Ferndale’s annual Fourth of July parade took over Main Street in the Victorian Village on Thursday afternoon to celebrate Independence Day with antique trailers, floats and animals putting on a show for the town of Ferndale with plenty of patriotism. Following the parade, the Ferndale Veterans Hall hosted a barbecue sponsored by the Ferndale VFW Auxiliary with proceeds from the event going towards Wreaths Across America and other veteran groups. “Everything went pretty well,” said Janet Carney, president of the Ferndale Chamber of Commerce, of the parade.
“Mary Ann Bansen, who has been a resident in this town for 50 years, she has done many of the parades, and she did the last two since I’ve been president. This year she wasn’t able to make it, so she gave us some instructions.” The instructions worked like a charm, with even the weather cooperating in the celebration with the sun beaming down to make the red, white and blue pop in the early afternoon daylight.
Carney spent 20 years in Ferndale, attending many of the Fourth of July parades, which she says doesn’t make her a long-tenured resident with the many families of Ferndale going back three, four generations but she still recalls her first-ever Independence Day parade in the town. “I brought my mom to the first one. She was well into her 80s and I parked her up by the Red Front store in her wheelchair and she said in her English accent, ‘How’d you end up in this beautiful town?’ She loved and I�.