CdA to skip annual parade

It appears there will be no Fred Murphy Days Parade this year.

The news that Coeur d’Alene’s annual parade honoring its colorful tugboat captain isn’t happening comes as a shock to many, including the family that spent the past 10 years organizing the event and parade regulars who march down Sherman Avenue every Memorial Day weekend in the traditional kickoff to tourist season.

“We would have been down there at 10 o’clock with our leos on and had our own little parade,” said Funtastics owner Lisa Adlard, who had planned to have 25 young gymnasts in the parade. It would have marked the ninth year the center’s gymnasts had cartwheeled past the spectators. For the youngest of the gymnasts, Adlard said, the spring parade has been “their spotlight event.”

“The whole community’s out there clapping for them,” she said. “The energy down there – it’s very exciting.”

Stephen Gregory, a founder of the nonprofit Coeur d’Alene Festivals Committee, served as parade director for at least the past 10 years. When his wife, Wyn, died last year, Stephen and his daughter Carol relocated to Arizona.

“It’s a shame,” said Carol Gregory. When the family sold their Coeur d’Alene bed and breakfast last year and moved, Gregory said her father had discussed the future of the parade with the Coeur d’Alene Chamber of Commerce.

“We were under the impression that the chamber was going to continue doing the parade,” Carol Gregory said Wednesday. “This is the first we have heard.”

Chamber President Jonathan Coe said there was some discussion of the chamber taking over, but no decisions were made.

“We did realize there was an opportunity for some organization to take it over,” Coe said, but nobody has stepped forward.

Longtime residents and acquaintances of Fred Murphy said they were sad to hear that no parade is planned for this year.

“I hope someone will recover it in time to do the parade,” said Sandy Emerson. His father, Tom, was Murphy’s best friend and biographer.

Originally known as the Lake City Days parade, the event was renamed in Murphy’s honor in 1988.

According to Tom Emerson’s book “Fred Murphy; A Legend of Lake Coeur d’Alene,” Murphy began steamboating with his father at age 9 and got his first job as a tugboat captain at 14. Murphy died in 1986, when his snowmobile crashed through the frozen waters of Lake Coeur d’Alene. Naming the town’s spring parade in Murphy’s honor was a fitting tribute to the man once dubbed “Mr. Lake Coeur d’Alene,” Sandy Emerson said.

“His life and his family’s lives span a whole segment of history in our community,” he said.

Shirlee Wandrocke wasn’t close to Fred Murphy, but she knew him and describes him as “quite the man.”

When she and her husband, Dick, were chosen as grand marshals of last year’s parade, Shirlee Wandrocke said she was honored. After the parade, they tacked the banner up in their shed as a keepsake.

The Wandrockes are also friends with the Gregorys. Stephen Gregory worked hard to make the event more than a parade of tow trucks and fire engines, Shirlee Wandrocke said. In recent years, the Fred Murphy Days parade has had more than 80 entries.

The local chambers of commerce have debuted their floats at Fred Murphy Days. The timing of the parade allows local high school marching bands to participate.

Jim Phillips, band director of Coeur d’Alene High, said he hasn’t had a Memorial Day weekend off since he started teaching. He’s excited to have a long weekend to himself, but Phillips said he’s already scheduled the band to perform in next year’s parade – if it happens.

If the parade isn’t resurrected, Shirlee Wandrocke said it really marks the end of an era.

“It was just a lovely addition to a small town,” Shirlee Wandrocke said. “As towns get bigger, it’s too hard for them to do parades so often.

“It was a joy to belong to a small town.”