The National Park Service (NPS) will commemorate the 82nd birthday of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) with a Jazz Concert performed by the Exeter Community Band at 2 p.m. on Sunday, April 19, at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site (NHS).
The event is free and open to the public. This concert is part of the nationally renowned Berks Jazz Fest that runs from April 10 to April 19.
The Exeter Community Band is an all volunteer local non-professional concert band that has performed at local churches, retail establishments, senior citizen homes, The Oley Fair, and other local festivals. The Hopewell program will feature the music of the 1930s and 1940s. Songs such as Star Dust, Blue Moon, and But Not For Me will be played by the band along with patriotic music. These are tunes that might have been heard on the radio by the some 400 members of the Civilian Conservation Corps companies that built French Creek State Park and restored Hopewell Furnace. The concert will also feature Jazz Songs composed by Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller.
Created in March of 1933, during the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, known as FDR’s tree army, put thousands of unemployed men to work. Under the direction of the NPS, the CCC camps at the federal French Creek National Recreation Demonstration Area accomplished the first preservation and protection work at what is now Hopewell Furnace NHS.
The foundations of American industry are featured at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site, a historic iron-making plantation. Hopewell Furnace is located five miles south of Birdsboro off Route 345.
For more information stop by the park’s visitor center, call 610-582-8773, visit the park’s web site at <www.nps.gov/hofu> or contact us by e-mail at <hofu_superintendant@nps.gov>.
