After 5 decades, fair’s mascot rooster keeps on crowing

August 31, 2014 at 12:09a.m.

CANFIELD

Cock-a-doodle-doo.

The rooster has something to crow about, and he should.

After all, he is the mascot, the brand, the icon of the fair.

He is the symbol of those savory sausage sandwiches, decadent dumplings, lively livestock, energizing entertainment, plump pumpkins, sun-reaching sunflowers and a continuous list of fair must-haves and must-sees.

Roosters are known to be territorial, and they try to win any fight, which has to mean something about the Canfield Fair.

“Because we have the rooster, we are the dominant [fair],” Fair Board President Craig Myers said of his thoughts on the rooster.

The Canfield Fair is the largest county fair in the state and is one of the top fairs in the country. In the first three days of its 2014 run, more than 100,000 people have come to enjoy the sights and sounds of the fair. The fair continues today and Monday, Labor Day.

Many fairgoers flock to the golden rooster at the main entrance to the grandstand to meet with others.

The question is: When was this rooster symbol adopted?

Well, it all started with the rooster — he is a cocky thing.

There was once a woman referred to as “Miss Canfield Fair” who gets the credit for bringing the rooster in.

In 1962, the rooster-crowing contest was started. During the contest, which still goes on today, the roosters have 30 minutes to crow the most times to win the contest. The owners are allowed to entice their birds to get them to cock-a-doodle-do.

Grace Williams, the former executive secretary for the Mahoning County Agricultural Society, came up with the promotional slogan “Something to Crow About” a year after the inclusion of the crowing contest. From the saying, the rooster symbol developed.

“I went to the Mahoning Dispatch [a former community newspaper serving Canfield and surrounds] and asked Ralph Fowler if he had any rooster art I could look at. He got out a big stack for me to go through and when I came to this one, it just jumped out at me and I grabbed it,” Williams recalled in a Vindicator article written for Williams’ retirement.

Williams retired in the 1980s, according to The Vindicator archives, after starting with the fair in its 80th year, in 1926. She did not become executive secretary until 1955.

Her predecessor was the man who got her started with the fair, Atty. Edwin Zieger. When she first started at the fair, she would record the poultry entries by hand — maybe the rooster was her destiny.

“Rooster figurines on her desk and on the files, and a framed needlepoint rooster on the wall and even a stained-glass rooster window in the door do more than just represent the fair’s “Something to Crow About” logo,” the late Vindicator reporter Janie Jenkins wrote in a Dec. 8, 1985, Vindicator article.

Those countless figurines and then some still line the walls and offices of the Canfield Fair Administration Building. Every guest to the fair administration meetings receives a pin, which, of course, has the rooster on it.

Let’s not forget the newly adopted BIG LOCK rooster at the Fine Arts building. Guests are asked to bring locks to the fair this year to lock up a collective love for the fair. A metal rooster, of course, holds the locks and the love. The rooster’s look hasn’t really been changed over the years and it actually has been trademarked.

“[The rooster] branded the fair,” Myers said. “It gives something people can identify.”

The grand rooster has no official name and maybe it will stay that way, but the collective love many have for the fair continues and with that comes the love for the rooster that was destined to be a part of the fair.

“It is the face of the fair,” said George Roman III, fair board member.

The rooster-crowing contest will take place at 9:30 a.m. Monday in the south ring.