Vicksburg on parade

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, December 10, 2002

8,000 line up to see,

march in Christmas show

[12/08/02]Saturday’s Vicksburg Christmas parade was the first for one group of Sharkey County children, who said it was the biggest parade they had ever seen.

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Sunday schoolmates Jimmy Smith and Terrale Washington, both 7, and Raoul Ortega, 8, were three of a 24-member group at the parade from Cary’s Mount Buria Baptist Church. Watching the parade from near its beginning, at Belmont Street, they joined thousands of other spectators who lined Washington Street for the 11 a.m. start.

“This is the longest one,” Washington said, comparing Saturday’s to the parades he had seen before, all of which had been in Rolling Fork.

Chief parade organizer Steve Pranger’s pre-parade estimate of total parade participants and spectators ranged as high as 4,000 each, for a total crowd of as many as 8,000.

“It’s probably every bit of that,” Vicksburg Police traffic division Lt. David Beard said after surveying the crowd gathered between Belmont and Jackson streets near the parade’s start time.

“We definitely had more people in the parade this year than last year,” Pranger said after, adding that about as many people came out to watch.

Parade grand marshal Otho Jones, who retired this year as a Warren County Sheriff’s Department chief deputy after 31 years of service, rode in a convertible near the front of the line.

“This is an honor and a pleasure to do this,” he said before beginning his ride.

Vicksburg Junior High School band members Shannon Guynn and Hannah Davis, both 13-year-old oboe players, said it was the first parade they had marched in with a band. The VJHS band, which had about 100 members marching, played the Christmas carol “Do You Hear What I Hear.”

Both band members said they enjoyed the march.

“It wasn’t as cold as it has been the past few days,” Davis said.

All spaces in the 75-unit parade, which took nearly an hour and a half to travel its nine-block route, were full, Pranger said. Co-sponsored by the Vicksburg Jaycees and Vicksburg Main Street, the parade had 30 floats, 24 trucks or trailers, eight cars, six marching units, five marching bands and two horse groups.

Jaycees parade committee members judged the floats, selecting the one from Redwood Elementary School best overall.

“They had a train station and little kids dancing, moonwalking (on their float),” Tolley said of the Redwood float. “They were jamming.”

Winners in other categories were Warren-Yazoo Mental Health, most original, with a float that displayed the words, “Aliens love Santa, too;” The Equitable and Vicksburg High School Key Club, best from a school or civic organization with a float that used a Mexican motif to fit the parade’s theme of “Christmas Around the World;” and Ameristar Casino Hotel-Vicksburg best from a business, committee member Patty Tolley said.

The event not only helped celebrate the season but also provided an opportunity for downtown to show off to thousands of people the progress being made there, Main Street board chairman Harry Sharp said.

“There are so many changes, new construction, redevelopment and new businesses,” he said. “I’ve been a downtown property owner and business owner for 15 years, and the last couple of years it’s really started to turn around.”

Washington Street along the parade route is scheduled to be reworked, with a new brick surface and a straighter route, before the next Christmas parade. That work is to begin next month.

Ortega, of the Sharkey County Sunday school group, which was accompanied by adults including Dorothy Tate of Rolling Fork and Dorsey Johnson of Cary, said the music was what he liked best.

When asked what he thought of the parade, Jimmy, a first-grader at South Delta Elementary School, said, simply, “Awesome.”