CHARLESTON, W.Va. — As planning gets started for the 2022 Charleston Sternwheel Regatta, Mayor Amy Goodwin hopes to recreate some of the excitement which was such a large part of the event in is heyday of the 1970’s and 80’s. She’s calling on some to offer input who were part of the original planning like Robin Jones whose husband Nelson Jones actually worked with the mayor to start the event in 1971.
“He had seen some sternwheel races as a young man and got excited about them . Then he started talking to the Mayor at that time about having boat races here and bringing people down to the levy to see them,” said Robin Jones on 580-Live on WCHS Radio Monday.
Mayor Goodwin made the announcement of plans to return the Regatta to the riverfront of the Capital City in 2022 during Friday’s season finale of Live on the Levee. Nelson said what started as a couple of sternwheel races in 1971, morphed into a major 10 day festival. In its prime, the Regatta included dozen’s of sternwheelers along with numerous other boats, a 10 day festival, and usually a major musical act performing on the river front stage. The event would always draw close to 100,000 people into Charleston.
Robin said despite all of its trappings, for her and for her husband, the celebration was always about the river and the boats.
“Initially there were transistor radios, but later there were speakers set up all along the Boulevard where people could hear and get into it. People really got into cheering for their boat. Everybody came every year planning how to beat whomever had won the year before. For years there was a competition between the Miss Sterling and P.A. Denny. That was a big, big thing,” Robin explained.
Mayor Goodwin hopes to capture that same enthusiasm and nostalgia in next year’s event.
“There were kids there Friday, a whole new generation with no memories of the Regatta, but they were completely fascinated with those boats. I want to get that back,” Goodwin said.
“Our main focus was always the boats and the river and teaching people about the river and what it means to our community. Charleston wouldn’t be Charleston without the river,” Jones said.