HOPE — As expected, Hope Heritage Days’ return from last year’s COVID-19 cancellation seemed a grand slice of Americana: a loud-and-proud, smoke-trailing, classic military fly-over just after the National Anthem, and just before the parade Sunday afternoon.
Food from cotton candy to corn dogs to funnel cakes. A Pioneer Village with a rustic look at yesterday. And a shopping bazaar from toys to T-shirts.
Oh, and one thing more: healthy crowds, no pun intended, amid the Delta variant.
Susan Fye, volunteering at the Pioneer Village, can vouch for that element about the attendance when the 53rd annual three-day event kicked off Friday.
“I’d never seen so many people on the square at one time on a Friday night,” Fye said.
Jake Miller, chief executive officer of the organizing Heritage of Hope board, was more than pleased by Sunday afternoon. He had been hoping for record crowds to help area nonprofits recover a bit financially from last year’s cancellation, and tallies and estimates from drone footage and more in a few days will tell him whether such was true.
“I had several of our non-profit vendors tell me that they sold more Friday night than they ever had,” Miller said. “And we heard the same thing from some others about Saturday being the biggest ever.
“ … Basically, this weekend has been an absolute win for everybody. It’s really been bigger than what we actually anticipated. “
He gushed about being grateful to volunteers, nonprofit agency leaders, attendees, and nearly anyone else he could think of, for making the event a resounding success.
The weather was winning enough Sunday to be in the mid-70s and super-sunny. In the Pioneer Village, 10-year-old history buff Emma Oster tried and tried again until she finally learned to walk on country-style wooden stilts. In fact, she even learned to walk backward.
“Pioneer Village is really the only place here that I don’t feel bored,” Oster said with a chuckle.
She loved it so much that she volunteered alongside Debra Slone Sunday, and plans to do the same again next year.
Amid the shopping booths, Gina Fisher found a slightly flannel-patterned Christmas T-shirt that she bought and will pair with coordinated pajama bottoms for snoozing in style. Yet, all things considered, she was fairly wide-eyed about catching her children in the parade with the Triton Central Marching Tigers.
“And this is the first time I have gotten to see them,” Fisher said.
