Born to be part of the county fair

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Shelley Medeiros has a connection to the San Benito County Fair that is deeper than most: with a bit of drama, her first visit was in 1975 as a two-day-old infant in a stroller. 

Since then, she has attended 48 out of 49 fairs and is now supervising the Junior Arts and Crafts entries, a category in which she herself first participated at the age of nine.  

“I just need to be involved,” she said. “I do it for the love of the fair, to help keep the fair traditions alive. I love the camaraderie, and what goes on behind the scenes is truly remarkable.”

By the time Medeiros was born, she said her mother, Peggy Bettencourt, was already a county fair denizen who got her start at 10 years old by entering her baking in competitions and showing pigs as a 4-H member.

“When she got out of 4-H,” Medeiros said, “Mom stopped exhibiting livestock because, at that time, the FFA did not allow girls to show. So she entered the craft competitions instead.”

In 1975, with a baby due at any moment, Bettencourt found herself racing against the clock while preparing her entries for the fair that year. She did not quite make it: she went into labor the night before the entries were due.

“I had sewing, baked goods and flowers that needed to be cut,” she said. “As I was getting closer, I began labeling all my entries, hoping someone would kindly deliver them to the fairgrounds in the morning.” 

Medeiros said that her mother called her friend Marti Hubbell from the hospital and asked her to deliver her entries, telling her where and when they needed to be submitted.

“Everything was on the kitchen table,” Medeiros said. “Mom told Marti something along the lines of, ‘I’m at the hospital, can you get my fair entries? They’re all laid out and ready to go.’” 

And that morning, on Oct. 1, 1975, Shelley was born—a healthy baby girl, weighing in at 9 lbs., 10 oz.

“As the fair ran its course,” Bettencourt said, “we relaxed and rested at home the next few days. The fair was ending late Sunday afternoon, and all entries had to be retrieved. Rather than disturbing anyone’s Sunday, I decided I could handle that chore.”

According to Bettencourt, she gathered up Shelley and her other daughter, three-year-old Vickie Rae, and headed to Bolado Park. Trying not to be noticed, she was nonetheless spotted by her friend, Russ Hodges, who asked her, “Didn’t you just have a baby?”

“At that point,” she said, “I whipped back the blanket and that was her debut at the San Benito County Fair. And every year after that, everyone in the entire fairgrounds got to eat birthday cake!”

Besides continuing to enter her crafts in the fair competitions, Bettencourt slowly became more involved in the organizational side, eventually supervising the floriculture competition. And, when she was at the fairgrounds working on the exhibits, young Medeiros was there as well.

“I always ran around in the floriculture and the 4-H building,” Medeiros said. “We weren’t allowed to run amok, but we were allowed a little leeway because, you know, we were Peggy’s kids.”

Medeiros began exhibiting finger paintings in the youth crafts competition when she was two years old; her mother keeps them in a hope chest. She moved on to exhibiting sheep from the age of nine to 19, which she describes as “the worst animals in the world to show, and I hated every minute of it.”

Bettencourt retired from working at the fair when her grandchildren became more involved in 4-H. However, that did not mean she and Medeiros were not regularly at Bolado Park for the fair. Having split her time between managing the floriculture exhibits and serving as a 4-H community club leader for her children, she decided to give up working at the fair so she could see her grandchildren compete.

“She wanted to be able to stay there and watch,” Medeiros said. “She had to run around while my sisters and I were showing, and she didn’t want to have to do that for her grandchildren.”

This year, Medeiros has come full circle, serving as the department head of the Arts and Crafts Adult and Junior Open competition—the same event she first entered as a child—and taking on the same kind of role her mother held for many years.

Medeiros saw a Facebook posting about the fair having that position open and she contacted the fair office and said, “I’ll take arts and crafts. I’m your gal.”

“Dara Tobias went to bat for me,” she said. “She told people, ‘This is the person we want. Her involvement in the fair over the years and her involvement with kids give her the experience to handle anything that is thrown at her.’” 

The competition is open to four age groups—two to five, six to nine, 10 to 13, and 14 to 17—and encompasses everything from finger painting, which gave Medeiros her start, to metal work, Lego constructions, designs for American Flags, table settings, collages and more. 

Medeiros said judging is done by the “Danish system,” where entries are judged by a set of standards rather than in comparison to the other entries, which can result in multiple first-place winners. 

Overall, she said, entries are up this year, but she will still be doing what she can over the next year to increase participation, particularly in categories where there are few or no entries.

“There wasn’t anyone to push for it,” she said, “It’s very sad because there could be entries for special education and individual classroom projects. We have the sixth, seventh and eighth graders who didn’t do anything.”

For Medeiros, the fairgrounds is more than just a staging place for this annual event; it’s a place where she feels a sense of ownership and belonging. 

“I feel like it’s my fair,” she said. “It doesn’t just belong to the county. It also belongs to me. I have been inside these walls every year since birth. This is my home, and the memories from over the years are bittersweet.”

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