Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
The fifth-annual Heroes and Hot Rods, a community day to recognize the area’s first responders, is set to take place at the Oregon Recreation Center on Sunday, Aug. 2 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
The event originally began as a way to honor Oregon’s first responders. This year, however, it has expanded to other local first responders such as the village of Walbridge and potentially more as the event gets closer to happening. The celebration is also moving to the soccer fields at the Oregon Rec Center this year, which is a larger area than earlier versions.
Local food trucks have expanded from five to seven, and they’ll include Lyle’s Crepes, Kona Ice, Hot Dogs 2 Go, Falafel King, FatBoyz, Sabrosa Specialty Tacos and Rider Coffee Co. The Clay High School cheerleaders will help with face painting for children, while Tammy Bartlett with the Millbury Classic Cars and Trucks Museum will have wooden American flags, where local residents can write stories and thank you messages to first responders.
The event, which is sponsored by local State Farm agent Dan Calmes, will also feature a sport and classic car show, prizes and giveaways, a 50/50 raffle, family fun and food trucks, as well as live music and a youth dance performance from Nye Dance Studio.
The car show portion of the event features free registration and 400 available spots, which is up from 250 last year. A live concert will take place at noon featuring Not Fast Enuff, which is a Northwest Ohio based party band that plays Top 40 favorites from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and today.
“Our goal is to unite citizens in a family-friendly event that recognizes our area’s first responders and the work they do to keep our communities safe,” Calmes said. “You’ll get the chance to meet our first responders, with fire trucks, police cruisers and EMT vehicles on site. Stop by, say hello, enjoy the music, grab a bite to eat and check out the classic cars.”
Cruisin’ Zeake & The Cruisettes will sponsor the 50/50, and proceeds will benefit the Hospice of Northwest Ohio.
As of press time, the men and women of Oregon’s and Walbridge’s police and fire departments will be there with police cars, fire trucks and ambulances to see. There is a potential for more local communities to join before the event.
Calmes said last year’s event experienced a huge growth in participation from the previous year, and he’s excited for this year.
“Last year kind of shocked me to be honest,” Calmes said. “We went from 100 cars to about 300. We probably went from a couple hundred people in the community, other than the car show people, to over 1,000. The food truck lines were 45 minutes. That’s why we upped the number of trucks we have. You try to do things that will draw additional interest. Some people like to come out just for food trucks. Some people for classic cars, some people because it's police and fire.
“The more people are aware of it, you get more people who have heard about it, so if they liked it last year, there’s a better chance of them coming back out this year.”
Heroes and Hot Rods originally evolved from Calmes providing gift cards at Christmas to Oregon’s police department. After speaking with police chief Brandon Begin, the pair collaborated on the idea of having police and fire interact with the community members.
“I figure what they do and what they get paid for what they do, and the situations that they're put in (that they deserve it),” Calmes said. “I think in our community and smaller communities you got a lot of people that really appreciate them, and bigger communities, maybe you got a cross-section that maybe don't as much as they should.
“I always felt I just wanted to do something small for them, and it used to be gift cards at Christmas. And then I thought, I'll do lunch for them. And that's when I talked to the police chief and he said, ‘Maybe we can get together and grow this into a day. That's what I want to do as the new police chief. I want to get my officers, too, meeting the people of the community, and I want people of the community to get to know my officers.’
“The fire department wanted to get involved for the same reason. It's one of those things that I was in a position to be able to do. It's kind of a feel-good type of thing. It’s not a marketing thing for me. It's just a giving back type thing.”
