NP Rotary seeking ‘Friends,’ sponsors for Story Book Lane
NEW PHILADELPHIA (WJER) (Oct. 25, 2022) – The community is getting its yearly opportunity to support the New Philadelphia Rotary its effort to restore and preserve Story Book Lane.
Project Chairman Tom Police says $100 gets you a three-year listing on the “Friends” cards at the end of the display that goes up at Tuscora Park each December; and for $300, you can sponsor one of its 24 Mother Goose nursery rhyme scenes.
“We lost a few sponsors this year, just some people that either moved out of the area or unfortunately we’ve had a couple of sponsors pass away,” he says. “With that sponsorship, we put two lines on the nursery rhyme board, the verse board at the bottom, telling who sponsored that.”
The Rotary has spent more than $50,000 over the last two decades refurbishing the 1940s display that once stood along East High Avenue a couple of scenes at a time. Police says they still have nine to go after spending the off-season the ones a vandal broke a few days before Christmas.
“Six of the displays were heavily damaged. We had to rebuild those, and 18 of the displays and storyboards were spray-painted. We were able to clean those up fairly well, but we still had to replace a dozen of the verse boards. So that was a major setback for us but we’ve been working on it steadily, and we’ve got everything ready to go again.”
Friends listings are due on November 19th and sponsorships by the 20th. Both require a form that you can download from the club’s website, newphiladelphiarotary.com.