Fun Fest's 2024 chairman has almost lifetime connection with the event

KINGSPORT — Tory Lorimer has been a Fun Fest fan since she was a 6-year-old girl living in the Ridgefields neighborhood, where Fun Fest balloons used to land a bit short of their goal.She helped wrangle them out of trees and bushes.Fast forward four decades of participating in and volunteering for Fun Fest: Lorimer chairs the annual community celebration that began in 1981 as a community unity festival and was not held in 2020 because of COVID-19.She's even clogged at Fun Fest as a youth.LONG-TERM FUN FEST CONNECTIONSTory Lorimer, 46 and senior practice manager at Holston Medical Group, said her mother was there when the balloons got caught up in the trees and bushes. She'll also be there for this Fun Fest at a concert, while Lorimer's husband, four daughters and two granddaughters will be attending Fun Fest events, too."I started out helping with Fun Fest a very long time ago, almost from the start of it," Lorimer wrote in response to an emailed question of how she became involved with Fun Fest."When I was little, the balloons would fly over my house and one year I got to help pull them down out of trees. That piqued my interest as a young child, so I asked my mom what we could do to get involved," Lorimer wrote. The next year, we volunteered as Trash Busters. We did that for a few years, along with attending many of the events each year."In a later interview, she said a photograph of her clogging at Fun Fest appeared in the Kingsport Times News in the mid-1980s and that one of her daughters, then Morgan Lorimer but now Morgan Evans, years later was in the Little Miss Kingsport Pageant.Evans and daughters Evans, Ashley Ellis, Baylee Waye and Rylee Waye all plan to attend Fun Fest this year, as will granddaughters Audi and Laine Ellis. Lorimer said all her daughters and grand daughters live in Kingpsort or the Tri-Cities except Baylee Waye, who lives in Knoxville.Her husband, GRC Construction owner Tim Lorimer, also attends events, including the balloon ones. GRC and HMG sponsors Fun Fest events."It's a family affair," Tory Lorimer said of Fun Fest for her clan.WORKING UP THE RANKSAfter becoming an employee at Holston Medical Group in 1999, she started volunteering at the HMG Fluid Station for Crazy 8's. She also went from doing check in and out at HMG to senior practice manager, recently marking her 25th year with HMG."That (initial volunteer work) turned into helping on the Crazy 8's committee, Little 8's, Tour De Possum and basically anything that needed a volunteer," Lorimer wrote. "Then after a few years, I was asked to join the Fun Fest Committee and I've been doing that ever since."At the end of 2022, I was asked to be chair for 2024 and I couldn't have been happier. I'm excited to be out in the community attending events, cheering for the runners at Crazy 8's, eating some amazing food at the Taste and listening to the concerts," Lorimer said."I look forward to the Miss Kingsport/Sullivan County pageant, The Outdoor Movie and the Broad Street Boogie, which is sponsored by Holston Medical Group."She added that she would "of course" be doing "anything else I can find to do that week, with all of the festivities that go on."She said her 83-year-old mother is going to the Phillip Phillips concert, and other family members are going to various concerts and events.