Community Raises Funds for Memorial Day Parade

Volunteers with the St. Clair Shores Memorial Day Parade continue their fundraising efforts with a night Saturday at the Bruce Post VFW.

The event for amateur and professional crooners is the latest event that is being held by the committee to raise funds for the annual event. Earlier events included a comedy show, scrap booking events and businesses donating a portion of their sales to the parade.

All of theses efforts have allowed the committee to look at covering the costs for the event.

"Overall, most of our fundraisers have been pretty darn successful," said Debbie Cottrell, chairwoman of the fundraising committee. "We have enough to cover the parade."

The combination of fundraising events and donations has raised about $20,000, enough to cover the costs of police, department of public works, and parks and recreation employees as well as other costs of the parade.

Cotrell said there are 38 participants in the parade, including a fife and drum corps, the Shriners, local scouts and representatives of the military.

This year's parade, the 59th, is being organized by a new committee that was formed after city council in September to move the parade to a new city-affiliated committee that would raise funds, plan and recruit volunteers.

In addition to events at the and , the owner of the , Louie Economopoulos, is giving back to St. Clair Shores by offering "SCS" bumper stickers to raise money for the Memorial Day parade.

The bumper stickers are available upon request for $2.

In addition to offering the stickers, Economopoulos helped in advertising and selling tickets to the Coulier concert.

The Parade Committee is still in need of volunteers. For more information, call 586-504-0493.

Wayne State University intern Frank Williams contributed to this story.