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Date: 12/30/2020
SOUTHWICK – To fund some of its events in 2021, Southwick’s 250th Anniversary committee is collecting money for preorders for the “Southwick Revisited,” a book all about Southwick’s history and scenery by Lee Hamburg.
Jim Putnam, the committee’s chair, said Hamburg is a member of the committee and worked with others to put the book together.
“He’s a chair of our Historical and Souvenirs Work Group. He’s very well known in town for his historical work and he’s not the only one. He and a few other dedicated people have done a great job of painstakingly maintaining our heritage by getting old photos and identifying who and where they are,” he said.
The idea for the “Southwick Revisited” book was initially approved back in 2018.
“Early on in our planning process, this work group came up with the idea for a book of historical photos. It was on his backburner for a long time and it took some significant funding to finance that. I think we approved this project some time in 2018, so he set to work on that,” he said.
To help get the book off the ground, Putnam said the committee purchased over 200 hundred copies.
“Part of the deal was that we would pay for a significant amount of them. There’s a lot of incentive for us to sell those books and turn that cash back into our Civic Fund Treasury so we have the cash available to fund our parade in 2020 hopefully,” he said.
Putnam said he is expecting the books to arrive by February.
“We won’t physically have any books, we’re assured of delivery in February, but with the way things are we’ll take that with a grain of salt. I don’t think they will be any earlier than that,” he said.
Residents interested in purchasing the book can pay in cash at the Southwick Florist, with checks made out to the Southwick Civic Fund, and by credit card or PayPal at SouthwickCivicFund.org, when paying online, residents must also said a receipt to Putnam at jimp@southwick250.org.
As of Dec. 23, sales were modest, but Putnam said the whole point of the pre-sale was to have some fun and give residents a different gift idea.
“We’ve sold about 15 so far, you always wish it was more but we’re off and running. I think it was an opportunity for people to give them as gifts, and like everything else we do, have a little fun with it,” he said.
The first 100 copies of the book will be numbered and signed by Hamburg.
“We’re doing numbered versions, for a lot of people that doesn’t matter but for some people that is kind of special to have version number 10 autographed by the author,” Putnam said.
The Committee will be hosting a drawing for the number two and three books on Dec. 31, but presales will continue after that.