WILMINGTON- Wilmington Old Home Week Committee members have been busy planning next year’s old home week celebration – and they’re looking for volunteers to help with everything from hanging pictures to organizing events.

The 2010 Wilmington Old Home Week Celebration will mark the thirteenth time the town has marked the once-in-a-decade event. The celebration, held from August 12 – 15, includes dozens of traditional events, and a few new ones, too. Since 1890, the celebration has included a picnic, parade, tours, and various class and family reunions. For OHW 2010, the committee is also planning some new events and displays.

Committee co-chair Nicki Steel says an e-mail from a descendent of the Ballou family prompted the consideration of a “family display area.”

“They wanted to have an area to display paintings and family information they collected,” Steel says. “We thought it would be nice to have an area where families or businesses can have a display of artifacts and history.”

Similarly, the committee plans to organize a “memory wall” with photos and remembrances of people who have died since the last old home week, as well as a “welcome to Wilmington” wall with photos of people connected to Wilmington who have been born since the last old home week.

Steel says the week also includes a number of events organized by other groups and businesses in town. Gerry and Sheila Osler, owners of the Old Red Mill, are organizing an alumni breakfast, for instance.

The parade promises to match previous old home week parades in both variety and length. Steel says the parade is one of the top events, bigger than some people may imagine. “A lot of people think of the Memorial Day parade,” she says, “but this is big. We shut down Route 9 for two hours.”

Traditionally, the parade includes floats prepared by local families and businesses, Shriners in tiny cars, bands, animals, and even neighborhood associations. “Last time White’s Hill Road marched as a group,” says Steel, a resident of the road, “and we’re planning to do it again. We’re just silly enough to do that.”

But the committee needs more volunteers to pull it all off. Steel says the committee is looking for at least two more members of the core committee, which does the overall planning. Each member of the core committee takes on responsibility for some aspect of the celebration. The committee meets at 7 pm on the third Tuesday of the month in the town hall meeting room.

The committee is also looking for people to organize the new “walls,” people to help with the planning of the town barbecue, and a volunteer to help with public relations and communications. For the week of the event, Steel says, the committee needs people who will sell tickets to events, man various stations and booths, pick up trash, and help with other activities.

The committee is also hard at work raising funds for the celebration. Although seed money for old home week comes from town coffers, Steel says the committee’s goal is to raise enough money to pay back the town and make the celebration self-supporting. In the past, the committee has sold commemorative plates and other memorabilia to raise money. For the last old home week the committee sold an embroidered throw with a Wilmington history theme.

For this old home week, the committee has teamed up with John McLeod to offer a collection of woodenware crafted at McLeod’s Wilmington shop. Each of the pieces, which range in price from $20.50 to $79.95, is “branded” with a Wilmington Old Home Week logo designed by Twin Valley High School art teacher Chris Simpson.

The special memorabilia are available from the committee by contacting Steel at (802) 464-5277 or nickisteel@myfairpoint.net. For more information about the woodenware, volunteering, or Wilmington Old Home Week 2010, visit www.oldhomeweek2010.com or contact Steel.

Wilmington’s Old Home Week is among the oldest old home week celebrations in the nation. Although the Library of Congress Web site lists the circa 1879 Hancock, NH, old home day picnics as the seminal “old home” event, many New England towns have celebrated similar events since the early 1900s. At the time, many northeastern communities were dealing with the economic realities of a rapid decrease in population. Westward expansion in the early 1800s, the gold rush of the 1840s, the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, and the rise of urban industrialization in eastern cities had decimated New England’s small towns. Old home week was a way of encouraging former residents to return and visit relatives and old friends.

For Vermont and the Deerfield Valley, Steel notes, the end of the Civil War marked a period of rapid emigration. “People were leaving the rocky hills of Vermont and heading west,” Steel says. “There was better farmland in New York and Ohio, and farms were left standing empty here. Old home week was a way of pulling people back to come look at us and see what we’re doing; to see how the towns are progressing and, hopefully, encourage some to come back and resettle.”

Frank Rollins, New Hampshire governor from 1899 to 1901, seized upon the concept as an opportunity to improve the state’s economic outlook, and declared a statewide old home week. His plan was to encourage newly affluent expatriates to maintain ties with their former communities, and to buy abandoned properties as family retreats. The idea was successful and popular, so much so that by the end of the first decade of the 20th century, many New England towns had established their own old home week celebrations.

But Wilmington’s first old home week, held in 1890, predates Rollins’ efforts by nearly a decade. The first such celebration was called a “reunion,” but it set the tradition for every old home week that has followed. One of the highlights of every old home week is a town picnic that brings former residents, longtime residents, and new residents together. The first picnic in 1890 filled Shafter Park, now an unused spit of land in the village, to capacity with celebrants.

In 1920, the centerpiece of the picnic was the roasting of an entire steer, donated by Martin Brown. According to a report on the event, a big cheer went up when the 1,400-pound steer was removed from the makeshift oven. The 1,800 guests consumed the steer, 3,000 ears of corn, 10 barrels of potatoes, 400 loaves of bread, and 50 pounds of butter.

But the dining events could be a source of controversy. In a letter to a group of Whitingham residents planning their first old home week in 1906, Wilmington Old Home Week Committee member CM Russell advises against catering the event. “I think the best way is for each family to carry their own picnic basket,” he wrote, warning organizers not to provide anything more than lemonade or coffee. “When you come to giving each one a good ‘square meal’ it is too much, because some will eat like hog.”