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Once a prize, rooster’s now a showpiece
By Kalea Hall
CANFIELD
Shirley Boyd brought her 70-year-old ceramic rooster back home this year to the Canfield Fair.
It didn’t come back as a game prize like it was 70 years ago, but as the center of Boyd’s flower arrangement for the Something to Crow About floral competition.
The painted ceramic rooster was won during the 1945 Canfield Fair by Boyd’s uncle, the late George Schavina, when he was 15.
“I am hoping he is smiling from heaven,” the Salem resident said. “His rooster has gone full circle.”
The story surrounding the rooster named Precious has been passed on to Boyd and to her daughter and granddaughter, who will inherit it.
As the story goes, Uncle George wasn’t allowed to go to the fair because of bad behavior, but he went anyway. When he won the ceramic rooster, he realized he couldn’t take it home because then his mother would have known he made the trip to the fair.
Instead, he hid the rooster with his older sister, Anne Pilch. Pilch cherished the rooster and then passed it on to her daughter, Boyd.
“I proudly display it on my patio table,” she said.
When the time came to enter a Something to Crow About-themed floral arrangement, she plopped Precious in the center of the arrangement and added some marigolds, snapdragons, black petunias and zinnias around him.
“I enjoy flowers as a hobby,” she said. “They make me happy.”
She received honorable mention for her entry.
Lisa Toy, Canfield Fair Board director of fine arts, floral and arts and crafts, loved Boyd’s rooster story when she heard it.
“I thought it was exactly what the fair epitomizes,” she said. “Almost every person who walks through the fair gates has a story [about the fair].”
Check out Precious the rooster, which is still in great condition for being 70 years old, and the rest of the floral displays in the Floral Expo at the corner of Boardman Drive near Bowman Drive.
By the way, Boyd’s grandma did find out about Uncle George’s trip to the fair.
“You don’t get anything past a mother of seven,” Boyd said.