The Delray Affair

For years, Colleen Buckner and several other Delray Affair volunteers had their own special way of welcoming new exhibitors to the City’s signature event.

“New people were always shocked to find out that we weren’t City or Chamber employees,” Colleen says. “We would tell them we were on a work-release program from the city jail. Some of them actually believed it.”

Having fun at the Delray Affair is something Colleen has been doing since the mid-1970s, when she first began volunteering.

During the course of more than 30 years of giving up a three-day weekend every spring and hours – not to mention innumerable hour before hand – Colleen has held several key volunteer posts at the show, including general chairperson. For the past 15 years, she has served as the Area Chair for the Veteran’s Park area and she is looking forward to being part of next year’s 50^th anniversary of the Delray Affair celebration.

Over the years, Colleen has seen the event expand to more than 700 vendors and grow from a show that only went as far west as the downtown railroad tracks to one that now crosses Swinton Avenue.

While Colleen takes her volunteer job at the Delray Affair seriously, she’ll tell you that there are always lots of fun times – often shared with other volunteers or even the exhibitors.

‘Whenever you had three pink shirts in one place, there was guaranteed to be laughter,” she said.

A commercial real-estate title examiner, Colleen moved to Delray Beach in the late 1960s and she quickly became a member of the Chamber of Commerce, which has organized the Delray Affair for almost five decades.

She served as membership committee chair during the Chamber’s growth years and decided she would learn more about the committee that coordinated the annual arts and crafts festival, which back then was run entirely by volunteers.

“It was one of the committees I hadn’t been on and it looked like fun,” she said.

Little did she know how much fun – and how much work – she was going to have over the next 30 years.

“It’s been said we were like a family but it’s really more like a coed sorority or fraternity with the show coordinator more like our house mother,” Colleen said, “We laughed for three days.”

As a volunteer, Colleen has been able to established friendships not only with other volunteers but also with the exhibitors, who often returned to the same location.

“We got to know the exhibitors and they got to know us,” she said.

While she has seen many changes in the Delray Affair as it grew, Colleen has also seen a constant in the passion and dedication of the volunteers who are so critical to the show’s success.

“The friendships we developed many years ago are still lasting today,” she said. “Now we’re making new ones.”