Fireworks Light Up Lives of 1st Family of Pyrotechnics

You want fireworks? Donna Grucci Butler has fireworks.

So does her mother, her father, her brother, her cousin Jim, her other cousin Jim, her son and her daughter. Along with about 10 other members of the Grucci clan, they are the heart and soul of Fireworks by Grucci, a mom-and-pop-and-brother-and-sister-and-niece-and-nephew-and-cousin operation that has been producing fireworks extravaganzas for practically every conceivable occasion for close to 150 years now.

In the past 12 years especially, the Gruccis have become a sort of first family of fanfare, and their fireworks have heralded such events as the country’s bicentennial celebration in Boston, which was graced by the music of Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops; the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y.; the centennial celebrations of the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge, and both inaugural ceremonies for President Reagan.

5,000 Shells to Explode

Tonight at 9 at Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley, the Long Island, N.Y.-based Gruccis will be at it again, exploding about 5,000 shells into the shapes of fountains, palm trees, peonies, chrysanthemums, golden rain and Saturn rings to kick off the yearlong celebration of Orange County’s 100th anniversary.

It will be a fireworks show with a difference, Butler says, and not only because of its price tag: about $100,000 for the shells alone. Wisk Laundry Detergent and The Times Orange County Edition are sponsoring the show. What makes the event special, she says, is that every second of the 24-minute show is synchronized to music. (The sound track will be simulcast on KWIZ-FM 96.7, 1480 AM for those who prefer to view the show, visible for a mile, from afar.)

“When you put music to fireworks,” Butler rhapsodized, “it’s like going to the ballet.”

The Gruccis’ shows have not always been so grandiose. Twenty years ago, Butler says, her parents, Concetta and Felix, who inherited the business from Felix’s uncle Anthony, who in turn inherited it from his father, Angelo, had to struggle to make ends meet. The Gruccis assembled all of their own fireworks instead of importing many of them from around the world as they do now, and used whatever raw materials were at hand. Butler says her mother and father even scavenged cardboard from old billboards to make the casings for the fireworks.

The shows had no music then, and the Gruccis catered mostly to local Italian churches on Long Island, where the entire Grucci family still lives and gathers for dinner every Sunday.

“The look then was strictly toward noise,” she says. “It was for Italian festivals, and Italian people like noise.”

In Parents’ Days

Now, when her parents watch the younger Gruccis’ pyrotechnical feats, Butler says, they gripe that “we don’t work as hard as they did.”

“They say, ‘You don’t know how lucky you have it today. I can remember days when we had to go rip off the signs for the casing. Now all you have to do is pick up the phone and order it.’ ”

If the younger Gruccis have benefited from the increased popularity and technical advancement of fireworks shows, they have also had to deal with its downside. Now, when the Gruccis return from the road, where they spend May through October, they have to field calls from an assortment of pyromaniacs angling for jobs with the outfit.

“You get all kinds of calls,” Butler says. “They want to know where the shows are going to be and can we help with the shows. They say, ‘I’ve been in the war and I disengaged nuclear warheads.’

“We say, ‘Yeah? Well you’re overqualified.’ ”

Fatal Accident

In their 138 years of dealing with fireworks, Butler says, the Gruccis have had only one serious accident. That was in 1983, when a warehouse containing fireworks exploded on Long Island, killing her 43-year-old brother, Jim.

For the Gruccis, Orange County is just one more stop on their annual summer fireworks tour, which takes them from coast to coast and all points in between, including some Butler would rather not see again.

“We’ve worked in spots that have to be some of the ugliest areas in the country,” she says. But then she added good-naturedly that she enjoys her work no matter where it takes her.

“I love to watch during the show the audience’s faces,” she says. “The men tend to like the grand finale. It kind of brings back their service days or their hunting days. And the women love to see the softer things.

“I’m like that too. I like the fountains and the peonies and the chrysanthemums.”