GALLERY: Royersford National Night Out

Royersford's second annual National Night Out ran from 4-8 p.m. on Tuesday night on Washington Street between 3rd and 4th Avenues. As the sun beat down in the late afternoon and early evening, dozens of volunteers, businesses and church administraters helped to set up the "block party." The major goal was to turn it into an event that got the community out in the streets and to drive crime out of Royersford.

National Night Out is a nationwide initiative that started in 1984 and has expanded leaps and bounds to what it is today. For more on the national outing, click .

A big part of the event was all of the games and activities for kids, including a puppet show, ladder ball toss and even a dunk tank, which wielded various members of the community for kids and adults alike to pick on. Dunkees included Pastor Kate Davidheiser of the First United Church of Christ and East Vincent United Church of Christ, and Jake Channing, a volunteer at the event and student at Daniel Boone in Douglassville. Boone said his friends dunked him a bunch of times, as well as his mom. Despite the normal and potential embarassment of having mom dunk son, Channing said it was more embarassing for her after seeing the way she threw the ball. "Pastor Kate" also got dropped into the refreshing water quite a few times.

"I must’ve gotten dunked 25 times. Unfortunately all the little children from my church saw that I was up there and almost every one of them got me in," Davidheiser said.

All fun and games aside, Davidheiser enjoyed seeing the community come together and most of all was ecstatic to see her church work so hard for this cause.

"Just to see them take this and run with it and have it completely empower them to do this on their own… I am amazed they have done this all themselves," said Davidheiser. "To me, that’s what church is all about. It doesn’t have to be the pastor taking them by the hands and taking them into the street. They took me out in the street and they showed me all the great places in town that wanted to do this for the community."

In comparison to last year's event, the community turnout was definitely greater, according to JR Bach, who was a major part of putting it together. Bach wanted to thank all of the businesses, police and fire squads, the borough, State Senator Tom Quigley and State Representative John Rafferty and all of the people who came out.

"We had more support than we had last year and the people being here, you just see the happiness and joy on their faces," Bach said. "It impresses me a lot to see it, especially with the economy we’re in. They didn’t have to do it. They’re taking it off of their bottom line and for them to say ‘We’re going to bring a truck full of food and just give it away,’ – that’s awesome. They couldn’t do anything more to the community. It speaks a lot for the area."

For a full list of people involved, click .

Overall, the general consensus was that next year's event would be ideal if the community could utilize another block of space. However, this will take further effort from the community.

"In order to do that, we need more community support," games coordinator and volunteer Becky LaFreeda said. "We had a great turnout tonight, but I think we would need to have more businesses and restaurants be willing to help us out. We have a great variety this year, but we could always use more and more!"