By Melanie Lekocevic
Capital Region Independent Media
GREENVILLE — We all know about rain and parades, but what about an Easter egg hunt after a snowstorm?
Just hours after a surprise spring snow fell on Greenville overnight this weekend, dozens of families gathered in the North Barn for an Easter egg hunt to usher in the holiday.
Sponsored by Community Partners of Greenville with help by a grant from the Greene County Legislature, the Easter egg hunt was originally scheduled to take place in the town park, but the weather forced everyone indoors into the North Barn.
But that didn’t dampen spirits, with kids laughing and rushing to collect as many colorful Easter eggs as they could.
The hunt was the brainchild of Debbie Von Atzingen from Community Partners, who purchased and stuffed 2,100 eggs, with some help from her husband. She planned the inaugural event with input from neighboring communities that have been hosting Easter egg hunts for years.
“I have been planning this since before Halloween,” Debbie Von Atzingen said. “I called Ravena and Bethlehem — towns that also do this — and they gave me some do’s and don’ts.”
“But they didn’t tell me what to do if it snows for Easter,” she added with a laugh.
Von Atzingen has been wanting to do an Easter egg hunt for years, recalling a fond memory from the past.
“When my son was little, the National Honor Society did this and he loved it, and they put his picture in the paper,” she said. “I always wanted to do this for the town. We thought about doing it last year, but Easter was in March and we thought it would be too cold, so we decided to do it this year in April, but we got snow anyway.”
Community Partners of Greenville has a series of events planned this year, beginning with the Easter egg hunt, all with one goal in mind.
“This is to make the community vibrant, to offer more activities,” Von Atzingen said. “We are doing all kinds of events — we have spring concerts planned, we have summer concerts, we are bringing back the ducks.”
The ducks are fiberglass sculptures that artists are decorating and will be put on display later this year and eventually put up for auction.
Bill Von Atzingen, president of Community Partners, said the egg hunt was also designed to bring young families into the town park to show what it has to offer.
“We tried to structure this event for 2- to 10-year-olds to bring in younger parents,” he said. “Unfortunately, the weather didn’t work out, but we would have done it in the park to introduce younger parents to Greenville’s town park.”
The next event planned by Community Partners is a park cleanup on May 3, and everyone is invited to come and join in. Then the group will introduce a spring concert series in the North Barn.
For more information on Community Partners’ upcoming events, visit cpog.org.
Here are more images from Saturday’s event:
