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Tuesday May 19, 2015 Edition
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Honoring And Remembering The Origins Of Vermont’s Largest Parade

Everyone loves a parade and this one was celebrated in 1988 and as usual brought thousands of people to town!
photo by Photo from Bixby Library Digital Archives
Everyone loves a parade and this one was celebrated in 1988 and as usual brought thousands of people to town!
On duty for over the past 25 years, two generations of voices will announce the 2015 Memorial Day Parade. Martha Sullivan DeGraaf and Ann Sullivan will be the voices of the day.
photo by Photo Provided
On duty for over the past 25 years, two generations of voices will announce the 2015 Memorial Day Parade. Martha Sullivan DeGraaf and Ann Sullivan will be the voices of the day.

Tuesday May 19, 2015

By Cookie Steponaitis

For the generations of Champlain Valley residents who consider the sound of Ann Sullivan’s voice a part of the annual Memorial Day tradition in the Little City, have no fear, this year will be the same. Sitting at the top of the reviewing stand will be two generations of Sullivans with Ann and daughter Martha calling out the floats, marchers, and special surprises of Vermont’s largest Memorial Day Parade.
   On this May afternoon the conversation turned not to the present Memorial Day but to the parades of the past and how this particular Vermont iconic tradition got its start. While the dates 1945 and 1946 have been batted around, the consensus of the local historians and American Legion archivists is that the Little City has had a Memorial Day Parade since the end of World War Two. The parade was started by the American Legion to honor those who had served and to remember those who had given their lives and was best described as tiny for the first ten to twelve years. The parade route ran only from the old Post Office to the center of town in 1958 and if fifty people showed up that was good attendance. There was no high school band present and the ceremony in the park featured a local person and was not heavily attended.
   The parade got a jump start and began to grow when the speakers were changed to people of state and national caliber. Over the years Senator Stafford and Senator Aiken set record crowds for attending the park services and listening to the presentations. In addition, the parade got a boost when one day the fire department was asked to come on board about thirty years ago. Once they marched one year they got the go ahead to invite others from around the region and the current count is around fourteen different departments from Vermont and New York who are a part of it each year.
    Not only did the parade grow but so did the route. By the 1970’s the parade route had expanded to the current size of about two miles and another annual event was in place. While people used to make the trip across the bridge to New York in the 1960’s to attend chicken barbeques, the American Legion decided in the 1970’s to offer their own. Serving fifty people the first year this year’s crowd is expected to reach its normal of close to or over 500.
    There is good reason to remember only the voices of Ann Sullivan and her family with this parade; for they are in fact the only people to have MC’d the event. Prior to Ann starting the position twenty-seven years ago, the parade had no announcer and simply moved along the route to the cheers of crowds.  Asking local people their favorite moments in parade history conjures up images of bagpipes, huge tractors, candy, marching bands and even floats they rode on as children.
    While the festivities have grown the crowds have increased the population of the Little City by a factor of five, and yes Vergennes residents are obsessive and meticulous about their lawns which harkens back to the original parade in 1946. The parade was created to honor those who had served and to remember those who gave the ultimate sacrifice and the 2015 parade has the theme of Honor and Remember and will probably be the biggest to date. So, if you have a float, a Brownie or Scout troop, a horse or just want to get more details, contact American Legion Post #14 at (802) 877-3216. If this is your first parade, then come early and prepare to enjoy yourself. The parades starts off from VUHS at 11:00 a.m. and bring a chair or a blanket because Main Street will have 10,000 people on it and only 2400 live here the rest of the year.


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