Community Days: Warden residents, guests gather for annual celebration

WARDEN — Citizens of Warden filled up Ash Street and Warden Volunteer Park for the Community Days celebration over Labor Day weekend. From Saturday to Monday, people gathered as a community.

Renay Jorgensen, the event’s primary coordinator and organizer, said on Monday that the event was going “way better than expected.”

“For our car show, we had 10 extra cars than we did the year before,” said Jorgensen. “We were able to bring in live entertainment for the car show, so it went perfectly. Yesterday was our free family dinner here in the park. Last year, we fed 200 people. Yesterday, we made over 450 burgers.”

After the car show Saturday morning and afternoon and the family dinner Sunday night, Monday started off with a fireman’s breakfast, volleyball tournament and then featured the parade and activities in Volunteer Park all afternoon.

Vendors of food and goods lined one edge of the park and dotted the area around the pavilion in the center, where event volunteers served food as well. Other booths included a story barn for children, a station for NCW libraries, Warden school booster clubs and a spot for donations to the Warden Food Bank.

Families and friends set up tents and seating under the shade of the trees to watch volleyball and cornhole tournaments.

Jorgensen said they brought in new entertainment for the park this year as well.

“We have a magician here,” she said. “He's gonna perform again later on this afternoon. We brought in Band H2A with their dancing horses, and then we did bring in the Seattle Cossacks.”

The Seattle Cossacks, a motorcycle stunt group, and Band H2A also performed in the parade, which featured numerous local organizations and groups showing their town spirit and celebrating the community. After the procession made its way down Ash Street and looped around to Main Street, parade-goers made their way to the park for the afternoon’s festivities.

“It’s been a great turnout this year; we’re really pleased,” said Jorgensen. “It's huge and it'll get bigger. Our park Isn't big enough, and we have a lot more vendors this year as well and they're all on that side, and we brought in a lot more food and so it's a great event so far.”

Jeff Whitaker, a recently retired firefighter who owns a tire business in Warden with his son, spoke about how the event was going.

“This has been fantastic. I want to give a big thanks to Renay and her crew,” said Whitaker. “They've done a fantastic job. This is the third day of the event and it's just really sweet, community support and it really brings the community together. This is getting back to the way (it was) when I grew up - because I was raised here, and it was kind of like this years ago and it kind of fell off a little bit.”

Warden resident Shasta Danielson also said she was enjoying the event.

“I work at the school. I'm a teacher, I just wanted to come by and see some of my kids,” said Danielson. “It's been really fun. It's bigger than last year…I got to see my son in the parade; he was riding on a float because he's part of the grid kids, so that was probably the best part.”

Tinker Ansel was at the event to receive donations for the Warden Food Bank.

“I'm so glad that it's starting back up again,” said Ansel. “Last year was the first year in a long time and I think the community needs to have these days so that we can actually be more of a community than just people living around town.”

Jorgensen said that she wanted to thank the city for allowing her and her volunteers to put on the event and the community for giving them a reason to do so. She then thanked those who helped make the event happen.

“I'm really grateful for my volunteers because they've been here all weekend long,” said Jorgensen. “We were here at 7 o'clock in the morning for the car show, and we haven't left.”

Gabriel Davis may be reached at gdavis@columbiabasinherald.com. Download the Columbia Basin Herald app on iOS and Android.