Summerville, Georgia's second annual Friendship Festival will be Saturday, one of many projects designed to buttress the town's community-led effort to claim the title as the Friendship Capital of the World.
Featuring food, crafts, music and activities, the festival is the peak of a week of friendship-related events, according to Susan Locklear, director of Summerville Main Street, an organization dedicated to enhancing and developing the city's downtown. The festival will be in Summerville's Dowdy Park from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
"New for this year, we have been working on a World Friendship Pocket Park," Locklear said.
Construction will begin this fall, and there will be a groundbreaking at 11 a.m. Saturday. The park site is across from the Summerville Depot and will feature 550 engraved commemorative brick pavers.
"We in the 400-or-so mark of sold bricks," Locklear said.
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Also, festival-goers can visit a booth to make free friendship bracelets, listen to live music by Soul Shine, join a parade of friendship and enjoy a free waterslide for the kids. Amerigroup Community Care, a health care partner offering Medicare and Medicaid services, will be giving away diapers and wipes while supplies last, said Jennifer Navichoque, who works in community relations for the agency.
Navichoque lives in Rome, and she said Summerville isn't far away - and it's a community she loves.
"They are a really strong-bond community," she said. "All the community leaders there are super nice and always willing to help and look out for families and children."
Locklear said the sale of pavers for the World Friendship Pocket Park has been a success because the community read about it, saw the vision and stepped up to support it. Some families have bought a paver to leave a legacy at the park, while others want to honor a departed friend or family member. Businesses and organizations have also bought bricks, she said.
"We want this to be a location where you can bring a friend and get your picture made," Locklear said. "Here's your solid rock of world friendship, here's the flag of friendship. We want it to be a photo opportunity area. We want it to be a very nice place where you'd want to come visit."
Retired teacher John Turner said one of the highlights of the festival is the raising of the big Friendship Flag - 20 by 30 feet.
"It's a pretty neat thing, it's like raising a big sail on a sailing vessel," he said. "Once that wind hits it, you can really feel the force of it."
Turner has carried the Friendship Flag all over the country, promoting friendship and Summerville. Starting in 1995, he became the founder and one of the biggest proponents behind Summerville as the Friendship Capital of the World, and the region as The Big Friendly. The festival and the new park are a big part of that vision.
"This World Friendship Pocket Park is going to have a big rock there that we're going to call the solid rock of friendship, so people can come and celebrate friendship in our little community," Turner said. "Summerville is the ideal size for a thing like this because, in a bigger city, the idea of a friendship capital of the world would get lost."
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Locklear said the park will also have a flagpole where the Friendship Flag will fly, benches, landscaping, irrigation and lighting. One of the Main Street group's board members, who studied landscaping architecture at the University of Georgia, designed the park.
There's been an entire week of friendship-related activities, Locklear said, during which people are encouraged to take a walk with a friend or take a friend to lunch.
Locklear also said that Turner bought several pavers and "awarded" them to community members he picked out - another demonstration of his mission to promote friendship.
With Summerville's location near the center of the Atlanta, Birmingham and Chattanooga triangle, Turner said the town is a nice day trip for people to come and celebrate friendship. He invites everyone to visit Summerville, "and we'll entertain 'em the best we can."
Contact Andrew Wilkins at awilkins@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6659. Follow him on Twitter @tweetatwilkins.