The history of a lentil legacy

The National Lentil Festival marks the start of each new fall semester at Washington State University. The festival celebrates the pulses that make the Palouse different from anywhere else in the world, and over the past 30 years, it has put the little city of Pullman on the map.

George Sharp, who was the director of the National Lentil Festival from 1990 to 1998, said the idea originally came from Jim Crow, the late manager of WSU's Beasley Coliseum.

Before 1989, Sharp said Pullman hosted a Harvest Festival the third week of September.

But, he said, Pullman's annual celebration did not stand out from the nearly 3,000 other harvest festivals throughout the United States in a given year.

It was Crow who said, "Why don't we celebrate what we have here?" Sharp recalled.

And it was then the idea of the National Lentil Festival was born.

Crow always had big dreams for the festival, Sharp said. So big that in 1991, just two years after the festival got its start, Crow booked Jerry Seinfeld as the headlining entertainment for the festival.

However, no jokes about lentils were made because Seinfeld canceled his performance after his show - Seinfeld - was signed for a second season.

The cancellation made national news, Sharp said, and only generated more publicity for the Lentil Festival.

"I sent him a letter that said 'Dear Jerry, thanks for canceling' and he sent me a signed picture back that said 'Dear George, thanks for not having me' - I still have that signed picture somewhere," Sharp said.

Sharp said in 1989, he was the first person to dress as Tase T. Lentil, the official mascot of the Lentil Festival, and in 2014, he returned to Pullman to be Tase T. Lentil again for the 25th anniversary parade.

He said the Pullman Chamber of Commerce held a contest the first year of the festival and let the Pullman community name the Lentil Festival mascot. He said a Pullman first-grade teacher was the one who came up with the name Tase T. Lentil.

In 1998, Sharp left Pullman and moved to Olympia, but he said he regularly talks to parents who say their child is attending WSU and has gone to the Lentil Festival.

"It is always on the weekend kids go back to school," Sharp said.

Pullman Mayor Glenn Johnson said he has only missed one festival in 30 years and enjoys how it is used to encourage student participation in the community.

"We're as close to campus as we can get without being on campus," Johnson said.

In recent years, the Lentil Festival has grown so much it now extends from Reaney Park to the parking lot just below the WSU Steam Plant.

The festivities last for two full days and include a parade, live music, a beer and wine garden, a 5K fun run, basketball, mini golf, and softball tournaments, a lentil pancake breakfast, food demonstrations by local chefs and free lentil chili - one of the festivals main attractions.

In the 1990s, the city of Pullman was awarded the Guinness World Record for the largest bowl of lentil chili, current festival director Britnee Packwood said.

She said the bowl used to cook the chili can hold 600 gallons of lentil goodness.

The year Pullman set the world record, Johnson said the festival had so much chili they were using the radio to beg people to bring buckets.

The following year, once the record was set, the festival didn't require as much chili, he said, but people were still bringing buckets to fill.

In recent years, the festival has packaged and donated any left over chili to the Community Action Center, which in turn distributes it to the food banks, Johnson said.

"(The Lentil Festival) did two things for us: It put Pullman on the map from a festival standpoint and from a food standpoint," Sharp said.

Katie Short can be reached at (208) 883-4633, or by email to kshort@dnews.com.