The memories of a queen

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FORT FAIRFIELD — Valeska Ward Lombard was driving a potato truck in her father’s Limestone potato field during the 1935 harvest when a local businessman came and asked her if she’d like to be a potato queen contestant.

“I thought he was kidding,” said Lombard, who was 19 years old at the time. “I drove off and left him standing in the field.”

But Lombard did enter the contest and was named the very first Maine Potato Queen. Her crowning started a long tradition of queens who were later chosen during annual festivals to promote the state’s largest cash crop.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Maine Potato Blossom Festival, which has grown through the years to an eight-day festival, featuring tournaments, pageants, potato house banquets and, of course, the annual crowning of a new potato blossom queen.

The festival will run from July 13 through 20.

Back when Lombard was crowned, there was no festival with parades or fireworks. The idea of a queen originated with a local group of farmers and businessmen that wanted to publicize the industry during the fall harvest. At the time, Maine was the nation’s largest producer of potatoes.

County towns that wanted to participate selected contestants, and Lombard, now of Caribou, represented Limestone.

The queen was crowned after a noontime banquet at the Northeastland Hotel in Presque Isle. Aside from the farmers and businessmen, there were media people, including some from Augusta and Boston, Lombard remembered.

“There was no competition; we just ate,” Lombard said during a recent interview as she sat at her weathered kitchen table, built 50 years ago from four thick planks by her late husband and father.

Lombard laughed as she said she must have won because “I didn’t drool or anything.”

For the banquet she wore a black dress with a silver collar. After being named the potato queen, she was given a gold “queen’s costume” with puffy sleeves. It was a “one-size-fits-all” outfit, and safety pins were used to fasten the dress in the back so it would stay on, Lombard said. A gold cardboard crown was placed on her head.

After the banquet, Lombard was taken to a field where a chair had been placed in the middle of a large pile of potatoes. There, the potato queen was photographed as the cold fall wind whipped around her. She was told to hold a large silver cup that someone else won in a horse race.

Since the cup’s handles looked like horses’ heads, Lombard had to place her hands over the handles so people would think the cup really was a queen’s trophy, she recalled.

The next publicity photo session was in a packing shed, where Lombard, still wearing her queen’s costume, posed with a bag of Maine potatoes with other queen candidates standing around her.

“I was told to hold the bag so the farmer’s name wouldn’t show,” Lombard said.

The whole idea of the queen concept was to advertise Maine potatoes, and the Limestone farmer’s daughter did her best. She attended a food fair in Portland, which also was attended by then-state Agriculture Commissioner Earlon Newdick and then-Gov. Louis Brann.

Wearing her cardboard crown, gold queen’s outfit and “my safety pins, I was to read a recipe to the governor for potato scallop,” Lombard said.

She also was photographed at the Augusta airport with Newdick in front of an airplane that was to carry potatoes to then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt. But it was all just a publicity stunt to advertise Maine potatoes.

“That plane never left the ground,” Lombard said with disappointment. “That was quite a disillusionment.”

It’s unknown whether FDR ever received the spuds.

While that may have been the extent of Lombard’s reign as potato queen, it didn’t end her involvement in the potato industry. She married potato farmer Maynard Lombard, and they moved to Caribou in 1946, where they raised four children.

Today, Lombard runs an antiques shop in her Main Street home and attached garage and barns. As she sat in her paneled kitchen, with hutches filled with old dishes, she said it was “sad” about how the potato industry has suffered through the years.

“You know it’s bad when the big farmers are having a hard time,” Lombard said.

Unfortunately, the first potato queen will not attend any of the 50th festival’s activities. She had scheduled a trip to Alaska before the invitations started rolling to past-queens’ teas and little-queens’ pageants.

The role of the potato queen has become an integral part of the annual promotion of the Maine crop. The winner represents the industry at various trade shows in Maine and along the East Coast, including the Eastern States Exposition in Springfield, Mass. She also competes in the Miss Maine contest.

Through the years, the festival has been a drawing card for thousands of people. Politicians, and state and national industry leaders as well as County natives all try to make it to Fort Fairfield for the festival.

Political parties schedule state meetings and high schools plan reunions around the festival week, traditionally held the third week in July when the potatoes are usually in bloom.

A history of the festival, written by Ruth Reed Mraz, states the festival grew from that first crowning of the queen to an eight-day festival in Fort Fairfield. Although this year marks the 50th celebration, there were several years, during World War II and early 1950s, when there were no festivals.

Lombard’s crowning was the only event associated with the 1935 promotion. The first real attempt at holding a festival was in 1937 at a farm between Caribou and Presque Isle. A year later, the first parade was added to the festival’s activities.

The annual event also was moved to the midsummer season, so it wouldn’t interfere with the harvest of the honored crop.

Through the early years, the festival was held in various towns in Aroostook County. In 1960, the town of Fort Fairfield was named as the official host for the festival, with the Chamber of Commerce organizing the activities.

As the festival matured, several features were added to promote the industry. In the mid-1980s, the Farm Family of the Year program was started to honor a family dedicated to ideas of the multigenerational approach to agriculture in Aroostook County.

This year’s farm family is the Kneeland family from Easton, which will be honored during the industry dinner on July 18 held at the Dick Shaw potato storage in Fort Fairfield.

Included in the 1997 festival schedule is the renaming of the Fort Fairfield Armory in honor of former Gov. John Reed, a Fort Fairfield native and U.S. ambassador. The ceremony will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, July 16, followed by the parade at 1:30 p.m. on the town’s Main Street. Reed will be the grand marshal.

A full schedule of festival events, as well as Mraz’s history of the celebration, is available in the festival’s 50th anniversary commemorative booklet available from the Chamber and several local outlets.