For an hour Friday, a section of Market Street shut down as throngs of children and onlookers cheered a parade of troops and local groups honoring the armed forces.
Ooltewah High School Army JROTC Cadet Maj. Joshua Simpkins marched his battalion for the first time in the parade, hoping his voice wouldn’t give out.
“To show off the JROTC program and represent the Army is a great thing,” Simpkins said moments before his group stepped off.
Sitting on a patch of grass, Victoria Moore showed her 4-year-old daughter, Rama Sherrod, and her daughter’s friends, Kellis and Kilin Moore, their first parade.
Moore remembered marching as a flag girl in Howard High School’s band in the early 1980s.