Sandwich Fair historian Joan Hardekopf was ready with a name when I asked for a longtime fair supporter I could interview. Joan is busy arranging displays in the new fair museum, which is in its second year.

The person she suggested is Juanita Anderson, who has been a part of the fair since she was 4 years old. That was the year her aunt asked her to help butter bread in the kitchen at the Federated Church’s food concession. Now 93, Juanita has been volunteering in various capacities at the fair for 89 years, except when she was 10 and was too ill to attend, Juanita said.

As a child, she lived down Center Street, just three blocks from the fairgrounds and remembers watching the big dray horses pulling farm equipment from the Sandwich Manufacturing Company past her house to the fair each year.