BWF Merchandise
New BWF Merchandise is now available at the City of Spencer Municipal Building. Products will be available there until the start of the festival then they will be available in the information booth during the festival.
Black Walnut Festival Begins Next Week
Appalachian Mountain Specialty Foods To Offer Samples During BWF
Appalachian Mountain Specialty Foods, of Spencer, WV, will be offering samples of their award winning products during the 59th WV Black Walnut Festival. Stop by their booth located beside the Spencer Antique Mall on Main St to sample such products as Wilted Lettuce Dressing, Zest Sauce and several other items.
Recently, Appalachian Mountain Specialty Foods won awards at the WV State Fair for their Copper Head Bloody Mary Mix and Sweet Britches Salad Dressing. Greg and Veronica Stover, owners of AMSF are proud to offer products that are West Virginia made and grown and invite you to sample this product during the festival.
BWF Book Signing Features Spencer's History
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (September 24, 2013)
Huntington author to sign new book on the history of sports in West Virginia at the Black Walnut Festival
Huntington
author, Bob Barnett, will sign his new book, Hillside Fields: A History
of Sports In West Virginia (West Virginia University Press, 2013) at
the Black Walnut Festival in Spencer on Friday, October 11 from 11 to 3.
Barnett will be located in front of the Courthouse.
Hillside
Fields: A History of Sports in West Virginia has the Spencer girls’
state basketball story at the beginning of the chapter on the history of
girl’s and women’s’ sports in West Virginia. The Spencer tournament
founded in 1919 was one of the three first girls’ state basketball
tournaments started in the United States that season. Barnett and
Spencer historian Steven Cooper will also sign copies of their
co-authored Goldenseal magazine story about the Spencer girls’
tournament.
Hillside
Fields provides a broad view of the development of sports in West
Virginia. Of course the stories about Jerry West and Mary Lou Retton,
and “We are…Marshall” are familiar to everyone. But the little known
stories of the development of sports from the first golf club in America
at Oakhurst Links to the Greenbrier Classic; from the first girls’
basketball championship in 1919 to post-Title IX; from racially
segregated sports to integrated teams; and from the days when West
Virginia Wesleyan and Davis & Elkins beat the big boys in football,
help to define the uniqueness of being a West Virginian. Hillside Fields
explains how major national trends and events, as well as West
Virginia’s economic and political conditions, influenced the development
of sports in the state.
Roane and Gilmer County athletes, coaches,
and teams appear throughout the book. Normantown’s state championship
basketball championship victory over Logan in 1945 and the major role of
Glenville State College (now University) in the founding of the West
Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference basketball tournament are
both featured.
“I tried to cover all of the major athletes
and events like Jerry West and Mary Lou Retton,” said Barnett. “But
because West Virginia is a state of small cities, small towns, and even
smaller villages may of the local legends are not widely known and in
danger of fading from memory. I tried to capture as many of those as
possible in Hillside Fields because they are what help define the
character of West Virginia.”
Barnett graduated from Marshall
University in 1965 and returned to Marshall to teach in 1972 after
earning a PhD from Ohio State University. He taught sport history
classes in the Division of Exercise Science for 35 years.
Barnett’s
first book Growing Up in the Last Small Town: A West Virginia Memoir is
about coming of age in the tiny northern panhandle town of Newell, West
Virginia in the 1950’s. He and his wife, Lysbeth, have two children and
six grandchildren. They now divide their time between homes in
Huntington and Sarasota, Fla.
For more information, contact the author:
304-523-3901 Huntington, WV
Or by e-mail at barnettink@aol.com
Get Ready for the 59th Annual Black Walnut Festival
Black Walnut Festival Car Show Update
The BWF Car Show is poised for a great event this year.
Marching Bands Set to Perform
With three weeks until the festival we have 16 high school marching bands set to perform. Several more are anticipated to sign up in the coming weeks.
The current list of bands consists of:
Roane County
Meadow Bridge
Calhoun County
Williamstown
Wirt County
Gilmer County
Herbert Hoover
Nicholas County
Tyler Consolidated
Poca
Lincoln County
Brooke
Point Pleasant
Scott
Winfield
Ripley
Shanna's School of Dance to Perform at BWF
Students ranging in age from four years old to teenagers will be dancing three selections at the Black Walnut Festival Queen's Coronation on October 10th at the Spencer Middle School beginning at 7pm.
Dances range from from Mickey Mouse to Jailhouse Rock complete with beautiful costumes & high energy choreography! The Shanna's School of Dance Performance Group, made up of select dancers of various ages from the school, will perform a new hip hop routine with original choreography by Shanna Hall.
Granpa Cratchet
Granpa Cratchet returns to the Black Walnut Festival.
Enjoy Granpa's shows throughout the day during the festival. Located on the corner of Court and Market St, Granpa is a favorite of both young and old festival goers.
