BUCYRUS—Back on its normal date this year, National Night Out parties could be seen all over Bucyrus on Tuesday evening.
National Night Out, held on the first Tuesday in August, is a night for communities and local law enforcement to come together to build camaraderie amongst each other.
An excerpt from nationaltoday.com says, “The origins of National Night Out day begin with Matt Peskin, way back in 1970. Peskin was a regular volunteer for the Lower Merion Community Watch program — which worked with the Lower Merion Police Department in the western suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Peskin would often patrol local areas and soon introduced a newsletter on community successes and local volunteer work. This was when he realized that new content for the newsletter was very difficult to find. He began reaching out to the surrounding communities for help and noticed they all had local groups of neighborhood watches but no way to connect to or even identify other groups.”
Jason Konstantinidis, who is in his sixth year of hosting a National Night Out party, said he loves doing it because he loves getting all the neighbors together and thinks it’s a great opportunity to spend time with your neighbors and to get to know them better.
Rose Wireman, who has been hosting for over ten years, said, “We are a family here, everyone on John St. and Southern. We all grew up here and are a family in this neighborhood. We love it.”
First-year hosts Tim and Karen Scott decided that it would be nice to get the neighborhood together and get to meet new people in the area and get to know others a little better.
Mary Erwin, who is in charge of putting together the Mader Drive area party, said that she saw it in the paper and decided to email her neighbors to ask if they would like to do it, and they all said yes.
“We did this for the first time the year before Covid. The first year we got everything set out, but we didn’t have canopies up yet, and it started to rain, and our dips had water in them, and the m&ms looked pitted, but we had a good time. We just really enjoy each other’s company,” hostess Michelle Ritzhaupt said.
After only five parties last year during Covid, the number of parties went back up to thirteen this year, which is still down from Bucyrus’ usual twenty or more parties but is back on the upward swing.