In advertising and promotion of the fair I took ads out in the Los Angeles Times, Calendar section and Valley Daily News, I put together press kits and sent them to all the smaller newspapers in the area. I put together small stories about the members of the committee and sent them to the newspapers where they lived. I printed up flyer and posters the committee put them in Irish pubs, shops and they even passed them out in shopping centers.

It is hard to believe, but when I reviewed our fair flyer and noticed that we only charged $2.00 for adults and children were free.

The First (real) Irish Fair.
As stated above our vision was an event that consisted of “Irish Music, Song, Dance, and Sports”. We had two Irish Pub stages that featured “Mulligans”, Des Regan’s Band”. A stage for Irish Traditional Music, another for Gaelic Language Rhetoric, and of course Irish Traditional Dance which later became a major feis, which sent the winner to Ireland to compete in the World Championship. Of course, we had to have something for the children, so we created “Leprechaun Kingdom” which had show’s and activities for the young ones.

Tara Village. I was called the front gate and there before me was a large group of people dressed in ancient dress. Their leader approached me and said they were Clan McCallion, a Scottish Clan that performed at the Renaissance Fair and sought entrance as guest at the Irish Fair where they could set-up camp, thus the beginning of Ancient Tara. Within a few years Katherine Kay, formed the Queen Meab, group, an Irish Historical group and soon we also included Vikings and the Fighting 69th. representing the Irish New York regiment that fought in the American Civil War. Within a few years we had several groups that numbered over a hundred.

At that time, the fair took place in October (usually on the Columbus Day weekend) and only for one day, Sunday. (After or first year we realized that we could make it a two-day event since we were paying for the whole weekend and for the day before (setup) and the Monday after (Take down). So, then we made it a two-day event.

About 3:00 pm we seen Jack Christy come out of the counting room with a smile on his face, he came up to Terry and myself and said “ we’ve cracked the nut”, meaning that we made enough money to cover our expenses, and people were still coming in. Quite frankly, this was a gamble, but it worked.
We did two years at Devonshire Downs the first time. Then the Downs operator raised the cost of the grounds that we could not afford so we moved on to Norte Dame High School for the next two years and then back to the Downs for another two years.

Fun and folly. I am putting the fairs at our different location and including the events that took place there. Our fourth year at the Downs I set it up that we not only had Tom McConville’s “Irish Hour” radio show broadcast from the fair, but also KNBC television’s “Sunday Show” that was live with Kelly Lang and Pat Sajak. These were not easy to handle, as both shows had to use a connection called “telecom”, and as Tom’s Show went off I had to quickly transfer the cable from one show to the other within minutes during commercials.