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Anonymous Donor Saves Northfield Tradition

Northfield, Vermont -- September 7, 2009

     Hundreds of cadets from Norwich University marched down Main Street in Northfield, kicking off the state's biggest Labor Day parade.
     "The cadets are wonderful," Heather Thomason said, "and just the people in the community, to see everyone come together, it's great."
     Thomason grew up in Northfield and comes back from Massachusetts for it every year. This parade has been a tradition for 35 years.
     "I'm born and raised here, but I'm not going to tell you how many years I've been coming to the parade!" Bonnie Bean laughed. "A long time!"
     A long time that might have had its last time. Organizers were afraid this year's parade may have been a casualty of the recession.
     "We just didn't have the money to start it up," said Marguerite Moore, president of the Northfield Labor Day Committee. "We didn't get enough from last year. We are primarily funded by donations, the selling of the buttons, and the fees the vendors give us, and it was not a good weekend last year so we didn't get our start-up money."
     Organizers were worried they'd have to cancel the parade. But an anonymous donor gave $20,000 to save it. That covered nearly all of its $25,000 budget."
     "Whomever it is, I thank them very much," Bonnie Bean said. She lives along the parade route and said losing it would be a tragedy. Thousands of people look forward to it as the last hurrah of summer.
     "I think we all would have been very sad," she said. "Very sad."
     Instead, the event turned out to be a happy occasion, as a parade should be, as kids waved flags and danced along to the music of the marching band.

Kate Duffy -- WCAX News