This Valentine’s Day weekend, firefighters in Luzerne County are letting love bloom with their annual Valentine’s Day Roses fundraiser.<\/p>\n
WEST PITTSTON, Pa. \u2014 With every bouquet of roses, wrapped in love, West Pittston Hose Company No. 1 is igniting the spirit of Valentine’s Day for the 20th year in a row.<\/p>\n
Under a tent in the parking lot of Gerrity’s Ace Hardware on Wyoming Avenue in the borough, the fire company’s annual Valentine’s Day sale blooms with love and tradition. Tom Lello from Moosic always buys his sweetheart’s roses here. “I’ve been coming here for about 10 years, buying the roses for my sweetheart. This year, I mixed them up a little bit. This is a mixed bouquet, so a little different. I want to try something new every year, you know?”<\/p>\n
Lello says his loyalty to the sale isn’t just owed to the beauty of each bouquet, but to support West Pittston’s firefighters. Every sale helps the volunteer fire company with rising costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Well, I’m a volunteer fireman in Dupont, and supporting their organization here, it’s great to do that. It’s one of their fundraisers, I think it’s the only fundraiser they have this year, so I like to support them,” says Lello.<\/p>\n
Carson Crossley is a firefighter with the West Pittston Hose Company No. 1 and the Vice Chairman of the Rose Sale. “Yeah, so we’re a volunteer department, so we need to buy equipment and gear. A set of gear is now, you know, about $8,000 a piece,” says Crossley. He says the price of roses are also a little bit higher this year. “The prices went up a little bit this year from the tariffs, the supplier said, but it’s a good cause to get us some equipment. It barely covers anything, but something, you know? Everything helps.”<\/p>\n
Here, every bouquet doesn’t just mean a guaranteed smile from your sweetheart; it means supporting those first responders who support the community every single day.<\/p>\n
“We like seeing the smiles on everybody’s face when they get the roses. The husband might come in a little moody, but then they make the wife happy,” says Crossley.<\/p>\n