Bangor promises bigger bang for the Fourth

BANGOR – Friday’s Fourth of July fireworks show “will be the biggest that I know of in the history of Bangor,” according to Rick Briggs, president of Blue Hill Pyrotechnics, the company that has been organizing the show for a year and has provided Bangor’s shows for at least 10 years.

The show, which begins at 9:30 p.m. near the waterfront, will include more than 2,500 aerial shells and a 750-shot finale presentation, according to Briggs. It will require a crew of 24 people to produce.

What has made the big show possible is TV Channel 5’s donation of $15,000 toward the fireworks to match the $15,000 contributed by the community for the day’s events. Channel 5 is celebrating its 50th birthday, the first TV station in Maine to reach that milestone. “We know to whom to attribute our success – the community,” said Mike Young, vice president and general manager, “and we want to show our appreciation.”

Fourth of July activities will start bright and early with a pancake breakfast from 6 to 10 a.m. at the Brewer Auditorium. The charge will be $4 for adults and $3 for children, and the proceeds will go to the Kiwanis children’s fund.

At 10:45 a.m., a 3-kilometer family road race will take off from Acme Road in Brewer.

The parade starts at 11 a.m., also from Acme Road, and winds its way down Wilson Street, across the Joshua Chamberlain Bridge, up Main Street in Bangor to Exchange Street, and ends by the garage at Pickering Square. The grand marshal will be the Bangor Lumberjacks baseball team.

Free tours of the 65-foot U.S. Coast Guard ship Tackle will be offered from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Bangor docks. The Tackle, based out of Rockland, has a crew of eight, and is an icebreaker through the winter and repairs lighthouses in the summer, although its top priority duty is to save life and property at sea.

A free concert with the Bangor Band will be held at 7 p.m. at Paul Bunyan Park.

Then there will be the fireworks show at the waterfront. The Joshua Chamberlain Bridge will be closed to traffic so that people can view the show from the bridge, for a fee of $1.

Any changes that need to be made due to the weather will be announced on local radio.

Marla Saliba, who is chairwoman of the Bangor Fourth of July Corp., which is a committee of the Kiwanis Club, is in charge of fund raising. There are other expenses to cover besides the fireworks, Saliba said. There are some parade expenses and, she said, “just the Port-a-Potties cost $1,200 to rent.”

Raising the $15,000 to match the WABI challenge was difficult. “This has been the hardest year in many years,” she said. “Four of the larger businesses that usually give $1,000 or more can’t do it this year. They’re laying people off.” In the end, they did raise the $15,000 because the corporation received some surprise donations. She said Harley-Davidson wrote a big check this year, “with a very nice letter about honoring our soldiers.”

Saliba said she thinks they need to focus on letting people in the community know that giving just $5 or $10 will add up and make a big difference, now that the business community is weaker.

The Kiwanis Club added the Fourth of July to its basic activities, raising money for many children’s causes, about 10 to 13 years ago, Saliba said, when Bangor decided to stop organizing the event.