A socially-distanced Fourth of July parade will take place in Aquinnah on Independence Day.
The Gazette turns back the page in this week’s edition as it revisits the Harris Poll, a first-of-its-kind scientific public opinion survey the results of which were published by this newspaper twenty-five years ago. What follows is an editorial from July 4, 1987, the year the Harris Poll survey was taken.
Aquinnah celebrates the Fourth of July with its 10th annual children’s parade. Floats, antique cars, face painting, music, buried treasure on the beach and town officials will all be part of the festivities.
The parade starts at 11 a.m. sharp at the top of Old South Road.
At 5 p.m. sharp on Wednesday, crowds in Norwich, England, gathered to see the Olympic torch arrive at the Queen’s summer estate. Crowds in front of New England televisions watched the Red Sox play in Oakland. And in Edgartown, a downtown crowd waited anxiously for the first notes of the annual Fourth of July parade.
“Forward, march!” he commanded for the 43rd year, and the parade began its journey down the West Tisbury Road.
All eyes in Edgartown were on Col. Fred B. (Ted) Morgan Jr., as he performed his last march as grand marshal and chief organizer of the Edgartown Fourth of July parade.
He marched upright, as always, in perfect time with the drumbeat, while spectators shouted in appreciation from the sidelines. “Let’s go, Ted!” “Alright, Ted!” “Yeah, Mr. Morgan,” they cheered.
As police lights flashed and sirens wailed through the heavy fog that settled in over Moshup Trail, 100 children, clad head to toe in their red-white-and-blue finery, paraded down Old South Road in Aquinnah.
What started nine years ago as a group of eight children strolling on Philbin Beach has transformed into a neighborhood event every year on the Fourth of July.
Islanders take the ferry to that other place, America. We even voted in Nineteen-Seventy-Seven to leave the state, and maybe the nation, too — when Beacon Hill moved to remove the Island’s seat in the statehouse, thereby leaving us with less representation for the taxation states always impose. So what if our ragtag secessionist revolution failed politically; the spirit of separation remains strong. Few remember the proposed Vineyard anthem, but a few more still have the flags of our one nation, and more than a few have good stories from those heady days when freedom was on every Islander’s mind again. In our hearts we remain a place apart.
Independence Day 2010
