Event-goers, volunteers have fun at Wiscasset carnival
Wiscasset Elementary School kindergartner Levi Freeman, 5, gets help on a mallet game from volunteer Eddie Tharp of Woolwich Feb. 25, at an indoor carnival in the Wiscasset Community Center gym. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
Tyler Garner, 7, of Wiscasset lands a mallet at the indoor carnival Saturday at WCC. Volunteer Ryan Denemy looks on. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
Volunteer Joan Barnes of Wiscasset greets an arriving family at the ticket table. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
Brooks James, 18 months, of Wiscasset, smiles from a bounce house. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
Indiana Robinson, 5, of Friendship takes a prize from the bucket volunteer Kayla Gordon is holding. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
Clockwise from front, Kate Marple, 5, of Whitefield, Mrs. Midcoast International Heather Demeny of Wiscasset, and Marple’s sisters Beatrice, 9, and Anna, 7, see how Kate’s toss goes. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
Wiscasset Elementary School kindergartner Levi Freeman, 5, gets help on a mallet game from volunteer Eddie Tharp of Woolwich Feb. 25, at an indoor carnival in the Wiscasset Community Center gym. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
Tyler Garner, 7, of Wiscasset lands a mallet at the indoor carnival Saturday at WCC. Volunteer Ryan Denemy looks on. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
Volunteer Joan Barnes of Wiscasset greets an arriving family at the ticket table. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
Brooks James, 18 months, of Wiscasset, smiles from a bounce house. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
Indiana Robinson, 5, of Friendship takes a prize from the bucket volunteer Kayla Gordon is holding. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
Clockwise from front, Kate Marple, 5, of Whitefield, Mrs. Midcoast International Heather Demeny of Wiscasset, and Marple’s sisters Beatrice, 9, and Anna, 7, see how Kate’s toss goes. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper
Without tossing a horse shoe or screaming their way down the inflatable slide, Wiscasset’s Joan Barnes and James Crowley were having fun Saturday in the Wiscasset Community Center gym, site of Wiscasset Parks and Recreation’s first indoor carnival. The couple, both WCC members, were volunteering.
Barnes said she absolutely loves the place and wanted to help with the event. She’s been a member since the center opened in 1997. “This place gives me so much, and I want to give back.”
Getting to interact with families added to the draw. Barnes, manning the ticket table, smiled as she told about one little boy who said it was the funnest day of his life. Crowley was nearby, smiling also as he supervised three small children trying out one of the bounce houses.
Fellow volunteer Kayla Gordon, Wiscasset High School Class of 2015, ran the stand-a-bottle game and had participants choose from a bucket of prizes. She knew a lot of the children from her time as a summer camp counselor at the center. She’s also facilities and programs manager Bob MacDonald’s goddaughter.
“It’s great to see the kids having fun, and I do anything I can to give back,” Gordon said about why she was volunteering.
“The kids are having a blast. I’m having a blast,” Eddie Tharp of Woolwich said between takers at the smaller of two mallet games.
MacDonald had been wanting to do an indoor carnival for a long time. It finally came together, he said in an interview in the middle of the gym at the start of day two, the event’s final day. Friday’s turnout was fantastic, he said.
Brian and Katy Petrie and their children Angus, 7, and Josie, 5, attended both days. The family had a great time Friday night and the children wanted to do it again, the Bowdoinham couple said. “It’s a great way to end (school) vacation,” Katy Petrie added.
Other parents interviewed said the carnival was helping get their school-age children’s energy out at the end of February break, and doing the same for their younger children. “She’s tuckered right out,” Friendship’s Lena Robinson said with daughter Rosalina’s head on her shoulder as Robinson held the 2-year-old. It was the bounce houses, Robinson said, smiling.
The toddler, in a ruffled skirt, watched from her mother’s arms as brother Indiana showed them the fishing pole he used in Gordon’s game.
On breaks from manning a bounce house with sister Olivia Peaslee, 14, of Wiscasset, Braden Peaslee, 11, tried the larger mallet game their father Ryan Demeny was manning. The whole family was volunteering; the children’s mother and Demeny’s wife, Mrs. Midcoast International 2017 Heather Demeny, had on her pageant sash as she helped, cheered and gave prizes to children playing horse shoes and other toss games.
“It feels good to help out,” Olivia Peaslee said.
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