Auburn Marks Our Nation’s 250th Birthday

Auburn marked America’s 250th anniversary with a three-day celebration Friday through Sunday, drawing residents out for everything from pickleball and water fights to a Fourth of July program built around readings of the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address.
Friday’s activities included pickleball, water fights with the Auburn Volunteer Fire Department (AVFD), photo booths, a sidewalk chalk contest and scavenger hunts, capped by a Summer Sounds concert in the park featuring the Chicago Invasion.
Saturday centered on the Fourth of July program, which featured the historical readings, musical performances and a full day of community celebration that ran into a fireworks display at dusk.
Billy Hayes addressed the crowd with reflections on the nation’s founding before reading portions of the Declaration of Independence, tracing its origins from the Second Continental Congress’s 1776 decision to form a drafting committee through Thomas Jefferson’s role as its principal author.
“I memorized this for my high school English class here at Auburn with Carrie Allen, which prompted her to ask me to perform it at the Brownville Freedom Festival when it started many years ago,” Hayes said. He added that he’s recited it every year for the past two decades, with a few exceptions when he was attending events in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Hayes walked through the timeline of the Declaration’s adoption — from Congress’s vote to approve independence on July 2, 1776, to the document’s formal adoption two days later — and noted that Jefferson and John Adams, despite differing views on government, remained close friends until their deaths on the same day, July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after the Declaration was adopted.
He returned to the podium later in the program to recite the Gettysburg Address, drawing a connection between Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 dedication of the Gettysburg battlefield cemetery and the founding principles laid out nearly a century earlier in the Declaration.
The Southeast Nebraska Community Band (SNCB) performed patriotic selections throughout the program, with vocals by Alayna Gerdes of Johnson-Brock and SNCB member Katie Umland, who joins Auburn as its vocal music instructor this year, along with her brother, Adam Umland. Laura Osborne, chair of the Auburn 250 celebration, closed out the music with a rendition of “God Bless the U.S.A.”
Osborne also recognized active-duty service members and veterans in attendance, who were presented with challenge coins by members of American Legion Post 23 Auxiliary.
That evening, dunk tanks, inflatables, yard games and a cookout hosted by the AVFD led into the fireworks display at dusk, closing out Saturday’s celebration.