Parades

Today is Bristol, Rhode Island's 224th 4th of July parade. Nice to live in a patriotic state. Since I don't do parades - I will never go. On April 28, 1979 we were supposed to go to the Battle of Flowers Parade in San Antonio. My father had gotten us really good tickets but Heather had surprised us by being delivered over a month early and so we were home bound (plus we were just barely over being quarantined for Scarlet Fever!). I was at Mom's and we were watching the preliminaries of the parade on TV when we saw where we would have been sitting. It was a great area and I actually was feeling a bit bad I didn't get to go when a sniper started shooting from a Winnebago. He killed 2 people and seriously injured 30 others before he was finally killed by the SWAT team. One of the people killed was a wonderful sister from the First Ward who was there with her granddaughter. She saw what was happening and threw her granddaughter down on the ground and covered her with her body. Her granddaughter was underneath her grandmother and protected for over an hour. She ended up with some chemical burns but no other injuries. Whereas everyone else in the area had bullet wounds. I know - I have never heard of a sniper incident since - but I don't like crowds anyway and every time I hear about a parade, I have this incident roll through my head. My father presided at the funeral with all the media there. He said it was very distracting - but the people wanted to know all they could about this brave woman.

I am sorry to be such a downer on such a wonderful day. So now I will say - Happy Birthday to my youngest grandson, Dutch Bailey Davis! He is one-year-old today. If I was going to only say one thing about him it would be he is the laughingest baby I have ever been around in my life. He laughs at everything! I hope he continues to love to laugh for the rest of his life.