JEFFERSON – Tina Fuller couldn’t help smiling as she watched people make their way into Giddings Park in Jefferson for the opening ceremony of the America 250 – Ashtabula County festival.
Several years of dedication and planning were coming to fruition just as Fuller and the festival committee had hoped.
“This is absolutely a dream come true,” Fuller, a member of the America 250 – Ashtabula County Committee, said. “It’s been about three years in the making, and it’s so much fun to see everybody just smiling and enjoying it, especially that parade. The parade was magical.”
The festival brought together people from every community in Ashtabula County.
“It was always the goal,” Fuller said. “This is the County Seat, and we wanted it to be an Ashtabula County celebration of the semiquincentennial. We are very grateful that the weather cooperated and the organizations came together and people really, I think, wanted to celebrate this.”
The opening ceremony followed a parade that lasted more than an hour. People all along the parade route could be seen in red, white and blue clothing while waving American flags.
“It was the Americana feel that we wanted and we were able to bring that together and everybody that is participating with us said that’s what this is about,” Fuller said.
The one-day festival included a number of kids’ activities, the Walk of Time, reenactors portraying James A. Garfield and Abraham Lincoln among others, food trucks and craft vendors and culminated in a fireworks display.
“I am looking forward to seeing my grandson smile and enjoying himself as well as everybody here and then the fireworks tonight,” Fuller said. “It’s just going to be a fun day.”
Despite extreme temperatures and annual festivals hosted in a number of communities in the county, the festival was well attended.
“I think that there’s enough to go around,” Fuller said. “We don’t want to take away from anybody else. This is a one-time, once-in-a-generation celebration. We are fully supportive of all the other cities and communities that do their celebrations. We just wanted to make sure that the county marked the occasion.”
Ashtabula County Commissioner J.P. Ducro IV thanked visitors to the festival on behalf of the commissioners during the opening ceremony.
“We would like to thank you for being here today and coming together to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our nation and the communities, families, organizations and people who make Ashtabula County such a great place to call home,” Ducro said. “We also want to thank Mayor Steven Sekanina, the Village of Jefferson, the many village departments and community partners who have helped make this countywide celebration possible today.”
Steven Sekanina, mayor of the Village of Jefferson, presented a proclamation on behalf of the Jefferson Village Council.
“Whereas Ashtabula County has played an important role in the history and development of Ohio and United States contributing through agriculture, industry, commerce, education, public service, and community leadership,” the proclamation read in part.
The Ashtabula County Commissioners, Ducro, Kathryn Whittington and Casey Kozlowksi, presented a proclamation thanking the America 250 – Ashtabula County Committee for planning the celebration.
State Representatives David Thomas and Sarah Fowler Arthur presented a commendation to share how proud they were of all the work the volunteers did to make the celebration a success.
Michael Dylan Brennan, regional coordinator for the Ohio 250 celebration, served as the guest speaker and was introduced by former State Rep. Dr. John Patterson.
“At America 250 Ohio, we’re celebrating not only the founding of this country, but Ohio’s role in the development of this great nation, a nation conceived in liberty based upon the self-evident truths that we are all created and endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Brennan said. “We all know these well, but what fewer may know is that Ohio was the first state carved out of the Northwest Territory, land that was free soil where slavery had been prohibited and had been prohibited since 1787.”
Brennan noted that hosting the festival in Giddings Park carried some significance.
“The Declaration of Independence was largely forgotten until the Civil War, until President Abraham Lincoln brought the declaration back as a matter of first principles, ones that pre-date and even take precedence to our constitution, a document flawed by the allowance of black slavery,” Brennan said. “It is only fitting that we celebrate the 250 here today in Giddings Park, named for Congressman Joshua Giddings. An abolitionist, Giddings and his contemporary, Benjamin Wade, both from Jefferson, challenged and changed the course of history with their unwavering and persistent commitment to racial equality and civil rights.”
Brennan noted that the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments changed the trajectory of the United States following the Civil War, and Giddings and Wade played a role.
“With these Civil War amendments, the balance of power was tilted toward the federal government as guarantor of individual rights against state infringement,” Brennan said. “The ideas and ideals of Jefferson’s Gittings and Wade succeeded where previous efforts had failed or fallen short to make men free, breaking the bonds of slavery in the south and the rise of the free labor system of the north allowing hard-working people to improve their social service and not serve as a permanent lower class in service to the rich.”
The America 250 – Ashtabula County celebration wasn’t simply about looking back on two-and-a-half centuries, but also ahead.
“Celebrating the 250 is not merely about looking at the past, it is about looking at that past as a context for looking ahead and creating our future, our next 250 years, working to continue to make that more perfect union where we aspire to rise to the highest of our ideals and not sink to our basest instincts,” Brennan said. “Two-hundred-and-fifty years ago today, the signers of the Declaration pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to dissolve the political bands that tied them to one misguided man and his court of advisors and turned in favor of self-governance, a nation of laws and not men, even as governments are instituted among men and not angels.”
Brennan noted that, as country and as individuals, we often fall short of our ideals, but we need to keep making the effort.
“We fall short often, and even lately, and in 1976 (during the centennial celebrations), we were saying the same thing, but now, as then, we get up and we try again and we continue to work and do better,” Brennan said. “As (President Abraham) Lincoln looked back at our Declaration of Independence as inspiration for reforming our union and moving forward, may we be similarly inspired. In Lincoln’s own words at Gettysburg, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth. May we come together and aspire to our better angels, inspired by the best to become the best of who we may yet be through the values of community, honesty and fair dealing.”
Brennan urged people to be better as we move forward.
“May we remember the four freedoms laid out by President Franklin Roosevelt on the eve of World War II, these fundamental human rights, freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear,” Brennan said. “May we fulfill and guarantee these freedoms for all, may we look out for each other, may we do better together, may we not pull up the ladder behind us as we ourselves climb, may we celebrate today with our family and friends and then resolve to meet this moment and in doing so we will fulfill for ourselves and our posterity, the potential and the promise offered by the United States of America.”
As part of the opening ceremony, the Ashtabula County 250 theater troupe read excerpts from the Declaration of Independence and President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
Fuller expressed her gratitude for the countless volunteers who helped plan the festival.
“I want to thank the committee, especially Troy Bailey, for thinking of bringing this to the county, J.P. (Ducro) and the commissioners for supporting it and then my team,” Fuller said. “They have been amazing. Emily Fuller, Carrie Wimer, LaVette Hennigan, Kathy Milford for the entertainers. The whole group has been amazing. There’s numerous other people and all the sponsors from community businesses to the veterans organizations. We have been very, very blessed. I couldn’t have done it without them. The Gazette has been really supportive of us, as well.”
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