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City's B-party not impossible
It's Mission Doable, but only if a bicentennial committee is formed rather quickly. If not, the thing will blow up.
Washington started life in 1769 as an Indian trading post called Catfish Camp, by 1781 was known as Basset Town and a short time later came by its current name, in honor of the first U.S. president.
By act of the state Legislature, it officially became the Borough of Washington on Feb. 13, 1810 (and a lot later, in 1924 to be exact, it became a third-class city).
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So, as you can see, the date for the 200th birthday is at this point anytime anybody wants it to be. But the real point is, there's work to be done, immediately if not sooner, if it is going to happen at all.
As of two weeks ago, the bicentennial issue first surfaced publicly (in this column, if I may say so myself), and City Hall is now listening and stirring. Fire Capt. Joe Manning and his wife, Lyn, have offered to organize a committee, and Sue Pomykala volunteered herself and some friends to join in.
Clay Kilgore, Washington County Historical Society curator, said longtime Washington County historian and writer Harriet Branton was to visit the LeMoyne House yesterday to discuss a role in the bicentennial and to put together a compilation of historical pieces that were published in the Observer-Reporter.
"This is not an impossible task," Mayor Sonny Spossey said Sunday, after mentioning offers by the Mannings and Pomykala and friends.
"We're going to have to explore working with groups we haven't worked with closely before, such as the National Pike Festival organizers, plus the Historical Society and Citizens Library.
"Maybe we can get W&J involved in this if they're not fed up with the treatment they got with regard to (the purchase of) Strawberry Alley."
One resource Washington could easily tap are the 16 organizers of the Canonsburg Bicentennial in 2002.
"If they don't have a meeting scheduled for tonight, they should have held one yesterday," said Joe Salandra, bicentennial co-chairman with Carmina Vitullo. "We started two years before our bicentennial and met every two weeks after that.
"At that first meeting, somebody asked, 'How much money do we have to raise, $50,000?'" Salandra said. "I said $150,000 might do it. We ended up raising more than $250,000, and we needed every penny of that."
Canonsburg printed up and sold 1,500 copies of a hardbound book. The first 1,000 sold out at $35 each; an additional 500 sold at $50.
Byron can be contacted at bsmialek@observer-reporter.com. To hear his column, visit www.observer-reporter.com.
