Local ‘celebrities’ to put on a show at Holmes Co. Fair

The Holmes County Fair features a variety of events each year.

One of those is the Celebrity Showman, which was started by Becca Schuch in 2021.

Schuch ran the event the past two years but passed over the reins to junior fair board members Jenna Sheldon and Garrett Fowler this year.

“We decided we’d take on the role of planning the show, contacting judges, finding people who own animals that they’ll let us use for the show and finding all the participants,” said Sheldon, who is Schuch’s cousin.

The event features six local “celebrities” doing unique challenges with six animals. This year’s participants include Jonathan Beam, Holmes County dog warden; Timothy Zimmerly, Holmes County sheriff; Rachel Day, representative for the Holmes County Special Olympics; Trevor Berger, Holmes SWCD program administrator; Dave Mast of the Holmes Bargain Hunter; and Steve Butcher, West Holmes High School band director. The animals will be a pig, a beef steer, a horse, a goat, a dog and a dairy cow.

“The six participants will come in, and we’ll introduce them and read a bio about them,” Sheldon said. “They will go from station to station and work with each of the animals and will be judged on a bunch of different random things. Some of them will relate directly to those animals, and others are just them having fun, getting the crowd involved and all sorts of things like that.”

At its core the Celebrity Showman event is about having fun. But it has a bigger purpose than just being a good time.

Each celebrity will pick a charity prior to participating in the event. Money will be donated by crowd members while the celebrities are showing off their improv skills, and all the money will be donated to the charity of the celebrity who has the most money donated toward them during the event.

“We’ll have a bucket with each person’s name on it or just in general for the show, (and attendees can) put in money for (their) favorite celebrity,” Sheldon said.

The Showman Celebrity event will take place Saturday, Aug. 12 at 2 p.m. in the large arena. For more information about the event or anything else involving the junior fair board, visit the board’s Instagram or Facebook pages.