I recently attended a movie at Marshall Cinemas and ran into my City Commission successor and his wife. We small talked about the City Commission and that he and his wife were on the Marshall Regional Arts Council, a board I had also served on. That talk turned to the Fourth of July. Mike spoke about an orchestra or a brass band sitting or something like that. Seeing that a nice percentage of the speak outs have been that Jefferson, Shreveport, and everywhere else have fireworks and we don't, this was apprepeau.

Let's segue to late May 2004. Henry Bradbury and Grady Lee came to my house telling me that we need to do something to celebrate the Fourth as the Chamber opted out; to be fair, the cost of fireworks and the cost for insurance is pretty crazy. If you don't have an underwriter, then you are hurting. Anyway, thanks to Senator Eltife's generous donation, we had a decent Fourth on the square. We had community groups out there with specific responsibilities charging a nominal fee, like a nickel, for a Coke or a snow cone.