Copyright The Oregonian
Linn County has long claimed to host the “largest Veterans Day parade west of the Mississippi,” and the third largest Veterans Day parade in the country. They might be right. On Tuesday the 74th annual Linn County Veterans Day Parade rolled through downtown Albany. Christine Ferguson, president of the Linn County Veterans Day Parade organization, said last year’s parade drew an estimated 45,000 people. This year’s crowd, on a rare dry November day, was larger. One other Veterans Day parade claims to be the West Coast’s largest. It’s in San Diego, whose county is home to roughly 115,000 active-duty service members, most in the Navy and Marines. Considering that the entire population of Linn County is just one-tenth of the population of the city of San Diego, it’s possible the California parade may attract more onlookers. But Albany can claim twice as many parade entries: about 160 entries this year, compared to 85 in San Diego. That’s a point of pride for Linn County’s parade organizers. “The community is so proud and appreciative of their veterans that people will come out of the woodwork to help,” Ferguson said. “I was in my 20s during Vietnam, and many communities around the country were derogatory and mean and very unaccepting of any Vietnam veteran that came back. This community never ever did that. They have always supported their veterans, whether they liked the politics of the thing or not.” Leading this year’s parade was grand marshal Dr. Derrick Sorweide, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves who is also the director of clinical education at Western University of Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine at the school’s Lebanon, Oregon, campus. “ This community has outstanding support for veterans,” Sorweide said. “We had a banquet last night for a veteran of the year, and to see how many groups showed up to support that was pretty impressive for a town this size. They work hard to make sure the veterans here feel supported.” Organizing a parade this size is a big undertaking. Close to 100 volunteers are needed, helping staff 15 staging points across some 18 city blocks. And that’s all before the parade even starts rolling. “I can already tell you we’re already planning next year’s, which will be our 75th,” said Bill Wren, staging supervisor for the parade. “There’s a certain limit to how much you can grow this parade before we outgrow our staging space. We could probably push to the 200 level, but it’s already almost too large to handle.” Wren compared the complicated behind-the-scenes organizing of so many floats, bands, trucks, motorcyclists and equestrian groups to “untangling spaghetti with a pipe wrench while wearing a blindfold.” That complexity was evident early Tuesday, when this reporter arrived at the staging area to find one particular participant: Nita Eggers, 99. Eighty years after the end of World War II, there are few living veterans of the war. Eggers, an Albany resident riding with the American Rosie the Riveters Association, had worked as a riveter at Boeing in Seattle. I wanted to find her. About 30 members of Oregon State University’s ROTC program had arrived two hours before the parade to volunteer. With more hands than tasks, one parade volunteer sent 10 ROTC members to “escort” the reporter on what he called a “mission” to find “Rosie.” It took visits to three separate staging areas before we found the members of American Rosie the Riveters Association. A cadet spotted a red and white polka dot handkerchief in the crowd and called out, “I see them!” The group consisted of several “Rosebuds,” who are the daughters or granddaughters of women who worked in the war effort, and the one original Rosie herself. We walked up to a 1931 Ford Model A, where a tiny woman in the passenger seat opened her door and said to our group, “Hello! I’m Rosie.” After Eggers graduated from high school in Ontario, Oregon, she took a bus to Portland, where she worked as a welder at the Kaiser Shipyards. By 1945, she had moved to Seattle to work as a riveter on war planes. With her tiny frame, she worked inside planes’ wings. “I couldn’t even wiggle, so they pulled me out by my feet,” she said. Eggers shared her story with the ROTC volunteers, then posed with them in the iconic “Rosie the Riveter” stance — arms flexed, fists raised. “I walk every morning,” Eggers told them. “It’s the only way to keep going guys. Walk! Don’t sit all the time and watch TV. Get out there and walk.” “We do a lot of that in ROTC,” one cadet replied. The parade lasted about three hours as it wound through downtown Albany. Because of the federal government shutdown, some parade entries from military branches were unable to attend. Canceled, too, was the scheduled flyover of two F-15 Eagles from the Air National Guard, which normally kicks off the parade at 11:11 a.m. But attendance this year was up, Ferguson said. Final estimates from Albany Police would not be available for several days, but she thought the crowd surely exceeded 50,000 people. Another 5,000 people, at its peak, watched the parade online through a livestream. And the community’s support for veterans doesn’t end after Veterans Day. Michael Aaron, who was honored Monday night as Linn County’s Veteran of the Year, served in the Marines and deployed to Afghanistan in 2005 and to Iraq in 2006 and 2014. Aaron founded Link Up Vets, a nonprofit dedicated to building camaraderie and purpose among veterans through outdoor activities, veteran assistance projects and community events. The nonprofit’s annual fundraiser, the Stars and Stripes Ball, will be held in Albany this weekend. It’s already sold out.
