Joanne Griner has a secret.

She leans forward and admits: “I don’t go to festivals. I really don’t care for them.”

One can’t help but share a laugh with Griner for her unexpected confession.

After all, Joanne Griner is the creator and driving force who started Valdosta’s Azalea Festival.

She recalls attending an out-of-town Georgia catfish festival several years ago on an August weekend. The trip represented everything she dislikes about festivals. It was hot, outdoors, crowded with sweating humanity, just plain awful.

With the 10th Annual Azalea Festival this month and a decade of success behind the event, Griner is safe in making her admission.

By fashioning an event around Valdosta’s azaleas, Griner created a type of festival she could condone.

The region’s azaleas regularly bloom mid-March, a time of year when Valdosta is traditionally neither too hot nor too cold, though past Azalea Festivals have endured weekends that were too hot or too cold, as well as weekends that were too rainy, but the festival and its crowds have always pulled through.

Given that Drexel Park is named for the man who brought so many azaleas to Valdosta, it became the perfect setting for the festival. The Azalea Festival wouldn’t have to be held on a closed street but under the canopy of Drexel Park’s trees surrounded by azalea blooms.

These combinations, along with a wide array of entertainment, vendors and food, proved not only popular with Joanne Griner but the thousands who have attended the event each year since the first Azalea Festival in March 2001.

Still, how did a woman who cares little about festivals come to not only think of one but push it to succeed?

Griner says she saw a need. Valdosta needed a festival.

She recalls in February 2000, a tree planting for Arbor Day at what would eventually become the James H. Rainwater Conference Center. The idea struck her for a festival centered on Valdosta’s nickname as the Azalea City.

All of the surrounding communities, cities and counties had festivals celebrating their individual histories and attributes. Why didn’t Valdosta? Through the years, she’d heard people talk about having a festival, but it was all talk. No action.

Joanne Griner prefers following up talk with action.

She took the idea to Matt Hollander, who was the conference center’s director at the time. He liked the idea and offered Griner use of some of his staff to get the Azalea Festival ball rolling.

She found support for the idea from other like-minded individuals. Griner also encountered a lot of skepticism along the way. Valdosta is a tough town for an event. Organizers never know if an event will capture Valdosta’s imagination or be generally ignored. Tougher still, something that succeeds one year might fail the next and vice-versa.

Having helped found Theatre Guild Valdosta in the late 1980s and participating in numerous Valdosta groups and events, Griner was aware of this trait within Valdosta’s character. But she believed an Azalea Festival could be a success and be good for the city.

Though she believed in the Azalea Festival doesn’t mean she didn’t face moments of doubt.

“I thought more than a few times, What if I have this party and no one comes?” Griner recalls of several sleepless nights. “There were times when I thought, I’m just going to call this off.”

But she couldn’t. The ball was rolling. She had too many people who not only shared her dream, but had become deeply involved in it. Throughout 2000 up to the first Azalea Festival in March 2001, Griner maintained a constant schedule of meeting with people, promoting the event, publicizing it, advocating it.

She was involved in every aspect of the first Azalea Festival from the big ideas to scheduling to creating a series of article ideas leading up to the festival for The Valdosta Daily Times to planting additional azalea bushes to hammering festival signs into the ground at busy intersections.

Griner was committed and organized.

The late queen of Valdosta-Lowndes County organization and civic duty, Louie Peeples White, once said, “Joanne Griner works 100 percent for whatever she’s doing ... She’s the most dedicated volunteer I have ever known.”

She was born Joanne Williams on March 10, 1933, in Plains, Ga. She was born in the same hospital as President Jimmy Carter.

At the height of the Great Depression, Joanne’s father, Mobley Williams, was an unemployed banker. Mobley, wife Josephine, and the Williams family moved to Adel. He opened Williams Mercantile, a clothing store, and Joanne grew up in Adel.

She met Ray Griner there. Upon graduating high school, Joanne left Cook County for Florida State University. She earned a degree in theatre. Upon graduating from FSU, she married Ray Griner in 1954.

She did not pursue a career. Like many women of the 1950s, she devoted herself to the duties of wife and mother. She and Ray had three children: Cathy, Robert and Becky.

Ray’s job took the Griners to many states, Oklahoma, Texas, Connecticut, where they spent 13 years. There, Joanne Griner became a high school substitute teacher. At Becky’s request, Joanne ensured that she would never serve as a sub in one of her daughter’s classes. Joanne took the responsibility of scheduling the substitute teachers.

In the mid-1980s, Joanne and Ray divorced after 29 years of marriage. She studied bookkeeping and accounting.

In 1985, she returned to South Georgia. She moved to Valdosta, where her mother was staying in a nursing home. Nine months after her return, Josephine Williams died. Though she had returned to be closer to her mother, Joanne Griner had already established herself here. She enjoyed the company of old and new friends. She enjoyed seeing familiar places. She found a job keeping books and with Downtown Valdosta’s First Baptist Church, where she still works.

She became active in the creation of Theatre Guild Valdosta and its eventual acquisition of The Dosta Playhouse downtown. She joined the Civitans and the Civic Roundtable.

Through long days and sleepless nights, she spearheaded the Azalea Festival.

Despite her drive to get the Azalea Festival off the ground, weather nearly destroyed it in the first year. It rained that first festival, but people attended anyway.

She had hoped the festival’s non-profit organization would not be too far in debt by the end of the first festival. Not only did the event stay out of the red, it ended in the black, making $56.38 more than what had been spent.

And she remembers some of the doubters becoming the converted. She has a fond memory of the late Valdosta Mayor Jimmy Rainwater admitting to a crowd that he had been skeptical of the festival and that he had been wrong. It was, indeed, a success.

The Azalea Festival’s continued success has relied often on its versatility. While Drexel and mid-March have remained constants, the festival has undergone many other changes. It was located in both Drexel and on the Valdosta State University campus a couple of times. There were night activities, including fireworks, for a while. At times, the festival has run Friday night, Saturday and Sunday. At other times, only Saturday.

A few years into the festival’s history, Griner was prepared to make another change. In her 70s, she was ready to step down as its chairman.

She mentioned the idea of having a co-chairman during a dinner party in the mid-2000s. Seated next to Griner was Grant Brown. He immediately said he could co-chair the festival.

Griner continued that her plan would be to serve as co-chairs for one year then she would step down, leaving the remaining co-chair to become the new sole chairman the next year. Brown agreed to this proposition, too. He has chaired the festival the past handful of years.

“Grant jumped right in there,” Griner says. “He’s strong-minded about what’s appropriate for the festival and what’s not.”

Meanwhile, Joanne Griner remains deeply involved in the Azalea Festival.

“I’m not the chair,” she says, with a laugh, “but I still have the checkbook and the keys.”

•••



Valdosta-Lowndes County

10th Annual Azalea Festival 2010

10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday, March 13

10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday, March 14

Drexel Park, at the corner of Patterson and Brookwood

Free parking in all Valdosta State University lots

Information: Call (229) 269-9381; or visit www.azaleafestival.com; or e-mail azaleafestivalvaldosta@mchsi.com



Arts & crafts vendors, food, roaming entertainers, Native American Village, Robinson’s Racing Pigs, the Fearless Flores Circus, Valdosta Technical College plant sale, Extreme Euro Bungee, Kidzone with the world-famous Disc-Connected K9’s Frisbee Dog Team, Hands-on Kids Art Project, many other children’s attractions, Humane Society “Pet Contest” (2 p.m., March 13, registration 9 a.m.-1:30 p.m.; $5 per category or $15 for all four; more information: 247-3266); Historical Valdosta Bus Tours (1 p.m. and 3 p.m., March 13, leaves parking lot behind Barnes Drugs at Brookwood Drive; $10, adult; $5, children, tickets available at booth or by calling 245-0513); Bands: Skannyardle, noon-4 p.m., March 13; Daddy’s Money, noon-4 p.m., March 14; 10th anniversary Wild Adventures raffle.



Azalea Festival Century Bike Ride

Saturday, March 6

South Lowndes Complex

6440 Ocean Pond Ave., Lake Park

Hosted by the Valdosta-Lowndes County Parks and Recreation Authority

Registration: noon-6 p.m., March 5; 7 a.m., March 6.

Cost: $30 per person. Helmets required. Lunch, T-shirt, goody bag provided while supplies last.

More information: Contact Sirocus Barnes, (229) 333-1861 or sirocus.barnes@mchsi.com; or visit the Web site www.vlpra.com







Azalea Festival 5K Road Race

and One-Mile Fun Walk/Run

Saturday, March 13

Start and finish: VSU Recreation Center, 1500 Sustella Ave., Valdosta

Hosted by the Valdosta-Lowndes County Parks and Recreation Authority

8 a.m.: One-Mile Fun Run/Walk

8:30 a.m.: 5-K Road Race starts

9:30 a.m.: Awards ceremony

Registration: 7 a.m., March 13; advanced registration available through March 5.

Cost: $15, individual pre-registration by March 5; $20, individual registration on the day of the race; $45, family pre-registration; $50, family registration on the day of the race.

T-shirt and goody bag offered while supplies last.

More information: Contact Sirocus Barnes, (229) 333-1861 or sirocus.barnes@mchsi.com; or visit the Web site www.vlpra.com