By Jim Newell

Review Editor

The weather outside may have been slightly frightful but the joy inside was more than delightful during the special needs Easter party on April 2.

The AU (Awesome & Unique) Special Needs Foundation hosted the annual Easter party at Lake Orion United Methodist Church with scores of children and their families celebrating the upcoming holiday.

Mary Vellucci has been organizing the Easter egg hunt and Easter party since 2008 for the Down Syndrome Guild. This year, she’s started her own non-profit – AU Special Needs – to support the special needs community in North Oakland County.

Vellucci contacted Lake Orion, Oxford, Clarkston and Lapeer schools to invite all of the special needs families in those districts.

“I did it through all of those schools and then posted flyers in the Lake Orion chat rooms,” she said.

Kids full of smiles and friendship and energy ran from game to game, colored, took photos with the Easter Bunny and refueled with a pizza and sandwich and dessert lunch before heading out to Children’s Park for a mad-dash egg hunt.

Lake Orion United Methodist Church welcomed the event back after it had spent the last several years at the Lake Orion Knights of Columbus Hall, which was recently sold.

“Our town is the most amazing town ever,” Vellucci said. “I posted the event in the chat room and people were reaching out to me asking how they could help, how they could support us.

Vellucci enlists a team of volunteers – family, friends and community members – to help during the event with running games, organizing the food and dessert spread and scattering the Easter eggs.

She also put boxes in local businesses to collect candy donations, money jars in local restaurants and banks and “some of the businesses supported us with food (donations).”

She said she’s always so grateful for the support from the community and always delighted at seeing the children have such a great time.

“I prep every year for 100 (attendees). We haven’t quite hit that yet, but we never know,” Vellucci said.

“Normally there would be a lot more (attending) but a lot of people have reached out to me in disappointment because it’s spring break still so they’re not all in town.”