Fallsburg Parade Celebrates Students: June 2020

Fallsburg Parade Celebrates Students
June 2020

FALLSBURG– Beginning just after 10 a.m. on the bright Saturday morning of June 13, dozens of cars filled with teachers, staff and their families moved slowly through the hamlets of the Town of Fallsburg.

Along the way, students, families and residents of the community greeted the caravan that included Rolling V school buses brightly decorated with signs from teachers thanking and congratulating students for graduating high school and elementary school, and for making it through a very challenging school year. Rolling V set up the route to pass by as many student residences as possible.

Also, part of the parade were several fire trucks and emergency vehicles from different fire districts with lights flashing and sirens blaring. As the vehicles approached each group of families, a cacophony of the sirens created a symphony with a hundred beeping horns. Passengers waived joyously back and forth with the young and older children waving flags and handmade signs thanking their teachers for coming to their homes.

These were their schoolhouses for the past three months.

During that time, the main contact each group had with each other was over the computer in the virtual classrooms. The horns, sirens and shouting seemed to release all the pent-up energy and bring some healing happiness with everyone seeing each other after weeks of quarantine.

In what appeared an extremely quick three hours, the parading vehicles returned to home base, at the school buildings. Staff members removed the decorations from the buses. Everyone exchanged smiles, elbow bumps and warm appreciation for what they just offered to the community and for what they received back from the kids, the grateful parents, and, even the barking dogs.

Everything moved very smoothly thanks to the Town of Fallsburg Police Department and the vehicles that welcomed the parade with beeps and waves of their own. With so many police vehicles protecting intersections and directing traffic, it seemed that dozens of new officers were on duty, but no, it was the same group in a well-coordinated effort led by Chief Simmie Williams.

When you saw him and his men and women officers in different hamlets at different times during the caravan, you finally realized that they were not extra police. They were great planners and safely made it from one location to the next, protecting the FCSD in the vehicles and alongside the roadways.