The presidential parade man
WASHINGTON— Earl Hargrove was a titan of parade floats — particularly for presidents.
His Maryland company, Hargrove Inc., has outfitted inaugural processions and parties, trimmed the National Christmas Tree and orchestrated special-event extravaganzas for decades. He died this month of progressive heart disease.
A master of visual delight, Hargrove began his career in the late 1940s as an apprentice to his father, who dressed the windows of Washington liquor shops and stores. As advertising moved to television screens and shoppers migrated to malls, the younger Hargrove ventured from downtown shop windows to projects on an increasingly monumental scale.
He first participated in a presidential inauguration in 1949, when he drove the mules pulling the float honouring Harry S. Truman’s home state of Missouri. A minor emergency erupted when the animals were spooked and departed from the parade route.
Every president since Truman has employed the services of Hargrove’s company. For Dwight Eisenhower, it supplied a parade float with a golfer — an homage to the president who putted on the White House lawn. President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural parade in 1961 included a replica of the PT boat he skippered during the Second World War.
In the swearings-in since Bill Clinton took office in 1993, Hargrove Inc. has been the general contractor for all official inaugural events, said his son-in-law Tim McGill, who with his wife, Carla, purchased the company in 2008.
Besides the parades, presidential events have included pre-inaugural dinners, prayer breakfasts and inaugural balls.
For more than 50 years, the company has decked the National Christmas Tree in Washington with its hundreds of ornaments and thousands of lights. Before the use of bucket trucks, said a daughter, Kathy Kelly, Hargrove donned a Santa Claus suit and scaled scaffolding to place the final star.
Over the years, Hargrove acquired a massive store of supplies, including 160 boxes of flowers used at Kennedy’s inauguration and 45-kilogram eagles built for Richard Nixon’s inaugural celebration. Hargrove displayed his most prized items at American Celebration on Parade, an attraction that he operated along with Shenandoah Caverns near New Market, Va.
Known as the president’s prop man, Hargrove was coy on his politics. Once, interviewed on ABC News, he was asked if either party received special treatment.
“No,” Hargrove assured anchor Peter Jennings. “We play both sides of that street.”