By: Erin Gartner, American Red Cross Volunteer

Exhibits at the international World’s Fair expositions often took a year or more to put together, featuring breakthroughs in technology, science and culture from around the world. But when Spokane hosted the 1974 World’s Fair, Herb Ayers had just six weeks to prepare.

As public relations director of Spokane’s American Red Cross chapter, Ayers was approached about creating an exhibit that would be seen by more than a million visitors. That meant coming up with an idea to align with the expo’s environmental theme, getting it approved, and raising enough money to build the exhibit in just a few weeks.

Ayers also had to find enough volunteers to staff the exhibit for 12 hours a day, every day, for six months. It would be featured alongside displays from countries worldwide, including the then-Soviet Union, Iran and Taiwan.

“I said, ‘Well, I love challenges,” Ayers recalled, laughing. “We’d been involved in the general community effort to prepare for the fair, but we hadn’t thought about doing an exhibit. After all, sometimes it takes years to put together an exhibit for an international event like this, and organizers are very stringent about the rules.”

As Spokane celebrates the 50th anniversary of hosting the 1974 World’s Fair, with events around the city through July 4, Ayers recalled how the expo revitalized downtown Spokane with parks and buildings that still exist today. He also noted that everything came together for the Red Cross during the fair, dubbed Expo ’74, thanks to dedicated volunteers.

In fact, the Red Cross exhibit garnered international media attention after Ayers coordinated with the International Committee of the Red Cross’ Secretary General in Switzerland to speak to visitors using a ham radio. The radio technology was a central theme of the Red Cross exhibit, to show how the Red Cross communicated while responding to natural disasters around the world.

International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

“Ham radio operators were instrumental in disaster relief,” said Ayers, who has a background in public relations and worked for the Red Cross for 14 years. “We wanted to highlight that.”

World’s Fair Changes Focus – and the City

The 1974 fair marked a shift in how World’s Fairs were organized and was the first to have a theme: environmental protection. Earlier fairs mostly focused on technology and culture, highlighting a technological utopianism, but the 1974 expo was the first to begin focusing on social and environmental issues, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

It was a natural pairing for the Red Cross. The organization’s exhibit explored the theme by highlighting how its staff and volunteers respond to hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters, and how those environmental events affected communities around the world. The Red Cross remains dedicated to helping communities affected by natural disasters and fighting the climate crisis.

Since the mid-1800s, more than 20 countries have hosted over 100 such expos, which experienced their heyday in the years before World War I. Spokane became the smallest city to host a World’s Fair when the expo arrived in 1974, yet the event still attracted more than 5 million people, according to Cascade PBS.

Like other host cities, including Seattle a decade earlier, Spokane used preparation for the fair to help revitalize parts of the city.

“The downtown area was kind of decrepit,” Ayers said. “It was an old railroad town; it had a lot of old hotels. It wasn’t very attractive. So the effort was made to make a park out of everything. Even to this day, the giant park and a number of buildings that were built for the World’s Fair are still there.”

Those facilities include Riverfront Park, which is hosting many of the Expo ‘74 anniversary events this year, including live performances, local vendors and interactive experiences; and the U.S. Pavilion, which hosts summer concerts, outside film festivals and other events.

Ayers noted that the 1974 expo also brought educational opportunity to the community, especially youth, during a time of especially strained relations between the U.S. and Soviet Union.

After navigating numerous hurdles with the U.S. State Department, Ayers was able to convince the Soviet delegation to speak with a Red Cross youth program in Spokane. Ayers, who also worked in mental health counseling, said the conversation helped demystify the Soviet Union and Russians among youth leaders.

“Probably one of the most important aspects of our participation in the World’s Fair was that we went beyond the fair exhibit itself,” Ayers said. “We were always looking for a way to engender good relationships. The Red Cross is an organization that’s around the world, and we want to show that we’re a people-first organization.”

Dedication to the Red Cross

The World Fair exhibit was just one of the projects Ayers coordinated during his 14-year career on staff with the Red Cross. After five years in the Air Force and studies at Gonzaga University, he joined the Red Cross as an assistant field director. He served at Travis Air Force Base and in Vietnam, and then worked for the Spokane Red Cross chapter in several roles, including community programs director.

He held other Red Cross roles before shifting careers in 1979 to become a mental health counselor, and he spent 30 years in private practice. But he didn’t leave the Red Cross behind: He served as a Red Cross mental health volunteer in Kennewick, Washington.

Ayers said he believes in “servant leadership,” which promotes an effort to share and care together, where the leader becomes the servant of others.

“‘I was able to establish a number of different programs in Spokane,” he said. “I’m proud of that.”