Lieutenant Governor Greg Franics, above, shakes hands with Festival Village honoree Stedwin Frett.
Love City Pan Dragons help open Festival Village.
The happiest Happy Hour on St. John started in low gear Friday night, June 28, as locals and visitors drifted into Frettsville.
More commonly known as the Cruz Bay Parking Lot, the 2013 Festival Village honored a man who might be described as the July Fourth Festival Committee’s official fisherman.
Retired Department of Parks and Recreation worker Stedwin Frett hails back to the early days of the 59-year-old annual celebration when St. John Festival lasted three days. In those days Frett would set out in his boat and catch all the fish that was served up at the fete.
Many years later, on June 28, 2013, the opening night of the village became Frett’s fete.
He showed up dapper in a double breasted suit and neatly trimmed hair. A few months had passed since he buried his beloved Maggie, a retired cook at the Julius E. Sprauve School who spent 37 years running a booth in Festival Village.
It was a moving moment for Village Committee Chairwoman Jane Johannes. A strict and sometime gruff overseer of proper practices, Johannes usually keeps it short on opening night, admonishing everyone to behave and to “go home” if they’re not out to have a good time.
But on opening night in Frettsville, the village chairwoman showed a flash of VI pride.
“We the committee, do not choose people because you are our friend or because we know you,” said Johannes. “We honor you for what you have done.”
“We St. Johnians are few people but we have a very big mind,” she said.“We stick together and work hard. We are not going to let anyone keep us down and we are going higher. For 60 years we have kept this festival together.”
Festival Queen Khadijah Lee and Princess Faith Sweeney sat alongside the honoree, lending their radiance. At the foot of the stage, the crowd began to swell.
The Love City Pan Dragons brightened the scene with music as the first plates of chicken and fish made their way across booth counters.
Children bounced, sometimes with parents dancing and spinning them around. Cocktail sippers shared some friendly chat.
Visiting college instructor Fred Hall said he was on island from Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina to attend a family wedding.
“I met the queen and then I went across the street and I met this lady,” he pointed to a picture of Food Fair honoree Floreca Henley.
Hall said he was impressed when he heard the festival queen was a freshman at the University of the Virgin Islands.
Henley settled into a nylon sling chair outside the Department of Tourism, watching the crowds roll by. Like Frett and Johannes, she’d been on the festival scene for 50 years or more.
And, she said, she still had it in her to work with the committee.
“I was out at the Queen Show Saturday night,” she said, “I still enjoy it. But now I have a little cold, so this will be my last night out. I’ll be back for the Fourth of July.”
At a nearby drink booth Elvis Smith Sr. said he was waiting for his son, Elvis Jr, to come relieve him on the beverage service. It would give him a chance to go home and relax, he said.
Near by, another booth owner busied himself with a cordless drill, installing a counter.
Smith spoke with pride about the other big event of June, Elvis Jr’s high school graduation.
“He doesn’t say much but he was really happy,” Smith said.
At the counter Paget Wyatt introduced himself as a “party man,” ready for a village night.
“I like to drink,” he said. “It keeps you out of trouble. You feel good, you go home, you go to sleep.”
But after the ceremony was over and Sweeta Band took the stage, there were no sleepers to be found. Dancers took up positions at the front of the stage as peals of rollicking soca poured over them.
Frettville had come to life.