Boys Harbor Fireworks Will Go On
Er, make that ‘the Great Bonac Fireworks Show’
(07/02/2009) A nearly three-decade tradition of a midsummer fireworks show over Three Mile Harbor, long a fund-raiser for the now-closed
 Morgan McGivern
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Harbor for Girls and Boys camp in East Hampton, will continue this year on July 18 as a viewer-supported event.
Rossetti Perchik began a grassroots effort to raise money for the fireworks about two months ago when he learned that plans for the annual show had been dropped this year. He is a Springs architect and founder of the Clamshell Foundation, a nonprofit organization that holds an annual sand castle contest in Amagansett to raise money for scholarships and environmental causes.
Mr. Perchik said this week that he has raised about $14,000, just a portion of the approximately $25,000 needed for what he and others are calling the Great Bonac Fireworks Show. That sum came from private donations, the promise of a $5,000 matching grant, and small donations made to jars labeled, “Help save the fireworks; it’s over unless we do something about it.”
Although not all the money has been raised yet, he said, “the commitment has been made” and the show will go on. The fireworks had long been a treat not only for those attending the camp’s fund-raiser but also for residents and visitors who set up picnics all along the shores of the harbor, or who go out in boats to float beneath the lit-up sky.
Contributions to cover the cost will be collected at prime viewing spots, such as the town dock at Gann Road, as well as among the flotilla, as has traditionally been done. Checks made out to the Clamshell Foundation and earmarked for the Bonac Fireworks can be mailed to the organization at P.O. Box 2725, East Hampton 11937. Donations can also be made online by typing Clamshell Foundation into the search box at www.karma411.com.
Those with a bit of spare change or more to contribute will find donation jars at the One Stop Market and at the Claws on Wheels seafood shop in East Hampton, at Barnes Country Store in Springs, and at the East Hampton branch of the Bridgehampton National Bank.
Fireworks by Grucci, a Long Island-based family fireworks company that is renowned throughout the world, will start the show just after dark on July 18.
A top-shelf Grucci fireworks display was long the centerpiece of an annual fund-raiser for the Boys and Girls Harbor camp, a retreat for inner-city children that was founded by Anthony Drexel Duke in 1937 and later established on acreage next to the Duke house on Three Mile Harbor.
The tradition actually started with George Plimpton, the late writer and founder of The Paris Review, who hosted an annual fireworks party at his summer houses in Sagaponack and Amagansett. They became public events, continuing even after the host, who lacked the required permits, was handcuffed by East Hampton Town police in 1972.
The parties were discontinued after a guest was burned on the shoulder by a windblown spark and sued Mr. Plimpton for $11 million in 1979.
The next year, Mr. Plimpton, a friend of Tony Duke’s, suggested that the party be turned into a benefit for the camp, then known as Boys Harbor.
The Grucci family, which supports charitable efforts for young people, donated and detonated the fireworks each year, and Mr. Plimpton, who was said to have expressed a wish to have his ashes shot skyward in a firework, served as emcee. Upon Mr. Plimpton’s death in 2003, his good friend James Lipton, the “Inside the Actor’s Studio” interviewer, took over the microphone.
After the camp closed, the event continued for several years as the Friendship Fireworks of East Hampton, organized by Fundacion Amistad, a Cuban-American “friendship foundation” headed by Luly Duke.
It raised money not only for that group but for other local organizations, including the East Hampton Day Care Center, Project MOST, the Wounded Warrior Project, and the Kendall Madison Leadership Fund, as well as the James Grucci Memorial Fund for underprivileged children.
The Gruccis, Mr. Perchik said, will again donate a major portion of the cost of the show. The Mendelman family, which owns several Three Mile Harbor marinas, is also supporting the production, Mr. Perchik said. In the future, he said, he hopes to line up corporate sponsors to offset costs, but this year, with a short window of time to keep the fireworks tradition alive, it’s a community effort.
“It’s that kind of spirit,” Mr. Perchik said. “It’s more like a private party for everybody.” Any money that is raised above and beyond the cost of the fireworks show, which will include the payment of thousands of dollars to the town to cover police overtime and safety officers such as the marine patrol and fire marshals, will be used by the Clamshell Foundation for its other community initiatives.
Since it was founded in 1991, the group has made donations to the East Hampton Dory Rescue Squad, Toys for Tots, the Red Cross, local food pantries, and shellfish programs run by the Nature Conservancy and the East Hampton Town Trustees, as well as to support a boating safety week. It has also granted $16,000 in environmental education scholarships to East Hampton High School students.