Queen, winning poster picked for Albion Strawberry Festival
Photos by Tom Rivers – Alison O’Hearn, a senior at Albion, will serve as Strawberry Festival queen during the June 7-8 event.
ALBION – The queen for next weekend’s Strawberry Festival is feeling a mix of emotions as she prepares to graduate from high school and begin college.
Alison O’Hearn, 18, was selected as queen after writing an essay about Albion. She has been active in the school as an honors student involved in sports and other activities, including vice president of FFA.
She will study biology at Grove City College beginning in the fall.
“I’m feeling sentimental,” she said about Albion. “For such a small school and small town we have so much to offer and so much going on. We have a lot of people who genuinely care about the community.”
O’Hearn will ride in the 10 a.m. parade on June 8 and will also help with the 2 p.m. turtle race in the canal, as well as performing other ceremonial duties during the festival.
Gabrielle Vagg, a sophomore at Albion, designed the poster that will be used to promote the Strawberry Festival. The festival is in its 27th year and features a canal theme this year.
An Albion student, Gabrielle Vagg, designed the poster that will be used to promote the 27th annual festival, featuring a canal theme this year. Vagg, a sophomore, highlighted the bridge collapse from Sept. 28, 1859.
That day more than 250 people crowded on the Main Street bridge over the canal to watch a wirewalker. The bridge couldn’t take the weight and collapsed. Fifteen people drowned and the calamity is noted with a historic marker on a patch of grass just west of the Main Street Lift Bridge.
