Lorain Memorial Day Parade – 1971

All the time that I was growing up in Lorain, I’d never thought of it as a small town.

But in many ways, it was exactly that – despite its considerable population and longtime status at Ohio’s tenth largest city. You could read the Journal and recognize the names of people you knew. In fact, the Journal played a major part of creating that small town atmosphere, by publishing school Honor Rolls, birthdays, hospital reports and regular editorials commenting about what was happening in the city.

Memorial Day parades seemed to bring out that feeling of Hometown, U. S. A. in Lorain too. For a few hours, tens of thousands of people lined Broadway and West Erie Avenue, united in their enjoyment of the city’s high school marching bands, colorful floats and drill teams – played out against the backdrop of the distinctive words of Jack LaVriha, the parade announcer and longtime Journal reporter.

Back on Memorial Day 2021, Journal photographer Tom Whittington seemed to do a particularly good job capturing that small town feeling through his lens. See for yourself in the collection of photos below, which appeared in the paper on June 1, 1971.

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Like me, you were probably looking at the photo in the top right hand corner of the page, trying to figure out where Gina Lollobrickida, I mean, Lollobrigida was in that photo of a pop art sculpture. Although the picture seems like a big pile of junk, Gina is in there (see below).