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Spirit of July Fourth Shines in Evanston's 85th Annual Parade

Mae Mae De Vuono, left, and Lincoln Brennan work on their section of this year's Backlot float, which will be either "Spelling Bee" or "Bee a Good Student."

Beginning with playground games and culminating in a fireworks display often named the best in the suburbs, Evanston's Fourth has become a homecoming day for far-flung family and friends.

The City does not underwrite the Fourth of July festivities. Evanston residents have been willing to finance the celebration from their own pockets for eight and a half decades. The Fourth of July Association, which has trimmed its budget in her four years as parade director, says Ms. Ducayet, "funds all spending the day of the event" -a sum of about $80,000. "Easily half" the money is for fireworks, she says. While praising the City as the parade's cooperative partner and "chief sponsor," Ms. Ducayet emphasizes that the day's events run on volunteer power and donations from citizens and businesses.

Flags along the Central Street parade route are the property and responsibility of the Evanston Fourth of July Association, which funds the holiday celebration with donations. Evanston's two Rotary Clubs donated the flags to the Association.

That makes a difference, she says. The Association is at once "the most patriotic and the least political group I've ever belonged to," she says. "It's important that a non-political volunteer group run the parade. There is no political agenda. No person with a patronage job gets the entry [forms]."

Even the flags on the Central Street lampposts belong to the Association rather than to the City. New flags, donated by two Evanston Rotary clubs, went up the Sunday before Flag Day and will come down the Sunday after the Fourth, as they do each year, mounted by volunteers from the back of a pick-up truck.

Despite its homespun aura, the two-hour parade is anything but spontaneous. Behind the scenes is a sophisticated operation, honed over the parade's 84-year history.

Planning for the Fourth is nearly a year-round task. Yet Ms. Ducayet has plenty of examples of what makes it worthwhile. She recalls the E-Town Steppers, a "plucky group of girls" who, undaunted by being shut out of the high school pom squad, strode to a second prize in the parade. And there was the graduate student from China who volunteered in order to "help celebrate democracy and freedom."

Parade preparations began last September, when Ms. Ducayet booked the most coveted acts. Professional bands like the Cavaliers and South Shore Drill Team schedule almost a year in advance, she says. They do more than one parade on July Fourth, charging as much as $5,000.

In October the committee chose the 2006 theme, "Stars and Stripes for Evanston," incorporating it into their first-ever fundraiser in February. During the winter Dave Sniader, longtime fireworks chairman, worked with Melrose Pyrotechnics to customize the show he sets to a different musical score each year. Parade applications and invitations to dignitaries went out in March.

Celebration Manager C.L. Geiger and committee chairmen deal with a thousand details, such as replacing the entry numbers ruined by last year's unprecedented rain, sourcing cherry and blueberry pies for the pie-eating contest and updating the website, says Ms. Ducayet.

By June, parade planning becomes a four-hour-a-day job for her. She contacts former participants who have not re-signed, oversees the search for judges and marshals, and rounds up stored floats (the Boy Scout float is in a City garage) and costumes for the parade's mascot, Sparky, and its icon, Uncle Sam.

At two weeks and counting, this year's celebration committee organized the parade. Bent over a dining room table littered with some 120 note cards, they spent hours "lining up everyone who wants to be first," Ms. Ducayet jokes, aiming for flow, entertainment and the particular needs of various groups.

Then each numbered entry was placed on a map of the staging area. This "sector map" of northwest Evanston streets shows the lengths, in feet, of 18 city blocks. Allowing, for example 10 feet for a car and another 10 for human marchers, the committee builds the parade on paper.

It will take 30 to 50 marshals to shepherd these entries from their staging areas onto Central Street come parade time. A July 2 training session will teach them how. Equipped with a packet of chalk, string and scissors the morning of the Fourth, marshals will take charge of their sectors, chalking boundaries and attaching numbers to their entries as participants assemble.

The excitement is palpable, says Ms. Ducayet, as Capt. Edwards of the Evanston Fire Department inspects each float for safety - and to make sure it fits under the 12-foot viaduct at Green Bay Road.

Ms. Ducayet, wearing what she calls "the world's largest fanny pack," communicates via walkie-talkie with Randy Knowles at the radio dispatch center at Central and Central Park. Cell phone to her ear, she monitors the progress of the big-name bands moving through traffic on their way to Evanston from other parades.

Then, just before 2 p.m., she signals the staging crew to begin pulling out the entries - starting with sector 3 - in an elaborate pattern she compares to an accordion. One staging area after another empties as the parade flows down Central Street.

Only days later does Ms. Ducayet see the parade - on videotape on Evanston Cable Television. But walking at the tail end of the procession, she says she feels satisfied if she sees that most people have stayed to the end.
For information, visit www.evanston4th.org

CitySkate Outreach Program Helps Kids Dream Big

By Victoria Scott

A fellow ice skating coach recently asked Kori Ade a question that helped clarify her own philosophy. "What do you do if your students can't achieve at the top of their game?" he asked.

Ice-skating coach Kori Ade believes her outreach program can teach children more than the fundamentals of the sport.

Ms. Ade's answer helps explain not only why she teaches skating to children who have the resources and parental support to succeed, but also why she started a program, CitySkate Outreach, that targets children who lack both.

"I'm teaching for the process, not the goal," says Ms. Ade, 33, who knows firsthand the life lessons a skater can learn. "I'm teaching because I have a passion for teaching."

The teaching bug had already bitten her by the time she was prepared to apply to medical school. A self-described "science geek," she had advanced directly to AP biology as an Evanston Township High School sophomore, then earned a bachelor's degree in skeletal anthropology at Loyola University and run a flow cytometry lab before taking the MCATs.

The process, not the product , of ice skating is what matters to coach Kori Ade.

Meanwhile ("'Relax' isn't in my vocabulary," she says), she had established a coaching business. She had children who counted on her and felt confident she was helping those Highland Park pupils "come away whole, physically, mentally and spiritually" from her lessons. Even the physicians she consulted encouraged her to stay put.

"I feel I have a gift, that every day I prove myself a great coach," she says. And that gift gained Ms. Ade entrance to a place most skaters can only dream about. For nine months last year she joined the skating greats, teaching at the Olympic training center at Lake Arrowhead, Cal.

Her own skating story did not make her a likely candidate for the prestigious position. In general, she says, no one without national accolades is invited to Lake Arrowhead.

"Missed opportunity" may best describe her competitive career, but she says the medals she lacks help make Kori Ade the teacher she is. She began as a "passionate little skater" who lacked an outlet. Unaware of the world of competitive skating beyond her home rink at Robert Crown, she was lucky to connect with a coach who gave her free lessons but demanded hard work. Then her family moved to New Mexico. She left Evanston at 11 in a child's body, she says, and returned at 13 in a woman's. "It was the worst time for a skater to be off the ice," she says. Besides, skating as Clara in the Robert Crown "Nutcracker on Ice" was her notion of success; national recognition was beyond her scope.

Instead of winning national accolades, she learned how to handle a challenge - something many accomplished competitors for whom everything came easily do not understand, she says. That knowledge, she believes, helps make her a good coach.

Yet returning to Chicago from the Olympic heights, she says she realized even though "coaching talented kids with resources fulfills my competitive streak, it doesn't fulfill my altruistic side. I've always given back."

Building on the satisfaction she had felt as a volunteer in a women's shelter as well as on her instinct for teaching, she made the decision to complement her coaching business, CitySkate, with an outreach program for underprivileged children.

She had already laid the groundwork. In the fall of 2004 she began offering weekly clinics for high school and college kids who wanted to volunteer in such a setting. During the winter of 2005-06 these young people she calls her junior staff worked with the Parkways Foundation in Chicago, teaching the Family Skate program at Bicentennial Park.

Then opportunity presented itself in Ms. Ade's backyard. As a Rogers Park resident, she often drove past the Rice Children's Center on Ridge Avenue in Evanston. She had friends who worked at the facility, a residence for children who are wards of the State. She knew the 30 children there stayed an average of two years - and suspected any time she had with them could make a difference. "Kids from chaotic backgrounds will thrive with organization," she says.

She learned that most had been disappointed over and over in their short lives and that consistency would be vital to earning their trust. She incorporated that knowledge into her clinics for volunteers, along with techniques like helping them respect the children's closely guarded personal space.

Ice skating promised to be an arena where these kids could shine. "The learning curve is long but methodical," says Ms. Ade. Their lessons, which began in April, are part of the children's treatment program, earned with good behavior.

"I want every kid to feel a sense of being special, important," she says. At the same time she believes that, as skaters, they can become "truly accountable for their own failures and successes, that they [can] turn into the kind of adults who don't make excuses."

Early on she met a Rice 11-year-old she deemed "a natural." After teaching him a few skills, she showed him off to the group. "Now take a bow and they'll clap," she whispered. He turned to her and asked, "Do you think I can be a champion?"

She answered, "The feeling of being a champion comes from inside. Today you are a champion. This is your podium."

Money from a June 2 fundraiser will carry the CitySkate Outreach program through the summer. Ms. Ade is determined to continue beyond that, though ice time at Robert Crown costs $200 per hour. Her next fundraiser, she promises, will feature Rice skaters nurtured by instruction at Crown and at her new Winnetka dance studio, to be used for their "off-ice training," including nutrition and fitness.