Celebration Central

As one of the many, many chairmen/volunteers of Decatur Celebration -- and a huge, huge fan of the event -- I found Tim Cain's article below to be absolutely awesome.

Thanks Tim!

Out for now.......

Matt

Cain: Command center is Celebration's heartbeat | Decatur Celebration | herald-review.com

Walking to the Decatur Celebration grounds Friday as setup is in process, the gates for entry are always places with the potential for disaster.

Even with veteran volunteers working the gates and veteran vendors and artisans working their way into the grounds, there's not only a potential but a probability of some kind of issue. This year, I saw a vendor who appeared to be working with a new rig. He was struggling to compensate for the unfamiliar size of his vehicle.

I continued my walk toward the Celebration command center, located in the Decatur Civic Center. News sometimes is generated from the room. In the event of weather interruption, if you're in the business of needing to communicate with people what's going to happen (or not happen) next, you need to be in the room, or in contact with the room.

But more often than not, problems are solved in that room.

Celebration volunteers communicate extensively via radio, especially during setup. And a call came over the radio: “We've had an accident at (one of the gates).”

I thought, “I know exactly what happened there.” But because I'm a veteran of sitting to the side and observing the room, what happened next was exactly what I expected. A couple of volunteers set to work taking care of the situation as best as they could.

In 10 minutes, it was time for the next crisis.

In my 15 times covering Celebration and checking out the situation in the command center, I've never seen voices raised. I've rarely seen anything that even ends in a tense discussion. People know the pecking order, and if commands come from specific places, they won't be countermanded, even by people who might think they know better. (And at times, might actually know better.)

There are smirks and head shakes and eye rolls every once in a while, sure. But do you know where else I see those reactions? Anywhere people work together. And with Celebration, the feeling seems to last as long as it takes to make the face. Then there's another problem to be solved.

The ultimate goal of any work situation, and this particularly applies to Decatur Celebration, is to get from one emergency to the next in as calm and peaceful a fashion as possible, with limited psychic, physical and financial damage.

Indeed, spending a few minutes in the command center on Friday afternoon is a treat. Not everything is in place, but it's getting there. And there's a fascinating ballet of veteran volunteers who know exactly what they're doing, newcomers afraid to do much of anything lest they do something wrong. (And they almost invariably will, and it's almost immediately forgotten). People with business on the grounds come in confused, lost and sometimes a little angry, but almost always walk out with answers to their questions and the knowledge that the show must and will go on.

Seeing several people balance several different problems several different times is inspiring, and it wouldn't be surprising to learn those volunteers take the benefits of problem-solving in a timely fashion off to their everyday jobs the rest of the year.

It's for those people, the volunteers in the command center and the volunteers on the grounds, that Decatur Celebration is not the same as it is for most of us. Those volunteers don't get to see stage acts as much as they might wish. They're not even really aware of how well things are going on the grounds (or the opposite), because they're putting out fires that keep popping up.

One of the saddest stories from the reign of Celebration founder Fred Puglia was his inability to get into the crowd to see the Village People perform “YMCA,” one of the few things he really wanted to be able to see when he was producer. He was busy doing something else.

But a more entertaining memory is from 2003. A storm ripped through the grounds on a Saturday afternoon. There are still people who believe a tornado came through. (Weather experts say otherwise.)

Amid reports of disaster (vendors saw items destroyed by the weather, and money literally washing down drains) and heroism (rescuing vital electronic equipment, including the throwing of a power switch by an unknown man who saved more than anyone can imagine), Puglia manned phones, radio and succeeded in keeping afloat an event under attack from Mother Nature.

He also made a couple of ventures to the grounds, to see what could and could not be rescued or re-established.

The next day, a visitor pointed to rain gear hanging on the wall at the command center. “Why didn't you use that?” Puglia was asked.

“I had other things I was doing,” he responded with a laugh.

Because that's what's supposed to happen in the command center.