SOUTHWICK – The Celebrate Southwick 250th Committee held their monthly meeting on Monday night at the Southwick Town Hall.
The committee spoke with representatives of Southwoods, a publishing company in town, about a logo for the milestone. Southwoods also offered to the committee some ideas for them to do a banner for the celebration.
Southwoods’ proposal is to create six to eight different banners to be hung throughout town, rather than just having one banner. Committee Chairman Jim Putnam reminded the rest of the committee that not everyone’s idea can be on the logo or the banner.
“It’s an image that stands for something,” said Putnam. “We can’t incorporate everybody’s idea.”
A motion was then made by the committee to approve the ideas presented by Southwoods and allow them to go forward with their design of the logo and banner.
The board members of the 250th Committee discuss their thoughts. (Photo by Greg Fitzpatrick)
The progress of each of the work groups was then discussed. Putnam noted that the outreach and social media work group is planning to launch the Celebrate Southwick 250th Facebook page by January 2.
Freda Brown then went through the list of events that the Events work group has come up with. The events include a First Night in Southwick, which would be on New Year’s Eve December 31, 2019 and would be at Woodland School as well as the Southwick Recreation Center. There would be family events and an opportunity for adults to head to restaurants and bars later in the night. Other events are a winter carnival in December of 2019, a pub crawl on St. Patrick’s Day in March of 2020, a boat parade in the summer of 2020, and more.
Lee Hamburg spoke about the Historical Content work group as he’s looking to create a historical book that covers the 250 years of Southwick history. Hamburg is looking for anyone in the community to give the committee any historical photos they may have to use for the book.
Marcus Phelps, a member of the Parade work group, went over the different elements of the parade that will take place on October 10, 2020. Eras and items to be included are the 1700’s, 1800’s, 1900’s, 2000’s, a September 11 float, having the neighbors of Southwick, as well as getting businesses and organizations involved.
Phelps also has an idea to get Southwick involved with their neighbors next door.
“We want to put a float in the Westfield parade,” said Phelps.
Westfield is having a parade in May as part of their own celebration for 350 years of being a city.
In April of 2018, the Select Board announced that they were looking to form a committee to work on the 250th anniversary project. In 2020, the town of Southwick will be celebrating their 250th anniversary. The town was incorporated as a separate community on November 7, 1770.
