Ilma McKern as Mother Goose
In 1968 Ilma first came to The Children's Festival as a clown.
It was 1969 when Ilma McKern began her long term involvement with the Storytelling Guild and Children's Festival. Ilma was recruited by Jeannette Paulson to serve on Pat Blair's Decorations Committe for that festival. Our first assignment was to "build a castle" to be used as the storytelling backdrop in Mother Goose Land. That year we also built two castle towers for the main entrance. The "committee" consisted of two people...Ilma and Pat Blair . . . plus our children, all of whom were very small (Sharon, Marcia, Leigh, Kevin and Bruce) . . . and our husbands,-- Bill McKern and Gary Blair, when we could convince them to help us!
Ilma worked tirelessly in many roles at Children's Festival. She took a crash course in Sandcasting in order to chair the sandcasting booth (that job lasted for only seven years.) Her two sons, Kevin and Bruce were her assistant sandcasters. She co-chaired the Library Book Booth with Alice Grimes for the following ten years.
When we initiated The Pied Piper Theatre (a travelling puppet and performance stage) Ilma became one of the eight Pied Piper Players who performed at the Children's Festival and around the valley to promote reading at school and public park locations in Jackson County .
Ilma, a retired elementary school teacher, was already an accomplished storyteller and jumped right in to storytimes at the library when her family moved to Medford!
She has remained active for all of these years (1968 to 2016). Ilma is a sought after storylady and is most often remembered as "Mother Goose" and also as "Mrs. Claus".
Ilma was given The Spirit Award for Children's Festival, (a ceramic dragon cup especially designed for this honor) in about 1984. TALK ABOUT SPIRIT!
She was honored as Children's Festival Queen in 1987 and is still remembered fondly by all those who visited her Royal Court. (Most of whom would be in their twenties now!). She stills appears at Children's Festival as Mother Goose.
What a treasure for The Storytelling Guild, The Children's Festival
and FOR THE CHILDREN of our Rogue Valley!
