EAST COBBER parade cancelled

EAST COBBER Parade and Festival cancelled for 2021

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East Cobber parade cancelled
The annual East Cobber parade and festival features dozens of community participants.

For the second year in a row, the EAST COBBER Parade and Festival has been cancelled due to COVID-19 issues.

Publisher Cynthia Rozzo said in a message in the current March-April issue of the magazine that public health compliance concerns prompted the cancellation of the event, which had been slated for Sept. 18.

Although initially hopeful due to the arrival of vaccines, she said that “under current CDC guidelines for community events and large gatherings we could not figure out how to keep participants and guests safe.”

The logistics include several months of planning and involve many community groups and organizations. “Those planning steps have been hampered by the outbreak and the uncertainty about it,” Rozzo said.

This was to have been the 25th anniversary of the parade, which travels down Johnson Ferry Road from Mt. Bethel Elementary School to Johnson Ferry Baptist Church, where a community festival follows.

Rozzo started the free community magazine in 1993, publishing 11 times a year. But after the COVID-related business closings last year, she has reduced publication of the EAST COBBER, which is mailed to more than 22,000 subscribers, to six times a year.

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EAST COBBER parade and festival cancelled due to COVID-19

by
East Cobber parade
Unicyclists from Mt. Bethel Elementary School are a regular participant in the EAST COBBER parade. (ECN file)

The 25th annual EAST COBBER magazine parade and accompanying festival won’t take place in September due to COVID-19, publisher Cynthia Rozzo said in her June-July issue.

She said after weighing various planning and preparation scenarios, and because of continuing public health restrictions stemming from the virus, calling everything off is “the right thing to do. I hated to do it, it was a very hard choice to make.”

Hundreds of community organizations and businesses march down Johnson Ferry Road before thousands of spectators in mid-September, and after the parade a festival is held at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church.

Large public gatherings and community events in Georgia are still prohibited, even as other restrictions on business and social activity are beginning to be lifted.

“We’re in a situation that nobody has been in before,” Rozzo wrote, “and there’s just too many facets of the parade and festival that have to happen that could not be finalized because of the coronavirus situation.”

Rozzo, who founded the magazine in 1993, also has been affected by the loss of advertising due to business closures as a result of COVID-19. For the first time in her magazine’s history, she suspended an issue in May.

The June-July EAST COBBER issue, which was published Thursday, is 24 pages. Most issues range between 44-52 pages.

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