CelebratING THE COUNTRY’S 250th

Rockbridge Gets In The Act With Traditional, New Events

Get ready to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence - Rockbridge style.

This upcoming Fourth of July weekend will be filled with the traditional local activities, but with some new events added as the area joins the country in marking its 250th anniversary.

There will also be nods to this area’s celebration of the bicentennial, complete with a time capsule reveal.

The events start on July 3, as usual in recent years, with the Freedom Food Festival, and then pick back up early in the morning on July 4 with Balloons Over Rockbridge and a new event in Buena Vista.

Hold on to your holiday hats.

Freedom Food Festival

The Freedom Food Festival, running from 5 to 10 p.m. on Friday, is once more taking over Main Street in Lexington with chef-prepared picnic fare and free concerts.

The festival is more than an exciting evening street festival; it is a tasty fundraising event. Celebrity chefs, caterers, and restaurants are paired with seven nonprofit organizations to create July 4th picnic-style fare. Festival-goers support the nonprofits when they exchange their cook-off meal ticket for the food of their choice.

Tables with seating for eight may be reserved online while supplies last.

• Lexington Catering Company is partnering with three nonprofits. Chef Laurie Macrae will prepare Blue Heron spicy fried noodles topped with savory grilled tofu and zesty lime Asian slaw to benefit Boxerwood Education Association. The Community Table of Rockbridge and celebrity chef Ginger Bomar will serve grilled chicken, peach chutney, corn fritters, and summer slaw. Celebrity chef Steve Landgraf will lead the Yellow Brick Road Early Learning Center team to create barbecue chicken sandwiches with sweet onion marmalade, roasted potatoes, and tomatocucumber salad.

• Friends of Natural Bridge State Park hope to be rewarded for the efforts of park manager Jim Jones and C.H.E.F.S. Catering, who are preparing Virginia whiskey and ginger pulled pork on a pretzel roll with crispy onion straws, Alabama white barbecue sauce, Maine lobster mac and cheese, Tennessee hillbilly slaw, and a watermelon wedge.

• Cooking for Rockbridge Habitat for Humanity is celebrity chef Lynne Johnson and Lexington Mercantile. Together they are preparing smoked pork belly, Asian slaw, Route 44 Chips, and a berry salad.

• Pure Eats is paired with Coach Travis Roadcap to prepare Angus burgers topped with cheddar or blue cheese, caramelized onion and garlic aioli, deviled eggs, potato salad and donut holes. Their nonprofit is Rockbridge County High School Wildcats baseball team.

• Celebrity chef Tara Rodi is paired with El Muchacho Alegre to serve beef and chicken tacos, nachos with ceviche, rice, and beans on behalf of Rockbridge SPCA.

Cook-off meal tickets and table reservations are available at FreedomFoodFestival.com. Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 the day of the event, which may be purchased by cash or credit card at the food tent of your choice. Tables for eight are $300 and must be reserved by June 28.

Aside from the cook-off meals, there are payas- you-go opportunities. For example, kids are likely to enjoy a hot dog and popcorn served on a Frisbee and benefiting Hull’s Angels, Inc. They will also be treated to a snow cone with their meal. Treat yourself to a slice of homemade pie and a scoop of ice cream benefiting Friends of Rockbridge Swimming, Inc. Stay hydrated with water and non-alcoholic beverages benefiting Team Na-Na Sports.

Festival-goers may purchase wristbands for $3 and enjoy restaurant-purchased alcoholic beverages on Main Street and within the festival footprint. Drinks must be consumed from a restaurant-branded container from Brew Ridge Taps, Haywood’s, Heliotrope Brewery, Juniper Lounge, NapaThai, Prontro Gelateria, Sweet Treats Bakery, TAPS, or The Palms.

Three bands are performing live on Main Street – for free for Freedom Food Festival.

Kicking things off at 5:15 p.m. is The Late Night Stumblers, a local Rockbridge County group with a dedicated regional following. Praised by NPR as one of the top 10 artists thriving in Bluegrass music, Mason Via takes the stage at 6:45 p.m. The festival headliner, Cordovas, out of Nashville, Tenn., plays at 8:30 p.m. The two-man band of songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Joe Firstman and guitarist/vocalist Lucca Soria delivers a rock show that bends soulful harmony, poetic craft, and jam-band style cosmic improvisation.

Freedom Food Festival is a free familyfriendly event and it will go on rain or shine. No coolers or outside alcohol are permitted. Because of the expected heat, large crowds, loud music, and temping food, festival attendees are asked to leave their dogs at home.

For more information about Freedom Food Festival, to go FreedomFoodFestival.com.

At Glen Maury

A huge crowd is anticipated at the Independence Day celebration this Saturday, July 4, atop Inspiration Hill at Glen Maury Park in Buena Vista.

“I’d like to see 1,000 people show up,” said Ron Cash, chief organizer for the semiquincentennial celebration and a member of City Council, at last week’s City Council meeting. “Things are coming together nicely.”

Festivities are to begin at 8 a.m. Those attending will gather around a new 12-foot-by-18-foot flag that was raised last week. They will join in singing patriotic songs and hear speakers sharing what it means to them to be observing the country’s 250th anniversary.

Cash is to serve as master of ceremonies. He’ll introduce the special guests, including keynote speaker Jay Brown, a retired senior master sergeant with the U.S. Air Force and a 1975 graduate of Parry McCluer High School.

Dr. Ben Gaughran, director of choral activities and assistant professor of music at Southern Virginia University, will lead the music. Among the selections will be the National Anthem, “My Country ‘Tis Of Thee” and “America the Beautiful.”

A 21-gun salute will be undertaken by the Lynchburg American Legion. Buena Vista Post 126 of the American Legion will lead the flag-raising ceremony.

A highlight of the morning’s celebration will be revealing the contents of a bicentennial time capsule that was buried in 1976 outside the Municipal Building and recently dug up.

A new time capsule was to be buried during the celebration but that has been postponed until Labor Day. Police Chief David Clements recently enlisted the city’s school children to offer suggestions for the contents of the new time capsule that won’t be opened until the nation’s 300th, or tercentennial, anniversary in 2076.

The large new American flag is to be raised atop the temporary wooden flagpole. A fundraising campaign is being launched to raise $14,000 to buy an aluminum 60-foot-tall flagpole that will be erected by next July 4 in 2027. Sponsors will be asked to pay $200 for one of the 50 stars or $500 for one of the 13 stripes.

Also on July 4 at Glen Maury Park, there will be live music in the evening by the Party Crasher Band at the multi-purpose pavilion behind the Paxton House. The Independence Day celebration will culminate with fireworks at nightfall.

Bike Parade

The 41st annual Children’s Bike Parade will take place in downtown Lexington on Saturday.

Coordinated by Main Street Lexington, this beloved annual event features kids on bicycles and tricycles, babies in strollers, and special guest Uncle Sam leading the way. Well-behaved dogs on leashes are also welcome.

Children ages 12 and under, along with their accompanying adult, are invited to come down to The Hub at 314 S. Main St., adjacent to Oak Grove Cemetery, beginning at 9 a.m. Kids will receive free decorations to adorn their vehicles, including flags, balloons, and streamers. Additionally, face painting and a Fourth of July tattoo station will be part of the pre-parade festivities.

The parade steps off at 10 a.m., with Uncle Sam leading bikes down Main Street to the Washington and Lee University Corral parking lot on Jefferson Street. Free hot dogs, drinks and water will be available courtesy of the Mountain City Mason Lodge No. 67, along with fresh watermelon provided by The Georges.

The parade will take place in fair weather or light drizzle. Heavy rain or lightning will cause its cancellation. Notification of cancellation will be provided by 8:30 a.m. on the Main Street Lexington website (www.mainstreetlexington. org) and MSL Facebook page (www.facebook.com/mainstreetlexington).

‘Birthday Wishes For America’

After the bike parade, at 11 a.m., the Rockbridge Historical Society and Rockbridge250 will welcome area residents to celebrate America’s 250th birthday in the newly renovated Courthouse Square in Lexington.

There, they will stage an open mic inviting residents to share and record community memories that look 50 years back to the 1976 Bicentennial, or to announce their “Birthday Wishes for America” come the nation’s Tercentennial in 2076.

Those reflections and readings will be capped off by sharing 250 cupcakes donated by Sweet Treats in a noon toast to this year’s landmark anniversary.

As part of its continued community archiving projects, RHS seeks to bridge older and younger generations by interweaving these warm retrospectives, and hopeful projections, with a local emphasis on Buena Vista, Lexington, and Rockbridge.

In addition to those recollections shared with known and new neighbors, area residents and descendants are also invited to write down memories, or to bring photos and memorabilia for show-and-tell, or commemorative items that might also be added to RHS’ permanent collections for preservation, or placed in the time capsule to be buried outside the Rockbridge Regional Library, to be opened in 2076.

Volunteered memories from the crowd will be balanced by selected readings from local community leaders, and younger students. Together, they’ll voice excerpts from founding documents of American democracy, such as “The Declaration of Independence” and 1786 “Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.” Others draw from Frederick Douglass’ famous “5th of July Speech” in 1852, with its emancipatory call for the United States to more fully deliver on Thomas Jefferson’s assertion that “all men are created equal.”

Passages from “Liberty, Further Extended,” a 1776 sermon delivered by African American preacher Lemuel Haynes, will complement quotations from the 1848 “Declaration of Sentiments” read by suffragists at the Seneca Falls Convention, and 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920, extending voting rights to women. There will also be other more contemporary poems and songs that voice American freedoms, with lyrics ranging from Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, to Bob Dylan and Maya Angelou, to the hit musical “Hamilton” and Amanda Gorman’s speech, “The Hill We Climb,” written for the 2021 Presidential Inauguration.

RHS will also display one of the four panels of the 150-square “1976 Rockbridge Bicentennial Quilt” that was created by local women’s groups before touring the state five decades ago. Those colorful, hand-sewn squares will couple with posters from the RHS Museum’s current exhibit on the 1976 TransAmerican “Bikecentennial,” during which cyclists riding 4,250 miles along U.S. Route 76 traversed a 50-mile stretch in Rockbridge, and the neighboring half-mile descent down Main Street, itself.

For questions and more information, to volunteer for a reading, or to discuss materials you’d like to bring to display or donate, contact RHS’ Executive Director Eric Wilson at [email protected], or call (540) 260-5091.

At NBSP

In the shadow of the Natural Bridge, the Declaration of Independence will ring out once more to celebrate 250 years since the American Revolution began.

Natural Bridge State Park is having “A Reading of the Declaration of Independence” on July 4 from 1 to 2 p.m. There will be interpreters in historical dress and a dramatic reading under the Bridge itself of the document penned by the first American owner of the Natural Bridge, Thomas Jefferson.

This event is free with park admission; bench seating is available for the talk. This event would not be possible without the support of the Friends of Natural Bridge State Park.

From 8 to 10 a.m., a nearly century-long tradition continues as the Natural Bridge is bathed in light, as it is the last Saturday night of every month, plus holiday weekends, April through October.

The visitor center will be open until 9 p.m. and the trail until 10 p.m., with light snacks for sale. Ticket sales will end at 9:40 p.m. The trail beyond the Natural Bridge will be closed.

For any questions, call the visitor center at (540) 291-1326.

Up, Up And Away

The Balloons Over Rockbridge Hot Air Balloon and Music Festival returns to celebrate the Fourth of July weekend with an extra patriotic twist this year: a nod to the country’s 250th anniversary.

The festival has become a staple of ringing in Independence Day, with majestic hot air balloon flights over the Shenandoah countryside. This year, several additions to the festival celebrate the USA’s milestone birthday, including a giant American flag, celebratory music and décor, and a 250th-themed banquet dinner for pilots, sponsors and crew.

Of course, the star of the show remains the hot air balloon rides. Sunrise and sunset flights are scheduled to launch both days, or you can opt for a tethered ride both afternoons to stick a little closer to the ground.

But if you do have jitters about soaring so high, co-chair of the Balloons Over Rockbridge board Dee Miriello says you’ll get over them pretty quickly. “I’m not crazy about heights, but it’s awesome. You’re up there, looking around going, ‘Oh my gosh. I didn’t know that was there’,” Miriello says. “You get over your fear of heights just because it’s so peaceful.”

Planned flights take off from the Oak Hill Property at the Virginia Horse Center at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Reservations are required and flights cost $350 per person.

Tethered rides launch on both afternoons from 4 to 7 p.m. at $25 per adult and $20 for children under 10 on a first-come first-served basis. At 9 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday nights, a fleet of balloons will light up the sky during the annual Ed McDaniel Memorial Balloon Glow.

All flights will launch weather permitting, and the festival is rain or shine. “Our pilots are all very safety conscious,” Miriello says. “If the winds are more than 7 mph, they won’t go. If there’s a storm within an hour, they won’t go.”

There’s still plenty to do, even if weather keeps the balloons grounded. During the day, kids can enjoy a play zone, as well as the chance to climb into a real balloon basket for cool photo ops on the ground. For adults, there’s a beer garden, music, vendors and food trucks.

This year’s music lineup includes Fatty Lumpkin and the Love Hogs from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, followed by Half Brassed Brass Band from 5:30 to 6, and The Mojo Parker Express from 6 to 9 p.m. Sunday’s lineup features Hoss & the Special Soss from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m., the Half Brassed Brass Band from 5:30 to 6, and Midnight Blue from 6 to 9.

Admission to the festival and parking are free. Leashed dogs are welcome.

The festival, which originated with the Sunrise Rotary Club of Lexington and held at Virginia Military Institute, is now in its 10th year under the auspices of the Balloons Over Rockbridge nonprofit, though COVID-19 forced its cancellation in 2020. Professional balloon pilots come to Lexington from all up and down the East Coast to create the beloved spectacle.

Miriello says it takes an army of planners, volunteers and crew to make the event a success. Football parents from Rockbridge County High School are tasked with helping with parking and local volunteers jump in to help crew.

“A lot of the pilots bring their own crew, but then we have somebody on our board who gets additional crew from anywhere else she can find them,” Miriello says.

The event serves as a fundraiser for several local charities chosen by the board each year. This year’s recipients include Meals on Wheels, Unity for Kids, Street Ransom (devoted to sex trafficking awareness), and the Mary Carol Moore Scholarship Fund at Parry McCluer High School.

BUENA VISTA’s bicentennial time capsule buried in 1976 is pulled out of the ground outside the Municipal Building. The contents of the 50-year-old time capsule will be revealed at the city’s July 4 celebration atop Inspiration Hill at Glen Maury Park this Saturday morning. (Ron Cash photo)