MARINE CORPS LOGISTICS BASE ALBANY, Ga. --
Corndogs, funnel cakes and fireworks always go well with the 4th of July, so this year’s 15th annual Marine Corps Logistics Base Independence Day celebration at Boyett Park was on par to be one of the very best.
With approximately 11,000 people attending the celebration, this year’s event proved to be bigger and better than the year before.
“I’ve been coming to this now for over five years, and it keeps getting bigger each year,” said Ashley Martin-Clarke who has been coming since she became a mother five years ago.
Her daughter Grace expects to come every year since it’s the day before her birthday and thinks it’s part of her birthday party.
This year’s event saw a few new additions of food vendors and a larger fireworks show than last year. Overall there were 14 different food vendors and a host of activities to watch before the main event of fireworks just after sunset.
This year, fans were awed by the Silver Wings parachute team from Ft. Benning, Ga., saw a military working dog K-9 demonstration and met and greeted the newly crowned Miss Georgia, Emily Cook, who walked around the park and mingled, posed for photos and signed autographs.
Among the varieties of food, the sites and child-friendly free activities such as the climbing wall and the space walk, the Albany Marine Band played a spirited twilight concert before the fireworks show.
The twilight concert was their last before the band made a long trip to New York to attend the reopening of the crown of the Statue of Liberty, and to play the National Anthem before the New York Yankees home game against the Toronto Blue Jays.
Vernon Harlow of Macon, Ga. said that he travels here each year with his family to see the concert, fireworks and twilight concert.
“I really come here to hear the band more than anything. It reminds me of my days in the Navy during the war [World War II], and I miss all the grandeur of it all,” Harlow said.
Martin-Clarke’s oldest daughter Christy summed up the evenings activities as “amazingly awesome” after coming off the space walk and doing two consecutive back flips before a line of eager onlookers.