20 years ago, the Hat Bet was Trump’s
Long before Donald Trump became synonymous with the red “Make America Great Again” hat, people in Waynesburg came to associate him with a different cap entirely.
In the borough office window, flanked by Kent Tekulve’s Pirates cap and actor William Sanderson’s cowboy hat, sits a white ballcap bearing the words “Trump Taj Mahal.”
It dates back to 2005, when Donald Trump — future president, then-new host of “The Apprentice” who was still known primarily as owner of the Taj Mahal casino — was the celebrity Hat Bet contestant in Waynesburg’s annual Rain Day festival.
Since 1939, the Hat Bet tradition has roped in local, state and national luminaries willing to ante up and make a bet with the borough’s mayor over whether or not it will rain on July 29.
The final choice of celebrity resides with the mayor.
County Commissioner Blair Zimmerman, then Waynesburg’s mayor, remembered getting a call from Rudy Marisa, who coached Waynesburg University’s men’s basketball team for more than 35 years.
More importantly at that moment, he was the father of Autumn Marisa — 1997 Miss Rain Day, 2002 Miss Pennsylvania, and then serving as Lady Luck at Trump’s Atlantic City casinos, where she served as spokeswoman for a year and hosted Trump’s birthday party.
“Rudy called me and said, ‘Hey, I have a connection with Donald Trump. Would you be interested in making a deal with him?'” Zimmerman said. “I said, ‘Sure.'”
Marisa didn’t make the contact directly, reaching out through her boss, the general manager at the Taj Mahal.
The answer came back: The bet was on.
As has usually been the case with national celebrities, Trump did not make the trip to Waynesburg himself.
On a mostly rainless day, the outcome of the bet hinged on 2:43 p.m. As the Observer-Reporter recorded at the time, several people near the courthouse told late Police Chief Timothy Hawfield they’d experienced rain — one drop on a bald head, or three on a shirt. (Miss Rain Day also attested to rain, though Hawfield did not factor in her account due to the inherent conflict of interest.)
Despite the narrow margin of victory, as far as Zimmerman can recall, the hat bet was paid up without dispute.
After 20 years and two terms as president, Trump carries a whole new set of associations. As to whether he’s ever struck by the oddity of seeing contentious issues pop up on the news involving someone he once won a hat bet against, Zimmerman said, “I don’t really think about it.”
When Marisa first worked with Trump, posting a photo of the two of them on Facebook would get an instant flood of likes. She’d be more hesitant now that Trump has become such a polarizing figure, “because you never know what people are going to say.”
She met him a couple of times in person in 2005. While Rain Day never came up in conversation, he was “even nicer than I expected,” Marisa said, as was his wife, Melania.
The experience of hobnobbing with Trump and celebrities like Pamela Anderson was “surreal and cool,” she said.
She’s also proud of her part in Rain Day. Winning the Rain Day pageant had been a goal of hers since she was a small girl. The several times it took her to win taught her tenacity and grit, she said, and set her on the course to become Miss Pennsylvania.
She also won the umbrella decorating contest for Rain Day, which she called “the biggest night of the summer.”
“”You couldn’t wait for that day to go up and see everybody, hang out,” she said. “That’s such an important part of my childhood and my memories, and just being part of that history too, through being Miss Rain Day and being able to bring Donald Trump,” she said. “At the time, that was somebody pretty cool to have, and looking back now, it’s even cooler.”
She’s even gotten a suggestion from her kids: “You should message him and see if he’ll do it again.”