While most major community activities have returned to normal in the wake of COVID-19, there has been one major event whose absence has been notable.
The year 2020 was to have been the 25th anniversary of the EAST COBBER parade and magazine, but was cancelled due to the pandemic. The event was delayed again in 2021, with public health guidance still uncertain.
The logistics of pulling off such a large, comprehensive community event are daunting enough. But last spring, when I spoke to founder and then-publisher Cynthia Rozzo, she was optimistic about a return.
However, she sold the magazine to Laren Brown, her advertising manager, not long after that, in the summer of 2022, and there just wasn’t time to take over the helm of the publication and pull together its signature event.
So the parade and festival would have to wait until 2023.
On Saturday morning under pleasant skies, Johnson Ferry Road was closed off for the silver anniversary of the parade, and a familiar vibe returned with it.
More than 50 community organizations and businesses made the mile march from Mt. Bethel Elementary School to Johnson Ferry Baptist Church, where a festival took place with a similar number of exhibitors.
Those numbers aren’t what they were before the pandemic, but the friendliness was hard to miss. Kids enjoyed bouncy houses and snow cones, spectators brought their dogs and small businesses and non-profits laid out their wares and information.
Brown came to our table with a swag bag and said her first shot at organizing the event was quite an undertaking. She had assisted Rozzo, who was on the scene Saturday to lend a hand for which her successor was grateful.
Recreating a small-town flavor of an old-fashioned community parade was what Rozzo wanted to provide to a Sunbelt suburb where people come from all over.
After four years of waiting, they got to enjoy that atmosphere again, and our community really feels like it’s got its groove back.
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