This past week, my daughter, Stella, attended Weir High School’s youth cheer camp, hosted by the high school and Weir High cheerleaders.

She couldn’t wait until cheer camp started this year and was so excited to show us all that she had learned when she got home. This is her third time attending.

I appreciate the efforts of the school and the cheerleaders for putting this event on. We can’t wait until the students of the camp perform all they learned at a home football game at Jimmy Carey Stadium. As an attendee of the camp, she has performed with the group at a Weir High football game and a basketball game. The girls are so proud to perform.

Being at the stadium brings back a lot of memories for me. I have only been to the new stadium a handful of times since my return back to our valley.

Most of my memories are from the old stadium off Virginia Avenue in Downtown Weirton. The stadium occupied the spot of the old Griffith House, a block house that appears in many of our history books.

The building was built in the late 18th century to serve as a safe house and hub to protect settlers from Native American war parties. It survived for more than a century before it was torn down to make way for the stadium. Weir High stadium was completed in the summer of 1935 and the first event held there was not a football game, rather it was the second-annual Festival of Nations.

According to the book “Weirton, A Pageant of Nations,” written by Dennis Jones, the idea for the Festival of Nations was conceived by the employee representatives of the Weirton Steel Co. based on an idea from the 1929 Weir High yearbook called the Onawa, which called for all Weirton nationalities to come together in a pageant.

The very first festival was held at the new Margaret Manson Weir Memorial Pool, or the Marland Heights pool, on Labor Day in 1934, which had opened just two months before on July 4.

On opening day, it is estimated that more than 20,000 people came to the opening events. E. T. Weir, Weirton founder and chairman of National Steel, and J.C. Williams, president of Weirton Steel, both spoke at the festivities.

According to Jones, Weir promoted unity between the company and the community. He said, “There must be cooperation between the company and the community, as there must be between employer and employee.” With Weir’s record of community involvement over the decades, he firmly grasped this idea.

On Labor Day 1934, 90 years ago this weekend, the “greatest entertainment ever to occur in the Twin Cities of Weirton and Holiday’s Cove,” kicked off.

Events began with sporting events at the Weir-Cove Field, now the Edwin Bowman field. Many of Weirton Steel’s interdepartmental teams competed in these events.

A tug-of-war was won by the Strip Steel team at the field, and a horseshoe tournament was won by the Tin Mill team at Marland Heights Park. Swimming events were held at the pool and other track events were held at the ballfield.

At the end of the day, Jones reports that a scoreboard was erected at the Weir-Cove Field that showed which mill departments had won more points in the competition: Strip Steel (53), Tin Plate (33), Steel Works (25) and the Sheet Mill (11).

Throughout the day and into the night, free bus service was provided from downtown to the pool for the festivities that would begin at 8 p.m.

That night, an estimated 10,000 people packed the Margaret Manson Weir Memorial Pool to witness the very first festival. Ten leading ethnic groups came together to perform dances and songs of their homelands on a built stage followed by an American group.

The ethnicities noted during the first festival were, according to Jones and the records of the time: The Russian Group, which were composed of the choir from the Russian Orthodox Church under the Rev. Theodore Kondratick; the Czecho-Slovak Group, which portrayed a traditional village wedding, as it was done in their homeland; the Hungarian Group, which showed a typical country village as two soldiers returned home from a holiday, and featured a Csardas dance; the Finnish Group, which portrayed dances called the “Weaving of the Cloth,” as they showed traditional cloth making; and the Italian group sang many songs that are important to folks of Italian decent, including “Santa Lucia,” “Torna a Sorrento,” “Tango Delle Rose,” “Italian March,” “Musical Proibita” and “Funiculi Funicula,” followed by the finale called “America and Italy Alliance;” the Welsh singers sang a song called the “Bells of St. Mary;” the Greek Group portrayed a show called the Progress of Modern Civilization with tableaus and dances of Greek history, followed by the finale called “America and Greece Honor Universal Peace;” the Romanian Group performed dances and songs including “Colo in Vale,” “Hora,” “Hatagana” and “Sirba;” the Jugo-Slavs performed dances called the “Kolo,” “Dermash,” and “Zikino Kolo;” the Polish Group portrayed the leading folk dance of the day, which was called the “Bialy Mazur,” and was set to Mazurka music.

The festival ended with all the groups coming on stage with the Weirton Steel Band as they all sang the “Star-Spangled Banner,” followed by a fireworks show. What a day of events!

The following year, the Festival of Nations was the first event held at the new Weir High Football Stadium on Labor Day. An estimated 15,000 spectators showed up to see the show despite rainy weather.

The festival continued strong through the years of World War II, when the focus of the pageant turned from celebrating individual ethnicities to showcasing liberty, equality and democracy, in addition to the war effort.

Jones explains that the pageants held during the war included “hundreds of local participants along with a cast of professional actors and were broadcast on radio across the United States.”

The last festival of that era was held 80 years ago on Labor Day in 1944 at Weir High Stadium and featured more than 1,000 Weirton participants and 350 servicemen in a salute to war production to end the war.

Also on Labor Day that year, the new Weirton Steel Honor Roll was dedicated on the corner of Main Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the MAB Building to commemorate and honor Weirton Steel employees who served in the armed forces. Looking back at the history of the Festival of Nations, it was certainly a unique event held to showcase the diverse and varied groups that made up our city.

We are blessed to still have today many of these groups represented in our community. Although it is not the same place, my daughter, Stella, will perform on the Weir High Football field like many have done going back more than 90 years in the past. Just like the Festival of Nations, the Weir High cheer camp brings together our community to celebrate what makes us special, and that’s something to be proud of.

(Zuros is a historian and Ohio Valley native)