Old Fashion Brush Arbor Meeting tent revival canceled this year due to illness

For the last 57 years, the Old Fashion Brush Arbor Meeting, which is a five-night old time tent style revival, has taken place off Brush Arbor Road during the first week of September, but this year it won’t be happening.

Organizer Jerry Sester, who is president of the Old Fashion Brush Arbor meeting, said the event isn’t ending and he hopes to resume it next year.

Due to health problems that both Sester and his wife, Rena, whose father first organized the event, are having, they just aren’t able to hold the event this year.

“Both myself and my wife aren’t able to do it this year because of major surgery that I have had. I have some more surgery following in the coming weeks so we are going to postpone it a year,” Sester said.

“As the old saying goes, it’s not over until it’s over. We are going to have it next year Lord willing.”

Sester said that it was a very difficult decision to not have the meeting this year.

“As I put on my Facebook page, it was with a heavy heart that myself and the board of directors are postponing it this year,” Sester said.

The event typically draws 200 to 250 people on the Friday and Saturday nights it takes place, some of whom come from as far away as Tennessee, Michigan and Indiana.

Rev. Bill Childers and his wife, Martha, started the event 57 years ago as a way to honor the way that the old people worshipped when they started in April and went through October under a lean-to with brush on top of it and a sawdust floor underneath.

“He wanted to have a one-year memorial service so he started at the McCreary County 4-H Camp then he moved to Williamsburg,” said Jerry Sester, who is Childers’ son-in-law.

The event took place in McCreary County for the first three years before moving to Whitley County where it has remained for the last 54 years.

Sester said that his wife, Rena, promised her father on his deathbed about 20 years ago that they would continue the event as long as they were able.