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Winter Garden celebrates Independence Day with pancakes, bike parade

by Thomas Adams
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Joceyln Loetz, 13, parked her baby blue beach cruiser outside City Hall and waited for the Independence Day parade to start while hundreds of families sat down to a pancake breakfast at Winter Garden’s Masonic Lodge.

Since she was four years old, Loetz has participated in the city’s yearly procession. She used American flags, streamers, balloons, and red, white, and blue electrical tape to decorate her cruise ship for four days this year.

Loetz stated, “I just wanted it to pop and I wanted to pay tribute to the country.”

For twenty-one years, families have gathered in downtown Winter Garden to celebrate the Fourth of July with pancakes and a bicycle parade that welcomes any child who wishes to ride.

Winter Garden Masonic Lodge No. 165 founded the All American Kids Parade & Breakfast, which attracts over a thousand people. The city has embraced it by helping to publicize the celebrations and closing the street to allow the children to parade.

Leo Pedro, the lodge’s president, stated that in addition to the Fourth of July being a significant day for us, the children also get thrilled.

Children under the age of twelve get breakfast for free, while adults over twelve are asked to provide $8. Fresh fruit, sausages, and pancakes were on the menu.

In the lodge’s tiny kitchen, the masons prepared the pancakes. Additionally, lodge member Brad McDowell showed up at 5:30 am to prepare 1,800 sausage patties in the bed of his pickup truck using a gas grill.

In collaboration with the Winter Garden Heritage Foundation, the Daughters of the American Revolution gave out decorations to help the children spruce up their bikes and spoke to them about the significance of the occasion.

To teach the kids about America’s founding ideals, Marcea Oetting, a descendent of a major who participated in the Battle of Bunker Hill, arrived disguised as Abigale Adams, the wife of President John Adams and a Founding Father.

According to Oetting, our nation’s mistakes are always the result of our forgetting those values. “Remember,” she said, quoting Adams, “all men would be tyrants if they could.”

Oetting gave families an explanation of how President Adams’ writings influenced the structure of the government.

According to Oetting, his words were the catalyst for the idea that the court should be independent and not part of the executive branch.

200 bicycle helmets were distributed to children by the Winter Garden Police Department at their tent. Winter Garden Mayor John Rees, decked out in blue shorts and an American flag shirt, spoke briefly on the steps of City Hall prior to the march.

Lodge member Jim Judovics, dressed as a 1776 Continental soldier, stood behind the mayor as he spoke, waving an American flag.

Judovics is a member of the National Sojourners Heros of 1776, an organization that dresses in historical clothing and visits schools, nursing homes, and immigration facilities to educate people about the significance of the American flag. Judovics is a Vietnam War veteran and a Hungarian refugee who fled communism to America in 1956.

According to Judovics, this government is of, by, and for the people, not the other way around. Literary people in this country are unaware of how fortunate they are.

Thomas Adams

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