Photos of Christmas Parade 2016

The 2016 East Ridge Christmas Parade may have been the biggest and best ever.

More than 70 entrants with elaborate Christmas-themed floats participated in the two-mile route down Ringgold Road.

This year’s Grand Marshal was the late Perry Vandergriff, the beloved Director of the East Ridge High School Marching Band.

A new element to the festivities this year was a post-parade gathering of folks outside the Community Center. A choir from The Crossing, a terrific church in East Ridge, sang carols, and Santa and Mrs. Claus read “Twas the Night Before Christmas” to a small gathering of attentive children. A ceremonial lighting of a Christmas tree was also included in the gathering.

The slide show below includes most if not all the groups which participated.

The parade could be considered an early Christmas present to the folks who live in and around East Ridge.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.