Madison’s 4th of July parade highlights history

MADISON, Conn. (WTNH) — Paradegoers started lining the Post Road early in the morning to get good seats for the town’s Independence Day parade.

With around a thousand marchers, it’s a big parade with a small-town feel. Madison has been taking its patriotic flair to the streets every Fourth of July for more than 47 years.

“It’s such a good parade, because everybody seems to come to Madison on July 4th,” said Tony Raccio, the chair of the Madison Fourth of July Parade. “The weekend is full of fireworks, concerts, et cetera.”

For the last 15 years or so, the Lancraft Fife and Drum Corps has been marching in it. But the group’s traditions go back a lot further than that.

“A lot of the traditional music that we play is dating back to the revolution,” said Dave Delancey, of the Lancraft Fife & Drum Corps. “Some Civil War-era. Some Irish tunes. We play a little bit of everything.”

A little bit of everything sums up the parade as a whole. You’ll get plenty of reminders of what independence from the British king means in New England, and you’ll get a lot more modern fun, as well. Parade organizers also try to highlight children, both in the parade, and along the route from downtown to the Surf Club.

Every year, the parade highlights a certain person or group doing good things around town. This year, the focus is on one organization of volunteers really trying to make a difference along the shoreline. The Shoreline Greenway trail is a project trying to connect Madison’s Hammonassett Beach State Park with Lighthouse Point Park in New Haven via walking and biking trails.

“Right now, out of 25 miles, we’ve got about six miles under some kind of a trail and we’ve got projects going on in several towns to start to connect those,” said Dan Buckley, chair of the Shoreline Greenway Trail.

“We decided to go with the greenway trail only because I walk down there at Hammonassett and every day that I walk down there, I thank god that I’m part of this beautiful place,” Raccio said.

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