By DAVE HAMRICK
Staff Writer

Next year, Fayette County Kiwanis will celebrate its 50th year as a civic club in Fayette County.

And in 2001, the group will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Fayette County Fair, the club's main fund-raiser and one of the biggest annual activities in the county.

The club was chartered in 1951 and had its first fair a year later on the corner of Ga. Highway 85 and Stonewall Avenue.

Kiwanis is an international civic organization that provides millions of dollars worth of community service annually. The group's current international goal is eradication of iodine deficiency disorder worldwide.

IDD is a little known problem, but it is the number one cause of mental retardation, according to Fayette Kiwanis president Wayne Snead. Kiwanis clubs worldwide are providing funds to put iodine salt factories in every country in the world, working with the United Nations Children's Fund.

In Fayette County, Kiwanis provides about $35,000 a year for local charitable work, providing scholarships and aiding other organizations such as the Youth Protection Home, the Southwest Christian Hospice, Council on Battered Women, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and the Fayette County High School band. The group also sponsors clubs in local schools to mirror the work of Kiwanis: Key Club (high school), Builders Club (middle school) and K-Kids (elementary school).

In 1952, the club purchased Kiwanis Fields on Redwine Road, which was to be the home of the county fair for 47 years. The group later donated the property to Fayette County to start its Recreation Department, but continued to have the fair there, working around the growing number of ball fields and facilities.

Looking ahead, the club also purchased land on Ga. Highway 54 as a future fair site, but for a variety of reasons, that site proved unsuitable.

Last year the Kiwanians sold the Hwy. 54 site and purchased 62 acres at Goza and Lisbon roads, just off Hwy. 85, where it hopes to conduct the fair for decades to come, and to provide a new facility for large indoor and outdoor events that will serve the entire community.

As Kiwanis enters the 21st century, the local club hopes to increase its charitable work in Fayette more than 10-fold, using the new facility for its own fund-raisers and also renting out the fairgrounds to provide additional income.

If all goes well, club officials say, the group could be contributing a half million dollars to the community within the next few years.

Kiwanis meets at Melear's barbecue each Tuesday at 7 p.m. Anyone interested in joining the club can phone 770-719-3530.

But be ready to spend some time in volunteer work, warned Snead.

“We want people who really want to help the community,” he said.