I can only remember the event we call a Corn Boil as an adult, so did not recognize it as a century-old traditional celebration comparable to Thanksgiving. Sure, farmers were happy the corn growing season was finished and harvesting was just ahead. I did a quick sprint through the wide web and was surprised to learn that the “Green Corn Celebration” was being practiced in the 1600s and has been in many different places in many different forms. Native Americans held similar festivals long before Europeans arrived and later established Thanksgiving as a specific day in November.  

I am not sure of exactly when the Chillicothe Corn Boil began, but from what I’ve been told it was started when Barb Truitt donated the first batch of corn. The City blocked off 2nd Street and served corn dinners for one evening in July. I remember taking my mother to one in the early 1990s and sitting at a table in front of Carlisle Drug Store. It wasn’t much on the festival side but the corn was really tasty. 

I became involved in the Corn Boil when I was employed by the Chamber of Commerce in 2003. Mayor Troy Childers suggested I apply for the job of Facilitator (office manager) of the Chamber of Commerce, since I was an unemployed former police officer with time on my hands. I was probably the only candidate. The job was available because Jeannie Quick was leaving the Chamber to enter the real estate industry. Jeannie was putting the “Corn Fest” together while making her transition and I followed along to get the hang of it. 

The fest had several components: the Gus Macker-type street basketball tournament run by Sandy Levell, a car show, and of course the festival in City Park where volunteers from Rescue 33 boiled corn and put on a very full spread of delicious food and snacks. Live entertainment was also wrapped up in the event. It may look like a small-town little event, but I can tell you from experience, “It ain’t no piece of cake!” 

I’m not sure whether I provided any genuine help in the success of the event that year, but I learned a heck of a lot about what it takes to sponsor and carry out such a project. One of the demanding aspects of a corn boil or fest, is the cooking of the corn. The device that was used that year had been constructed by local volunteers several years before and consisted of a large tank of water on a trailer that had a high-volume propane burner that brought the water temperature to 230 degrees or better. 

After the event was done, I was told that the boiler system had become unreliable and the Chamber Directors, basically through Treasurer, Darlene Kumpf, that my primary job over the winter was to find a solution to the cooker problem. After a lengthy search for a cooker capable of meeting our need, I saw it would have cost the Chamber nearly the same as two years of my salary. That just would not do. I steamed my vegetables at home and noticed how much better they tasted than boiled veggies. I wondered if it could be done for the corn fest corn. Over the winter I put together the plan to build a steamer capable of meeting the need. In the Spring I put it together at home and decided to try it at the first 2nd Street Market. I set it up in front of Happy Thought Coffee Shop and steamed hot dogs. It wasn’t quick, but it worked and it provided many of my friends a good deal of fun razzing me about what the contraption looked like. It sure wasn’t pretty. Lanny Whitley offered me several scrap pieces of aluminum panels to skirt around the burners to contain the heat. That made a big difference. When I explained how I would cook the corn, the Directors gave me rather strange looks and I think I may have caused Darlene a heart attack.

I had completed the plans for the Fest including entertainment and filling the park with vendors and rides (no Ferris wheel) and two tents of Rescue 33 who presented their usual great dinner. On the day of the event, I was stricken with an ailment that prevented me from assembling the cooker, but my friends, Harry Crull, Dick Howarth, Don Griswold, Rob Crothers, and Irv Latta jumped in and put it all together with my supervision. Thanks to them, we not only met the demand but got many compliments as to the crispiness and tastiness of the corn. The Chamber volunteers were great in serving customers.

I left the Chamber in 2005 but continued to be the corn cooker (steamer) for six more years. The Pearce Seniors shucked all that corn, 225 dozen each year. We cooked eighty percent of that number each year for a total of over 17,000 ears of corn. The corn came from Schaer and Duckworth farms. The corn boil is at the center of the festival so you can’t separate them. We just continue the four-hundred-year-old tradition of the “Green Corn Celebration.”