The Enterprise Veterans Parade Committee and city officials had to make a tough call this morning, but the threat of rainfall during the scheduled 6 p.m. parade has caused its cancellation.
Weather officials and hourly forecasts for the day indicate the city is under a 50 percent to 80 percent chance of rain during the hours of 4 to 7, when the participant line-up and parade would be taking place.
“This was a hard call,” said Mayor William E. Cooper. “The Veterans Parade and other veterans activities are very precious to us because it is a wonderful opportunity for our whole city to say a special ‘thank you’ to our veterans and active service members. But we also did not want to put the parade participants and the citizens who would want to come and honor these veterans in uncomfortable and possibly harmful weather conditions.”
Although the parade is cancelled, Cooper assured that the annual Veterans Tribute Ceremony will take place and veterans will be recognized as planned. The ceremony, which was to be at the Farmers Market immediately after the parade, has been moved up to 6 p.m. at the Enterprise Civic Center.
“The Civic Center will be dry and warm, and we hope that everyone who planned to come to the parade will come on up to the Civic Center and participate in that moving ceremony,” he said.
Col. Ross Nelson, commandant of the U.S. Army Warrant Officer Career College, will be the guest speaker at the ceremony, where Veteran of the Year Conrad Stempel and Service Member of the Year Russell Smith will be honored along with the award nominees John Cappadoro, Jim McDonough, Eric McLean, Scott Pittman and Steve Resteivo.
“Please come and help us applaud our community’s veterans to thank them for their service and sacrifice,” Cooper asked.