By Brian Trompeter
Viva! Vienna! draws tens of thousands of people to Vienna’s historic Church Street each Memorial Day weekend, but it hasn’t always been the bustling extravaganza it is now.
The festival, which will celebrate its 40th anniversary this year, began as a much smaller event, but still hews closely to its long-held goals.
Lifelong Vienna resident Bob Dix, a former Vienna Town Council member and Hunter Mill District supervisor, was a prime driver in the festival’s creation. He had enjoyed attending Vienna’s Fourth of July event and Halloween Parade and wanted to hold a festival over Memorial Day weekend to showcase the town’s uniqueness and honor fallen service members.
The event would be held in the town’s historic Church Street business area, charge no admission fee, give net proceeds back to community groups and acknowledge the business community, local residents and service groups. Its name would combine Vienna (Vi) and Virginia (Va).
“The basic tenets that were the foundation of the festival when it started in 1984 are still true today,” said Dix, who chaired the event for its first four years. “It’s just incredible and such a testament to the commitment of keeping it real and following through on the foundations on which it was launched. I think that’s part of the reason why it continues to be successful today.”
After becoming involved with the Greater Vienna Chamber of Commerce, Dix batted around ideas with former Vienna public-information officer Marie Kisner, who had been working with Historic Vienna Inc. about the town’s upcoming centennial in 1990.
When Dix became the chamber’s president in 1984, he sought to bring the event to fruition. Then-Town Manager Brackenridge Bentley liked the concept, as did then-Mayor Charles Robinson Jr., said Kisner, who now lives in San Antonio. Dix visited businesses along Church Street, which then typically were not open Sundays, and convinced them to be open the Sunday before Memorial Day and offer special sales, she said.
Organizers also pushed the festival’s time back later in the day to avoid conflicts with morning services held at adjacent Vienna Presbyterian Church.
The first event, co-sponsored by the chamber and Vienna Jaycees, was held Sunday, May 27, 1984, from noon to 6 p.m. It drew more than 15,000 people – triple what organizers had projected – and grossed $4,000. The sponsors used the $2,000 left after expenses to send mentally handicapped children to the Jaycees’ summer camp in Bedford, Va.
Lou Zone, who was involved with the event from the start and chaired it numerous times later, recalled how crew members wore trash bags with holes cut in them during the rainstorm that drenched the second festival.
Chamber officials in 1990 tried to keep the event’s proceeds to defray the costs involved, rather than disbursing them. But Dix, who by then was serving on the Vienna Town Council, objected strenuously and the Council agreed, Kisner said.
Zone and others formed the ViVa! Vienna! Foundation to run the operation instead. The foundation doled out the net proceeds to various groups in proportion to the number of volunteers they sent to the festival.
Zone suggested in the mid-1990s that the Rotary Club of Vienna become the event’s sole sponsoring organization. That happened in 1997.
“My idea was, let’s turn it over to a group of business people,” he said. “They’ll figure out how to do this the right way.”
The town government originally charged for providing police, fire and other services for the event, but eventually provided them for free. Rotary returns the favor by donating some of the proceeds to Vienna’s police, volunteer fire and parks departments.
ViVa! Vienna! later expanded to Memorial Day and the Saturday before it and broadened its focus to celebrate Vienna’s small-town charm, said Zone, who now lives near Tampa.
Organizers coordinated with the town of Herndon and Fairfax County to ensure their respective festivals did not overlap and compete with each other for attendance, Zone said. Vendors also appreciated the arrangement because they did not have to return to the area multiple times, he said.
ViVa! Vienna! does not serve alcohol, but in recent years there has been a separate, highly popular Brewfest Beer Garden held during the festival on Mill Street, N.E., next to the Town Green.
Gunnar Spafford, who is chairing the event for the second year, said it’s daunting to prepare for a festival that draws 60,000 people over three days.
“If you don’t have your ducks in a row, if you don’t have enough bathrooms, don’t have enough water, don’t have enough electricity, it can get challenging really quickly,” he said.
ViVa! Vienna! costs the Rotarians about $125,000 to produce and all the proceeds go to charity, Spafford said. During the past four decades, Dix estimated the festival has put back $3 million in the community. The event continues to be a big draw and its partnerships are strong, he said.
“I don’t think we find this kind of togetherness around America much anymore,” Dix said.
Technically, this will be only the 39th ViVa! Vienna! festival. The pandemic forced the 2020 event’s cancellation, but Rotary still disbursed $70,000 from its rainy-day fund to local groups the following year, “which made a huge impact,” Spafford said.
Spafford was vice chairman of the event when it resumed in 2021 and was touched when he overheard a young boy tell his mother, “This is the best day of my life!”
Spafford turned to his colleagues and said, “Yep, this is why we do it.”
To view the schedule and entertainment lineup for this year’s festival, which will be held May 25 through 27, visit vivavienna.org.
