ALTAMONT — After years without, the fair has brought back the manager’s position, although this time it has different duties.

Long-time fair volunteer Marie McMillen will be taking on those duties, a step up from her former position as the fair board’s vice president. She’ll be focusing on sales for the fair, rather than overseeing all aspects of the fair, which was the role of managers in the past, she said.

The fair has always been part of McMillen’s life. Her mother used to show cows at the Altamont Fair and McMillen was in 4-H as a child, she said, then her own children got involved, too.
"I would like to see the fair do more country-fair kinds of things," she said. The events that go on during fair week will largely be outside of her purview, though. Each section of the fair has its own committee that decides what things that will be happening, like the performers who will be invited and the judges who will be asked. McMillen will be focusing on the business end of things.

In her previous position at the fair, she made a big effort to make the fairgrounds available for events outside of the fair, like company picnics and music festivals. The two big events from last year will be coming back again in 2007; she said that both Countryfest and Summerfest will be renting the fairgrounds this coming summer.

The fair board decided that it would be good to have someone in the office on a regular basis, which is one of the reasons that it decided to reinstate the manager’s position, as paid rather than volunteer. The two major parts of McMillen’s job as manager will be to spend time in the office — Monday, Wednesday, and Friday this time of the year and more often over the summer — and to book outside events, she said.

There were some hard years for the fair, McMillen said, but 2006 was the best one in the last 10 years financially, a success owed largely to outside events, she said.
She’s happy with her new post as manager, she said. "My heart is really in the fair."