Rememering The First Kem Memorial Sweepstakes

By Sally Futh, Starberry Collies

Looking back to the first Kem Memorial Sweepstakes, remembering the blizzard on the way. With my puppy hopeful Starberry Solace, I was stuck on the way to Indiana in the snowstorm and spent overnight in the first Pennsylvania Turnpike toll station with a handful of other wannabe travelers. In the morning, thirty-foot drifts still covered the high-power lines crossing the highway at Morgantown, which kept the pike closed. We made our way west in a caravan with a few other brave souls on old Route 30, and the two of us eventually got to Indiana. It was worth the trip to be part of that event.

It WAS a long time ago and I haven't been able to come up with a catalogue so the only name I have for sure is the winner, Len JaBaay with Vi-Lee's Starring Jovi and of course wife Vivian doing the grooming. Harold Warner was the judge, if memory serves. He was a past president of CCA from Ohio, Harline Collies. But I do know that then as now the Midwest, particularly Indiana / Ohio was a center of Collie breeding. In the ring and at ringside there was a galaxy of Collie breeders. I wrote before about the influence of Lodestone; Oren and his mother Madge, Gus and Edna Sigritz of Cherrivale, Dorotha Sturm and daughter Sue (Barlow) of Lick Creek, George Dahl of Floravale, some of the Hertzville descendants, and the adherents of all those lines ... I think it was too early for a teenage Bertha Frank (Garrison) or Tim, to be on the scene with the Bandor Collies; her first winner came a few years later. There had to be many more as I think the entry was over fifty.

It was exciting for a neophyte breeder whose experience was almost all on the east coast. I haven't found the ribbon in my quilt, but I think my puppy was fourth; I was told later that I should have brought the younger one instead!

This is written a week before the 2021 iteration, and we are looking forward to it just as much. It looks as if this time the blizzard will be on the trip home! Weather is so much a part of dog show memories: the big one on the way to Centennial CCA, another the day entries closed for "outside Springfield," Oklahoma City in '71, Hartford in 1958.
Here we go again!

Robert Futh was scheduled to judge the Kem Memorial on Sunday January 31, 2021 at the Columbus Collie Club Specialty Show. The Futh's were unable to make it to the show this year and Butch Schulman was asked to judge. The Kem is one of the oldest Collie Sweepstakes and the only one that requires the judge to be an AKC licensed judge. Below, the complete list of Kem Memorial Winners.

> Read The 2001 Kem Memorial Article previously published on colliesonline.com in 2001