Fourth Of July Fireworks Show Cancelled
(EDITOR’s NOTE; The Fourth of July fireworks show in Culver City won’t be held next month. The Observer’s Fred Altieri interviewed Earl Eskridge of the Exchange Club, who explains the situation)
This really would have been our 49th year instead of our 48th year. We started to create patriotism at the time that we started, which was 49 years ago.
Patriotism was down so we thought should instill patriotism by starting up this fireworks show. And we got the idea from the Pasadena Fire Department and the Los Angeles Fire Department who had them. Pasadena had one in the Rose Bowl, a 4th of July fireworks show and L.A. had one at the Coliseum.
It was Chuck Pratty and John McNally and myself, and we started the ball rolling. I was on the Parks and Recreation Commission at that time and that’s why I knew that these people were doing these shows.
So Chuck Pratty, our president, and John McNally who was at the MGM Studio, we were all members of the Culver City Exchange Club.
The Exchange Club is a service organization and we’re national, we’re not international. We’re the largest national service club in the United States. We’re like the Rotary and Lions Club and our main thing is child abuse. We do a lot of charity work and donate to different organizations.
Over the years we’ve had the fireworks show at Culver high school. The first year we had animals there, we had horses that performed, and a couple of years we had elephants that performed out on the field.
The military used to participate all the time. They use to bring tanks and different things like that and we had fireworks at the other end of the field. We had a pre-show. We opened the gates around six o’clock and we had entertainment, a band, and all the officials would give a speech and welcome everybody. We called it the Independence Day Fireworks Show.
We raised money to fight child abuse and in fact we started a child abuse center but it never went over but we support a big one down in Orange County. We give a lot of money for that.
Then we started giving away a lot of scholarships in the high school, the graduation classes and different charities in town. Last year we gave away almost $60,000 in grants.
We give scholarships every year to different people, most all of them are from Culver high school. We’re always supporting the other schools, the elementary schools when they need something we give them money. What ever we have to raise we give away most of the money. It costs a lot of money to put these shows on.
The Exchange Club was started in 1923. The Culver City Exchange Club was started in 1949. We have one charter member left, Bill Fickle, and then I’m the next oldest one.
I didn’t come in until 1951 although I started attending in 1950. But we did the fireworks show to raise money and create patriotism. And people love it. I think the first year we only had about 500 people show up.
We brought in bleachers from the Little League. It was all on the football field. They didn’t have the bleachers in at that time. But now we get close to 10,000 people show up, the first couple of years it was 500, 1,000 and then it just kept building.
Mainly it’s the Exchange Club that is involved and the City helps us. How we got the fireworks show is that they used to sell fireworks in Culver City, the American Legion.
The American Legion hired our show for us, the fireworks part, not the other part, as long as they could sell fireworks. And then the city came by and said, “No. You can’t sell fireworks anymore.” So the city said that they would help buy the show, the fireworks part and they contribute to that. The city and the school district are our co-partners because the school lets us use the ground and the city helps pay for the fireworks. They supply the police and the fire department.
The number of people showing up has stayed about the same for the last four or five years. Two years ago we had close to 12,000 people and last year we had about 10,000. They want us to cut it off at 10,000.
Everybody parks on the school grounds and all around. A lot of people walk to the show from Culver City. Every park that we have close to the field are full of people. Even the Little League fields are full of people and on the hill to watch the show but they can’t see the entertainment we have on the field.
We have a band and singers. You can’t shoot the fireworks off until 9:00, 9:05, when it’s dark. So even though it starts at 5:30, 6:00, we have all this entertainment. People bring picnics, lunches and we also have a snack bar.
The Rotary Club used to run it. The YMCA used to run the snack bar. The Exchange Club is a big contributor to the YMCA. We’ve gotten a fantastic response over the years. People love it.
What we do is we ask for a donation and people donate $2. Some people put $5 or $10 in and the ones that can’t afford it, we just let them in.
This year they are re-doing the field. They’re putting a new synthetic grass on the field and putting in a new track. Originally they were going to move everything over. They were going to take the bleachers down and everything but the money fell through. But they did have the money to put in a new track and a new cover on the football field. So they are renovating and that’s why we can’t have it this year,
it’s all tore up. It was supposed to start last July 5th, right after we were through with the show but it didn’t start until April of this year.
We met with the officials of the school and contractors and it wasn’t feasible for us to have it this year because the field would still be tore up and have equipment there. They also won’t have the graduation this year on that field.
That’s why we’re not having the show this year. Otherwise, we certainly would be. We hope to have it back there next year if the school allows us to have it. I’m sure the city will cooperate wherever we have it.
It’s a big project. It takes a lot of manpower to do it. We work about six months on that show to get the preparation. We have to line up all the entertainment. We’ve got to line up the bands. We have raffle prizes.
We start almost at the beginning of the year. In the meantime, we have other things going on. We put on a car show. Actually we work all year round doing bits and parts of it to get it together. We get the banners. We get an advertising book out and that takes a lot of work. We have to sell ads.
We really don’t promote the fireworks show anymore. People just show up. We put banners over the streets. There are three street banners: one by Veterans Memorial, one down Lincoln by Costco and one we have one right here by Sony Studios.
In the early days we had some movie stars come out and take pictures. They were from MGM at that time. John McNally was an executive over at MGM so he helped promote it. In fact he got us a lot of stuff: the light stanchions for people. MGM loaned them to us through him to help light the place up because at the time the field didn’t have those big lights.
The school has the bleachers. The Exchange Club sets up different booths and tents around the area. People bring their own blankets and sit on the football field, back in the practice field. They go from the baseball field clear back to the parking lot.
Solid people. The fireworks show can last about an hour, fifty something minutes, forty something minutes. It just depends. The more aerial we have the longer it lasts. If we have set pieces, because it takes more money to buy a set piece than it does to shoot in the air, it’s shorter. So we’ve cut down on the set pieces and that’s why the show can go on longer. But I’d say on average it lasts about 40 minutes.
We have close to 100 people working on the show including our wives. Friends, Boy Scouts and different organizations help monitor the people and direct them. We hire a company to shoot the fireworks.
We are going to miss doing it this year, that’s for sure. Everybody was excited about doing it but we missed one other year. That was during the Watts Riots. The Police Chief wouldn’t let us have it.
We’re sorry we can’t put it on this year due to the circumstances of the field being renovated. We’ll be back again next year, a bigger and better show.”
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