The Sun Sunnyvale's Newspaper Homecoming parade: a first By JUSTIN BERTON Just after 3:30 p.m. last Friday, Phillip the Firebird strutted out onto Fremont Avenue to lead the first-ever homecoming parade for Fremont High School, which opened 75 years ago. "I'm excited, I'm excited--I'm just excited," said one excited 17-year-old Fremont senior, Mildren Flores. Flores and fellow senior Fred Lwee agreed that a parade was precisely what the high school needed. "We are getting to show the community how much spirit we have," Lwee said. "People have worked real hard for this." Not trailing far behind Phillip the Firebird (a.k.a. student Justin Polgar) was one of the hardest working persons one can find in a parade: the tuba player. Though this was the first parade for most, junior Brian Moore has experience with lugging the 20-pound brass instrument over his shoulder for hours at a time. "It's a bit heavy," Moore said, "but not really." The Fremont parade was measured somewhere around one mile--four miles shy of Moore's personal record. One personal record not likely to be broken anytime soon is the one held by the parade's grand marshal, "Mr. Fremont" himself, Tino Rodriguez. Rodriguez graduated from Fremont in 1944, and has since been a dedicated alumnus. He met his wife Manuela in Spanish class after she asked him to a teen club dance. "I was asked to the dance by another guy, but I thought, 'Nah, I don't wanna go with him,' " Manuela recalled. "I turned behind me, and I thought, 'Maybe I'll ask this cute guy sitting behind me. He's quiet, he shy, he's nice.' So I did. I asked him. But he said, 'I don't know how to dance.' I said, 'Well I'll teach you.' He said, 'OK'--and he's been a great dancer ever since." Rolling just behind the Rodriguezes in the parade was the staff of Fremont High, decked out in Mardi Gras gear and blowing kazoos. "It was about mid-September," Fremont administrator Julia Ziegler recalled, "and Bob Grover and I were sitting around talking about Homestead's parade. We both thought, 'How come we can't have one?' " The pair presented the idea to the students, who took it from there. From creating a temporary on-campus dock for float-building, to choosing the grand marshal, the enthusiasm for the parade quickly became the students', Ziegler said. Appropriately, not far behind the staff came the students, each class represented by a float from a different city: Paris, Honolulu, Hollywood, and...Bedrock (that was the juniors). In painted faces and high spirits, the students created quite a stir. There was the royal court, the cheerleaders and the football team, and they all passed through the streets of Sunnyvale, causing minor traffic delays, but little complaint. [ Back to Contents Page | Sunnyvale Sun Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, October 28, 1998. ©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.