One Last Blast for Great Bonac Fireworks Show

The Great Bonac Fireworks Show will go on this summer, continuing a 35-year tradition, after a successful community fund-raising campaign.

The show, which was sponsored by East Hampton’s Clamshell Foundation, was to be dropped after the death last month of Rossetti Perchik, the organization’s founder. In recent years he had personally underwritten the cost of the midsummer display when fund-raising efforts fell short.

With days running out before a deadline on a $60,000 fund-raising goal, the Clamshell Foundation announced yesterday that enough money had been raised to mount the July 16 display by Grucci Fireworks, which puts on one of its “national class” shows over Three Mile Harbor.

A Go Fund Me page set up for online fund-raising showed donations of $16,556 raised in just under two weeks through individual donations by 93 people.

Billy Kalbacher, a Clamshell Foundation board member, said that, in addition to generous contributions from the community, “a large donation by one family that asked to be anonymous” had helped raise enough to allow the show to go on.

After this year, however, he announced, the Clamshell Foundation will no longer organize the fireworks show. However, the group will assist a new sponsor through the transition of taking over the show.