Princeton Times

Opinion

Discussion

June 29, 2012

Our view: Thanks for lighting Princeton's July 4th sky

Princeton Times

PRINCETON — After four dark Independence Days, Princeton will light up Fourth of July celebrations Wednesday. Fireworks will once again burst and glisten over Hunnicutt Stadium Wednesday, thanks to a generous collaboration between the Princeton Rescue Squad, the City of Princeton, the Princeton-Mercer County Chamber of Commerce, and several other organizations and citizens who opened their hearts and bank accounts to bring the July 4th tradition back to life.

We owe these organizations and neighbors a bright thank you, as big as the finale fireworks that are sure to explode over our city to brilliantly end a beautiful day of classic cars, talented musicians and old-fashioned community fun.

Thanks to them, this July 4th, we’ll enjoy a part of our culture that we’ve missed since the fireworks went dark. While we longed for the sparkling red explosions, brilliant blues and glistening golds of the fireworks, we missed a lot more than the twinkling lights and rumbling explosions that saluted the wars it has taken to keep our country free.

We’ve missed the times when rain almost dampened the celebrations, but we still watched under umbrellas as long as the pyrotechnic equipment was dry enough to launch the lovely explosions that made us proud, and we’ve longingly recalled the times we roasted through the revelry when the weather was warm enough to see the heat radiating off the pavement before dusk.

For many of us, the Independence Day celebration became a way to mark the years. We watched our families grow and looked forward to experiencing the show with people who knew us and our hometown better than anyone else, because their hearts were at home here too, even though their bodies sometimes resided elsewhere on other days of the year.

Here’s hoping that this July 4th celebration is bigger than Princeton has ever known and that the joy we find inside it will ignite a newly recalled pride in our hometown and its ability to make our home the place we want it to be.

Each year since 2008, the outcry proved that we wanted fireworks, and the Princeton Rescue Squad, City of Princeton and PMCCC joined forces to bring the celebration we loved back to the city we also love, even through the disappointment of dim nights and big issues that fireworks can’t fix.

Kudos to each of these organizations and thanks to each of the individuals behind the scenes, who worked tirelessly to make our community a brighter, livelier, more beautiful place this July 4.

Happy Independence Day!

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