The annual Joel Garrison Children’s Day celebration is the culmination of activities on all of the City of Williamsport’s playgrounds. This year it will be celebrated on Monday, August 13.

The Joel G. Garrison Children’s Day will be celebrated at Memorial Park, West Fourth Street, Williamsport. It will consist of free activities for all community children from 4 to 7 p.m.

The event will offer complimentary games, bounce houses, face painting, swimming at Splash Cove, and refreshments.

Pet therapy animals of all shapes and sizes — from ducks to donkeys — from Young’s Funny Farm of Berwick will also be present for children and their families to pet, feed, and enjoy.

The Joel G. Garrison Fund at the First Community Foundation Partnership of Pennsylvania supports the Joel G. Garrison Children’s Day. This day is made possible by the foresight, generosity, and compassion of Mr. Garrison, and his desire to ensure that children in the City of Williamsport would have a day in which they could enjoy free entertainment and refreshments.

Mr. Garrison is remembered as a kind man, who took joy in helping children in need. A veteran of the Spanish-American War, Joel Garrison chose to designate August 13, a date that corresponds with the end of the war in 1898, as the day in which children would benefit from his gift to the community.

Who was the man who made this day of fun and excitement possible?

In 1898, he served in the Spanish-American War as chief steward and hospital orderly of the 12th Regiment, a volunteer outfit recruited from Williamsport, Lock Haven, Muncy, Milton, Lewisburg, Sunbury, and Danville. He was a druggist by profession. Without a family of his own, his delight to his lifetime was to help underprivileged boys and girls. It was no surprise to his friends when they learned that he dedicated his estate to the entertainment of children. The First Community Foundation administers the money he left for this.

Not any of the children will know anything about this man because Mr. Garrison died in 1942 at the age of 83 years.