'A good day for Gadsden': Near-disaster becomes a triumph as fireworks show draws praise

In the space of 10 hours, a near-disaster turned into a gloriously entertaining moment in Gadsden, thanks to the efforts of people who weren't going to let the city go without Fourth of July fireworks.

Not only did they ensure that happened, the result has drawn lavish praise in social media posts and texts to officials of the City of Gadsden and the Gadsden-Etowah Patriots Association, which host the annual pyrotechnic display.

The event draws huge crowds each year to the riverfront and adjacent areas; as Mayor Craig Ford put it Tuesday, “People in Gadsden like three things: the Christmas Parade, fireworks on the Fourth of July and their roads paved.”

This year's show was poised to be special, lasting about 25 minutes compared to 15 minutes as in the past.

However, organizers got a late-night call on July 3 from Pyrotecnico, the company that had been contracted to stage the display. One of its employees had been injured and flown to a Birmingham hospital earlier that evening, after a fireworks shell inadvertently exploded as a crew was setting up for Jax Fest at Jacksonville High School.

Billy Harris of the Patriots Association, which puts the program together each year and shares the cost with the city, reached out to John Moore, Gadsden's director of economic development and governmental affairs.

“I told him we've got a problem, that we've promised all these people we're going to have a fireworks display and they (Pyrotecnico) want to cancel,” Harris told City Council members Tuesday.

While conceding the situation looked dire, Moore went to work, turning to council member Jason Wilson, an entrepreneur who's familiar with fireworks because of displays held at Gadsden's Back Forty Beer Co., which he founded.

Wilson told Moore about Andy Urban, a former Southside High School athlete and longtime coach and administrator, who, along with his current day job as athletic director of Mountain Brook High School, has a BOGO Fireworks franchise at 826 Rainbow Drive, the site of the old Huddle House restaurant.

After some back-and-forth communication between the three, with the mayor kept in the loop, an agreement was reached for BOGO to handle the display.

Some adjustments were required: Because the company's offerings don't “go as high” as typical professional fireworks, they needed to be detonated from higher ground, so the staging point was moved to the old Convention Hall site on First Street.

That meant changes in parking and traffic flow — Ford praised Gadsden Police Lt. John Alred for his efforts there — and by extension people's traditional viewing locations. Ford said there were a few complaints along those lines, but otherwise the response has been overwhelmingly positive for a display that ran more than 32 minutes.

“I've gotten more texts and messages on this fireworks show than when I won mayor,” he said. “People I don't even know have said it's the best fireworks show they've ever seen. It came out of the gate blazing, like a 'grand finale.' ”

Urban said in a telephone interview that BOGO has handled smaller-scale fireworks displays in cities like Talladega, Thorsby and Vincent before, “but nothing to the extent of what we did (in Gadsden).”

He said he contacted Brian Autry, the company's owner, to make sure personnel were available to shoot the fireworks, given that his business is generally retail.

“We normally sell them to people for however they want to shoot them,” Urban added. “But this one, they wanted a turnkey solution so we were able to go in and create a situation where we just did it and got out of there.”

Even though it was a larger-scale show, he said, “We had a pretty good idea of how much (fireworks) we needed and where we needed to be. It went off as good as it can be.”

Urban thanked the Gadsden Fire Department for being there to ensure the fireworks were detonated safely and to hose them down afterward, and the city for aiding with the cleanup.

Harris, a former council member, joked that he'd have “had to leave town” if the event had been canceled.

“I didn't sleep that night, because we'd promised people a 25-minute show that was going to be the biggest and best we'd ever had, and it wasn't going to happen,” he said. “But John and Jason, his partner in crime, made it happen, and I've gotten nothing but praise for that fireworks display.”

Wilson called it “a good day for Gadsden,” noting that it involved supporting a local business with local money.

Urban, who played college baseball at Wallace State Community College and the Univeristy of Alabama, and also has been AD at Hoover High School, has moonlighted with BOGO for about 20 years after connecting with Autry (who played baseball at Birmingham-Southern) when they were slow-pitch softball teammates.

He's had the Gadsden franchise for 15 years, and said his wife (Crista, daughter of longtime Etowah County high school coach Moe Smith), in-laws, son and sister help operate it.

There were preliminary events to this year's fireworks show — a free concert, food trucks, vendors and a cash bar — and aside from a few hiccups (lost children who were quickly reunited with their parents, someone shooting a pistol in the air) that Ford said were addressed by the police presence, everything went well.

Council member Tonya Latham said she attended with five generations of her family, and felt a spirit of unity there, with people moving about freely and having no issues with others pulling next to them in tight areas to watch the fireworks.

“That spoke volumes about where our city is and where it's going,” she said. “There was a feeling of unity and everyone getting along and people assisting others regardless of our differences. In a lot of things we are different, but our differences don't have to divide us.”

Wilson added, “You have those moments in a community where you can just feel it. You walked around the space and there was live music, food trucks, vendors, diversity spread out over the lawn, everybody on their blankets. It was just a good old slice of America.”

Ford said shooting the fireworks off from Memorial Bridge on Broad Street, which was done in the past, is a possibility for next year.

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: Late-night efforts save Gadsden's Fourth of July fireworks