Rotary Club will hold Auctionfest in April to help Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library

The Rotary Club will hold its annual Bucyrus Auctionfest on April 13 at the Wynford Community Center. This year's partner is the Crawford County Affiliate of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library of Ohio, and the theme of the fest is Read, Grow, Inspire.

“We chose the partnership with them because we feel that putting books into the hands of children is so critically important for their being able to perform in life,” Rotarian Donna Laipply said. "You need to be able to read, and if you can foster that love of reading at a very early age, it just makes the transition into school and into life much easier, and quite frankly these children are our future leaders.”

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library in Crawford County

The county affiliate of the Imagination Library assists in mailing age-appropriate books monthly to every child under age 5 enrolled in the program. Currently, more than 1,600 Crawford children are enrolled, which is 73% of eligible children in the county. This puts Crawford County in the Ohio top 10 counties for enrollment, according to the Bucyrus Rotary Club.

“Imagine the excitement of children each month as they receive their book in the mail,” said Barb Scott, spokesperson for the county affiliate.

Auctionfest history in Bucyrus

Laipply said the Rotary Club accepts applications for the Auctionfest from local nonprofits during the summer months.

Rotary’s Auctionfest co-chair, Virginia Hammontree, said they started to bring partners into the Auctionfest in 2002.

“Since 2022, in this auction $723,000 has been our net sales,” she said. “That’s the money that has gone to partners, to the Rotary Club, and to Rotary scholarships.”

The first Auctionfest partner was Crawford College Connection. which makes scholarships available to county students. That year, the Rotary Club made $17,500 that was divided between the club and its partner.

“It is now a huge organization with wonderful funding from all over the county, but they got started with $8,500 from the Rotary Auctionfest,” Hammontree said.

Every year, after the nonprofit applications are submitted to the fest, organizers choose three to present to the Rotary Club for the club to make its decision on a partner. For three years, the club had multiple partners for its Auctionfest.

Throughout the history of the event, Rotary partnered with the Crawford Park District, Bucyrus Little Theater and Crawford Antique Farm Machinery Association, as well as the school bands.

“We had two years of $46,000 plus,” Hammontree said. “For the last two years, the partner has received over $30,000.”

The two partners were the Bucyrus Backpack program that serves 11 county schools with 500 free meals a week that the students can take home for the weekend, and LifeWise Academy that offers off-campus Christian education.

Dinner and entertainment this year

The event consists of a dinner, entertainment, a live auction and a silent auction. The higher valued items, such as trips, will be auctioned in the live auction.

“You want to create excitement, you want to create a bidding war that goes between people who want to have those items,” Laipply said.

The dinner this year, said Laipply, is coming from Katering Kountry Style, and local band Crazy Gringos will provide entertainment. Crazy Gringos is made of a group of attorneys from the community, Laipply said.

“They love music, they like to get together and play together,” Laipply said.

The items auctioned this year will include gift certificates from businesses, gift baskets, a quilt and the first business card from the late 1800s from D. Picking & Company in Bucyrus.

“It is the first business card given out by Robert D. Picking in 1878,” Laipply said.

The company started as a producer of hand-pounded copper items, primarily kettles, providing jobs for the community in times when it was difficult to find employment, especially during the Depression.

“It is now the only hand-pounded copper kettles in the United States,” Laipply said.

Usually more than 200 people attend the event, including employees of the businesses and Rotarians and their spouses. Some come every year from as far as the Toledo area, Hammontree said.

Tickets are available through Thursday. A donation of $100 per person gives the ticketholder a dinner with entertainment and $50 of purchasing power.

“Monies raised in Crawford County remain in the county,” Scott said. “If there isn’t money for the program, the program goes away.”

Doors open at 4 p.m. Dinner begins 5:01 p.m. For more information and/or view the auction items, contact the Bucyrus Rotary Club on Facebook or call 419-562-5032.

This article originally appeared on Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum: Bucyrus Rotary Auctionfest benefits Dolly Parton Imagination Library