The General Chair of the Little Egypt Festival is pleased how everyone stuck together to carry out the festival despite on and off rain throughout the day on Saturday.
Jay Henke says everything went as planned for the 50th annual event.
“I am very very proud of our home town. I’m very proud of all the entrants of the parade. It was horrible weather conditions and nobody cared. Everybody just said whatever, it’s raining we’re just going to have a parade. We heard no bad comments from anyone about we should cancel or anything. Everybody was ready to go on top of the hill. We sent the parade out and I followed behind them. It seemed like we had a great turnout today and you know people had umbrellas, tents, and things and just enjoyed the parade.”
The Co-Grand Marshal’s also had praise for how the event went off despite the less than desirable weather. Frank Richards who was involved in the festival since the beginning and then served a number of years as General Chair noted the early days were difficult to raise needed funds.
“We did everything we could to maintain it and keep it going because it was such a wonderful thing and it brought in thousands of people from all around Southern Illinois. And the way the Little Egypt Festival came about is the people of the northern part of the state had a drought in crops one year and they all came back down into Southern Illinois to buy their crops and food for the winter and that’s kind of the breadbasket of the Little Egypt Festival Parade beginning.”
Jeannine Richards, who served as parade chair for many years, was impressed with the turnout for the conditions.
“It is always such a pleasure to see all these people come into Salem and they just come in and come from everywhere. It didn’t matter if it was raining. I mean they stood out there and I felt bad when I saw all that rain I thought ‘people would be going home’, but God bless them they didn’t. I know it’s not only the people in the parade who enjoyed seeing them, I’m sure that the people along the streets and everything had a wonderful day because the floats were just gorgeous.”
All other activities that were part of the festival also went on despite the rain, including the crafts and food vendors, car show, children’s games, and the horse show.
Vendor numbers were down due to the rain, but those who were at the festival reported good sales. Photo by Austin Williams.
Kids who didn’t mind getting wet who took part in the Big Wheels race and some of the other kids games. Pictured are Miss Marion County Junior Miss Sarah Morris along with contestants Gunner Morgan, Naomi Draper, Keagan Webster, Gavin Schuler, Avery Runkle and Grady Dawkins. Photo by Bruce Kropp.
