Everybody Loves a Parade

Published in Hilton Head-Islander Magazine,  July 1984   

Everybody loves a parade! We'll stand for hours in summer or winter, forgetting the temperature and our aching feet just to get a brief glimpse of each beautiful float and thrill to the sight and sound of the marching bands and beauty queens.

 The South Carolina Low Country can boast of its share of parades from the granddaddy of them all, the Hampton Watermelon Festival, to the now-famous St. Patrick's Day parade in Savannah. It's parade time again in the Low Country with the 28th annual Beaufort Water Festival. Begun in 1956, it has grown to be one of the leading festivals in the south. One of the center-stage events each year is the grand parade which gracefully rolls down oak-draped Bay Street to the delight of thousands of spectators.

Have you ever wondered who built these beautiful floats, who imagined these flights of fancy that so delight the eye? My parents, H. E. and Lena Bridges, were professional parade float designers and builders. They called their company Universal Decorators. As a child, I would often ask my dad how he got started in the business. I always loved his stories about the early days and here's what he said in a newspaper article in the Florence (SC) Morning News in 1956.  "I began working in the business in 1923 for the Little Washington Decorating Company in Little Washington, North Carolina. I was hired for $15.00 a week and the privilege of sleeping under a truck. In those days, we decorated wagons, express carts, and an occasional truck and there was none of the material we have to work with now. I can remember adorning one of the units of a parade by stretching chicken wire over it and putting bright colored paper napkins in each hole in the wire. That was work!"

Daddy and me

 My eyes widened with wonder as he described how he "draped literally millions of feet of crepe paper over vehicles when that was the only means of obtaining the desired effect." Daddy, then when he married Mother, grew to be one of the best in the business, making floats for the New Orleans Mardi Gras, the Wilmington Azalea Festival, and just about every parade you could imagine from Virginia to Louisiana. Christmas parades served as a big part of our float menu which began during Thanksgiving each year. Although we traveled many places including Charlotte, Raleigh, Charleston, and Columbia for Christmas parades, I vividly remember taking a train each year from our home in Florence, South Carolina to Savannah at Thanksgiving for their Christmas parade. Mother and Daddy would run beside the train with excitement as the train pulled into the Savannah station with my sister and me on board. I always had a special place in my heart for the Low Country parades from Savannah way up to Myrtle Beach-not really considered the Low Country-but the Fun in the Sun parade there was spectacular as it rolled through one of the south’s most popular tourist destinations.

One of our essential tools of the trade was a staple gun. Growing up, I held a staple gun in one hand and a doll in the other. We had a seasonal crew of men who assisted in the building and decorating, always under the watchful perfectionist eyes of my parents. We also picked up day-labor to help us transport the floats over the thousands of miles we traveled each year in convoy. Every time we completed the grueling task of readying 15 to 30 floats, my family watched with pride as the floats began to move down the parade route.


From the drawings on the paper to the last staple on the fringe, my parents dreamed it all and made it a reality. Each of the floats was built on four-wheel trailers which ran from 20 to 25 feet in length. Some of them were as much as ten feet high and decorated with all sorts of beautiful materials with names like floral sheeting, festooning, foil paper, and fringe. Daddy came a long way since the chicken-wire days of the 1920s.

The “Miss America" float was one of our favorites.  In 1956 when Marian McKnight-a Manning, South Carolina beauty-won the national title, the South Carolina Jaycees

Photo in 1963 South Carolina Roadmap

commissioned my parents to build the float without even asking them what they had in mind. The "Miss America" was built to withstand the strain of thousands of miles of travel all over the country wherever Marian McKnight appeared. Mother described the 36-foot long float’s underpinning being built like a Sherman tank. A snow-white American eagle perched on the prow and at the rear a nine-foot tall red, white, and blue shield sat as a backdrop to the queen. Two four-by-six floral sheeting American flags flanked the queen's throne on either side of the shield. This float was one of the most magnificent we ever built and newspapers frequently carried pictures of it when it appeared in parades. Daddy always said that he wanted to build a Miss America float for me, for he had visions of his little girl becoming a beauty queen. He died in 1966 the year I was crowned Miss Florence, and the Miss South Carolina Pageant parade was the one I so wanted him to be a part of.

Photo in 1963 South Carolina Roadmap

My beautiful Mother

In the summer we traveled with our parents and I celebrated my June birthday at the Hampton Watermelon Festival each year. 

Artist Carew Rice was an institution, watermelon was king and politicians made sure they showed up at Hampton’s town square. We decorated the floats in the old airport hangar located next to a corn field.  My sister Jane and I always had a hand in the decorating. The towns people came out in droves when it cooled off each evening just to “see how the floats were coming." It was the highlight of the year in small town Hampton where the festival began right after World War II. My dad was right there readying the very first parade. When I was a baby my Mother and I rode the train from Raleigh, NC where we lived at the time to Hampton, SC to be with Daddy. A few years later, Mother and Daddy ran our business together. They were quite a team blending their two smart, creative, administrative, and entrepreneurial ideas.  

The Beaufort Water Festival always came on the heels of the Hampton Watermelon Festival. When the Hampton parade was finished, we immediately began to transport the floats with our fleet of cars and trucks over the lovely two-lane roads, some still prevalent in South Carolina today. In the '40s and '50s, though, it was the only way to  travel. We tried to do the driving in the late afternoon when the white-hot heat had begun to recede into the relief of evening. Jane and I loved to jump into the back of a      pick-up truck and just enjoy the wind on our faces, the green of the land, and the smell of the marshes.

Beaufort was a joy to us, for we loved the magnificent oaks and the quaint town set like a jewel beside the bay. The parade traditionally began at the National Cemetery and proceeded down Bay Street with a grace and beauty not unlike a queen. The Navy's Blue Angels and the Marine Corps band were always a thrilling part of the celebration each year. My parents were there at the beginning of this Low Country tradition too.

In their legacy, my parents instilled in us hard work, pride in our craftsmanship, and an innate sense of bringing something beautiful out of the ordinary to brighten the lives of others. They gave the crowds a sense of wonder and a touch of the extraordinary to their everyday lives. That's why newspapers called them "architect of dreams."

Next time you enjoy a parade, remember that somewhere decades ago in an old airport hangar or tobacco warehouse, my parents created memories, beauty and enjoyment for thousands of onlookers. I hope you were among them.