After 30
years, annual Pullman festival is known for much more than its chili
By Katie
Short, Moscow Pullman Daily News 8/15/2018
The National
Lentil Festival marks the start of each new fall semester at Washington State
University. The festival celebrates the pulses that make the Palouse different
from anywhere else in the world, and over the past 30 years, it has put the
little city of Pullman on the map.
George Sharp,
who was the director of the National Lentil Festival from 1990 to 1998, said
the idea originally came from Jim Crow, the late manager of WSU's Beasley
Coliseum.
Before 1989,
Sharp said Pullman hosted a Harvest Festival the third week of September.
But, he said,
Pullman's annual celebration did not stand out from the nearly 3,000 other
harvest festivals throughout the United States in a given year.
It was Crow
who said, "Why don't we celebrate what we have here?" Sharp recalled.
And it was
then the idea of the National Lentil Festival was born.
Crow always
had big dreams for the festival, Sharp said. So big that in 1991, just two
years after the festival got its start, Crow booked Jerry Seinfeld as the
headlining entertainment for the festival.
However, no
jokes about lentils were made because Seinfeld canceled his performance after
his show - Seinfeld - was signed for a second season.
The
cancellation made national news, Sharp said, and only generated more publicity
for the Lentil Festival.
"I sent
him a letter that said 'Dear Jerry, thanks for canceling' and he sent me a
signed picture back that said 'Dear George, thanks for not having me' - I still
have that signed picture somewhere," Sharp said.
Sharp said in
1989, he was the first person to dress as Tase T. Lentil, the official mascot
of the Lentil Festival, and in 2014, he returned to Pullman to be Tase T.
Lentil again for the 25th anniversary parade.
He said the
Pullman Chamber of Commerce held a contest the first year of the festival and
let the Pullman community name the Lentil Festival mascot. He said a Pullman
first-grade teacher was the one who came up with the name Tase T. Lentil.
In 1998, Sharp
left Pullman and moved to Olympia, but he said he regularly talks to parents
who say their child is attending WSU and has gone to the Lentil Festival.
"It is
always on the weekend kids go back to school," Sharp said.
Pullman Mayor
Glenn Johnson said he has only missed one festival in 30 years and enjoys how
it is used to encourage student participation in the community.
"We're as
close to campus as we can get without being on campus," Johnson said.
In recent
years, the Lentil Festival has grown so much it now extends from Reaney Park to
the parking lot just below the WSU Steam Plant.
The
festivities last for two full days and include a parade, live music, a beer and
wine garden, a 5K fun run, basketball, mini golf, and softball tournaments, a
lentil pancake breakfast, food demonstrations by local chefs and free lentil
chili - one of the festivals main attractions.
In the 1990s,
the city of Pullman was awarded the Guinness World Record for the largest bowl
of lentil chili, current festival director Britnee Packwood said.
She said the
bowl used to cook the chili can hold 600 gallons of lentil goodness.
The year
Pullman set the world record, Johnson said the festival had so much chili they
were using the radio to beg people to bring buckets.
The following
year, once the record was set, the festival didn't require as much chili, he
said, but people were still bringing buckets to fill.
In recent
years, the festival has packaged and donated any left over chili to the
Community Action Center, which in turn distributes it to the food banks,
Johnson said.
"(The
Lentil Festival) did two things for us: It put Pullman on the map from a
festival standpoint and from a food standpoint," Sharp said.
