MIDDLETON — What began as a string of illuminated jack o'lanterns lining Maple Street 25 years ago has evolved into a weekend long festival enjoyed by generations of Middleton families.
As families gathered at the Howe-Manning School on Saturday to celebrate the Middleton Pumpkin Festival's 25th anniversary, festival founder Geraldine Shipley was on hand and marveled at how the festival has grown and changed over the past quarter century.
The original idea for the festival came after Shipley saw a farmer in Maine who had lined the wall of his farm with illuminated carved pumpkins.
"It was really impressive," Shipley said. When Shipley returned to Middleton, she approached the president of what was then known as the Middleton Arts Council.
"I brought up the fact that Middleton should have something to interest the children and bring the town together," she said. "Topsfield had the strawberry festival and Boxford had the apple festival."
The first year, Shipley and her small group of volunteers, including Bob and Rita Kelly and John and Joan Caulfield, had a hard time getting the festival started, Shipley said. Eventually, the volunteers found and carved their own pumpkins and asked people up and down Maple Street to display the illuminated pumpkins.
Over the years, however, the festival has grown from those humble origins. In the early 1990s, Encore!, the town's performing arts society, began decorating King Street with scenes from children's books. Soon after, Paul Richardson and members of the Richardson family began volunteering the time and equipment for the haunted hayrides down King Street.
The festival has now grown to include pumpkin carving that was held at the Fuller Meadow School on Friday night, a pancake breakfast held at the Middleton Congregational Church on Saturday morning, the day of arts and music festivities held at the Howe-Manning School, and the costume parade, haunted hayrides, and Jack O'Lantern Row that was held on Sunday afternoon.
At the Howe-Manning School on Saturday, it was rare to find even the youngest attendees who haven't been coming back to the pumpkin festival year after year.
"This is my fifth year coming here. It gets a little bigger every year," said 11-year-old Mitchell Becker, a Boy Scout from Troop 19.
Each year, Troop 19 sells popcorn at the festival, and it is typically the troop's biggest fundraiser of the year.
Troop leader Dana Paul agreed that the pumpkin festival has become more popular over the years.
"It was strictly a hayride when we started doing this," Paul said. "Now, it's an all-day, an all-weekend event."
While most of the volunteers for Troop 19 were veterans of the festival, Mitchell Becker's younger brother, Kevin, age 6, was helping sell popcorn for the first time. In addition to helping raise money for the troop, Becker said he was excited to take part in many of the other family-friendly events taking place at the school, including caricatures, balloon twisting, face painting, and singing and dancing with Judy Pancoast.
Samantha Cabral, 9, and her dad, John, admired caricature artist Mike Horvath's portrait of Samantha. Samantha said she liked coming to the pumpkin festival every year and was looking forward to all her friends showing up.
Six-year-old Christopher O'Grady said his favorite part of the festival was the games and the balloons. His mother pointed out that he also liked the bake sale table sponsored by the Howe-Manning PTO.
"I like the rice krispy treats," he said.
Shipley said it is the intergenerational spirit of families growing up with the pumpkin festival that she likes best.
This year also marks a changing of the guards in the festival's leadership, as Amy Ogden-Benoit and Barbara Masse-Zagami took over the coordination of the festival under Shipley's tutelage.
Zagami said she has been honored to help continue the festival.
"It has been such a great Middleton tradition that we are not planning on breaking any time soon," Zagami said.
And although this was also the last year in which Shipley played a part in coordinating the festival, she said she is looking forward to seeing Zagami, Benoit, and the rest of the volunteers continuing it for many years.
"They are doing a wonderful job, and hopefully, they will keep it alive for another 25 years," Shipley said.
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