Planning for an event in Tiger Town Park

It seems like I have been planning for over a month for the "Unveiling of a granite monument" at Tiger Town. I have rescheduled the event for this Sunday, Sept 7 at 2 pm at the playground.

When we were doing our fundraising for the playground, we had a category called "Title Sponsors" for anyone or any group or business that donated $10,000 or more. They were told that a permanent marker would be engraved with their names and place near the entrance to the park. The owner of a local monument company and his wife donated a large light gray granite monument and had it engraved on the slanted top side. In front they printed the name of the park "Tiger Town" and dedicated the park to the children of Elba.


This Sunday we will have a "ceremony" and unveil the marker and honor those whose names appear on the marker. We will also be celebrating the 2nd anniversary of the playground.


I will write more about this on Sunday following the event, and include some photos.


Today I'm just writing about "getting ready". You wouldn't think so much preparation has to be made for a ceremony that will only last for about 10-15 minutes. Much of the preparation was made before Aug. 24th when our event was right in the middle of Hurricane Fay and we had so much rain dumped on us for several days. The next Sunday was Labor Day weekend, and it was also bad weather. Our new date is Sept. 7 and there is 30% chance of rain. We will have 2 tents in place and the ceremony will take place even in the rain.


First of all, I wrote letters to the families, businesses, clubs, etc. to be honored to see if they could all have someone present for the event. Sept. 7 is the date of the first Univ of AL home football game; and one of our ardent supporters of the playground will be away. His father was one of the Title Sponsors and he died before we built the playground. His wife will be attending the ceremony along with other family members of the Jack R. Brunson family.

Some members of the Kelley Foods family will be present but they couldn't all be present since two of them are away on Sunday.


Others include National Security Insurance Group, Kiwanis International and Elba Kiwanis Club. Governmental officals include our Mayor, State Senator Jimmy Holley and State Representative Terry Spicer. Our senator and representative were so helping in securing money from the State of AL for our project.


I am getting programs printed on the back of fans, and some other handouts. All of this took time to put together and send to the printer, who just happens to be one of the playground coordinators. She was the one who suggested printing the program on a fan, so people could use them to keep cool.

I needed a cover for the monument and instead of a dark color, I chose bright royal blue with balloons on the front of the cover. I had a hard time making them look like balloons and not lollipops! Two teen-aged children of one of our playground committee members will remove the cover. They have grown up since we started working on the playground in 2005.

I wanted to release balloons at the end of the ceremony as the Carpenters sing that popular Sesame Street song, "Sing a Song". We hope to have a lot of children present to release the helium filled balloons. I bought two helium tanks today. No, I'm not blowing up 60 balloons. I called the high school and asked for some school Ambassadors to come early and blow up the balloons and take care that part of the program. I hope they all show up! They need service hours.


I had a hard time locating the song to use for the balloon release and someone downloaded it for me and I made a CD to use. Now I have to locate a CD player with loud speakers to play the CD.

My brother loaned me a large Coca Cola container to use to put ice in it to cool bottles of water.
I have been looking for water to be on sale and found 24 bottles for $3.50 today at WalMart. I bought 2 cases. There's water fountains at the playground in case we don't have enough bottled water.


The entire cost of this event will be less than $65, which includes 2 Blue Juniper shrubs to place on either side of the monument.


I went to City Hall today to borrow the portable microphone. It's charged and ready to use. I tried it when I got home and didn't know the volume was on high and I almost blasted my family out of the house! Outdoors it won't be that loud I'm sure.


Another friend will take a large table to the site Sunday for us to use to display the architect's drawing of the new additions to the park. These buildings will be built from grant money we recently received and this announcement will be made public by the Mayor at the ceremony.


I just checked off most of the things I had listed to get done before Sunday - except for one thing. I had planned to get some curly ribbon at WalMart to use to tie to the balloons. But they didn't have large rolls. Their small rolls only had enough to wrap a small present, it was shiny, and cost $1.29. I would need a lot of these rolls. I look at other party places and they didn't have any at all. I came home and looked through my Christmas wrapping box, and there was no curly ribbon. I don't know what I will do. My last resort is to visit a florist tomorrow to see if they will sell me some, like they use when they fill helium balloons.


So you see, planning even a simple event takes a lot of time if you want it to be special.


Our local newspaper will be covering the event, and I invited someone to come from Channel 4 in Dothan, our local news station for this area.


Check back Sunday night for more on this important event for the people of Elba.