Fireworks beats rain with spectacular display

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Heat kept the early num­bers down dur­ing Wednes­day evening’s Siz­zle in July Fire­works Spec­tac­u­lar at Big Wal­nut High School in Sun­bury. Live enter­tain­ment played to a thin audi­ence until the crowd began to swell as the sun dropped.

But smart phones with live Doppler radar indi­cated that a storm was on the way so the 10 p.m. fire­works dis­play was moved for­ward to 9:30. The sky was still a bit light when the first rock­ets went up, but storm clouds and advanc­ing dark­ness made for a spec­tac­u­lar pyrotech­nics display.

New this year, the high school’s senior park­ing lot came alive with four hours of live, on-stage enter­tain­ment before the fire­works show. Spec­ta­tors enjoyed the sounds of YESS Youth Enter­tain­ment, Dori-Kay Strom, Simba Jor­dan, the high school’s 15 Min­utes of Fame win­ners, PopArazzi and (“Hello, Ohio!”) NylonPink.

There were also con­ces­sion ven­dors and free bounce houses for kids.

Those seek­ing pop and patri­otic music (and air-conditioning) went inside the high school for the Big Wal­nut Com­mu­nity Cho­rus per­for­mance. The con­cert fea­tured tunes such as Elvis’s Don’t Be Cruel, ABBA’s Danc­ing Queen, tunes by Irv­ing Berlin, and, in keep­ing with the occa­sion, patri­otic favorites such as Amer­ica, the Beau­ti­ful, My Coun­try ‘Tis of Thee and The Bat­tle Hymn of the Republic.

As always, the longest por­tion of the evening was leav­ing the high school fol­low­ing the fire­works dis­play – hun­dreds of cars and only two exits.

The 2012 Inde­pen­dence Day Com­mu­nity Fire­works were spon­sored by the Sunbury/Big Wal­nut Area Cham­ber of Com­merce, the Vil­lage of Sun­bury, Sun­bury Chi­ro­prac­tic Cen­ter, Vision Con­cept Tech­nol­ogy, Amer­i­can Showa, Ulti­mate Tech­nol­ogy & Secu­rity Solu­tions, Imme­di­ate Health Associates/Sunbury Urgent Care, Feazel Roof­ing Com­pany, Jack­son Farms, Cel­lar Lum­ber & Roof­ing Sup­ply, Mud­flats Bar & Grill, Eagle Auto Repair, For­man Mini-Storage, BST&G Fire­fight­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, Molly’s Flow­ers & More, Jour­ney Fel­low­ship, DeVore/Snyder Funeral Homes and Sun­bury VFW Post 8736.

Posted by Gary Henery on Jul 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.