Each year Folkmoot International puts on North Carolina’s official international festival with smiling faces, brightly colored costumes and cultures from around the world. For two weeks in the summer performers delight audiences with their exuberance for sharing their country and their customs.

But behind the glitz and glamour of Folkmoot is a legion of volunteers devoted to making the festival a success. For folks like these, volunteering at Folkmoot is much more than a two-week experience — it’s a lifestyle. And from nursing the sick to providing something good to eat, driving a bus to selling tickets, there’s always something to do.

Shirley Gaddis, a Folkmoot volunteer for 20 years, helps manage the festival’s on-site first aid clinic. Every festival morning from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., area doctors and nurses pay a visit to Folkmoot headquarters to administer any required first aid and treat the common traveling ailments such as upper respiratory infections, upset stomachs, sprained ankles, ear infections and toothaches.

“Every year there’s something new,” Gaddis said.

The clinic sees about 100 patients during the course of the festival, keeping doctors and nurses who volunteer for the job busy.

“We want to just be able to provide the dancers and musicians and the other people that come here with proper medical care and make it a positive experience,” said Virgil Messer, a doctor who regularly works at the clinic.

Keeping performers healthy is high on Boyd Medford’s list as well. Having been involved with Folkmoot since its inception, Medford helps round up groceries, particularly fruits and vegetables, so that performers will have something good to eat.

“We just try to gather them up and have them available,” he said.

The goodwill has passed down through the family, and now Medford’s daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter are all part of the Folkmoot team.

Folkmoot bus driver Ben Latimer has been involved with the festival for almost eight years, as he and his wife started out working as seating ushers at performances.

Latimer soon found himself in the driver’s seat — literally — hauling dance troupes from location to location as they gave two to three performances a day with the three-performance days often starting at 8 a.m. and running until midnight.

“Every day is different,” Latimer said.

Bus drivers are assigned to a specific dance troupe and drive that troupe for the entirety of the festival. Consequently, drivers get to know their cargo.

“I remember one time I had a group from Chile and every time they had a minute off they wanted to go up on the Parkway,” Latimer said.

All those trips to the Parkway gave the group extra bonding time and Latimer became friends with one of the dancers who also served as a group translator. Latimer and the dancer, who was an agricultural engineer working with one of Chile’s university’s to grow corn and grains, remain in touch, communicating via e-mail.

“He always asks me how Folkmoot went,” Latimer said, referring to the festivals that have passed since the dancer’s visit.

Latimer said he’s getting too old to keep up with the festival’s hectic schedule and had planned on making last year’s festival his last so he was assigned to drive a group from Norway comprised mostly of retired people.

“They were like me, kind of wanting to go to bed early,” Latimer said.

But for now the call to duty is just too strong to ignore.

“Every year when they send me a form and say ‘we need you,’ I just sign up and go back,” he said.

A similar sense of commitment keeps 10-year veteran Willie Rhodarmer coming back. Once a resident of Asheville, Rhodarmer promised Folkmoot’s founder that when she retired and moved to Haywood County she would become a volunteer.

“A promise is a promise,” she said.

The festival needed someone to do basic office and clerical work and Rhodarmer, with her degree in business, perfectly fit the bill.

“I started out doing what needed to be done,” she said.

Regular duties now include ticket and souvenir sales, but it’s the feeling of pride in the festival and what it brings to the region that sold Rhodarmer to the cause.

“To have that here in Western North Carolina I think it’s just fabulous,” she said. To see the relationships and the friendships that it evokes, I just think it’s a wonderful, wonderful thing and I believe in it wholeheartedly.”

The same goes for Annabelle Trantham, who has been a part of Folkmoot for almost a decade and a half, helping to cover all the basics on a year-round basis. From setting up displays to making sure the international flags are flying high, Trantham has a hand in it all.

“I’m more of a go-fer than anything,” she said.

The cultural exchange — meeting people from different countries, learning about their heritage — draws her back. Sometimes the faces are familiar, perhaps a dance troupe that has performed at the festival before or a group organizer. But of the familiar faces, Trantham said she wished she saw more locals.

“The local people don’t really get involved in it,” she said. “It’s the summer people that come.”

The experience of volunteering is something that shouldn’t be missed, she said.

“If they ever got involved, they’d keep coming back,” she said.

There are many more ways to get involved with Folkmoot from volunteering to help at the late-niter parties to serving as a troupe guide to working as an emcee. If you’re not actively participating now, visit the Folkmoot International Web site at www.folkmoot.com and click on the Volunteer link under the Organization section to fill out a volunteer form. If you’re already a part of the team, encourage a friend to join.