Attempting to find the origin of Lewes’ Doo Dah Parade held every Fourth of July, but not always – isn’t at all like searching for something where evidence that it ever existed is nebulous.
The Loch Ness Monster. The Holy Grail. Bigfoot. Caesar Rodney’s gravesite. They’re supposedly out there, but where: Who knows?
Nailing down the origin of the Doo Dah Parade, examining its present condition and forecasting its future doesn’t require expert scientists, scholarly historians or skilled researchers.
One needn’t look further than Phyllis Hoenen, one of the parade’s founders. So, how did it all begin?
“It started about 40 years ago with Carolyn Shockley and me, a lot of local friends and the gang that we ran around with. Over a period of time it’s grown and grown,” Hoenen said as she prepared for this year’s parade.
A Pennsylvania native and Lewes resident since she was a baby, Hoenen wouldn’t tell her age.
“Age is all in your head – and in your knees and in your back,” she said.
Hoenen said during the first several years of the parade, a few people rode in a convertible car up and down a few Lewes streets with a portable record player’s tinny speakers blaring marching tunes.
“That’s really how it started. It was just a Fourth of July Parade,” Hoenen said.
She credits Cape Gazette Publisher Dennis Forney with naming it a Doo Dah Parade – it had previously been nameless – several years after it began.
“But you can ask him about that,” she advised.
She said traditionally, anyone who has the Fourth of July spirit, whether from Lewes or elsewhere, would pile into and onto festively decorated pickup trucks, automobiles and farm flatbeds that line up along Manila Avenue.
“Anybody who wants to get in it can. It’s not backed by any organization. We just talk about it and the next thing you know we’ve got a whole crowd of people,” Hoenen said.
In an uncoordinated yet coordinated start, the 2008 parade swung onto Kings Highway, jogged right onto Savannah Road, marched down Second Street, turned onto Third Street, and then onto Savannah Road for the home stretch.
Typically, Hoenen has led the parade but didn’t this year because of a toe injury. Instead she took a seat aboard the rolling drum platform with members of the band vinyl shockley, including brothers Ed and Mike Shockley, Carolyn Shockley’s sons, who kept beat with the parade’s traditional stepping-off soundtrack – John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”
In a 1993 Cape Gazette report on Independence Day festivities in Lewes, celebrations - including the Doo Dah Parade - were called “the biggest yet.”
In July 1999, the Gazette reported that Lewes’ celebrations on the Fourth – and its Doo Dah Parade – “drew a record crowd.”
The report didn’t say what the earlier record was but it must have eclipsed that set in 1993.
The Cape Gazette in July 2002 reported that the Doo Dah Parade had been cancelled after thieves made off with three commercial-sized cooler chests – two filled with beverages, and one filled with ice.
Someone – apparently several someones – didn’t get that the celebration of freedom, liberty and independence didn’t mean they could help themselves to everything.
But Hoenen said the Gazette’s report erred. “The parade has never been cancelled – except by weather,” she said.
The afternoon parade has always had a flexible start time – sometimes 5:30, or maybe 6:00, or 6:30.
“If you’ve ever been in a parade you must know that you never know when it’s going to start. Some people get there and they get antsy and they want to get going,” she said.
Continuation of the Doo Dah tradition will mean passing the torch to a younger generation, Hoenen said.
“There are quite a few people who aren’t here anymore. I think I counted 20 who used to be in the parade but are gone now,” she said, among them husband Tom, and parade co-founder Carolyn.
Will the Doo Dah Parade still march through Lewes’ streets 40 years from now?
“I think so – if I can hang on. Michael and Eddie will continue, I’m sure,” Hoenen said.
