Parades and flag raising: Patriotism marks Fourth of July events in Newport News

Leigh Johnson sat in a lawn chair on Newport News’ Main Street Monday morning, taking in yet another Hilton Village Fourth of July parade.

His 44th in a row, to be exact.

The parade always passes directly in front of Johnson’s house. When his children were young, he said, they’d be in the parade, too — decking out their bikes with red, white and blue.

But Johnson, who is in his 70s, said there’s “always a new twist” to Hilton’s parade, such as this year’s “kazoo band” humming Yankee Doodle Dandy and America the Beautiful.

“I like to see everybody come together,” Johnson said of a parade that he said has been going on since “at least” the 1950s.

“For one moment, everybody comes together — male, female, Black, white, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish,” Johnson said. “And everybody’s happy. Everybody’s having a good time. And it makes me feel good to see everybody happy.”

“We’ll fight later,” he quipped.

There were other events in nearby Brandon Heights — an adjacent neighborhood that celebrated its 56th annual Fourth of July parade and block party — as well a day of festivities at Yorktown and many other venues.

In Hilton Village, trucks and ambulances led the parade, followed by a formation of Boy Scouts from troops 27 and 242, carrying the American flag and troop flags.

Then dozens of children on bikes and scooters — and babies in strollers — streamed out in July 4th colors. They were followed by the Hilton’s Women’s Club, school officials, politicians, “the kazoo band,” and the Lion’s Den, a pep band from the Lion’s Bridge Football Club soccer team.

The kazoo band was jointly organized by Mary Ann Ford, 82, of Hilton Village, and her 11-year-old neighbor, Lydia Lynerd. The idea came at the Hilton parade a year ago, Ford said, when “we decided the parade needed some music.”

“A kazoo is something everybody can use,” she explained.

While Ford provided advice and the plastic kazoos — she had run a kazoo band previously — Lydia recruited the band’s participants. “I just got a bunch of my friends that I thought would like to do it,” Lydia explained. “It was really fun.”

The group practiced their tunes at the Hilton Pier Sunday evening.

Jim and Elaine Deviese, of York County, said it was their first Hilton Village parade. Jim Deviese grew up in Indiana, and the Hilton parade — non-choreographed and with amateur marchers — reminds him of his youth.

“What I like is that it harkens back to a more innocent time in the country,” Deviese said. “It sort of had the vestiges of my childhood. It’s the vestiges of what America used to be, and now it’s charming.”

When about 20 vintage cars came down Main Street, everyone knew the parade was coming to an end.

Lawrence Leslie drove his 1951 Ford Custom — a light green two-door sedan — down Main. After the parade, he proudly displayed a picture of himself at age 14, in an identical model he bought with money cutting meat at his uncle’s grocery store.

“I tore it up as a teenager, and swore up and down that I’d get another one,” Leslie said, saying he bought the “new” one in 2006. “And it’s all original — original paint, original interior, original wiring, original engine.”

He said he starts it up once a week, “and I’m 14 all over again.”

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In a separate event that’s been going on for decades, a Newport News Knights of Columbus branch — Council 5480 on Nettles Drive — held its annual flag-raising event.

Joe Drozdowski, 84, a retired computer scientist at NASA Langley, came up with the idea in 1988 when he was the council’s “grand knight.”

“When I was president of the club, I put up a flagpole,” he said. “Now that we had a flag pole, I said on the Fourth of July we will put up a flag, and we’ll call it a ‘flag-raising event.’”

That event is still going 35 years later. Scouts from Troop 242 carried Old Glory to its spot in front of the council hall and raised it, followed by salutes, songs and speeches.

Patrick Rowland, who leads some 29,000 Knights in Virginia, said that just as the Founding Founders dealt with “profound and historic” change and tumult in 1776, we also have challenges now.

“But the truths set down in our Declaration of Independence ... continue to light our path,” he said.

Rowland said it’s a good thing that America celebrates its independence not with guns and tanks, but “outdoor barbecues, family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy and the flies die from happiness.”

If you ate too much, he said, it’s merely patriotism, “because you celebrated our Independence Day.”

“America is a work in progress,” Rowland said. “And we will strive through challenge and change to maintain what our Founders envisioned on our first Independence Day.”

Many people “still believe in our country and in freedom,” said Frank Doherty, an Air Force veteran who served in Korea. “It’s just to show our patriotism and that the country isn’t falling all by the wayside,” he said.

The flag “is a symbol of our country, and you have to be kind to it” — treat it with reverence, said Parker Mokry, 18, a Scout who attached the flag to the pole. Of the event, he said, “it was awesome.”

Peter Dujardin, 757-247-4749, pdujardin@dailypress.com