For 54 years, the Rotary Club of Lexington Park has sponsored the popular National Oyster Festival in St. Mary’s County. As a caring organization, the Club has an abundance of concern for the well-being of Festival goers and volunteers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
For this reason, the Club reluctantly concluded that the Oyster Festival cannot and should not be held as a major community event in 2020.
Rather than hosting large public gatherings on October 17 and 18 this year, the Club will host small, controlled localized events. These events will serve to preserve the National Oyster Cook-Off and the U.S. Oyster Shucking Competition. The intent is to continue to honor these long-held traditions. In the best case, if local restrictions on gatherings are safely relaxed, these events will be planned to scale-up as much as is practical.
Otherwise, current planning calls for live streaming or pre-recording these events. This will perhaps involve a wider scope of national cookers and shuckers to create a national virtual celebration of the Oyster in October 2020.
As these plans mature in the coming months, announcements will be posted to https://usoysterfest.com and the Oyster Festival Facebook page.
As is the case for many an event this year, the Rotary Club of Lexington Park is saddened by the loss of your contributions to the many participating charitable organizations. King Oyster assures us all, however, that the U.S. Oyster Festival will fully be back and better than ever in October 2021!
