Three years into the Great Depression, the Hopkinsville Chamber of Commerce took a dramatic approach with the city’s first big Christmas parade and branded it as “Prosperity Driving Depression from the Streets.”
A haggard, old man in tattered clothing represented Depression for the 1932 parade as it traveled up Ninth Street and turned onto Main, Christian County Historian William T. Turner told Hoptown Chronicle. Several feet behind that man was another, dressed in fine attire to represent Prosperity. He carried a whip and cracked it along the parade route to keep Depression on the move.
Despite the chamber’s optimism, the country’s economic struggle continued for another five years and Hopkinsville wouldn’t see its next Christmas parade until around 1937, said Turner.
Since then, the city has had a Christmas parade every year with the exception of 1941, because of Pearl Harbor, and 1951, for reasons no one recalls.
For Turner, two of the most memorable parades were in 1949 and 1950, when he was a young boy and watched local high school boys guide a few of the huge Macy’s parade balloons through downtown Hopkinsville. Jimmy Duncan, a Chamber of Commerce member who owned the Duncan and Son Garden Center on Fort Campbell Boulevard, arranged for the loan of the balloons, said Turner.
The balloons were inflated on the Hopkinsville High School football field off Walnut Street and then members of the football team held the guide lines and walked the balloons up Ninth Street.
That first year, a gust of wind caught one of the balloons and Turner, standing on a street corner, saw a few of the football players lifted from the ground before they wrestled back control of the balloons and continued down the parade route.
As a lifelong observer, and occasional participant, of Hopkinsville’s Christmas parades, Turner said he’s pleased the city opted a few years ago for a nighttime parade.
“The lights add so much to it,” he said. “There’s an emotion about it. I think it really stirs people.”
This year’s parade begins at 5:15 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 14. It will start on Main Street at Glass Avenue and head South through downtown.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. Brown was a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era, where she worked for 30 years. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board past president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition. She serves on the Hopkinsville History Foundation's board.
