After Main Street has cleared and the last vendors head home from this year’s Seaboard Festival in Hamlet, chances are you may not be ready to turn in for the night. To keep the celebration going, head over to the East Hamlet Community Center for the third annual Seaboard Festival Afterparty.
The event is held in conjunction with Hamlet Chapter 1, Inc. and JW Mask Jr. Alumni Chapter, and serves as a fundraiser for scholarships that both groups award to Richmond Senior High School students each year.
“We wanted to do something after the festival to raise funds,” said coordinator Bernard Manning, president of Hamlet Chapter 1 and a former Monroe Avenue High School graduate. “We have been raising funds for scholarships to individuals that have graduated and are attending college — and the students are connected somehow with parents or grandparents that went to either (Monroe Avenue or Capital Highway High School) … We don’t believe in giving a scholarship for one year, and then the next year, you’re on your own. We want to do it for at least those four years (of college).”
Each year, Manning said, the chapter takes on a new student for their scholarship.
The party will be held from 8 p.m. to 12 a.m., and will cost $12 in advance or $15 at the door.
“At the afterparty, some of the attendees have dressed in railroad-type outfits and we will decorate all of the tables with miniature trains. We will also have an electric train that we have set up to entertain people, as well as a computer that projects a screen on the wall that goes through the story about the railroad and how it was developed.”
“It’s a good thing,” said Barbara Young, a past organizer. “We go in, we decorate the day of, and we make it look very special … It’s just a beautifully decorated place when we get through with it.”
DJ Donnie Young will be providing entertainment throughout the evening.
“People get up and dance and have fun,” Young said. “A lot of people come home for the Seaboard Festival and that’s why we think it’s such a good thing to have — they go to the festival, they rest and then come on out to the party.”
Food and non-alcoholic beverages will be available at the afterparty, but guests are invited to bring their own coolers.
“This event is open to everybody,” Manning said. “It’s for people that really love their hometown and come back and get together and see old friends and relive their younger years.”
East Hamlet Community Center is located at 155 Laurel Hill St. in Hamlet.
For more information or to purchase tickets, contact Bernard Manning at 301-423-7305.
— Staff Writer Mallory Brown can be reached at 910-997-3111, ext. 18, or by email at mallorybrown@heartlandpublications.com.
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