This year the Brandywine Health Foundation held the annual Strawberry Festival the weekend on June 2nd to June 5th. What a weekend it was! The volunteers of Thorndale Volunteer Fire Company spent many hours preparing for the event on Wednesday June 1st. They had to prepare all the fields for parking and set up all of the equipment and signage to accomplish the large task at hand.

Once Thursday came around it was time to get to work. All four days of the festival, the fire police provided traffic control at the main entrance to one of the parking lots. This year, Thursday was one of the busiest Thursdays the fire company has had in regards to the amount of cars needing to park. Due to the weather on Friday, the fireworks could not be set up, however the festival was still busy and the fire company had to park hundreds of cars that night. Saturday was the busiest day this year; the lines of cars waiting to park were endless! It did not let up all day, until minutes before the fireworks went off. The weekend came to a close on Sunday with a gloomy day. However, there were a good amount of people who decided to take a chance with the weather. As some collected money, directed traffic and parked cars, others were working on cleaning everything up before the rain came. It was a great weekend that required a lot of hard work by all.

During these five days, it’s imperative that the volunteers stay hydrated, fed and healthy. Squad 38 drove around constantly handing out drinks and food to those collecting money and parking cars. Without the help of some of the businesses in our township and surrounding townships, we would not have been able to do those three things! The Thorndale Volunteer Fire Company would like to express our sincere gratitude to the following places for their food, drink and/or gift card donations;

Acme, Thorndale
Belfor Property Restoration
BJs Wholesale Club, Downingtown
Buffalo Wild Wings, Downingtown
Caln Pizza and Pasta, Thorndale
Chick-Fil-A, Downingtown
Coca Cola Bottling Company
Dairy Queen, Coatesville
Dominos, Thorndale
Giant, Thorndale
Jack’s Pizza, Coatesville
Jake’s Wayback Burgers, Thorndale
Joeys Pizza, Thorndale
Midway, Thorndale
MisterWok, Thorndale
Primo Hoagies, Downingtown
PJ Whelihan’s, Downingtown
Wegmans, Downingtown
Wendys, Thorndale

The words “thank you” hardly seem enough. Thanks to these businesses, we were able to make sure the volunteers had enough to drink, eat and stay healthy during the long weekend!