Festival still going strong after parish merger
Former Our Lady Queen of Martyrs, now Holy Trinity, still draws a big crowd to annual Park Square festival
WOONSOCKET – As a marker for the high point of summer, folks from the local area will tell you the Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Parish Festival is as good as any calendar.
When the festival – this week marking its 64th annual run at Park Square – sets up on the par- ish grounds, parents in the area know it is time to be looking around for school clothes, because the start of school is just a few weeks away.
And that thought is often also in the minds of the young people who gather on the grounds hoping to enjoy a few summer nights spent with friends under the colorful whirling lights of the carnival rides.
Thoranong Khong of Woonsocket was among the carnival’s regulars who took his family to the opening night.
“I’ve been coming to the carnival since I was a kid at the middle school,” Khong said. “I’m 42 now so that has been a long time.”
Khong’s sons Xavier and Xaidyn, and daughter Natalie,
were already on the rides and he and his wife, Katrina had settled into a role of watching all the fun.
“I like that this is a place for families to come to that is close to home,” he said. There was plenty to do at the carnival – from riding the major rides set up by the Rockwell Amusements crew, the Ferris Wheel, Pharaoh’s Fury, Starship 3000 or the Zipper, to munching doughboys and cotton candy or chowder and clam cakes and dynamites from the Cuisine Ronaldo kitchen.
The festival also offered its traditional parish games as fundraisers, about 15 booths in all staffed by parish volunteers and offering challenges like tic, tac, toe, basketball, the bean bag toss, mix up, and the very difficult Coke bottle toss.
The idea behind the Coke bottle toss was to drop a wooden ring around the neck of the bottle with a number of tries, but even with multiple attempts, success was not easy as Hunter Doyle, 9, and his mom, Melanie Doyle of Woonsocket found while playing the game. Doyle said her son likes the game booths best of all and said she felt that she was supporting the parish and its programs while spending time with him there. Hunter did win a police rubber ducky at one game and small teddy bear, too.
Hunter attended the Monsignor Gadoury school at the parish and is now a fourth grader at the Good Shepherd Catholic Regional School on Mendon Road, his mother said.
For Sarah and Dorian Rave, the festival was an opportunity for a family night with their children, Isabella, 10, Sidney, 7, and Bryana, 17.
“I love it. I have been coming here since I was a kid,” Sarah, a resident of Burrillville, said. She had even attended the parish’s Monsignor Gadoury School as did her daughter Isabella.
Dorian, who is from Central Falls and operates the Ravenous micro-brewery on Cumberland Hill Road, said the festival has nonetheless become a family tradition for him too.
“It’s just nice to come here and hang out with the family after getting out of work. It’ s nice to do something different,” he said.
The festival’s fit into the fabric of summer is a longstanding one, according to Mike Rison, who was found waiting with his wife, Amy, for their daughter, Hanna, to exit Pharaoh’s Fury.
“It’s awesome. This is the midsummer event that everyone in Woonsocket looks forward to,” he said. “When the festival is back at Park Square everyone knows that school is coming,” Rison added.
Tina Marcoux, festival co-chair with her husband, Greg, said everything got off to a good start on Wednesday after clouds came in and for a time looked as if they might bring rain. In the end, the clouds proved to be a blessing for the parish’s set up crew which had begun its opening night preparations early on Wednesday and finished with just enough time to go home and change before returning for the 6 p.m. start of the festival with bracelet night.
“My favorite part of all of this has to be how we all came here this morning and worked like crazy to getting everything set up and then came back here to see everyone enjoying themselves,” Marcoux said.
Although advertised as the Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Festival, this year is actually the last year the popular festival will go by that name. Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Parish was combined by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence with Holy Family Parish and Sacred Heart Parish in July and now the new parish entity, Holy Trinity Parish is running the festival with the help of volunteers from all three of the church communities.
The change has brought a few additions like the new Prize-a-rama booth, a sort of penny social, that will raffle off items such as a 26-inch bicycle, a television, cooking items, a Yankee Candle gift basket, handmade afghans and $100 gift cards from Bass Pro Shops and L.L. Bean.
The festival’s Big Drawing tickets are also being sold and the prizes, a 1st Prize of $5,000, 2nd Prize of $2,500, a 3rd Prize of $1,500 and $500 prizes for fourth and fifth prize drawings will be picked on Saturday night as the festival comes to a close.
Although she has only been involved with putting on the festival for the past five years, Marcoux said she is lucky that there are so many carnival veterans, some involved for many years, that are on hand to help out.
“It is like a turn key operation for them and they make it all happen,” she said. Three members of one family, Gerry and Yvette Houle, and their son, Jeff, have been working together to manage Cuisine Ronaldo for many years, she noted. This year, the carnival also gained a crew of new volunteers like Janet Ballou from Sacred Heart, who were doing their part to keep the festival running.
The Rev. Daniel Sweet, the pastor of Our Lady Queen of Martyrs and now pastor of the new Holy Trinity Parish, said he was very appreciative of all the work the parishioners had put into making this year’s festival a success. With the festival already underway on Wednesday, Rev. Sweet said it looked like everything would continue to go well as the week continues.
“It is a good carnival for the people of Woonsocket that always draws a good crowd,” Sweet said. That support also helps him as pastor of the parish, since he gets to meet the people coming to Park Square and make connections with the community.
“It is a great, positive and uplifting experience,” Rev. Sweet said. And the food, he noted, is also good. Rev. Sweet was found with an order of onion rings in hand and said another of his favorites was the dynamite served up by Cuisine Ronaldo. That just shows how much work the parish volunteers, including the new ones, put into getting the festival set up, he said.
“They are excellent people and just really dedicated,” he said. Although the ad- vertising for the festival had already gone out before the parish merger this year, Rev. Sweet said its new name, the Holy Trinity Parish Festival, will be on the banners next year. That will be the only change, however, and like this year, all the traditional festival features will be back at Park Square for the next edition of the summer milestone event.
Jeff Gamache is performing on Saturday evening before the prizes are drawn and Saturday is also a ride the rides from 1 to 5 p.m. bracelet day. The festival runs until 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.