Alice and Tom Walker lived in Durham at a time when air conditioning didn’t exist, and the hot summer days left people hanging around without much to do in the sweltering weather.
To keep people busy and happy, they had the idea of starting a Fourth of July parade, and it debuted in 1950, making it the state’s oldest such event.
This year, the 73rd annual Watts Hospital-Hillandale Independence Day at Oval Park served the same purpose, drawing crowds of people looking for a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.
“In 1950, no air conditioning. Kids are hot and sweaty and mopey,” this year’s parade coordinator Tom Miller told ABC 11 News. “What do we do? And they organized the neighborhood kids into a parade. They said the Pledge of Allegiance, they sang ‘America the Beautiful’ and the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ and then they had a cold drink of pop. But the kids remembered, they forced the parents into doing it, and pretty soon it got bigger and bigger and bigger.”
Of all the flags from around the world displayed at the park, one American flag was more than 100 years old.
“That flag was purchased by my great-grandfather in 1898,” Miller told ABC 11 News. “It is very tender; it’s made out of wool. We pull it out once a year and hang it up.”
