Concord Bicentennial committee sets event schedule

The Concord Bicentennial Steering Committee will be partnering with the Dairy Festival planners to stage a tug of war competition on Friday, June 1. The event will take place on the grass patch next to the old fire hall on Franklin Street and is scheduled to begin at 6:15 p.m.

Participants in the town of Concord pull will be eligible to compete in the tri-town tug of war on June 24 against Eden and Hamburg. All three Western New York communities are celebrating their 200th birthdays this year.

The contest is open to adults and teenagers, both men and women. There is no fee or pre-registration required.

The painting of fire hydrants along Franklin Street and around Fiddlers Green Park has been moved forward to May 21 and 22. Springville-Griffith Institute High School art students will paint the hydrants red, white and blue using 11th grader Mary Kate Wirfel’s bicentennial design.

The bicentennial window painting event is set for May 24 and 25 and will utilize nearly two dozen downtown storefronts. Students from St. Aloysius, Springville Elementary School, Springville Middle School and the S-GI High School will compete for cash prizes.

A bicentennial display event has been added to the Saturday, June 2 Dairy Festival and will take place in and around the town hall on Franklin Street between noon and 5 p.m. Among the planned activities is the opportunity for community members to drop off items for the time capsule that is scheduled to be buried in October.

Events making up the town hall display include author Jeff Miller’s revisiting his talk from the first Lyceum Speaker Series on Glenn “Pop” Warner at 12:30 p.m. Barb Bohneberg and the Fiddlers Green Band will perform a musical set at 1:30 p.m. and again at 4. Derek Otto will present an updated version of his bicentennial slide show at 2:30 and 4:30 p.m.

The first copies of the new book “Springville” have arrived off the presses of Arcadia Publishing. Authored by town of Concord residents Alan Manchester and David Batterson, the text, which features nearly 200 photos, will go on sale during the Dairy Festival.

WSPQ radio has been playing one-minute selections from a series of historic snippets recorded by Manchester several years ago. Fred Haier, the longtime voice of 1330 AM, features these bits of local trivia during his 9 a.m. news update Monday - Friday.