They say that home is where the heart is – and we hope this thought will urge former residents to make plans to attend home coming celebrations scheduled for Lawn for Aug 14 – 22, 2010. A committee was formed in August of this year to plan the festivities for next year.

For those of you who don’t know already, Lawn is a small community located on the south coast, with a population of just over 700 people. As with most other small outport communities, the fishery has been and continues to be the main industry in the town and because of the downturn in the fishery, Lawn has felt the effects. However, we are a tough breed and have weathered this storm like many others – and remain strong in spite of those drawbacks.

Although Lawn may be considered by many as a small town, there has never been any lack of community spirit and support for events such as these, and this is no exception. All fundraising events so far have had great support from the residents and we feel sure that this will continue right up to and beyond the Come Home Year festivities. We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for this support, as this makes our job so much easier.

Things are moving along quite well, and a Facebook group to help promote Come Home Year 2010 has close to 700 members already. The committee has regular weekly meetings and have already started on the schedule of events – as a matter of fact, the schedule is filling up rather quickly, as the group has asked for input from the different organizations within the community to ensure that everyone has a chance to plan and include various activities for the schedule.

Lawn has had two previous home coming celebrations, the first in 1994 and the second in 2005 – both events were top notch and had people returning home from all across Newfoundland, Canada and abroad. We are hoping that next year’s event will rival or top the other two and that those who make the trip home will not be disappointed.

Some events already on the schedule include an opening parade, blessing of the fleet, a boat ride, a variety concert, soccer games, community potluck supper, old-fashioned garden party and dance, battle of the bands, children’s fun day, kitchen party, brunches, poker games, bingo, dart shoots and a golf tournament - and the list is not complete!

This is by no means the full schedule and we invite you to check in on a regular basis on our Facebook group to get updates on other events as they are added to the list.

We would like to extend a cordial invitation to all former residents of Lawn to attend as many of the scheduled events as possible. We will be attempting to contact everyone by mail or email, however, there may be some people out there who we cannot make contact with through regular channels, so we are hoping that this method of communication will work for those people. You may contact us either through our Facebook Group - Lawn Come Home Year 2010, our webpage, jhtarrant.com/2010, by email - address is [email protected] or the old fashioned way, by mail at P.O. Box 2010, Lawn, NL, A0E 2E0.
  Submitted By: Ruth Bennett