HELENA — Downtown Helena is alive with families and fun as the Last Chance Stampede Parade is back after postponing last year’s event due to COVID-19.
Karen English the Parade Coordinator says during her nine years of being head of the parade, it has become a family event.
“It's a family event for us, most of my volunteers are my family, my husband, my now adult children and they were kids when we first started, I could not do this without my volunteers',” said English.
And even her grandson enjoys putting time into the parade. “I have a lot of fun working and helping in the parade,” said Zayn English.
Since the parade was canceled last year, English says they are glad the community celebration is back.
“We're pretending like last year never happened because it didn't,” said English.
The volunteers and coordinators of the parade say they had a shorter notice of the parade being able to happen, so it was a sprint to the finish line.
“We put this together this year in six weeks, what we normally take six months to do and that is just a tribute to my fantastic volunteers our wonderful supporters you know how much people love doing this how much they love that this happens we've been working our tails off, but we got it done,” said English.
English is elated to bring back a Helena tradition and to celebrate the healthcare workers of Lewis & Clark County named as this year's Parade Grand Marshal, as they have been hit hard by the struggles of the last year.
“The entire community is just so happy to be out to be able to be with friends see people they haven't seen for a long time and for my crew we are so honored to be a part of helping to make something like that happen,” said English.
The parade also has grand prizes totaling $5,000 dollars for the best parade float that were donated by local businesses, with the grand prize.
