By Jill Fennema

The 75th Annual Edgerton Dutch Festival is starting to take shape. As of this printing, the festival is only 142 days away! The festival committee has chosen the theme for the parade and that is, “Diamonds through the Decades.’

The 75th anniversary is the “diamond” anniversary and as such, the committee would like to see some of the great parade floats from the past recreated. We at the Edgerton Enterprise are paging through the archives and rifling through old photographs to find photos of the most memorable and creative floats of the past 75 years.

If you were part of float building in the past, grab your old photo albums and see if you have a photo of your float. We’d love to see it! We need to inspire today’s generation to get their thinking caps on and make this year’s Dutch Festival, the best one yet!

We also want to see more floats for this anniversary parade – did your neighborhood make a float every summer? Time to have a neighborhood reunion and get busy planning this year’s float!

The float pictured above was made by the folks in Section 12 – which includes people on Trosky Road and in the “circle” of Park Ave – took home the Grand Champion award in 1998. The theme for the parade that year was “Precious moments in your life.” This float was entitled “1960’s Basketball Champs.” The men on the float impersonated the 1960s basketball team and cheerleaders. Pictured are: Fred Vander Stoep, Fred Schuld, Elmer Walhof, Archie Nibbelink, and Clares Christians as the players and Dan Schnyders and Corky Gunnink as the cheerleaders.