Family Week makes headlines in the New York Times
David on Jul 23rd 2007
Provincetown Family Week got some mainstream attention this week as the New York Time’s published an article yesterday about the event and it’s history.
Many people don’t realize that Family Week started as a very small gathering in 1996 before it grew into the mammoth that it is today:
In 1996, Tim Fisher and Scott Davenport, a couple living in New Jersey, brought their daughter, Kati, and son, Fritz, to Provincetown for a vacation. After a week of meeting other gay and lesbian parents at the beach, they invited about 15 families to their rented house for dinner. It was a magical event, Mr. Davenport recalled, at which children of gay parents — many of whom didn’t know other families like theirs — suddenly felt less alone.
ver the next decade, the event — which came to be known as Family Week — grew so large that by last summer a family parade seemed to stretch from one end of Provincetown to the other. Among those working as volunteers were Kati and Fritz, now teenagers.
From 15 families to a few thousand, Family Week has grown by leaps and bounds. But the week’s magic is not deluded by its size; each year is better than the previous. Seeing so many beautiful, loving families is a transforming experience for even the most hardened of hearts.
Provincetown Family Week officially kicks off in five days. Some things will be different this year: our partnership with R Family Vacations, broadway-quality performances, and more robust workshops, programs and events. But the heart of family week will be the same; the magic that is Family Week will be in full force.
Mr. Davenport, who was present at the creation, said he wasn’t unhappy that Family Week was changing. “Gregg and Kelli have been to enough Family Weeks that I think they understand the magic,” he said.
Besides, Mr. Davenport (who now lives in Maryland) said, it didn’t matter if children who attended Family Week went to a fish fry or a circus. What matters, he said, “is that they get to grow up knowing other families like theirs.”
If you’d like more information about Family Week, click here. And check out pictures from last year’s event.
Filed in family week, r family vacations |
[…] aimed at LGBTQ parented families (you can read more about the week in a recent New York Times article). Thanks to our partnership with R Family Vacations, we’ll even have Broadway quality events […]
Broadway quality events? Hmmmm I must have missed that? We went to the Broadway brunch and they ran out of food before our part of the line made it up to the food!
Then they had some people singing some really obscure love songs on a bad microphone. The kids were bored in two minutes - no costumes, not sets, no live music - very dry. I was even bored. I think they may have sung 4 songs - thank god there wasn’t more!
They did a school house rock song - but only the parents remembered that. Sing something the kids know - from their generation - not ours!
Very poorly done …. please stop saying there was BROADWAY entertainment - there was none. I would have preferred getting some drag queens from in town and do a number or two - at least that would have held the attention of the kids!