What a Parade It Was! Brandon Shows Up In Force for July 4th Celebration

What a parade it was! Tens of thousands of folks lined up to watch and to participate in the 2012 Greater Brandon Fourth of July Parade that paid tribute to the pioneering families and roots of our town.

Under clear and hot skies, friends, neighbors, colleagues and family members paid tribute to the town as it is and once was, with a staging on Lumsden Road followed by a march down Parsons Avenue north, to the viewing stand judges just south of the left-turn swing down Robertson Street.

• Don't forget to upload your photos of the parade at . Do so by 5 p.m. July 6 for a chance to win free stuff!
  

• More parade photos, posted by Bloomingdale-Riverview Patch editor D'Ann White, are at .

Before the parade's start, a small group gathered at O'Brien's Irish Pub and Family Restaurant at 730 Lumsden Road to count the cash and checks received in this year's race for honorary mayor of Brandon. Gay Lynn Love earned the honor to replace Cami Gibertini as the newest honorary mayor of Brandon, with Love's first congratulations coming from her sole competing candidate, B. Lee Elam.

For many, the parade was a familiy tradition. For others, like Jeremy Rosado, the parade's grand marshal, a first-time affair. Rosado, a Durant High School graduate and a student at the Brandon campus of Hillsborough Community College, was a Top 13 finalist in this past season's run of "American Idol."

"I honestly never knew this parade was here, and I've lived in Brandon for 11 years," Rosado said. "It's awesome."

For Andy “Pappy” Huber, president of the Westside chapter of the Nam Knights motorcycle club in Valrico, the parade was a chance to display the piece of steel the club acquired from the Twin Towers in New York.

“It’s why we went up to New York to get the steel, to bring it back to our town so people here can see what the price of freedom is, and what better way to do this than on Independence Day?” Huber said.

Like the Nam Knights, members of the New World Celts met at O’Brien’s before lining up for the start of the parade. The club is open to anybody interested in, or with roots traced back to, the six territories recognized as Celtic nations: Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, Isle of Man, Scotland and Wales.

“We do it all, because everybody’s got a little bit of something in them,” said one club member.

Octogenarians Harry and Elizabeth Carpenter were back at the parade, at their regular spot, near the lake between Parsons Avenue and the Sandy Rodriguez Center, which houses the Brandon Regional Library and the Center Place Fine Arts & Civic Association.

“I was in World War II,” Harry Carpenter, 86, said, as if that were reason enough for paying tribute to his country at the Greater Brandon Fourth of July Parade. And it was, the Carpenters agreed.

In the bleachers next to the judges’ reviewing stand, Tammy Holmberg, a past honorary mayor of Brandon and this year’s Alice B. Tompkins Community Service Award recipient, sat with other parade participants with deep roots to the community.

As a town supporter, and as the proprietor of the Chick-fil-A restaurant in Lake Brandon Village, Holmberg is an active participant and supporter of community events. Watching the parade, she gave it high marks, and had no doubt the event would draw the huge crowd that it did. As she put it: “Who doesn’t like a parade?"

Across the street and just to the north, Pat Pons was watching what she said ust have been her 30th Brandon parade.

“I’ve lived here most of my live so I’ve been to a majority of them,” she said.

She noted back in the days when the parade ran its course down State Road 60, also known as Brandon Boulevard, where at the time there was only one traffic light.

Great change has come to Brandon, she acknowledged, but one thing remains constant about the parade.

“It still has a small-town feel,” she said, “and it’s still good to come to."

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