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Fireworks History Part 2!

From our Fireworks master Jill Doczi comes the second installment of how the Independence Day Fireworks funded by individual contributions came about:

“July 2011: Our first authorized show in 2010, organized by our Ocean Park Civic League president, Rick Mercadante, was a huge hit. In his words, “We started the summer by celebrating our nation’s birth with a fantastic fireworks display that exceeded all expectations. I was proud of the way our neighborhood came together in a grassroots effort to make this happen. What a great country to live in, and even better, what a great neighborhood we live in.

Rick’s accomplishment set the ball in motion for our new, safer tradition, and it did indeed accomplish the goal of curbing the night-long illegal fireworks along our beach. However, at the end of his commitment to our country, he received his final call — to Djibouti. Before he left, Rick asked me to take on his project. If someone didn’t keep it rolling, we wouldn’t have a fireworks celebration of our country’s independence anymore on our beach.

As a child, fireworks seemed magical to me. The anticipation of the explosions followed by the surprise of colorful displays were a once-a-year treat in Roanoke if we were lucky enough to have someone drive us downtown, find parking, squeeze into bleachers with thousands of others and watch our city display over a football field. At the time Rick asked me, I had small children who had only ever known the un-hassled Independence Day tradition of walking down to the beach with family and friends to watch fireworks with reflections on the water and the sound of waves as the backdrop to our “Ooooos” and “Ahhhhhs.” I wanted them to grow up with those memories. I agreed with hesitation. Little did we know, this would be a learning year.”

Donate: www.opcl.org

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Thank You Note from Coren Huff to Ocean Park

Dear Sponsors of the Ocean Park Civic League’s George Lyon Memorial Scholarship,

I would like to share my deepest gratitude for your scholarship. It will help me greatly in the years to come! Money has been the greatest hurdle for my family to send me to college. I am deeply touched by your generosity to us overcome this obstacle. I am thrilled to start the next chapter of my life studying at my dream university, Virginia Tech, and carry the values of service and community into my studies and future endeavors.
Rest assured that, with your help, I will one day sit in your position and provide my own scholarship to students like myself,

Thanking you again,

Coren Huff

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Ocean Park Scholarship Winner: Coren Huff

First of all thank you to this year’s volunteers on the Scholarship Committee: Natalie McIntyre, Rachael Beutler, and Blair Valdivieso from committee chair Betty Dierstein. She says, “We had 20  applications and it takes time to read and evaluate each packet so I appreciate the time they spent in helping make this selection. This year’s recipient is Coren Huff who is graduating from the Global Studies and World Language Academy at Tallwood High School. She will be attending Virginia Tech in the fall majoring in International Relations and Spanish with a minor in Ecological Cities. She has a 4.233 grade pt average and volunteered over 400 hours with her church and other groups. She also works a part-time job, is a member of the Global Studies Honor Society, participated in the US Youth Ambassador Study Abroad Program, the Junior World Affairs Council at Tallwood, was  a member of the National Spanish Honor Society-just to name a few of her activities. Some of the awards she has received: AP Scholar of Distinction, Future World Language Educator Award, Virginia Seal of Biliteracy in Spanish and English and the Global World Studies Butterfly Effect Award.  In her essay, Coren mentions the Butterfly Effect ” the idea that small, seemingly trivial events may ultimately result in something with much larger consequences.“- a fitting characterization of the effect achieved by volunteer service.”
Betty attended the Tallwood Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, June 10 to present the scholarship award to Coren. She reports that Coren is a personable, polite and very grateful student!” Congratulations to Coren!

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The Story Behind the Ocean Park Fireworks: Part 1!

Jill Doczi tells the story of how our fireworks show came about:

In the past, neighbors celebrated the day of our nation’s independence starting at sundown and continuing into the early morning hours with their own fireworks on the beaches. From Little Creek Amphibious Base to First Landing State Park, we had a stunning array of light and sound from everything between small sparklers and thousands-of-dollars mini-shows, all illegal, but impressive as a whole for a community.

Over the years, the word spread, and people from outside the community flocked to participate. Sometimes those people showed up a little under-the-influence, excited to share their self-taught pyrotechnic skills. Sometimes they didn’t care as much about the safety of neighbors and sometimes they didn’t have the skills they thought they did — resulting errant shots into dry dune grass, onto roofs and into crowds. Hundreds of fireworks shooting in all directions up and down the beach did start to resemble a war movie.

In 2009, we experienced the Great Fireworks Crackdown. Due to some serious safety issues from the previous year, the city launched a very militant effort to stop the illegal use of fireworks on the Fourth of July along the Shore Drive beaches. In addition to increased beach patrols, they staged police and fire marshal staff at every access entrance. They checked coolers, bags and buggies for explosives and meted out severe penalties. It worked. Fireworks celebrations of Independence Day appeared to have ended on our beaches.

The community realized that maybe it had gotten out-of-hand and unsafe, but we weren’t willing to give up the tradition. How could we celebrate our country in the same patriotic way that centuries of Americans before us have, while not setting each other and our neighborhoods on fire?

In 2010, our then civic league president, Rick Mercadante, proposed we raise funds for a professional show. The city agreed. Word-of-mouth and a loan from the civic league launched our first authorized fireworks show in July 2010.

Donate: www.opcl.org

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Interim Changes to Shore Dr.?

Councilman Schulman, OPCL Pres. Danny Murphy, Mr. Hank Morrison, Phil Pullen, Phil Koetter, Rick Loman, Kathy Warren and Phil Davenport of the BAC.

President Danny Murphy recently participated an onsite meeting with Councilman Schulman, the Bayfront Advisory Commission leadership and city planners to explore the construction of a temporary  patchwork to create stopgap contiguous sidewalks for improved pedestrian safety along Shore Dr. As feared the 2023-2024 city budget defunded our long-promised Phase 4 Shore Drive Improvement Project, further delaying the construction of a modern roadway including improved curbs, multi-use path, and sidewalks.

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Beach Season Reminders

After Memorial Day until after 6:00 pm on Labor Day dogs are allowed on the beach only before 10:00 am and after 6:00 pm. According to Beach Rules Virginia Beach Gov.com : “Dogs can be off leash on the beach so long as they are firmly under their caretaker’s control so as not to disturb other people or dogs”.

Some reminders about “golf carts” in our community. Although some communities in the area are designated golf cart communities, Ocean Park is not a designated or approved golf cart community. Because of this, to drive lawfully on the streets of Ocean Park golf carts must be street-legal electric vehicles as defined by state and city law. This means they must meet all the vehicular requirements, be titled, registered with low-speed license plates from DMV and covered by minimum insurance requirements. They may only be operated by drivers with a valid license or learner’s permit and the driver must follow all the same rules of the road as a normal vehicle. (Virginia Beach Codes of Ordinance: Sec. 7: 65-68 ).

It’s growing! The newly planted dune grass is looking beautiful! But it serves a very important purpose: to catch the sand to build and maintain the dunes. The deep roots also anchor the dunes and help preserve the dunes. Please stay off the dunes and allow the grass to get established!

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Why Are the Fireworks on the 1st of July this year?

It bears repeating that the time and effort involved in arranging the fireworks every year for Ocean Park and the bayfront is considerable and is accomplished by people donating their time, chiefly of course is Jill Doczi. The short answer to the question of why the fireworks are on the 1st this year is: it saves a lot of money. The fireworks are funded exclusively through donations. None of the money raised goes into the civic league. Please donate to the fireworks fund!! (though by supporting the civic league you are contributing to the administrative costs and supporting the fireworks also). In recent years fireworks by other civic leagues along the water have been discontinued.. it takes a lot of work to get it done!

The longer story of why this saves money is interesting. Jill says: “There is an enormous barge shortage due to some major long-term construction projects in the midAtlantic concluding HRBT and CBBT. So much so that it took us and our contacts in Special Events at the city several months of working together to locate the correct type and size of ocean-going barge last year. The city and our show lost our long-term fireworks vendor over it because he was afraid he would be left with no income at all on the fourth and accepted some land shows. It was so nerve-wracking looking and being disappointed over the three months we searched that I almost quit 3 times. We were convinced there would be no fireworks in Virginia Beach at all several times. Anyway, the city finally located one. Because of that we piggybacked on the barge use last year and will this year.” We had two choices: “do the turnaround from the 3rd to the 4th and pay all that crew overtime (all of these people have to have Homeland Security clearance, State Polic clearance, fire marshal approval set. They can’t just find some employees at a temp agency) or have one load-in on the 1st or 2nd for $10,000 cheaper. Definitely save the $10,000 was the way we went. Considering that the 1st fell on a Saturday, the consensus was choose Saturday.”

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