Distinguished Citizen: ‘It’s been a part of me’

Published 5:45 am Saturday, March 26, 2022

It started with a handful of vendors inside a converted high school gym. Now, almost 40 years later, it’s probably the biggest yearly event in Cullman County that doesn’t involve alcohol and country music stars.

The Bloomin’ Festival is coming up this April at St. Bernard, and from the very start, Joyce Nix has been the festival’s energetic driving force. As a place for bespoke arts and crafts makers to showcase their unique goods, it’s far from a country event. But the woman who makes it go has country roots enough: She’s a Winston County native who found her way to Cullman early on, and through 38 years, she’s organized, marketed, lassoed volunteers, created logos, made TV appearances, liaised with sponsors, and somehow still found the time to personally attend arts festivals all over the South — all to keep a vigilant lookout for authentic artisans who’d make a good fit for the festival’s carefully curated lineup of vendors.

Nix would be first to tell you that the Bloomin’ Festival is a team effort; a massive undertaking that relies solely on St. Bernard staff, clergy, parents, and student volunteers to create the pleasant springtime spectacle that delights thousands of locals and far-flung visitors each year.

But make no mistake: The festival — the St. Bernard Prep School’s flagship fundraising effort — would not exist as it does today without her. With support from the monastic leaders who trust in her ability, Nix has overseen every iteration of the event since its 1984 inception, and in just about every conceivable way, she’s become its public face. Remove her tireless energy and commitment, and there’d be no tourists flooding Cullman with welcome tourism dollars, nor crowds streaming onto the bucolic St. Bernard campus each April with family, friends, and much-needed dollars for the school.

For shaping the Bloomin’ Festival into one of our county’s premiere family events through four decades, and for simply being an engaging, positive, and diligent force for good at both St. Bernard and across the wider Cullman community, The Cullman Times is honored to name St. Bernard Marketing, Public Relations & Festival Director Joyce Nix its Distinguished Citizen of the year for 2022.

“Just say I was a very small child when I started working out here!” Nix jokes while discussing plans for this year’s event. “In truth, when I first came to work at St. Bernard, I was going to be a secretary — the school secretary, as a matter of fact. But we just kind of evolved our roles.

“We were just getting started as a school, and we needed to come up with fundraising methods. We wanted something that would kind of tie the community together, but in a way that could emphasize the assets we had out here — our beautiful campus, our unique fit in the community. and we set out to do that, with a family-friendly event that could cast a wide net, welcoming people of all religious backgrounds.”

In hindsight, that first festival in 1984 looks like a small-scale trial run compared with the current Bloomin’ Festival, which these days can draw upwards of 20,000 people to campus. But in most ways, it was. As a private school, no government was coming to save the day with subsidies or student aid, so Nix and the small startup team at St. Bernard put their heads together, rolled up their sleeves, and simply learned how to put on a show by actually doing it — no prior professional experience required.

“Our first show, we only had 60 vendors,” says Nix. “Now we’re pushing 180. It was a real learning experience, that first year. We held it in the old gym. We originally were going to stage it on the soccer field, of all places, but it looked like it was going to rain, and back then it was just a one-day show. So the next year, we brought it out to the lawn, just as it is now, and things took off from there. We realized holding it on the grounds was great for guests, because the grounds out here are absolutely gorgeous. Thankfully, it’s grown ever since.”

Personally taking point on an event that coordinates so many moving parts; so many personalities and funds, draws plenty of fire when things go wrong. Some years it rains. One year, a guest’s pet monkey bit a child, effectively bringing about the festival’s no-pets policy.

“It’s definitely my fault if something goes wrong,” Nix told The Times in a 2018 interview. “It’s always the director’s fault with anything that goes bad. You do have to be a people person, and you definitely have to be a duck too — you’ve gotta let that water just roll off your back. You can’t take anything personally. and when someone comes to you with a better idea, well, you just tell them to knock themselves out!”

That’s a task many may aspire to, but few can achieve — especially year after year, always generating new ideas and bringing a fresh spark of energy when the time comes to start making phone calls and get the ball rolling. After 38 years, Nix has the bounce of little kid when the talk turns to this year’s festival.

“Oh, it’s huge. We’ve got a yard full of vendors who’re coming back, plus several new ones — wonderful artisans with the kind of stuff you don’t buy off the internet or out of a catalog. We came back [from COVID-19] last year with a really fantastic festival, and we’re full speed ahead this year. We’ve had tremendous sponsorship support from the community, Jesse Erwin at Creative Design did up the gnome graphic for our T-shirts (yes, there are gnomes on the T-shirts), and Emily Barnes — one of our parents — did our poster.”

She goes on and on from there, waxing rhapsodic about “her” vendors — repeat-visit artists whose experience at Bloomin’ Festival is always rewarded with robust sales and a fun weekend excursion away from home. She talks about the Monk’s bread, the funnel cakes, the fudge and caramel apples, the chance for first-timers to see the Ave Maria Grotto. She even talks about drafting St. Bernard students into volunteer service to prep the grounds and staff the event when festival weekend comes.

In short, Nix has no shortage of enthusiasm for the Bloomin’ Festival, for St. Bernard, and for the event’s annual chance to showcase everything about Cullman that makes it the kind of place she calls home. And when you’re running a public-facing fundraiser whose stakes for annual success are eternally high, that’s exactly the kind of enthusiasm — coupled with Nix’s no-nonsense radar for sorting the important stuff from the chaff — that you sorely need.

She’s not even Catholic herself, but Nix knows her identity is forever entwined with the springtime event she helped to create and grow.

“We’ve put many footprints and many a mile on ourselves and our cars,” she laughs. “I wore my kids out, dragging them to craft fairs and trying to find quality artists when we were first getting established. My daughter, Rachel, even used to tell people her mom ‘owns the festival’ before she outgrew it and realized that’s not at all how things really work.”

Four decades is a long time, and Nix couldn’t be criticized for wanting to walk away from the whole thing; to let someone else take the reins and see just how unruly an event’s moving parts can be…despite your very best efforts. But then that enthusiasm raises its head again.

“It is a lot of work, on me and on everybody,” she lets herself admit for a quiet, brief second. But the very next moment, that reflection vanishes like a mirage, and she’s snapped right back to her high-energy baseline.

“We like being hands-on! We really like it this way!” she chirps. “Because we’re able to maintain a quality and diversity that’s pretty unique here. We take a lot of pride in making the extra effort to offer guests a chance to enjoy things that are truly handmade. To give them a different and memorable experience; a reason to come back. I’ve been a part of this — and it’s been a part of me — for 38 years. I have absolutely no plans to call it quits!”