Fourth of July Festival may not happen this year

The Fourth of July Festival and Community Picnic Planning Committee has lost two key members in Allen “Woody” Woodwick of Havre and committee chairperson Sherri Simonson, who now lives in Helena, and hasn’t yet found people to fill these seats, meaning the event may be canceled for the third year in a row.

The event, a long-running tradition in the area, was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19, but this year it may be canceled due to a lack of committee members.

Woodwick said if the committee doesn’t find someone to step up and start the planning for the event by the first week of May the event will not happen.

“About the first week of May is when we’re going to make a final decision, if we don’t have somebody it looks like we’re going to pull the plug and let it die a natural death.”

Simonson said they haven’t gotten any real interest in the position and she’s hoping they see someone step up to the plate soon, as the event takes a solid month and change to plan.

The celebration started with a parade down Fifth Avenue in 2001 and since has expanded to a major celebration in Pepin Park on Independence Day with food, music and companionship.

Woodwick said he and his brother’s family were looking for something to do in Havre one Fourth of July and found few people stayed in town due to a lack of events.

“We heard a lot of people tell us that ‘you can’t do anything, because nobody sticks around,’” he said in an interview last month, “but maybe if we did something to keep people around, folks like him would have things to do.”

“It just started growing from there,” he added.

He said the event would go on to draw more and more organizers and support until they started serving 2,500 hotdogs and hamburgers some years.

Simonson said last month that she believes the event still has the potential to grow bigger if they keep on doing it, but it will need some leadership.

She said she left the committee because helping to organize the event from afar, after her move to Helena in 2016, has become prohibitively difficult.

Despite her distance, she said, she heard people saying they missed the event during its absence in 2020 and 2021 and the prospect of it not happening this year is disheartening.

She said, if she could she’d love to keep serving on the committee, but at this point that just isn’t possible for her.

She said being on the committee is a great deal of work, but it is very gratifying and they get a lot of community support.

“It is a big undertaking,” she said.

Woodwick said the job of being on the committee requires a lot of organizing, from reserving the park to lining up insurance, getting the barbecue and food set up, as well as the band lineup and their equipment.

He said the committee has put together a document laying out how and when is the best time to do all of these things and guide a newcomer working to make it all happen.

“We have an owner’s manual,” he said.