MEDIA RELEASE__Bluffton, your help is needed!  This summer, our village has the opportunity to experience a hot new entertainment experience. Bluffton's America 250 committee has scheduled a drone light show in June following the Lions Club Festival of Wheels. 

The show consists of 100 computer-synchronized areodrones (UAVs) creating colorful light formations and 3D pictures in the sky. It’s a nighttime color spectacle in the sky, much like fireworks. Drone light shows usually occur in bigger cities and can attract quite large crowds. It is rare that villages our size host events such as this. Wouldn’t it be great if we could enter the next 250 years of American independence as a host for this new-age attraction? Gene Benroth, known as Mr. Bluffton and one of the ardent civic promoters of all things Bluffton, was quoted once saying, “If we’re doing it, we might as well do it BIG.”

And, just like fireworks, this kind of show is produced by a private company hired for our exhibition. The America 250 committee found a company willing to allow us to reserve the service while raising funds for the event.  They will accept our first-half payment of $7000 at the end of February. 

We have a short period of time to seal this deal. During the last four months, the committee has solicited funding from area businesses, presented at the Bluffton Chamber of Commerce at December and January breakfasts, and gone door-to-door to raise funding. Some businesses understand that this is a once-every-250-years event; a singular non-annual celebration and have generously offered beyond their yearly giving to Bluffton civic causes. 

These businesses deserve high praise for their decisions working toward community-strengthening and heritage-centered mindedness.  Those businesses and other $1000 donors will be featured as prominent patrons on America 250 in Bluffton, Ohio, merchandise and in advertising.  Without their help and additional help from community members, a drone show like this is not possible in Bluffton, Ohio. 

If you would like to add your civic-focused generosity to help fund this event, please do. It is needed immediately.  Checks can be made out to “Village of Bluffton” with America 250 on the memo line and sent to the Bluffton village administration offices. America has proven to the world that we are certainly not a flash in the pan, and with your generosity, Bluffton’s summer celebration of this 250th anniversary won’t be either. 

Future generations will thank us for creating memories such as this.  They will someday talk about it with their future families.