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closeSumner Rotary revives May Day Kids Parade
First parade in more than 30 years features 250 children marching down Main Street, while longtime residents reminisce
Roxanne Cooke
Last Sunday, Sumner’s Main Street was a blast from the past for Ona Moltke — and for many other longtime Sumner residents.
After more than 30 years, the Sumner Rotary Club revived the Rotary May Day Kids Parade. The last parade took place in 1976.
Moltke remembers marching in the parade in the 1940s.
“We’d decorate the bicycles,” she recalled after Sunday’s parade. “We had drill teams. It’s been so long I forgot.”
A gaggle of children ages 6 to 13 arrived in costume on Sunday riding bicycles, tricycles or pulling wagons. The Old Cannery train drove through the parade as well. Some children and parents brought their pets. Best costumes won ribbons, just as in the past.
Children marched from Main Street to Sumner High School in years past, Moltke said. This year, the route avoided the traffic on Wood Avenue, and instead turned right at Sumner Avenue and looped back to the starting point at Heritage Park.
After the parade, children traditionally received ice cream in Dixie cups and a ticket to the former Riviera Theater, Moltke said. This time around there was Old Cannery fudge, candy and toys up for grabs in a raffle drawing.
The 64-year-old Sumner resident participated in the parade multiple times, starting at the age of 4.
“I’m glad to see them bring it back,” Moltke said. “I think it’s good for the children. I was glad to see the turnout. I’d like to see more.”
Sumner Rotary has been talking about reviving the parade for years, said Rotarian John Skinner. It ran from 1934 to 1976, and was discontinued because the Riviera Theater closed its doors and was demolished.
Without the tradition of receiving a theater ticket, the parade wasn’t quite the same, he said. Rotary replaced it with a scholarship program.
Approximately 250 children participated this year, according to Skinner, who chaired the event. The highest number of children recorded was 671 in 1961.
“It was a little bigger” in the past, said Councilman Leroy Goff, whose children marched in the parade in the early 1950s.
It’s a good event for the children, who will likely remember these parades for years to come — just as his children have, Goff said.
“Those were good years,” he said. “They don’t come back.”