09/10/2026
In the early ’70s, Gene McKay was musing about the origins of the fictional Irmese people and suggested they were “probably short people, a farming tribe who lived off okra.” Okra, part of the mallow family along with cotton, hollyhock, and hibiscus, has a long history of being a popular area food item in the South. The ladies at the Lake Murray-Irmo Woman’s Club decided that a festival focusing on okra was just the thing to jump-start the fundraising effort for a library in Irmo.
The long-standing Irmo celebration of Abelmoschus esculentus, a flowering plant in the mallow family native to West Africa but used in the cuisines of many countries, owes its beginning to Lake Murray-Irmo Woman’s Club (LMIWC), former radio broadcaster Gene McKay, and the Ancient Irmese General St...
