Friday, Dec. 09, 2011

Christmas parades still marching across Myrtle Beach area

Regattas, car clubs, bands make season merry

jblackmon@TheSunNews.com

Nascar Speed Park in the Myrtle Beach Christmas Parade as it circles the parking lot at Broadway at the Beach on Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. Photo by Janet Blackmon Morgan / jblackmon@thesunnews.com

If you go

• Conway Christmas Parade

Who | Conway Chamber of Commerce

When | 10 a.m. Saturday

Where | From 16th Avenue between Sherwood and Main streets, across downtown: on Third Avenue, Laurel Street, Fourth Avenue to Wright Boulevard

Information | 248-2273 or www.conwayscchamber.com

More information

• Town of Surfside Beach Christmas Parade

When | 2 p.m. Saturday

Where | From Ocean Boulevard at 10th Avenue South to 16th Avenue North.

Information | 650-9548 or www.surfsidebeach.org

More information

•  2011 North Carolina Christmas Festival and Parade

When | 10 a.m.-noon Saturday

Where | From First Baptist Church in Leland, N.C., to the Leland Shopping Center on Village Road

Information | 910-371-9921 or www.ncchristmasfestival.com

A number of local coordinators might be able to relate to the character of Doris Walker.

Maureen O’Hara played Walker in the classic “Miracle on 34th Street,” from 1947. Walker is the special events coordinator for Macy’s Department Store and is responsible for finalizing everything for its annual Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City.

Various local communities such as Aynor, Georgetown, Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach have already marched their Christmas parades over the past two weeks, but Conway and Surfside Beach will step off with their respective street extravaganzas at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday.

Tina Gerrald, parade coordinator for the Conway Chamber of Commerce, said about 120 units are signed up for Conway’s parade, an annual tradition going back “as far as I can remember.”

“It really gets people in the Christmas spirit,” she said.

Gerrald said groups from churches, civic organizations and merchants always turn out every year.

“I think people are excited about coming downtown and seeing the Shriners,” Gerrald said. “And we have some creative businesses that put floats together.”

Last year marked Gerrald’s first time organizing the parade, after assisting as a volunteer for many years. Despite a “monsoon,” people still rode through the parade under umbrellas,” and members of the community still lined the streets.

“That was a good way to get my feet wet,” Gerrald said.

With any parade amounting to “a lot to do in a short period of time,” she said the homework and preparations entail nitty-gritty tasks, such as obtaining permits from the city and the state Department of Transportation.

Spacing it out

Sorting through applications, a parade committee also divvies up the marching groups, based on whether each one has music, and whether it’s a group of walkers or float that can be ridden.

“We separate it out to make it flow,” Gerrald said. “That’s the fun stuff. You just have to have good balance, with the variety of different types of floats and different types of participants, including beauty queens and high school marching bands. We have the Conway High School band to open the parade, and the Carolina Forest High School band closes it for us.”

Gerrald said this parade represents “a community beyond the downtown area,” too, reaching into neighboring Carolina Forest, and she saluted all the volunteers who make a parade pan out.

“When you think about all the people and time that go into it,” she said, “and it’s over in two hours, at least you get your reward real fast.”

Continuing a (sort of family) tradition

Debbie Ellis, recreation coordinator for Surfside Beach, said the town’s Christmas parade continues a tradition begun more than 30 years ago by a former merchants association.

She said the 80 applications for its scheduled marching units on Saturday undercounts the actual number of participants in the parade.

“One application might represent two to three cars for one group,” Ellis said. “The Cub Scouts have one entry, but they could be in a trailer or in golf carts.”

Figure in a car club, which might have 15 people driving separate cars, and the marching unit count shoots past 100 easily, Ellis said.

Although she sends out applications to participants in October, “we start getting phone calls in June,” she said.

Still the same every year

Reviewing the routine through the years, Ellis said the variety of parade entries has remained steady, especially for the prominent role fire trucks maintain in the line of traffic.

“People want to show off their antique cars,” she said, “and Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are a given every year, and local churches want to do their nativity scenes.”

Ellis said the welcome mat always stays unrolled for more marching bands, but said St. James High School in the Burgess community and Carvers Bay High in Georgetown County are all tuned up for Saturday.

Weather remains the lone variable for every parade. Ellis remembers one event four or five years ago “when we were out there in shorts,” but last year, “it was freezing and raining ... but we went, rain or shine.”

Ellis said all the hard work of town crews and volunteers “getting everyone there and in their spots, and going” leads to the best part every year, watching the parade unfold.

“Once it gets going, then I can have fun,” Ellis said. “I can stand on the reviewing stand, and wave and watch them roll by.”

Parading on water

Susan Watson has coordinated the annual Intracoastal Regatta for all of its 27 years, always on the Saturday after Thanksgiving on the Intracoastal Waterway for six miles from Little River to North Myrtle Beach.

She said an estimated 20,000 watched the parade this year, on Nov. 26, and parade volunteers collected a “warehouse full” of donations or unwrapped toys through the commensurate “Yachts for Tots” collection, which relays toys to area schools for distribution to needy local children.

Even though the parade took place about two weeks ago, the ripples of its efforts continue. Anyone who wants to donate can drop off goods in any of four dozen “Yachts for Tots” collection boxes in north Strand marinas and restaurants through Thursday, Watson said. (Details at 249-8888 or christmasregatta.com.)

Having started the regatta simply “to give something back to the community that I grew up in,” Watson said parade officials “see a lot of patriotism” displayed on the boats, depending on what’s happening in the world each year, “and you see a lot of just putting Christ back into Christmas.”

Watson lauded the “dedicated boat owners who come back year after year” with their decked out, illuminated vessels.

“Without the boaters, there would be no parade,” she said.

Remembering the birth of a granddaughter on parade day seven years ago, Watson has another reason to celebrate each regatta.

“Now she thinks the boat parade is her birthday party, Watson said.

Reach STEVE PALISIN at 444-1764.

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