Another Quiet 4th In Newtown —

Will There Be

Fireworks Next Year?

By Steve Bigham

It has been 17 years since Newtown last put on a fireworks display, yet residents still call the Parks and Recreation department each summer asking what time the show starts.

There is no show in Newtown, the Parks and Recreation staff tells callers.

But there appears to be a movement afoot to bring the annual event back to the skies over Newtown.

Assistant Parks and Recreation Director Rayae Giampetruzzi is hoping to bring them back next year.

“People are always asking where are the fireworks in Newtown. We always tell them there are no fireworks in Newtown. But I’m trying to bring them back,” she said this week.

Longtime residents of Newtown will remember the days when there was a fireworks show –– one of the biggest and best in the area.

On or about Independence Day each summer, Dickinson Park was the place to be as the town-sponsored pyrotechnics show drew thousands of residents to Elm Drive to recognize the birth of the nation with a bang.

The best place to watch the evening show was in the area around the Dickinson pool, where ground shows provided entertainment in between the sky boomers, but others watched the event from the large hill at the Newtown Country Club, which overlooks the park. Others watched from the field behind Village Cemetery and from various other surrounding points.

But those days are long gone. The fireworks show, put on by the Newtown Summer Festival, fizzled out after 1985.

The annual event, one of only a few each year that brought the entire community together, came to an end in the spring of 1986 when the town’s police commission voted unanimously not to issue a fireworks permit to the Newtown Summer Festival. It cited increased risks to spectators, difficulty getting emergency vehicles into the park, and problems with securing liability insurance.

At the time, Police Chief Louis Marchese said there were also problems with traffic and private citizens setting off additional fireworks at the golf course.

The Newtown Summer Festival then went to the Board of Education for permission to hold the event at Newtown High School, but was denied for similar reasons.

To go along with the evening fireworks, the Newtown Summer Festival also organized other events at the park, including a field day, hot air balloon rides, and swimming activities. According to Debbie Tendler, a former president of the festival committee, that was cancelled too.

“When the fireworks were no longer, the picnic made no sense,” she explained. “It’s certainly not the same any more.”

Newtown also once held an annual block party in the Queen Street shopping center during the month of August. Interest in that event faded around the same time the fireworks were stopped.

So what about a fireworks return in Newtown? Almost every other town in the area has some sort of Fourth of July celebration.

“You’d have to find a really good location. I don’t know if Dickinson Park would be the place for it,” noted Parks and Recreation Director Barbara Kasbarian. “We’re running out of space in Newtown. We need a place where they can shoot them off and an area where people can watch them from.”

Assistant Fire Marshall Bill Halstead said Fairfield Hills would be the obvious location. The show could be seen from points all over town and the pyrotechnics would light up the Borough.