The Amboy Fall Festival was held from Saturday September 19-20 and featured community activities for Amboy residents and visitors. The festival, now in its 4th year, featured a parade, dunking booth, corn hole tournament, car show, and a variety of other events designed to appeal to a wide variety of guests. As part of the event, the bank sponsored a presentation of a memorial park bench honoring former FFBT employee and board member, Steve Shrock. Locally based Caldwell Monument Inc was contracted to create a fitting memorial inscription as shown below to be placed near the park bench that was dedicated at last year’s ceremony. Also sponsored by First Farmers Bank & Trust was the car show, the corn hole tournament, and the Little Mr. and Miss Amboy Pageant. The winner of the People’s Choice Award for the car show was Buff Fuller. The winners of the Little Mr and Miss Amboy were as follows:
5-7 years: Alaina Simmons and Deaton Pond
8-10 years: Victoria Davis and Braxton Camden (Pam Camden’s grandson!)
The winners of the corn hole tournament were Noah Herschberger, Jake Schmuber, Wayne Otto, and Ed Petty. First Farmers also held several events throughout the week and at the fair, and participated in other festival activities. In keeping with the Rock and Roll theme of the festival, the branch held a “Do the Twist” contest. Nancy Williamson was the winner and won a box of checks for her effort. They also gave away Merle Haggard tickets in a random drawing, and the winner of that drawing was Fred Ammerman Jr from Peru. Finally, the Amboy branch gave away free popcorn like they have done in past years and Melody Ringeisen volunteered to spend almost an hour in the community dunking booth! She made almost $24 during that time, and even contributed some of her own money to make sure she dunked Chris Norris a few times! Chris was in the booth representing Norris Insurance in Amboy, but he is also one of FFBT’s board members. Overall, the festival raised $1018 to be donated for playground equipment for the children. Attendance at the event surpassed expectations and the community looks forward to hosting the festival again next year.
