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Date: 6/9/2021
EAST LONGMEADOW – After being canceled for 2020, the East Longmeadow 4th of July Parade will return this summer. While Carl Ohlin is usually working behind the scenes to organize the parade, this year he will be front and center, having been selected for the prestigious role of grand marshal.
“I was very humbled,” Ohlin told Reminder Publishing.
Since 1999, Ohlin has been the chair of the Grand Marshals Committee. Until recently, members of the committee were not eligible to serve as grand marshals but that rule was changed just before the pandemic.
When choosing a grand marshall, “We look for citizens from the community who were a benefit to the community as evidenced by their actions,” Ohlin said of the process. He explained that each member of the committee submits a name and information about that person’s volunteer work to the entire committee, which then votes. He called the people who have served as grand marshals in the past, “the backbone of the community.”
Ohlin grew up in Springfield. “I grew up in a really wonderful time in the 50s and 60s,” He said that he went to school and played with the same kids throughout his childhood. “Having that localized community. There was a kind of connection,” Ohlin recalled.
An award-winning, life-long educator, Ohlin moved to East Longmeadow in 1974 and became a Lion in 1983. Part of the responsibility at the time was to participate in the parade, and Ohlin has been a member of the committee ever since.
As a Lion, Ohlin has been on the Board of Directors, Fishing Derby Committee and served as the Lions Club president. He has been awarded the Lion of the Year Award and the Distinguished Citizen Award.
The grandfather of four has also been active as a member of the East Longmeadow Hall of Fame Committee, Senior Center Renovation Committee, Millennium Committee, Salute’s WWII Veterans Committee, First Congregational Church Retired Men’s Group and as a Recreation Department Coach. He has also volunteered for Rays of Hope, a breast cancer awareness and fundraising organization.
Ohlin said generations of families stage picnics to watch and cheer on the parade, which features thousands of marchers, floats, marching bands, businesses and sports teams. Ohlin reminisced about how the parade used to stage itself at Birchland Park Middle School, but eventually, it outgrew the location and moved the staging ground to East Longmeadow High School. The parade will start at 10 a.m. at the high school and move down Maple Street, through the rotary, where it will turn onto North Main Street. From there, the route takes a left onto Mapleshade Avenue and turns down Elm Street, eventually ending on Hanward Hill, near the middle school.
In 1969, Ohlin said that the parade nearly “went under.” After it was resurrected by residents Joe Scanlon and Marshall Handson, Ohlin said it began to grow in scope and popularity. Now the time around Independence Day is celebrated with the parade, concerts, fireworks and a carnival.
“It’s a wonderful, patriotic family tradition,” Ohlin said.
For more parade information, or to register to participate, visit https://www.facebook.com/EL4th or email 4th@eastlongmeadowma.gov.