Let the good times roll
CHARLOTTE — Loud squeals of delight and peals of laughter pierced the air as hundreds of St. Matthew School students gathered around the outdoor track hoping to catch trinkets being tossed from specially decorated “floats” during the all-school Mardi Gras parade Tuesday morning.
The festive parade kicked off in typical Mardi Gras fashion with a parade leader bedecked in purple and gold, wearing lots of colorful beads and sporting an umbrella embellished with purple and gold feathers.
St. Matthew fifth-graders, assisted by 22 Charlotte Catholic High School students, used small wagons and their creativity to decorate the floats in a variety of themes. Botanical, Super Hero, NFL Football, and Pokemon floats were just some of the ideas students produced.
“I think it’s such a nice tradition. It’s so great to help the kids and I love art,” said Angela Ortiz-Green, a junior and art club participant at Charlotte Catholic who assisted with the Botanical float.
Fifth-grader, Perry Levasseur, helped decorate the Super Hero float. “We decided that because there are a lot of kids here and we thought they’d really like that,” she said.
An NFL Football float was a big hit, as the boys who designed it included a football action figure who could kick a small football through a gold goalpost they mounted to the bed of the wagon.
“We all like football and it’s an exciting float,” Jackson Dapice said. The four boys root for different teams but they all agreed building a football float was fun for them.
Joe Hickman, a senior at Charlotte Catholic interested in engineering, helped build the Pokemon float. He said he had looked forward to meeting the next generation of Catholic students. “It’s exciting for them. I love celebrating Fat Tuesday!” he said.
“They’ve been teaching for several weeks about Mardi Gras and Lent,” said Beth Fontenet, whose granddaughter, Charlotte Baker, is a second-grader. Fontenet was visiting from Ville Platte, Louisiana. She said she celebrates Cajun Mardi Gras where she’s from. “This is so much fun. I’m glad I could be here today,” she said.
The grand finale of the parade came when Father Miguel Sanchez, parochial vicar of St. Matthew Parish, rode in on the back of a festively decorated golf cart with Principal Kevin O’Herron also on board. Father Sanchez tossed inflatable mini-bats to the students who jumped and cheered in hopes of catching one as he passed by.
Father Sanchez said that today’s parade showed the students that “They can learn that it is okay to have fun and it’s okay enjoy fraternity with other kids.” He noted that it is important for them to learn about traditions too, especially those celebrated in the United States that have a tie to our Catholic faith.
“They are learning to transition into Lent, which starts tomorrow on Ash Wednesday, so they know that all this is part of the celebration that we are going to enter into a more reflective time,” he said.
— SueAnn Howell. Photos by Troy Hull
