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Community Corner

Live Music, Family Activities and Good Food at Rubber Ducky Festival

The sounds of local bands mix with activities for the whole family at the 8th annual community festival.

For eight years, the Rubber Ducky Festival has been drawing crowds for its local bands, local business, show cars, and children's activities.

“The thing we like about it is that compared to a street fair,  this event is deliberately sep up village style so that people can wander in and out, and the people who come tend to stay the whole time," said Hal Daume, of the Berkeley Heights Rotary Club, the event's sponsor.

Despite a light rain, hundred of families came out for food supplied by Famous Dave's, and music featuring several local kids' bands, including The Flies, a car show, games, water balloons, a moonwalk, and of course, the Rubber Ducky Race.

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"I am having a lot of fun," said five-year-old Danielle Sabrina of Union, who was mesmerized by the plethora of activities at the games tent. One of her favorites appeared to be a bean bag frog sea saw, where she stepped on one end of the sea saw and the bean bag toy went flying overhead.

A big part of the festival was the participation by Berkeley Heights Boy Scouts Troop 368, which uses the festival in part to introduce scouting to other youngsters. On Saturday, scouts set up a Monkey Walk, a rope-laden bridge-like structure to pass across, several ball throwing games and a dunk tank, featuring council member and merit badge counselor Tom Pirone on the dunk seat.

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"It's all for a good cause, right?," Pirone said as he shivered from being dunked so many times.

Dunking Pirone may have been a thrill for some, but by far the highlight of the event was the Rubber Ducky Race, where thousands of small rubber ducks, which are "adopted" for $5, are launched in the Passaic River to race to the finish line at Passaic River Park. The owners of the ducks crossing the finish line receive prizes donated by local businesses - a gift certificate to Delicious Heights, two tickets to the Liberty Science Center or four tickets to a Mets game.

The Rubber Ducky Festival is a fundraiser for the Rotary Club, a nonprofit group of local business owners and professionals who focus on serving the community.
There's quite a bit that the organization does for the Berkeley Heights community.

Their work includes providing academic and service scholarships to Governor Livingston high school seniors, providing dictionaries every year to all Berkeley Heights 3rd-grade students, and helping Cub Scout packs, Boy Scout troops, and Girl Scout troops with events and financial support. 

According to Daume, most of the money brought in from the Rubber Ducky Festival will be funneled to various causes, but this year, the first $5,000 has been earmarked for the Berkeley Heights Rescue Squad.
 
 

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