Heroes on parade

The floats and groups in Coeur d’Alene’s American Heroes Parade started to make their way down Sherman Avenue at 11 a.m. Monday.

The street was lined with people, an estimated 30,000 in fact, who were sitting in camping chairs or on their parent’s shoulders.

Parade emcee Kerri Thoreson welcomed the first few groups of the parade over the microphone as they marched down Sherman. As each of the 80 groups went by, she gave the crowd details about who they were.

The first few groups to go were the military units and veterans groups. With a military family background, Thoreson led the crowd to cheer and honor those groups.

The military groups were followed by the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office, Kootenai County Search and Rescue and varying fire departments. Thoreson asked each fire department how tall the ladder on their trucks could extend.

The winner of that challenge wasn’t even a fire department, but Champion Concrete Pumping and Conveying with a ladder that extended 110 feet.

One of the more exciting floats of the morning was the pirate ship driven by the Coeur d’Alene Chamber of Commerce.

The pirate ship lives at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds and gets refurbished every year. This year it got a total makeover with new masts and sails, new paint, lights and new motor and electric equipment.

The chamber of commerce takes its float to parades all over the Inland Northwest to promote Coeur d’Alene.

Some of the groups that left the crowd dancing and cheering along were the “Red Hot Mamas,” pushing shopping carts that read “yolo,” the high school cheerleading teams and the Perfection-Nots.

Christa Bradbury, head coach of the Lake City cheerleaders said the team has been working on its routine for the past three weeks or so.

“We had tryouts for the team in May and over half these girls are brand new,” she said. For most of them, the parade was their first performance.

The routine was choreographed by the team’s three captains: seniors Mallory Lunceford, Susan Gilmore and Alenna Sellers.

“We’re excited to represent our community, our school and our team,” Gilmore said.

The Perfection-Nots is a community band with more than 100 participants.

Cindy Mitchell and her son, Jeff, who came home to visit for the Fourth of July after having missed it for the past 15 years, have been in the band since Jeff was in high school.

“I love it because you see people from all walks of life get together and just celebrate and be crazy,” Jeff said as he looked around at all the people in tutus, silly hats and decorated instruments. “I love the crazy costumes.”

People of all ages participated in Monday’s parade, from military veterans approaching 100, to 5-year-old Mia Miller with Gizmo and the Kinetic Fest.

Miller’s mom helped her make her bike look like the back end of a bumble bee while Miller herself was the body. This was Miller’s first time in a Fourth of July parade and she loved it.

“It was good. I even went in the middle of the street!” she said.

Miller thought the best part was showing off by riding her bike with no hands.

There were also guest appearances by Wonder Woman and Napoleon Dynamite.

The Snake Pit Derby Dames and a group representing the Coeur d’Alene Skatepark gave the crowd something to cheer about when they each laid someone in the middle of the street. Members of each respective group proceeded to jump over the person laying on the ground with their roller skates or skateboards.

Also on roller skates at the parade was Scott Hough, son of the late Bob Hough who emceed Coeur d’Alene’s Fourth of July parade on roller skates for years.

“I was actually the one who taught him to roller skate,” Scott said. “I thought ‘how fitting would this be to put on the skates and come out here?’ There was channeling of Dad today, yep, there was a little bit of that going on.”

At the end of the hour and a half long parade, spectators and participants dispersed for lunch, to hang out at McEuen Park or go to the beach to continue their Fourth of July festivities.