FAIRLEE — There’s something about the Fourth of July that brings out the fun in people.
Fireworks, picnics, egg tosses, a parade of fire trucks with sirens blazing, they are all part of the tapestry by which many Americans celebrate the country’s Declaration of Independence from Great Britain 245 years ago.
A look back at the Valley News over the years shows people getting into the spirit of the times and joining their neighbors in doing so.
From 1968, the inimitable Vilas Bridge, a Woodstock resident known for his zany hats, donned one of his helmets with antlers as part of the Woodstock Lion’s Club Fourth of July exhibition. Bridge, who was born in Barnard in 1915 and died about 15 years ago.
In 1983, Ria Blaas, now a well-known sculptor in the Upper Valley, played the part of the clown with the Upper Loveland Marionettes as part of the Hanover Street Fair on July 4th weekend.
A native of the Netherlands who lives in Norwich, Blaas said she had done some street clowning in Europe but became more interested in puppetry over the years. “There are two kinds of clowns, the quiet clowns and the rambunctious clowns,” she said. “I was often the quiet one.”
Also a teacher of the craft of puppetry, she noted that shy kids often “shine behind the puppet theater,” outside of the spotlight.
Laura Fraser in Fairlee dressed as a patriotic clown in 2010 as part of the annual July 4 parade held in conjunction with the town of Orford.
She has also played a flapper riding in the rumble seat of an antique REO, and has dressed up as a farmer on a float with baby calves from a local dairy farm.
“It’s the community coming together, and supporting our little town,” Fraser said. “There can be some times where you have hundreds and hundreds of people on both sides of the river.”
Enfield resident Jerusha Howard, recalled wearing a dress made years ago by her mother for the 1995 Fourth of July celebration in Plainfield, where she grew up and was then Jerusha Nelson.
“I believe our library was doing a pioneer theme that year, and so that’s what I wore,” said Howard, who tends to hold a more low-key get-together these days with family. “It was always a fun thing.”
Plainfield has been known for its parade for years. In 2018, Claremont resident Steve Wood, who portrays Abraham Lincoln, read from a pre-inaugural speech delivered by Lincoln in 1861, and later talked about it with summer Plainfield resident Stephen Breyer, the Supreme Court justice.
A year earlier, Breyer had read the Declaration of Independence outside the old Plainfield Town Hall as part of the festivities.
These days, with the country so divided politically and symbols like the American flag meaning very different things to different people, it is worth remembering the last line of that revolutionary document.
“And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence,” the signers wrote, “we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”
Maybe it’s that type of unity that is worth celebrating, too.
John P. Gregg can be reached at jgregg@vnews.com.