SEQUIM –– With vintage blouses, waxed mustaches and the air filled with patriotic tunes, Sequim gathered to celebrate its 100th year along with America’s 237th birthday in grand fashion Thursday.
“We figured we’d get all of our stuff together to help pick up the old-timey feel,” said Sandi Lazzaro, who donned her grandmother’s blouse and a floor-length purple skirt and was holding a classic parasol as she and friends Jan Wilson and Patti DeVogler helped turn back the clock.
The Old-Fashioned Town Picnic ran from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Water Reuse Demonstration Park and the James Center for the Performing Arts in Carrie Blake Park.
Organizers decided to throw an old-fashioned birthday bash for the city’s centennial year.
Sequim was incorporated Oct. 31, 1913.
The Independence Day festival included classic picnic games like sack races and watermelon rolls as contests that celebrated last century’s fashion took the James Center’s outdoor stage in between fiddlers and barbershop quartets.
Picnickers gathered in front of the James Center bandshell at 2:30 p.m. for a community photo taken from the air by Sequim photographer David Woodcock.
Another community photo is planned today, Friday, at 5:30 p.m. at the main intersection of Sequim Avenue and Washington Street before the “Street Dance of the Century” featuring the Guy Johnson Band and Magic Bus begins downtown at 6 p.m.
Now in its 21st year, the Sequim City Band graced the James Center stage with an afternoon slate of patriotic tunes.
“It’s a lot of fun to be out here, and we worked really hard to put together a great show,” Cheryl Smoker, a trumpeter and 17-year member of the band, said before the concert.
Under the direction of Tyler Benedict, they ripped through a stirring set which included a performance of Robert W. Smith’s “Inchon” that had drummers mimicking helicopter sounds while they played around the audience.
Fourteen men were awarded prizes of centennial gear and a professional photo session for putting their best faces forward at the Beard and Mustache Contest.
“We had some real dedicated guys out here,” Halina D’Urso. “They really took a lot of care in their hair.”
Tom Collins took home the strangest award for best “invisible beard.”
Collins had grown a beard for the picnic but, while trimming it earlier in the week, knicked a part of it and decided to take the whole thing off.
“It looked pretty deformed,” Collins said with a tan line revealing where the beard once was. “Better to take it off than show up looking like that.”
In Port Angeles, boats decked out in red, white and blue cruised around Port Angeles Harbor at noon and 3 p.m. Thursday.
Later, Port Angeles celebrated a parade at 6 p.m., followed by music at City Pier and fireworks after dusk.
A parade and fireworks also were highlights of events in Forks, where the Old-Fashioned Fourth of July celebration will continue this weekend, and fireworks also burst above the harbor at Neah Bay .
In Port Townsend, the 45-member Port Townsend Summer Band presented its 12th annual Independence Day concert at American Legion Post 26, corner of Water and Monroe streets, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Joe Smillie can be reached at 360-681-2390, ext. 5052, or at jsmillie@peninsuladailynews.com.
