Local opportunities for fireworks displays aren’t on the horizon for this year’s Independence Day celebration.

The highly anticipated Mathews fireworks show, which has drawn increasingly larger crowds each year, was canceled in March, when the nation was still grappling with the pandemic, and organizer Jeremy Elliott said he still believes that was the right call.

“Sending out donation letters at the same time people were receiving stimulus checks would not have been the right thing for the good people of Mathews County,” said Elliott.

In addition, he said, it still wasn’t known at the time whether the new vaccines were going to “pan out” or what kind of social distancing rules were going to be in place.

“That made it hard for us to schedule this event that far out,” he said.

Elliott explained that the fireworks display is a larger scale undertaking than what people may think. “It takes a lot of planning, dedication, and money to put on a huge fireworks show every year,...