Fort Vancouver's dark; but it isn't defeated

Rhonda Flora wasn’t even a year old when the first fireworks show was held at Fort Vancouver, but it soon became a family tradition.

"I have been attending the Fourth of July fireworks since I can remember walking," the 46-year-old Vancouver resident said Friday.

But not this year. For the first Independence Day since 1962, the skies over Fort Vancouver will be dark tonight.

"My friends, my family, are all up in the air about what to do," Flora said. "It’s just horrible to drive down there and see the sign, the big sandwich board, that says, ‘Remember, no July 4 fireworks.’

"That’s kind of disheartening. It’s very, very discouraging. And it’s a real letdown for the city of Vancouver."

For decades, the fireworks show, once touted as the biggest west of the Mississippi River, was Vancouver’s signature event.

This year, it’s a casualty of rising costs and dwindling financial support.

Vancouver is hardly alone as communities across the country cancel or pare fireworks shows as they scrape for every dollar during a sour economy.

The New York Times and Newsweek contacted the Fort Vancouver National Trust for comment on the Vancouver show’s demise, as part of coverage of a nationwide trend toward fewer flashes and bangs this holiday.

"It’s the same story," said Elson Strahan, president of the nonprofit trust, which sponsored the show for much of this decade. "Many of them are being canceled. Others are scaled back significantly."

The trust killed this year’s show last September after it lost its primary sponsor, fireworks vendor Edward "Dominic" Rinck, who backed out of his sponsorship agreement after a dismal sales year.

Beginning this morning and lasting through the day, there will be security guards, trust employees and National Park Service officials at the Fort Vancouver National Site to greet anyone who hasn’t gotten the word.

"If people show up expecting an event production, then it’s going to have to be someone who absolutely doesn’t read the news or listen to the news," Strahan said.

The first Fort Vancouver event took place in 1963, and an estimated 17,500 people watched sky-diving exhibitions, water battles by local firefighters and a fireworks show. The event quickly grew, attracting crowds of 60,000 or more to the site and thousands more to surrounding areas.

As the event’s popularity soared, so did its financial problems. Its 46-year history has been marked with pleas for community support, warnings of imminent collapse and last-minute donations so the show could go on.

People got so accustomed to the event that they thought it never would go away, Strahan said.

"There really is an entitlement mentality that it is here, and it has been here, and it will always be here," he said.

Strahan, although sad to see the fireworks show canceled this year, said the annual grind to secure funding "became very old."

"So from the standpoint of a wake-up call, we really needed to put the brakes on, to step back and reflect about what the Independence Day celebration is all about and recast the event," he said. "Sometimes it takes this kind of jolt."

Organizers plan to return in 2010 with a smaller, more family-oriented event that won’t cost nearly as much as the almost $500,000 spent on the 2008 show. Plans call for a smaller, but possibly more intense, fireworks display launched from a spot near Pearson Field instead of a barge moored in the Columbia River.

The trust has a new deal with fireworks vendors and suppliers to operate the Fort Vancouver 4th of July Committee’s stands and to provide $100,000 for the 2010 event. BNSF Railway also has agreed to contribute $20,000, and Comcast has indicated a willingness to continue its sponsorship, although no dollar amount has been set, Strahan said.

The trust’s Web site — fortvan.org — allows people to make donations to support the 2010 celebration, but Strahan said his group hasn’t been "overwhelmed with financial responses."

"Certainly not having a show this year will drive home the point … that without community support, the event will not continue," he said.

Flora said she will do whatever she can to encourage people to donate and looks forward to returning with her family to Fort Vancouver next July.

For this year, what she called "a very sad day in Vancouver," her family has different plans.

"We’re actually having to go to Longview," Flora said. "People are spending their money somewhere else this year."

Her husband, Joseph Flora, said his stepfather was part of the committee that staged the show back in the 1960s.

"It’s kind of a sense of pride," he said, "that we were able to say that, if nothing else, for one day out of the year, we were the best thing on this coast, the Pacific coast. West of the Mississippi, we were it.

"And we don’t have that anymore."

Jeffrey Mize: 360-735-4542 or jeff.mize@columbian.com.