The Alderson Fourth of July parade gave me a chance to live out a girlhood fantasy. Kelly & Kay Sparks offered me a ride in their apple red 2005 50^th Anniversary edition Thunderbird convertible. They own the very last T-bird to come off the assembly line. 

            Tempting as the T-bird was, I rode on the “Democrats for Action – Greenbrier, Monroe, Summers, Mercer Counties” hay wagon.  What fun we had with the wide-awake Summers County Democratic women:  Betty Giles, the Three Rivers Democrat of the Year; Hinton Mayor Cleo Matthews; Mary Lou Haley; and Phyllis Parker.  In addition to all her multitude of parade duties, Karen Lobban helped decorate the float and loaned us her son, Charlie, to drive the SUV that pulled our float.    

            The crowd, estimated at 10,000, waved back enthusiastically.  Generations decorated themselves, and everything else in sight, in every possible combination of red, white and blue.  Kenny Massie offered to trade my plastic bowler for his star-spangled Alderson Big Wheel restaurant baseball cap.    

            The parade lasted two hours!  It had everything -- wizened veterans on golf carts.  Fire trucks and farm wagons and antique cars.  Marching bands.  Massive military vehicles.  Flags galore. Altogether, a most satisfying parade. 

            Steve Keadle helped give out Johnson Memorial United Methodist Church’s 2,000 bottles of ice cold water.  Near the end of the parade, Clintonville’s James Chapel United Methodist Church members lived up to the Scripture verse on their bottles of cold water:  “I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts.”  (Revelation 21.6) 

            Thanks to Alderson’s outstanding librarian, Phyllis Auvil, I’ve been re-reading Thomas W. Dixon, Jr.’s classic, The Rise and Fall of Alderson West Virginia.  (©1967, Thomas W. Dixon, Jr.  McClain Printing Company, Parsons, WV) 

            According to Tommy, Alderson’s first big Fourth of July was celebrated by about 2,000 people in 1894.  About 3,000 people were jolted into the next celebration, a quarter century later, by 21 dynamite blasts at Snowflake quarry.   

            By 1921, the crowd was estimated at 5,000 to 5,500. Tommy wrote, “Citizens again displayed their hospitality toward visitors.  The various clubs in the town provided ice water at several stations on both sides of town.”  “A large spigotted barrel of water was placed on its side on the Woodson-Mohler platform for the refreshment of the visitors, only atop it a sign read ‘MOONSHINE’.  It is reported that one fellow who saw the sign and barrel made a dive for the spout yelling, “This is the height of hospitality”, but the look on his face after gulping down a swallow was one of supreme disgust as he howled, ‘WATER! Poisoned b’gosh!’” 

            When only about 2,000 people showed up for the Sesquicentennial of American Independence parade in 1926, Alderson suspended the parades until 1962.   

            Lots of elected and wanna-be elected officials joined this year’s parade.  Wasn’t I lucky to ride with Hinton Mayor Cleo Matthews!  She drew cheers all day.  I saw the vehicles of Natalie Tennant, a candidate for Secretary of State; Betty D. Crookshanks, second-term Greenbrier County Commissioner and former Greenbrier County Delegate; and Tom Campbell, re-elected last year to his fifth term in the House of Delegates.  I was told that many other politicians were there. 

            Alderson has a long history of extending hospitality to political bigwigs.  United States Army General Rutherford B. Hayes and Captain William McKinley, Jr., who became the 19th and 25^th Presidents of the United States, chased enemies across the Greenbrier River during the Civil War. Benjamin Harrison, the 23^rd president, spoke in Alderson in 1896. President Ulysses S. Grant “took supper at the old Monroe House Hotel”.  Both the 1908 presidential winner, William Henry Taft, and the loser, William Jennings Bryan, campaigned there.  In 1922, Bryan returned and spoke for two hours to a packed house.  Teddy Roosevelt, 26^th President, delivered a “rip roarin’” speech in Alderson.  Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32^nd President, inspected the Federal Prison in 1934.   

            Steve Keadle’s eyes lit up as he told me that he was a sixth grader when he heard presidential candidate John F. Kennedy speak at the high school in 1960.   Some folks, he reported, have autographs of the future thirty-fifth President and “Jackie” but he was so awestruck by Mr. Kennedy that he does not remember seeing Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy. 

            Rick Parker gave me another “Alderson Proud” lapel pin.  He gave me my first years ago when I reported on his Alderson Elementary School project, “Order of the Oaks.”  His sixth graders remember Alderson heroes by planting oak trees along the Greenbrier River.  The students’ choices ranged from my Little League Baseball colleague Coleman Highlander and the school’s cook to the town’s namesake, Elder John Alderson. 

            Places, like people, have personalities.  Local festivals are outward expressions of those personalities.  Alderson is like the people I most enjoy:  they know who they are.  Confident people, and confident places, are secure enough to be genuinely hospitable to visitors. 

            With West Virginia’s largest Fourth of July parade, Alderson celebrates our American citizenship.  No wonder, then, when the still active Ku Klux Klan -- that Confederate flag waving terrorist group organized by unrepentant Confederates after the Civil War -- came here on  recruiting drive, Alderson welcomed a counter-Klan celebration of our diverse community.   

            Let us be grateful for Alderson and all the small, confident places where we learn who we are as individuals and as a nation.  May we, wherever we reside, help build confident communities. Meantime, I am truly “Alderson Proud.”

Joan C. Browning lives in Lewisburg, W Va and writes for the Mountain Messenger newspaper. She is currently running for the West Virginia House of Delegates. As a writer, researcher and fundraiser, her contributions to social issues are well know through out Greenbrier County and West Virginia. I am happy to publish her contribution to Alderson and the Aldersonian.