Hickory Park

BERGEN – Children in Bergen got to take part in an Easter Egg Hunt on Saturday in Hickory Park, although it was not in the traditional format.

The event is an annual tradition in Bergen, in which children usually hunt for eggs by age group. 

This year, however, due to COVID-19, children stayed in their cars and parents drove by and the Easter Bunny (aka Tom Tieffel) and his helpers, Village of Bergen Mayor Anna Marie Barclay, Connie Tieffel, Anne Sapienza, and Jody Fisher and Sandy Partridge handed out bags of filled Easter eggs.

Kids got to see the Easter Bunny and then quickly checked to see if their bag contained a Golden Egg. If so, they were driven to the prize table to collect a special surprise.

The Easter Egg Hunt is sponsored by the Bergen Business and Civic Association.

Photos by Virginia Kropf.

Top photo: Easter Bunny, aka Tom Tieffel, waits by bags of prizes in Hickory Park for this year's drive-thru Easter Egg "hunt" in Bergen. 

Below, from left, Village of Bergen Mayor Anna Marie Barclay, Connie Tieffel, the Easter Bunny (aka Tom Tieffel), Anne Sapienza, and Jody Fisher and Sandy Partridge are all decked out and ready for the Easter Egg drive-thru event in Bergen’s Hickory Park on Saturday.

BERGEN – Thirty cyclists who are members of HeartCycle’s Touring Club stopped to visit with Bergen Mayor Anna Marie Barclay and village administrator Cortney Gale on Sept. 25 during a nearly two-week ride from Grand Rapids, Mich. to Rochester.

Barclay and Gale welcomed the cyclists in Hickory Park.

This is year four of the HeartCycle’s Coast to Coast, which was originally formed as a cardiac research project, but has long since become simply a nonprofit bicycling club.

The riders departed Sept. 8 from Michigan on their 660-mile ride. They proceded south through rural Indiana, spending the first night in Battle Creek. In Bowling Green, Ohio, they stopped for a day of rest, before continuing on to Lake Erie and Downtown Cleveland.

From there, they rode the next three days near the Lake Erie shoreland, then into Pennsylvania and New York. From Dunkirk, they headed toward Buffalo, mostly on bike paths, arriving at Niagara Falls, where they spent two nights.

The 57-mile ride to Batavia took them a day, where they spent the night before heading to Bergen and the Erie Canal, where they planned to finish their ride to Rochester along the canal.

(Photo: Bergen Mayor Anna Marie Barclay, center, and village administrator Cortney Gale welcomed the Heart Cycle Touring Club to the village's Hickory Park during their ride from Grand Rapids, Mich., to Rochester. Photo courtesy of Anna Marie Barclay.)

A bit of rain didn't dampen spirits in Bergen this morning where officials dedicated a new "life trail" system in Hickory Park.

The system, made up of seven, three-sided stations with a series of exercises people can perform, is designed to give seniors in particular a chance to be active and improve their physical health.

It was funded by a $50,000 state grant, secured with the help of Sen. Michael Ranzenhofer, Assemblyman Steve Hawley and County Legislator Bob Bausch.

"We have put in place a parks master plan with a focus on fitness and wellness," said Mayor Anna Marie Barclay. "In particular, we want to give opportunities to seniors, which is our fastest growing population, an opportunity, because there are not as many opportunities for seniors as there are for other age groups. We want to encourage our seniors to come out, and not just our seniors. We invite seniors from all of the surrounding communities to come out to our park."

Ranzenhofer said he was proud to have helped bring about the project.

"I'm very excited to be here," Ranzenhofer said. "The comment about the weather, we were talking before about it being a rainy day, but it really is shining today, even though you may not see the sun. On a project like this, with your hard work, collectively, we were able to do a very good thing for the village residents, and thanks for including me."