The Hunts say it’s vital to keep the parade going
Published in the June 22 – July 5, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Lauren Newcomb
Photo by Marty Cheek
After 30 years organizing the Independence Day Parade through downtown Morgan Hill, Bob and Maureen Hunt will retire from their volunteer position.
Bob and Maureen Hunt emphasize that they work together as the “chair” (and definitely not “co-chairs”) who organize the team of unpaid volunteers putting on Morgan Hill’s Fourth of July Parade every year. The local couple love volunteering their time and energy on this annual American birthday tradition. Even their home, a farmhouse on Hill Road, is accented with red, white and blue decorations.
The local July 4 parade’s history goes back 140 years, Bob said, so it’s important to the couple for the community to keep it running. But after 30 years, Bob and Maureen plan to make this year their last one serving as parade chair. They want the 2016 patriotic march through downtown Morgan Hill to be extra special, they said.
Who knows if this is indeed their final parade as chair? The Hunts tried to retire 13 years ago and told everyone in 2003 that year’s parade would be “the last” one they would organize. The Freedom Fest executive director pleaded with them to come back. They couldn’t say no.
Maureen looked around conspiratorially. “What happened to 2003?” she said with a sparkling laugh. “It really is a labor of love.”
The Hunts have been active residents of Morgan Hill since the 1970s when they moved to the city after Bob got a position at Live Oak High School serving as its principal. The community captured their affections, so they decided to stay and be a part of it.
Photo by Marty Cheek
Bob and Maureen Hunt love the colors red, white and blue and decorate their home with patriotic decor.
“We’ve been doing this parade together since 1986,” Bob said. “We’ve been the chairs, or rather the chair, since 1996.” Bob emphasized their position as the chair, singular, because they consider it to be a unique position. They aren’t “co-chairs” with separate agendas, but the “chair” with singular purpose, fulfilling different aspects of the same goal, he said.
To illustrate just how long they’ve been doing this, Maureen pulled out the badges that they will be wearing at the parade. At more than a foot long, the badges sport a bar for every year spent volunteering, each one attaching to the bottom of the previous one. The Hunts’ badges begin with the year 1996, spanning their time as parade chair.
“These are our badges,” Maureen said, presenting them with a grin. “All the parade volunteers get a badge, and every year they get a year bar.” The special gold bars commemorate every fifth year of volunteering. “They tend to weigh us down,” she said, laughing.
Quite a few volunteers at the parade have been volunteering for 15 years or more. “This is their parade and they want to be there,” Bob said. “It really is impressive.”
For the couple, the history of Morgan Hill’s Independence Day Parade is fascinatingly relevant today. Even before there was a village, there were Fourth of July celebrations conducted by the farmers and ranching families in the region.
The first parade in the area took place in 1876, Bob claims. It was organized entirely by volunteers, just as it is today. Sometime in the early 1900s, the city took it over and employees began organizing the parade. At the time, it didn’t involve much work because the farming town was so small in population — about 1,000 residents — so the expense for the taxpayers was low.
As Morgan Hill grew and the city didn’t want to handle the celebrations anymore, the Morgan Hill Chamber of Commerce took over. “That’s how I started with them,” Bob said. “I started with the chamber as a volunteer.”
By the early 1980s, the chamber was having difficulty getting people to help out. The existing volunteers didn’t want to sacrifice any aspects of the celebrations so they formed their own nonprofit organization to handle the celebrations, naming it Independence Day, Inc., a precursor to the present-day Independence Day Celebration, Inc., which puts on Freedom Fest. Now the July 4 celebrations have come full circle. “We’re back to the original 100 percent volunteer organization,” Bob said with a proud smile. “At some point we might need to get one or two paid employees to handle the really difficult jobs, but it hasn’t happened yet.”
Parade organizers estimate more than 50,000 parade-watchers came downtown to watch Santa Clara County’s official Fourth of July parade last year. That number included more than 2,500 participants, including marching bands, colorful floats, a variety of performance groups and numerous specialty entities. Describing their dedication to putting on one of the largest and best old-fashioned Independence Day parades in California year after year, Maureen said, “We’re crazy! Originally it was just going to be three years, but nobody else was crazy enough to take it on.”
Three years was the typical pattern for volunteering within the organization. “You do three years, then you rotate and do something else, or join another group,” Bob said. “But nobody showed up three years later,” he said. The Hunts found themselves in charge of the parade ever since.
Bob and Maureen enjoy organizing the parade, but admit that it requires a lot of work. “For us, it’s a labor of love. A love for our country and a love for our community,” Maureen said. “As volunteers, we don’t get paid, but we do get paid when we see everybody having such a great time.”
Bob agreed wholeheartedly, saying that satisfaction is a great payment. The couple in turn express their appreciation for all the wonderful volunteers who help them with the parade by hosting a get-together with a potluck, with a feedback for improving the parade and a fun raffle afterwards. “Everybody gets a prize,” Maureen said.
“It’s really important that we honor our volunteers.” Bob added, “It’s good for morale.”
To Bob and Maureen, the Fourth of July is a very special holiday because both of them consider themselves very patriotic with a love of America.
“My father was in the Army, and my stepfather was in the Air Force, and they were both in World War II,” Maureen said. Her father fought at the Battle of the Bulge, during the German offensive that incurred the greatest number of American casualties in the war.
“He was there during the third wave, busy trying to save lives and amputate legs and arms,” she said. “My stepfather was a bomber pilot. He flew B-17 planes,” she added.
Growing up in a military family and seeing her father and stepfather fight to free Europe from the tyranny of fascism and protect American freedoms imbued Maureen with her strong patriotic streak early on. She spent some time in Europe as a teenager, attending an American high school in Germany from age 16 to 19. Although she appreciated her experience abroad, Maureen found that she liked being in America much more.
“Even at that age I knew it,” she said. She attributed this in part to a feeling of safety in the United States that she didn’t feel in Europe. “Seeing soldiers with guns on the beaches, that’s just not something you’d see here.”
The story is similar for Bob. He also attributed his love of country to time he spent in the military. “I was in college when the Korean War was going on, and during my second year I signed up for the Air Force,” Bob said. “Although I didn’t go to Korea, I was sent to Saudi Arabia to help out there.”
The 2016 Morgan Hill Independence Day Parade has the theme of “America, My Home Sweet Home.” It will distinguish itself from many previous parades in a grand fashion by having an “international flair,” the Hunts said. Chinese lion and dragon dancers, the mayor from Mizuho (Morgan Hill’s Sister City in Japan), a Scottish piper, a Bolivian dance folklorica group, Japanese Taiko drummers and a Mexican Mariachi group — all emphasize that the United States is a melting pot of cultures. Other attractions include 10 different bands, 21 floats, and the new Corbin Sparrow electric “personal transportation module.” Nineteenth century pioneers “Diana and Hiram Morgan Hill,” for whom our town is named, are also expected to make an appearance in this year’s parade.
Morgan Hill’s July 4 parade is funded entirely by donations, both from private individuals and corporate and local small business sponsors. It costs tens of thousands of dollars to pay the various expenses to put on the community’s parade, the Hunts said. “The schools are never able to support them as much as they’d like,” Bob explained. “So we pay a total of nearly $10,000 to bands to get them to come.”
The best thing about being the parade chair for the Hunts is looking around on the Fourth of July and seeing everybody happy. Bob explained, “We’ve always had the privilege of being in the parade ourselves as the very last unit. Seeing the crowds along the street is just marvelous.”
Even as the organizers of the parade, Bob and Maureen can find themselves surprised by gate crashers who on occasion get into the lineup. “We had Elvis with us one year!” Maureen exclaimed. “Don Prieto — he snuck in one year. In a pink Cadillac. Later, we had people say, ‘Elvis was fantastic!’ And we said, ‘What are you talking about?’ We had no idea!”
Bob and Maureen see their brand of patriotism every Fourth of July, when people from all over the nation, and indeed the world, come to take part in the South Valley’s annual parade. “One year, I went from group to group and asked where they were from,” Bob said animatedly. “There were a lot of states represented because the Fourth of July is when people go ‘home.’”
Among the people going back to their roots were representatives from Singapore, various European nations, and South Africa. Locally, many people came from the surrounding cities and towns, such as San Jose, Watsonville, Hollister, Gilroy and Salinas. “And why do they come from all over? Because they know this is a special parade,” Bob said.
