The City of Edgewood will be hosting its annual Independence Day parade, and this one is special, since it is the event’s 60th anniversary.
This year the parade will be held on Monday, July 4 at 9:30 a.m. The route will start at Caywood Elementary, off Turkeyfoot Road, and end at Presidents Park, off Dudley Road.
“I remember that we always used the golf carts from the Kenton County Golf Course, and they were electric, most of the time, so we were ahead of the times,” Mayor John Link said.
Link was on city council from 1976 to 1982, and again from 1990 to 1993 before he was elected mayor in 1993.
“I always liked having the city hold the parade because it is community building, and it gets people involved, and that’s what a city always needs to do, is involve their citizens in events all around the city,” Link said.
The Grand Marshall for this year’s occasion is World War II Marine Corporal Howard Requardt, a 96-year old veteran who fought in the battle of Okinawa.
The theme for the parade is ‘Standing Strong, Hometown Heroes’, which makes the corporal a fitting representative.
Edgewood incorporated as a city in 1948, and two other sections, Summit Hills Heights and St Pius Heights, joined the city in 1968.
The population of the city in 1960 was 1,100. By 2010 the population had steadily grown to 8,575.
Dr. Charles Zimmer and his wife, who lived on Lyndale Road, thought it would be a great idea to have a Fourth of July parade for the city, and get the neighborhood kids involved, having them decorate their bikes and such.
Kim Wolking was recreation director at the City of Edgewood and took care of organizing the parade for 16 years.
“There were very few years that we could get a band,” Wolking said. “I don’t know if they changed band directors, or what, but they said it was hard to get the band members together. We did have the band from Dixie Heights a few years.”
Wolking said every year there were about 50 to 75 entries, and then there were the people who just showed up the day of the parade. Although she tried to put everybody in the correct order, usually showing up the day of the parade meant they were put at the end of the parade.
“We had a lot of people who came every year, like Neiheisal Plumbing, and he was pulled around in a bathtub,” she laughed. “We would have the Brookwood Swim Team, and the Raiders football team and cheerleaders. We even had the St. Pius choir. And the Kenton County Police Honor Guard always started the parade, and they have always walked the entire route in their uniforms.”
This year there are 70 entries.
Grand marshalls were always chosen by the city, and Link said they try to look at people who have had past services to the city, or who have gone the distance for the city. In the past few years, he said they had Bob Begnoche, who was public works director for a number of years, and just recently the city honored the nurses of St. Elizabeth Healthcare for their work through the COVID pandemic.
The city has held the parade every year except for 2020. Councilman Ben Barlage said it was a difficult decision for council to make but COVID caused the action.
Barlage is a historian, and he has gathered some information and pictures from the Don Busemeyer family.
“For many years in the 1960s Carl Folz and his wife Marie, whose dairy farm was located at the northwest corner of Dudley and Turkeyfoot, rode in an old family horse-drawn carriage,” he said. “Growing up in Winding Trails, we were somewhat separated from the balance of the city. We had 266 new families in a great community with the nation’s bicentennial surrounding us. We had our own community parade. The children dressed in period garb, or red, white, and blue, put crepe paper in our bicycle spokes and taped flags to our banana seats and Big Wheels.”
The parade route was changed in 2015 due to construction on Lyndale and Edgewood roads. The route was always a bit circuitous, but the city liked having the parade go through the neighborhoods to get residents involved with their city.
“There are people who never see their mayor or council in person except during the parade,” Link said.
Even though there was an uproar with the change at first, the city felt that the new route worked better for the city, and it became the official route. Except for eliminating Lyndale and Edgewood roads, much of the route is the same.
When the parade ends at Presidents Park, the mayor will give out three awards for entries in the parade: Best Original Entry, Best Performing Entry and Best Entry Honoring the Theme of the parade.
Mayor Link said that as of July 1 the city will also be celebrating the 75th anniversary of the city, so he said they will be advertising the anniversary year in this year’s parade.
“We will be putting up banners and signs most of the year, and decals and letterheads,” said Link. “But we will still be doing the best job we possibly can to build the community and make the city the place people are glad to be.”
