This past Friday was the annual Tyrone Area Community Picnic at DelGrosso’s Amusement Park. With nothing but sunshine and warm weather for the entire day, the picnic turned out to be absolutely perfect.
Cary Simpson did his thing on the radio at Midway and kept the public aware of the events for the entire day as an all-day routine. Simpson interviewed several people on how their day was going at the park as he did a live broadcast for WTRN. He had a lot of fun as well as the rest of the community did at DelGrosso’s for the day.
Kids were able to ride and slide all day for no charge and everyone was able to enjoy STATUS and Dance Fusion pull some nice moves in the spotlight. These performers danced to the hottest beats as they spiced up the picnic before the chicken dinner.
Around 5:30 p.m., a chicken dinner was served and almost all of Tyrone came and enjoyed the fantastic feast. This was the appetizer to the Tyrone Talent Search and the Tyrone Community Raffle which were scheduled just minutes after the dinner was served.
This year, 24 contestants lined up for the annual talent search, making this the most entries ever recorded in the history of this event. There were five different individual competition groups including Pre-school through fourth grade; fifth through eighth grade; ninth through 12th grade; adult to 39 and 40 and over. There was also a group division which was an open division to all ages.
In the pre-school to fourth grade, Amelia Woodcock finished in first place after her lyrical dance to Keep Holding On. Taylor Rhodes came in a close second and Paige Umholtz finished in the third spot.
The fifth through eighth division winners were Mikayla Fisher, first; Gabriel Whetstine, second and Kathleen Beck, third. Fisher sang Sunshine and Summer Times by Faith Hill as she took the crowd after her wonderful performance.
The high school division included just two participants, but they were very talented participants as Emily Miller took the first prize with a dance to the song, Bleeding Love and RJ Beck performed and sang a song on the piano that he composed himself called, Stay.
The competition heated up as six participants entered the adult to 39 division. Each of these performers were excellent and was by far the hardest group to judge. Anyone could have been in the top three, but Stevie Woodring took the crown for the second year in a row, this time in the adult division. In a close second was Jonathan Harris and finishing in third was Mary Rafetto. All of these performers were outstanding as the final two categories approached.
As an annual battle in the 40 and over, Jim Cushion and Kip Woodring did their usual routines. Woodring played his guitar and showed off his excellent skills with his singing and acoustics and Cushion used his comical talents to try and make the crowd laugh.
This year they were a lot closer than previous years. Woodring sang a song from John Denver to lead things off. He had the crowd right where he wanted, but Cushion had something up his sleeve. He came out with a banjo and a CD player. Cushion hit a button and a banjo started playing as he told jokes.
Both of these men worked hard and Woodring finished first with Cushion in a close second to bring up the group division.
Mary Beth Raabe, Anna Baran and Gia Gavazzi won the group division with a dance to the song, Bounce. Tifani Sprankle and Sabre Nail performed a Jazz duet to Best Friends, but finished in a close second to complete the Tyrone Community Talent Search.
At the conclusion of the talent show, the Tyrone Community Raffle began on stage as Mayor Jim Kilmartin and Sandi DelGrosso began pulling tickets from the raffle cans.
There were 66 total prizes and if anyone is still looking for their prize, please contact the Herald at 684-4000 to find out more information on their prizes.
The event was finally over, but a special award to the Hometown Hero was given out. This year, Pastor Norman Huff was awarded the Hometown Hero award and quoted, “I do not do this for myself, I do it for the Lord above and whatever he sets me out to do for the community.”
What a spectacular day this past Friday turned out to be as the Tyrone Community Picnic came to a close. Games, prizes, great food and entertainment were all brought together by the Tyrone Area Community Picnic Committee.
The TACP committee would like to thank all of those who came out to the event, all of our sponsors and DelGrosso’s Amusement Park. We are trying to get fireworks for next year’s picnic. We all hoped you enjoyed the day at DelGrosso’s.
