For the first time this year, the City and the Parks Department came together to put on an entire weekend of fun for the community during the 4th of July weekend in Michigan City.
Michigan City’s Independence Day Parade was put on Saturday morning to honor America’s Heroes and celebrate Indiana’s Bicentennial. This year’s parade brought a record number of entries of over 165 to Franklin Street to march through the city. Michigan City and surrounding areas schools, businesses and organizations gathered to participate.
Click here to see more photos!
Jeremy Kienitz, Superintendent of the Michigan City Parks Department said that the parade is a chance to bring the entire community together. “It’s great for the community, I mean, as you can see, I don’t know if you’ve been up and down Franklin Street already, but you know, people have their chairs set out the night before and it just gathers the entire community.
The event also offers businesses and organizations in Michigan City and surrounding areas to interact with the community. “It showcases a lot of the organizations and businesses and youth of our community within the parade itself. And it gives them a chance to put them on stage and a platform in front of our community for everyone to see,” said Kienitz.
Kalon Kubik, Administrator in the Mayor’s Office, said that this year is the first year the city was involved with the parade planning. Moving everything to one weekend this year was to give the community a sense of pride for their events.
“Michigan City, we used to be kind of disjointed with what we did with our fireworks and our parade. Our fireworks were always like a week after the 4th of July and everything was kind of disjointed. So now we’re trying to bring everything into a solidified weekend and make it more of a community event.”
The City wanted the residents to be to have their very own special events during the weekend of the 4th.
“LaPorte has their thing and Valpo has their thing. And we want Michigan City and Michigan City residents to have pride in what we’re doing too as a community. Because this is for them. Everything that we’re doing here is for them. And you see all the participation that we’ve got and the turn out and that’s what it’s all about, providing it for the citizens and the residents and so, yeah, we’re pretty excited about what’s happening here this year.” said Kubik.
Hawhaw Elvis (his clown name), a Michiana Clown said that he loves parades and making all the kids smile.“We’ve been clowning for 30 years and we’ve always been in the parade,” he said.“It’s a beautiful parade.”
Many Michigan City businesses including the Michiana Clowns were also in attendance. The Michigan City Piranhas made a beautiful float with a swimming theme to catch the attention of the community.
“We love to endorse the skill of swimming, especially living in Michigan City, it’s a life saving skill to know how to swim well here.” said Assistant Coach, Brian Vedo.
Brenda Harvey, a Michigan City resident comes to the parade to honor America’s Heroes and support her community.
“I actually get teary when I see the veterans and I know” she laughed. “I’m probably the only one who cries at the parade, but I do. I just, I think it’s a great time to honor people.”