Though 47 isn't quite the age to be considered a daddy's girl, Barb McWilliams of Highland Road in Jefferson Township is proud to be following in her father's footsteps when it comes to her involvement in the Jefferson Township fair, which is in full swing this week.

"My father was the one who came up with the idea" for a fair, Mrs. McWilliams said of D.W. "Bud" Hackett, who was chairman of the fair board for 20 years. "The civic league was very active at that time, and they saw it as a money-making project, so a committee from the civic league handled it."

The fair, her father's board membership and her own involvement in it began in 1970, when Mrs. McWilliams was a teen-ager. "We did our own games. We had no carnival at the time. It was really a community social gathering," she said. "I thought it was fun. With him being president of it, you had to go with the flow."

She said Hackett was responsible for ordering all the food, maintaining the grounds and making sure every committee and booth had people to work.

"He did things nobody knows about -- the background, behind-the-scenes stuff," Mrs. McWilliams said. "As he got older, he delegated more things out."

Her father stepped down as chairman in 1990; he died five years later.

Mrs. McWilliams matured along with the fair.

In 1970, a 15-year-old Barb Hackett was running the fair's nickel-pitch game. By 1985, the fair had grown from a two-day event to five days and a married Barb McWilliams had begun running the fair finances as treasurer. She has held that post ever since.

One thing that hasn't changed, according to Mrs. McWilliams, is the fairgoers and the former residents who return home for the event every year.

"I think it brings the community together. A lot of older folk just come and visit. They sit out and watch people and visit with their old neighbors," said Mrs. McWilliams, who works for Grace Industries in Transfer.

Her family's love affair with the fair extends to aunts, uncles, cousins and her husband John, who has been been on the township police force for more than 30 years. "He'll be patrolling the (fair) grounds and the township during the event," she said.

But it's the memory of her father that is the driving force behind her commitment.

"I'm proud to be involved in it," she said. "It was his pet. ... He was proud of it too. He couldn't believe we started from nothing and got to where we are now."