UPDATE — Here’s some photos of this morning’s parade:
(credit: Howard Levine, Grass Valley Downtown Association)
(credit: Howard Levine, Grass Valley Downtown Association)
This year’s 128th Donation Day Parade — a festive, historic event — was this morning at 10 a.m. in downtown Grass Valley. Children march through the streets carrying donations of canned goods for local families. Bagpipers and bands add a festive air to this historic Grass Valley Ladies Relief Society sponsored event.
Here’s some background from the Lyman Gilmore Middle School website: “In 1883, while Caroline Mead Hanson watched the school children pass her window on the way to Lincoln School on South School St., she had an idea. 1883 had been a particularly harsh year for the Grass Valley miners. The Eureka Mine and several others had closed, and many miners were out of work.
The Grass Valley Ladies Relief Society had been inundated with calls for help. They just had $4.86 left in their coffers.
“On November 20, 1883, Caroline Mead Hanson wrote this letter to the Daily Union newspaper:
‘On reading the report of the Ladies Relief Society I saw with regret they are much in need of assistance. I cannot aid them as I should like to do, but (like many other people) I am willing to give them the benefit of someone else’s ideas. About a year ago I read of a children’s party, which was successfully given in aid of a charitable organization in one of our eastern cities, and which I think we might get up in aid of our own society.
The plan is this: on a day to be named by our City School Superintendent all of the public school teachers would be required to ask the children in their charge to bring to the schoolhouse, each one, one potato and one stick of stove wood. The potatoes to be put in a sack by the janitor. The wood to be piled in the yard.
The donations to be brought into all the schools on the same day of the week. On the next day they would be removed by the Ladies Relief Society to any place they might judge to be in need. The donation from each child is so small, there is hardly a family who could not afford to give it, but as there are several hundred schoolchildren attending our schools the aggregate might be of some value.’
Thus, the tradition of Donation Day was born. This tradition continued to grow. Soon merchants joined the school children adding hams, and sacks of flour and merchandise to the sticks of wood and potatoes. A butcher shop owner suggested making this a parade.”
(Donation Day Parade, circa 1907)
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As an alumnus of Hennessy School and marcher in three Donation Day Parades, this brought back some great memories, one in particular. In third grade, the first year back then that you were able to participate in the parade, my mother, being of a conscientious nature, sent me to school with a whole paper bag full of canned goods just incase one of my fellow classmates had forgotten theirs. Well no body forgot theirs and I decided that since “I” had brought the most cans, I would carry the whole bag for the world to see how much more giving “I” was than they. My teacher reluctantly allowed me to do this after I assured her the bag wasn’t too heavy. Well the Parade got started and all was well until we just about reached the top of Neal street along side the Del Oro Theatre. That is when my bag broke and sent all my cans rolling down Neal street. The neat line of marches transformed into this chaotic frenzy of school children trying to catch the rolling cans.(picture a bunch of kids trying it catch a chicken and you will get the idea) After all the cans were gathered up and order was restored(about two blocks later) I looked up to see my teacher and the police officer that was stopping traffic, just shaking their heads in disbelief.
Needless to say, for the next two parades, my mother sent me to school with one can to donate, she drove down a full box of donations when she came to pick me up. The can she gave me to carry in the parade: SPAM of course!
May the Holidays bring out cherished childhood memories (this one…not so much..lol)
Pete
Thanks for the chuckle this morning, Pete!
Wow, what a great story!!