An Autumnfest for the ages
Woonsocket Autumnfest Parade is a spectacle for 40th anniversary edition
The 40th edition of Autumnfest’s 10-division parade proved to be a winner on Monday as cloudy skies and moderate temperatures didn’t keep the big crowds away from the parade’s route, from Diamond Hill Road to World War II Veterans Memorial Park. The parade’s spectators saw a memorable mix of historic floats, a strong contingent of area high school bands and a few special treats – like an appearance by Santa – thrown in too.
As is Columbus Day tradition for the Autumnfest Parade, many families were out along the route early and some even set up their lawn chairs at the break of dawn to ensure they would be back in their traditional parade viewing sites.
The parade stepped off at 9:30 a.m. with members of the Woonsocket Police and Fire Departments leading the First Division along with Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt and members of the Woonsocket City Council.
Woonsocket School Committee member and Parade Grand Marshal Paul Bourget rode in a car wearing a Union officer’s Civil War uniform just ahead of group of Union soldiers and their horse drawn wagon.
Gov. Gina Raimondo was also in the division, with her son Thompson
Moffitt, following a State Police honor guard, and stepping along with members of the Rhode Island congressional delegation, U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Jack Reed, and U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, and state office holders including Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea and others. Also marching in the division were a list of political hopefuls in the upcoming Nov. 6 including Raimondo’s Republican challenger, Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, and Whitehouse’s Republican challenger, Robert G. Flanders. Politics is a parade tradition with the election so near. City Mayoral candidate Albert G. Brien had a plane pulling a banner stating his campaign slogan, “Al Brien-Mayor with Vision.”
Members of the Woonsocket Teachers Guild were also out in force in the parade, marching as a group, and also with teachers on the sidelines holding signs noting their ongoing contract dispute with the city.
A very special tribute to the D-Day invasion of Normandy during World War II came later in the division, as city native Richard Fazzio, a Navy coxswain who piloted a Higgins landing craft in the first wave to Omaha Beach, was back at the helm of a restored version of the craft while it was carried on a trailer through the parade.
“Oh it brings back memories, but the good ones, not the bad ones,” Fazzio said when visited at the helm of the craft, and relating how he was enjoying his ride on the parade route. “I had a lot of good times on this boat,” Fazzio added while noting he had operated a landing craft on many other occasions during the war. The Higgins boat was brought to Autumnfest by one of its restorers from the R.I. Aviation Hall of Fame, city resident Richard Picard, and the history-steeped parade float claimed the Judge’s Award trophy. The Higgins boat is being restored by the R.I. Aviation Hall of Fame in North Kingstown, which also sent along its trailer-mounted replica of the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier and an F9F Panther jet fighter, the type plane Red Sox Hall of Famer Ted Williams flew in combat with the U.S. Marine Corps during the Korean War.
In addition to the area bands marching and playing along the parade route – the Woonsocket Villa Novans, Cumberland High School, Lincoln High School, North Smithfield High School, Burrillville High, Blackstone Millville Regional and Mount St. Charles Academy – there was also plenty of music from floats, such as the orange and yellow dressed one from the Woonsocket Lodge of Elks, the Academy of Tap, Jazz & Ballet Autumnfest 40th Anniversary float, and Krylo Dance Studios 70th Anniversary float dedicated to music and dance across the decades it has operated.
Tony Lapore, the Dancing Cop, showed his traffic control techniques during the parade again this year. There were fife and drum groups, colonial musket brigades, and of course the area’s Girl Scout and Boy Scout troops, and the city’s youth football and baseball teams.
Mount St. Charles President Alan Tenreiro, 2016 National Principal of the Year, had a special surprise ready as he walked alongside his school’s float, a replica of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart private Catholic School atop Logee Street. Hearing a compliment about the accuracy of the model of the Walter Fontaine designed Mount building, Tenreiro advised the back of float had an added surprise.
As Mount moved away, Bill and Dave Belisle, Mount’s father and son hockey coach duo, could be seen waving to the crowd from a porch on the building.