Arlington’s massive 4th of July parade, number 58.5, is ready to resume

Arlington’s population had just passed the 50,000 mark in 1965 when Dortheda “Dottie” Lynn and some members of Church Women United decided that Arlington needed some Independence Day spirit.

Maybe a parade. Sort of.

They organized a little loop around the trails of Randol Mill Park, with about a hundred kids decorating their bikes with little American flags and red, white, and blue streamers, and many of the bikes with playing cards in the spokes. It made them feel a bit like they were on a motorcycle. Sort of.

A phenomenon has occurred. People were present for this small event. Many of them. So much so that the kids did a few rappelling loops in the park. An impromptu kazoo band played a rendition of “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” as well as a semi-recognizable essay of “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Collectively, it was a big thing that started small.

“I knew right away that something bigger could come from this.” Something that should come of it,” Lynn told an Arlington Citizen-Journal reporter in the 1970s.

And so it did. Soon the parade became a nonprofit, moved downtown, and is now Arlington’s longest-running event. It may be the largest Fourth of July parade in Texas, though a few other Uncle Sams could claim that claim. It’s a 2-mile montage of red, white, and blue Americana that begins at UT-Arlington’s “South Forty” parking lot, winds north through the university district, loops back to City Hall, and then back south to the original parking lot.

Ninety minutes, maybe a little more. The crowd is bigger, much bigger, than the Randol Mill event, which now has around 100,000 spectators.

Lynn, once Albert Einstein’s secretary at Princeton University, served for four years as chair of Arlington’s new Fourth of July Association, eventually becoming one of the first female city council members, as well as the namesake of Dottie Lynn Parkway and the Dottie Lynn Recreation Center. She died in 2006. But the parade goes on.

The 4th of July event will be parade #59, or maybe 58.5. The COVID-19 outbreak forced the parade to be canceled for the first time in 2020.

This is a development, said current association president Kevin Donovan, that board members found intolerable.

“We dressed in red, white and blue, met in the South Forty and at 9 a.m. we walked the entire parade route,” Donovan said. “So technically we haven’t had a parade since 1965.”

There have been a few near misses. Rain is a rare occurrence, a statistical improbability in this part of Texas on July 4, at the exact time of the parade, but it does happen.

“We delayed one parade by half an hour because of the proximity of lightning and another by an hour when we had a deluge,” Donovan recalls.

Donovan works in the parking lot staging area during the parade and was there during the year of the flood.

“It ruined a lot of floats,” he said. “The Arlington Conservation Council had created these very ornate, big, colorful paper flowers that were slowly fading into unrecognizable clumps.”

The parade still continued after the rain, the floats soggy and lumpy, the spectators damp but enthusiastic.

Two of the parade’s long-standing traditions are the naming of a marshal and a theme. This year’s theme is “Home Run for Heroes.” The parade marshal this time will be former Cy Young Award-winning Major League Baseball pitcher Ferguson “Fergie” Jenkins, whose more than 3,000 strikeouts and 284 wins make him the best black pitcher in MLB history.

“We will also have a float with the World Series trophy won by the Rangers this year, along with an entourage of Rangers Six Shooters,” said Claudia Perkins, also a board member.

The participants in the parade are very varied: high school marching bands and bike scouts, cheerleaders and sergeant teams, drivers of small Moslah car-vettes, Korean veterans, horse patrols, Sikhs, religious groups and even an association of atheists.

“I’ve been doing this since 1997 and it’s always a pleasure for me,” Donovan said. “It’s one of Arlington’s true community events and it’s really a melting pot. It’s an event that anyone can attend or participate in – no memberships, no reservations, it’s all free right here in downtown Arlington.”

OK Carter is a columnist for the Arlington Report. You can contact him at [email protected].

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