Near perfect weather led to large crowds at both the 99th Annual Centralia Halloween Parade and the Fall Festival.
The organizer of the parade each year Butch Mathus was pleased.
“We had a lot of wonderful entries this year for the 99th annual Centralia Halloween parade,” Mathus said. “Wonderful weather, great turnout in the community. We’re just going to take a break and regroup, get back in March and plan for the 100th anniversary of the parade, and we’re going to try to make it greater and better.”
The Centralia Youth Wrestling Club took home the top prize, the Harley Queen trophy, with their entry Patriotic Pumpkins. Tonya Oetjen says over 50 kids assisted with the construction.
“A lot of hard work, a lot of work from the youth wrestling team,” Oetjen said. “A lot of dedication, lots of time, and lots of painting. We had a wonderful time, and it was for the kids.”
The Grand Marshal’s trophy went to the Macz Funeral Home and their entry Liberty or Else. Tammy Macz explains their float.
“This float was a two-part float,” Macz said. “My husband took apart the top of a golf cart and turned it into a boat that was the forefathers crossing the Delaware. The second half of the float was Lady Liberty, where we had McKinley Harding on the top as Lady Liberty. Obviously, much appreciation goes to our veterans, and as always we want to thank the parade committee for all the hard work that goes into it behind the scenes. This is a wonderful community event and family event, and we greatly appreciate all the hard work that goes into this event.”
The top commercial float was a first-time entry from Intermountain Electronics entitled ‘Powered by Commercial American Pride – Frankenstein Edition ‘. Kylee Smith says this is the first time Intermountain has ever built a float and she couldn’t believe they won a first place trophy.
“We had Frankenstein on there, we had Igor, and Igor actually jumped off and chased a couple of people, so that was fun,” Smith said. “We had music, lights, fog, we had just a little bit of everything. It was so fun. We had lanterns, pumpkins, we had a little army guy on the back that was saluting, he was pretty cool.”
Five to six built the float, but 20 joined the fun of taking it through the parade.
Walmart’s entry, Stars, Stripes and Pumpkin Nights, took second in the business division.
In the school division, the Alternative School was first with their entry ‘Freedom’. Second place went to the Centralia Trinity Lutheran School’s entry ‘Star Spangled Spookley’.
In the civic division, the Wamac Lil Toot was first, and the Centralia Firefighters Association local 618 was second.
in the family division, the Lauder family’s entry ‘1600 Pennsylvania Avenue’ was first the Boxx family’s ‘Skeleton Splash Bash’ was second.
In the church division, St. John’s Episcopal and Redeemer Church was first, and Sandoval Community Church was second with ‘No Greater Love’.
The Royal Pink Dolls took first place in the marching division. Malaysia’s World was second.
In the band competition, Sandoval took first in junior/senior high, and Iuka was first for grade school bands.
