Kids parade in the Oak Bluffs Campground turns 14

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Leading the parade were Jodie and Bob Falkenburg, who tried to step down as grand marshalls this year, but were refused. — Photo by Lynn Christoffers

Fourteen years ago on the 4th of July, Campground neighbors Pam Rogers and Gretchen Rehak gathered their four young children together, handed out pot lids and wooden spoons and told them to march around the yard and make as much noise as they could. Who, under the age of five or 30 or 70, could resist a prompt like that? Definitely not the Rogers/Rehak gang, who were four, two, one, and one at the time.

Monday morning the Founding Families were joined by more than 150 other young Campgrounders to march and holler and smile their way from the south end of West Clinton Avenue up to Trinity Park, then around the Tabernacle to finish by the Cottage Museum. Assorted adults and pets joined in as well.

Riding in a float that looked suspiciously like a golf cart at the head of the procession were Ms. Rogers’s parents, Jodie and Bob Falkenburg, grand marshals of the parade since its inception. Between them and the ragtag throng that trailed along behind — many of them on bikes — was the band, an unusual quintet. The instruments were flute, recorder, tuba, clarinet, and drum. The finale to their five-song repertoire was “The Star Spangled Banner.”