Class of 1961 float featured in Community Days Parade!

As part of our Class of 1961 reunion in Valley City (N. Dak.) June 15-16-17, 2018, a team of our classmates constructed a float that appeared in Valley City's "Rally in the Valley Days" parade on Saturday afternoon, June 16.  Wes Anderson, Director and Curator of the Barnes County Historical Society's museum, shot a one-hour video of the entire parade. From that video, I excerpted the one-minute segment that only shows our float. Both the excerpt and Wes's full parade video are linked below.

The Class of 1961 float  was constructed by our classmate Barry Borg.  It began life as a 24-foot flatbed trailer, but was converted to a beautiful HiLiner blue and white float, with white railings, a banner across the back, folding chairs and a couple of hay bales for seating, and marvelous stairsteps with railings to make it extremely easy for all of us to step up onto the float! There was even a flagpole with HiLiner blue/white rope to pull up the American flag!

Barb Lang brought two 12 ft. banners for the sides of the float that said "VCHS Class of 1961" and Dave Maasjo brought his classic John Deere tractor to pull the float. About 17 classmates showed up to ride, and in no time at all, the huge pile of candy that we brought along to throw was all used up! A great time was had by all of the riders!  We hope that next time, more classmates will decide to ride along . . . we noticed that the Class of 1968 must have had about 35 riders on their float. The challenge is on! Barry promises that he can re-construct the float for another parade, and we need to THANK both Barry and Dave for all the work they did to prepare for the parade!

The float riders were:
Jan Zaun Arneson, Maureen "Mo" Pederson Young, Mary Ann Musch Gamrath, Margaret Peterson Anderson, Georgia Stephenson Flannigan, Mary Koch, Warren Olson, Barb Brown Schmidt, LouVay Ruemler White, Colleen Bryngelson Zick, Marlo Byberg, Denny Gillund, John Manstrom, Les Brix, Barry Borg, Barb Lang and Dave Maasjo, of course.


To see the Hiliners61 float-only segment (one-minute), click here.

To see Wes's video of the ENTIRE parade (one-hour), click here.

THANKS, Wes, for the excellent video and your thoughtfulness and work in shooting it!  LG 6-22-2018