A hometown holiday

Four decades ago, Green Bay saw its first-ever holiday parade, founded by Doug Schubert, who owned the Holiday Inn downtown, and WBAY’s Tom Kiedinger after a trip to the happiest place on earth.

“They bumped into each other at a parade at Disney and said, ‘You know what, this would be great to do in Green Bay,” said Kevin Keuhne, who has served on the parade board for many years. “Then they had the first year… They had a different route that kind of went around the Associated Bank parking lot.”

After the first initial years, the parade began growing in popularity and in size.

“We had eventually got funding from Port Plaza Mall, and that was a big deal,” Keuhne recalled. “They gave us four or five thousand dollars and we started running the parade downtown. We had a very specific time frame because they wanted it to end when Port Plaza Mall was opening. The concept was that downtown was all retail, so we wanted to bring as many ‘deer widows’ downtown to go shopping. Bring your kids, go to the mall, spend some money — that was the whole concept.”

Although the Port Plaza Mall no longer stands, those who went to the holiday parade in its early days might remember some of the extravagant shows the parade brought to the shopping center.

“One of the best parades that I can remember is when we got the Wisconsin Marching Band,” Keuhne said. “We got the whole band here and decided, ‘Okay, we’re going to march them through the parade to the mall. They played probably 30 minutes inside the mall and people were dancing and just having a great time. Everything was just alive.”

Eventually, a bleacher seating area was added to give performers an opportunity to stop and put on a show during the parade.

“We put up bleachers to be kind of competitive… The TV was always panning and there were sponsors but then it was like, ‘Woah, these guys have bleachers for their parade,’” Keuhne said. “That was really the entertainment zone. We would stop bands at that point and let them perform for 30 seconds.”

Now, 40 years after the parade first started, many things, including the bleachers, remain the same.

“Fast forward 40 years, and [the parade] is almost identical to the way you describe it,” Jen Matcalf, assistant director at Downtown Green Bay, told Keuhne.

One thing in particular that hasn’t changed is who the parade is tailored to.
“The way the committee always dedicated [who got into the parade] was, ‘How are little kids going to like this?’” Keuhne said. “That’s how we decided what’s going to be in the parade. You’ll notice there are no politicians other than the mayor. No politicians, no guns, no military — but we have the Color Guard. It’s all about what little kids are going to like to see.”

“Kevin’s words, whether he was at the table with the committee making these decisions or not, his voice is still in our heads,” Metcalf said. “We still ask to this day, ‘What would Kevin say?’ He’d say, ‘This is for the kids. This is for the kids. Remember, this is for the kids.’ Every year we’ll get an entry of a trucking company or something and they’ll throw a bow on top of it, but we’re not just a moving advertisement. We are not full of commercials.”

This year’s theme, Hometown Holiday, promises to bring that same energy and joy to children in attendance.

“There is nothing like seeing the smile on little kids’ faces when they see something that gets them excited,” Keuhne said. “I never really watched the parade, I was watching the reactions… I’ve never really seen the entire parade from start to finish.”

This year will be the first year that Keuhne is stepping back from the parade, allowing other committee members and Downtown Green Bay, which became involved with the parade after Port Plaza Mall stopped funding it, to take the reins.

“I felt that, since Schubert had turned it over to me, I had a responsibility to the community to make certain that [the parade] would continue,” Keuhne said.

Taking over the parade, though, proved easier than most people expect with years of fine-tuning in the event’s history.

“We’re all stewards of this tradition,” Metcalf said. “It’s a lot of pressure, but it’s not hard. It’s such a well-oiled machine and it’s been that way forever. Why change it? There’s a million moving parts and it’s not that easy, but you just follow the plan and you’re good to go.”

More details about the Holiday Parade can be found at downtowngreenbay.com.

The lineup for this year’s Holiday Parade can be found on the back page of this issue of City Pages.