GILROY
– During the 2003 Garlic Festival, Janie Mardesich will have as
much responsibility as anyone involved with Gilroy’s world famous
event.
GILROY – During the 2003 Garlic Festival, Janie Mardesich will have as much responsibility as anyone involved with Gilroy’s world famous event.
This year’s festival president will also have as much fun as anyone there. For Mardesich, having fun at the Garlic Festival is not a volunteer’s privilege. It is their duty.
“If we have a good time, I guarantee our guests will have a good time. I really believe that,” Mardesich said.
Her baseball jersey selection for the official shirt this year reflects that sense of fun and, of course, teamwork.
Mardesich, a 28-year Gilroy resident, has some favorite ways to have a good time at the Garlic Fest. She’ll catch the Corvairs and Shaboom performances, and she’ll stop by the cook-off stage plenty of times, too. But more than anything, Mardesich will try to “find humor in the hiccups,” the things that invariably don’t go exactly as planned.
“Things run pretty smoothly until the week of, when everything gets set up and put in place,” Mardesich said, recalling incidents such as a vendor who placed its booth in another vendor’s spot.
Mardesich is in her 17th year as a Garlic Festival volunteer, an annual act of giving back to the community that she sees as a sort of second career. An accounts payable clerk for Del Monte Foods, Mardesich’s Garlic Festival career started when she helped her husband Dave work the parking lot for a service club he was in.
“I loved it. Everyone was in the same boat – mud and dirt,” Mardesich said referring to the unpaved lot the parking attendants worked. ” … watching the people come and go and to see how happy they were to be at the festival was terrific.”
After her parking lot stint, Mardesich moved on to surveying guests for three years to find out where people came from, what they liked and what they’d like to see done differently.
“I kept having fun so I kept getting more involved,” Mardesich said.
The mother of two became co-chair and later chairman of the Children’s Area, a place she calls “a festival within a festival.”
Her experience chairing one of the festival’s prime areas made her a logical choice as an advisory board member, a role she played for two years. In 2002, Mardesich was elected to the Garlic Festival board of directors and served as vice president when she was groomed for the president’s post she now holds.
Mardesich already knows what her role in the Garlic Festival will be next year. Outgoing presidents serve as past president for one year and are involved with the strategic planning group of the Garlic Festival.
“There is a festival life after being president,” Mardesich quipped.
No matter what her role is with the Garlic Festival in the future, the last full weekend in July figures to be a Mardesich family holiday for a long while. Every year her son and daughter, who both live in Southern California now, visit mom and dad during festival time.
“Nothing gets in the way of festival weekend,” Mardesich said.
Mardesich acknowledged “a little bit of extra pressure” to pull off a successful festival in this its 25th year.
“People always ask me what is going to be new this year,” Mardesich said. “I usually just reply ‘What would you like to be new this year?’ It’s amazing how few people have an idea. I guess if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
“I hope we have good weather. I hope we get a good sized crowd, but not too many people,” Mardesich said, trying to describe the ideal Garlic Festival. “And I hope this year is just a big celebration where you can see volunteers show that pride for what the festival has accomplished over the years.”
