City float captures first place finishes in holiday parades
Special to Leader-Press
GATESVILLE — Feliz Navidad! Frohe Wienachten! Joyeux Noël! The Copperas Cove Five Hills royalty represented nearly a dozen countries in their entry in the Temple Christmas Parade with the theme, Christmas Around the World. A lighted human snow globe made to look like earth and a backdrop of national flags added the final touch to the City of Copperas Cove float that captured first place in the Temple Christmas Parade.
“Temple’s ‘reverse’ parade was our very first parade where we could truly do things that we’d never done before on the float like creating a backdrop and extending our presentation off the float and into the street,” said Copperas Cove Five Hills Junior Ambassador Hayley Sawyer. “It worked so well that my mom and I created a banner with the parade theme for the Gatesville Christmas Parade and again, we captured first place.”
Senior Ms. Five Hills Dawn Hale and her husband, John, created a giant spur with a working rowel for the Gatesville parade that celebrated the city’s “Spur-sesquicentennial.”
“Usually, the Five Hills Royalty participate in over a dozen parades throughout the year. This year with the pandemic, many parades were cancelled,” Hale said. “We represented our great city in the Waco Juneteenth Parade, Lampasas Christmas Parade, Temple Christmas Parade, and finished with the Gatesville Christmas parade. The royalty did such an amazing job working as a team, ensuring we put our best foot forward. We knocked it out of the park, thus bringing home first place wins to our city.”
Preteen Miss Five Hills Romella Spitzer says the pandemic forced the royalty to change how they interact with the community.
“This was a new experience for me because I was so used to watching a parade go by instead of the other way around,” Spitzer said.
Jillian and Jose Tobias knew many of their cherished holiday family traditions would be different this year with the pandemic. The parents of Miniature Mister Five Hills Maddox Tobias are thankful for the many events through which they have been able to give back this holiday season.
“From honoring our veterans with fluffing and laying wreaths, three epic parades, adopting his pen pals on the nursing home angel trees, crowning the new Krist Kindl royalty, and ringing bells for the Salvation Army, each event has shown our son how rewarding the gift of giving truly is,” Jillian Tobias said. “Maddox will forever take pride in knowing he spread holiday cheer to others during this difficult year.”