Elkins Mountain School float takes top MSFF award
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ELKINS -- The Elkins Mountain School's Forest Festival Grand Feature Parade float wowed judges "to tears," earning them the parade's top award, the Grand Silvia Award.
Along with the award, the float received a monetary prize of $500. The float featured several clients and faculty from the school as well as members of the Augusta Heritage Center.
"Over my 20 years, I've seen some really good floats," Kathy Vance, owner of Kathy's Decorating and Design and a judge for the parade, told The Inter-Mountain. "But the one that was entered into this year's parade by the clients and staff of the Elkins Mountain School brought tears to our eyes and was fantastic."
The float depicted a wooden cabin with smoke coming out of the chimney on the back of the float, with a fully-loaded coal car on a small track on the front of the float. With the coal car were two Mountain School clients dressed as coal miners, one wearing an older set of mining equipment and the other in a current set with all the safety gear. With them were fellow clients in football jerseys, and Mountain School staffers and Augusta Heritage Center officials in flannel and cowboy hats playing "Country Roads" on banjos and guitars.
Roger Robinson, the Mountain School's Chief Operations Officer and one of the builders of the float, said the school really wanted to truly incorporate the parade's theme, "Timeless Traditions."
"The cabin was the main focus point, to show a family environment, sitting on a porch playing music while others sat around a fire making apple butter on a cool fall day with smoke coming out of the chimney," Robinson said in an email statement.
"Lumberjack competitions bring about many spectators and have been around for years, so we had those old cross cut saws on the side of the cabin. The other side of the cabin had scenery of old traps, an old cabbage cutter and corn planter, and the idea behind this was to show how the tradition still exists today."
Smaller details on the float included cornstalks, pumpkins, an apple butter kettle along with apples, jars of apple butter and pepperoni rolls sitting in baskets, and even a portrait of Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother's Day and a Grafton native, hanging on the cabin door.
Vance said she and two other judges walked through the parade lineup Saturday morning and looked over the floats to select the winners. There are two divisions in the parade – the professional floats, which are made by Shaw Parades, and amateur floats, which are designed by the organization that is entering the float in the parade. Vance said the floats are judged on originally, use of color, spectator appeal, excellence of design and execution of the festival theme.
"I am fortunate to work with a group of employees who are very creative and talented," Robinson said. "Several employees helped with ideas and provided items for the float. The builders of the float mainly consisted of myself, Christian Scott and Frank Shahan. We put together a plan with the theme and the float turned out amazing."
Robinson also expressed gratitude to Seth Young and Emily Miller of the Augusta Heritage Center, as well as Mountain School staff members Billy Stump, Cassandra Norwood and Frank Shahan for performing live music on the float.
Mountain School CEO Laura Hawkins said not only were the clients excited to win, but also to participate in MSFF festivities.
"They really appreciated the visit from the royal court because, you know, we never used to be on the list to come and visit the schools," Hawkins told The Inter-Mountain. "Our kids absolutely love that, and we host them because it's the last stop. So, we provide them with refreshments at our cafeteria afterwards, and the Queen and the Maids of Honor interacted with our boys and asked them questions and talked to them, and that's just a really good experience for all of our kids to see that."
Hawkins added officials also take the clients to Queen Silvia's Coronation on Friday so they can "see what they were a bigger part of."
"They think it's a big deal when the royal court comes to our campus on Wednesday, but then when they see what they were a bigger part of, being to Coronation and being on the parade route, it really comes full circle for them what a big deal and what they were involved in," Hawkins said. "We hope that they take their experience here in Elkins, because we serve kids in all 55 counties in the state... and working in this community, and they take it to their home communities."
In 1987 Elkins Mountain Schools opened its first residential program to keep at-risk male adolescents in-state and closer to their homes, schools, and communities.