Flynn prepared for State Fair; keeps Kay Rodgers Park busy

story and photo by Doug Kelley

Every year in Fort Smith, this time of year means fair time.

For eight days, people from all over stream into Kay Rodgers Park to see what the Arkansas Oklahoma State Fair has to offer, to enjoy the sights and sounds of the carnival midway with its brightly lighted, fast moving rides, mysterious sideshows and enticing games of chance.

And food.

The air is filled with the warm aromas of funnel cakes and corn dogs, the sweetness of caramel apples and cotton candy.

The people walking through the livestock barns or around the carnival midway rarely think about how it all comes together. One thing is certain: It doesn’t happen all by itself.

Somewhere behind all the flash and commotion, there are people who make it happen.  At Kay Rodgers Park, the man behind the events throughout the year — the fair, the Old Fort Days Rodeo, the Futurity and all the rest — is Executive Director Denny Flynn.

Flynn, of medium height and slim build, his silvery gray hair peeking out from under his ball cap, has been on the job for only a year. He began the job after the death of the long-tenured Jim Berry, but he seems to have already earned the easy respect of those working under him. During a golf cart tour of the grounds, right hand man Clayton Denney pulls alongside in another cart. They discuss the latest issue, and Flynn listens to Denney’s opinion.

“Good,” Flynn says. “Do that.”

It seems Denney was simply advising Flynn of the situation rather than asking permission. A hundred yards along, another worker was down inside an opened water service. He looked up and grinned.

Flynn pulled to a stop. “Cleaning it out?”

“Yeah, this drain was pretty well clogged.”

“Okay.” Flynn waved his approval and moved on, getting a wave in return.

“We really started getting the place ready a few weeks ago,” Flynn said, “adding about 18 temporary employees to my 3 full-time maintenance workers.”

The fair is a big undertaking, not counting the grounds work. The biggest part of that planning — the arranging of the carnival rides, the Independent Midway, the entertainment — is done by Flynn’s other right hand, so to speak, fair chairperson Sherry Shumate.

“It’s a volunteer position,” Flynn said, meaning Shumate earns every penny she isn’t paid. Still, she approaches the job with cheerful enthusiasm.

“People don’t realize how much goes into getting the fair together,” she said, but even as the days get hectic, she still has a laugh in her voice, not showing the press of trying to squeeze 40 acres of fair into Kay Rodgers’ 26 acres of park, nor of the acres of headaches that come with it.

Shumate gives a lot of the credit to Flynn.

The fair starts Friday, Sept. 25, and runs until Oct. 3, and is expected to draw an expected 150,000 to 175,000 visitors — a prediction based upon improved attendance earlier this year for the rodeo and every other event at Kay Rodgers Park.  The slow economy is not necessarily a detriment. The predicted attendance is more people than last year.

“People are not taking the long vacations this year,” Flynn said. “They are staying home, and they are spending their money in Fort Smith.” That, along with money spent on motels and meals by the traveling fair workers, should means millions of dollars to the local economy.

Flynn shines with enthusiasm for the coming week, clearly relishing the job. He does seem to have an easy, confident hand on the tiller, steering the park through the busy days. The fair is important, and the rodeo is important, but there is a lot of year between those big events, and Flynn wants to make complete use of the grounds.

During a recent week, the expo hall was filled for four days with an enormous assortment of baby strollers, baby clothes, baby toys, car seats and anything else baby related. It was a giant consignment sale. Illustrating the full use, Flynn noted, “This ends at four o’clock on Saturday, and at five, the gates open for Rock the River, a concert with several good bands. Should draw a big crowd … Then, right after that, we have a big group of Good Sam RV Club members coming in for a big gathering.”

It is clear that there is more than the fair and the rodeo to Kay Rodgers Park, which dates back as far as the early 1900s — the first airplane flight in Arkansas in 1911, took off and landed at what was then Electric Park — and Denny Flynn stays busy between those marquee May and September events.

His interest is rooted in his own days on the rodeo circuit as a world-class bull rider, with the National Finals Rodeo championship belt buckle to prove it. But he does not let that diminish his attention to the other events. Right now, this time of year, the fair is on his mind, just as it is on the minds of a lot of other people.