NEW BETHLEHEM – “Special” and “unique” are two words Julia Sabin uses to describe New Bethlehem, a town in which she only spent a brief few years, but made a lasting impact.
After all, when people think of peanuts and peanut butter, most immediately think of America’s southern states when the crop is grown. And search online for peanut butter factories in the USA, and you’ll see one location stand out amid southern cities such as Lexington, Ky., Little Rock, Ark., St. Louis, Mo. and Memphis, Tenn.
“New Bethlehem — what a special community,” Sabin said from her home in Florida, where she retired to following a 41-year career with the Ohio-based J.M. Smucker Company. She added that New Bethlehem, being a northern town, was “unique” for having a long history of making peanut butter.
That uniqueness and the locally made peanut butter products that continue to put New Bethlehem on the culinary map, will be celebrated this weekend as the town’s Peanut Butter Festival returns for its 30th anniversary year.
Sabin will also return to New Bethlehem and the festival this weekend, where she will be honored as the festival parade’s grand marshal on Saturday for her role in starting the event following the devastating “Black Friday” flood of 1996.
It will be Sabin’s first festival, and only her second time back in New Bethlehem, since the first event in 1996, after which she was moved to oversee another Smuckers factory.
“I’m very excited to come back,” Sabin said, noting that she will make the trip with her sister.
Sabin said she is thrilled to learn the festival has thrived in recent years, and that it has grown considerably from the first event she helped with 30 years ago.
Growing up in California, Sabin said she always loved all the festivals held in towns throughout her area.
“I’ve always been a fan of festivals,” she said.
After attending UCLA, she returned back home to Chico, Calif. where she got a job at a organic juice company, that would eventually be purchased by Smuckers.
In 1994, she said she was surprised to learn that the company had tapped her for a promotion to plant manager, and was asked to move to the New Bethlehem factory, which produced the company’s line of organic peanut butters as well as its Goober line, which combines jars of peanut butter and jelly or honey.
“That was a wonderful opportunity for me,” she said of the move to Clarion County with her husband and two young children.
Overseeing the New Bethlehem factory, Sabin become involved in the then-named New Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce, which is now known as the Redbank Valley Chamber of Commerce. It was at those chamber meetings where she said she began talking with others about her love for festivals, and how New Bethlehem could benefit from such an event.
In working with local resident Wendy Wyant at the factory, Sabin said discussions about having a festival began to take shape in 1995, with the thought of starting out in 1996.
That’s when the flood of July 19, 1996 occurred, washing throughout downtown New Bethlehem and surrounding Redbank Valley communities, and appearing to wash away any talk of celebrations.
“The mood — everyone was in shock and stunned,” she said of the community, with many homes and businesses destroyed. Sabin said others were of the opinion that the festival idea needed to be put on hold.
“But I remember thinking, this is the greatest thing we could do for this community,” she said, explaining that the local residents needed a place to come together to have some fun and to forget about what they had just come through.
“And peanut butter is fun,” she said of where the festival’s name came from. “We just decided we’re going to do it.”
Around the same time, she also learned that Smuckers was planning to again move her to a different factory, but not before the festival became a reality.
“The Peanut Butter Festival prevailed before I left,” she said, noting that while the first endeavor “was nothing fancy,” and didn’t yet have a parade or a festival queen or many of today’s longstanding traditions, it was still something the community needed.
“Everyone just had joy in their faces,” she said. “It gave them a little bit of away time to do something fun.”
Just a short time after the 1996 event, Sabin moved on, back to California. Her only return to New Bethlehem in the time since was in the 2000s when she came back for the retirement dinner for longtime plant maintenance supervisor George Gruver.
But, Sabin said, she followed news of the festival and the local factory any time she met up with fellow Smuckers employees who worked in New Bethlehem.
After 41 years with the company, and several moves to other job sites throughout the country, Sabin retired a couple of years ago.
She said the Peanut Butter and its success over 30 years is a reflection of the local community, which she described as “kind, gracious, supportive and helpful.”
She that that for something to last as long as it has, is an indication that it has been done the right way throughout the years.
“This speaks well for the culture of the community,” she said.
Redbank Valley Chamber of Commerce officials are also excited to have Sabin coming back this year to mark the 30th anniversary (the 2020 event was canceled due to the pandemic).
“Without her vision and persistence, there might not have been a Peanut Butter Festival, and without people like her, there might not be the thriving, lively New Bethlehem that we are today,” the chamber board said in a history of the event.
The chamber’s history notes that although the festival had a rocky start coming in the aftermath of the flood, the three-day event “has grown from a local street party to a Western Pennsylvania attraction” that brings in people from across the region and beyond.
The full schedule and information about all the festival’s events can be found in the special section included in today’s Leader-Vindicator.