

“I’ve been doing this since 2014, and this is the first time where we’ve had any type of projected bad weather,” House said. “There was a lot of dealing with things as they came up—juggling changes, talking with vendors, coordinating services, things like that. I’m quite proud of the way the committee and volunteers handled things, with the problem solving and doing their best to make the vendors happy so that we could have the Mum Festival in spite of the rain Saturday and Sunday. Overall, it was well worth having. There was quite a good turnout and the vendors did well. Hopefully, the next President will have much better weather than I brought to this year’s festival!”

Since this marks the end of House’s term as President of the Festival Committee, he felt compelled to express his gratitude.

“I know that as the President of the festival committee, there’s a lot out there, given the title and things like that, but it’s impossible to do anything of this magnitude by oneself. Any type of success that I had this year could only have been accomplished because of the festival committee and volunteers. Without them, there could have been no festival. I’m grateful for their help and support, and I’m proud to be a part of the group.”