Search Maine Yellow Pages 
Log In | Register | Help
Winslow family uses garage as post to organize July 4 week activities
By COLIN HICKEY
Staff Writer Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel Saturday, June 30, 2007

WINSLOW -- Ron LeClair has turned his garage into the Winslow Family 4th of July Celebration command post and supply warehouse.

Leaf bags filled with patriotic bunting sit next to 21 cases of Winslow 4th fundraising cookbooks.

Also competing for floor space are stacks of soda, boxes of volunteer T-shirts, a popcorn machine, mustard bottles, paper plates and Styrofoam food containers.

Along a side wall, multiple organizational charts are in place, each one detailing the schedules and assignments of the 150 volunteers LeClair has recruited.

This is normal at the LeClair household. Winslow's annual multi-day celebration starts and ends here. And LeClair enlists the aid of everybody who sleeps under his roof: his wife, Jo Ann; his son, Brandon; and his mother-in-law, Yvette Begin.

Call them the First Family of the Winslow Fourth.

Brandon, who is entering his senior year at Winslow High School, designs the Web site for the Winslow Family 4th of July Committee. He also has long been his father's No. 1 gofer during the celebration week, a job that basically runs around the clock.

"If I retreat to my bedroom, he just bursts in to get something off the copier," Brandon said. "So I can't escape him."

Jo Ann LeClair, the one who creates the organizational charts, cannot escape, either. The Winslow Fourth is almost a daily presence in her house -- and not just in the weeks leading up to the July 4 week.

"(People) don't realize it is the whole year," she said. "He has a full-time job that pays him, and he has a full-time job that doesn't pay him."

Yvette Begin is too busy stuffing, addressing and stamping the more than 600 fundraising letters sent to businesses and individuals to contemplate an exit strategy.

"I don't mind it really," she said. "I don't really do much."

Ron LeClair doesn't mind the work either.

The truth is he thrives on the full-time duties. He relishes the opportunity to organize what generally is acknowledged to be the largest Independence Day parade -- both in participants and spectators -- in the state.

But then LeClair gets energized by the six-day spectacle. Starting with last night's chicken barbecue and concert at Fort Halifax Park, Ron LeClair will be the ever-present face of the Winslow Fourth, a blur of energy with a cell phone.

"If I could get paid, and this was a full-time job, then I would do it," LeClair said of his chairman duties, "because this is my forte."

LeClair took a break from the celebration three years ago -- the year he built his home on Outer Clinton Avenue.

Yet on July Fourth morning that year, he woke with a start at 4.

"For some reason it came into my head that something was going on (at Fort Halifax Park)," LeClair said, "and I had to help out."

Turns out LeClair was right. Help was needed setting up generators at the park. Later he sneaked out of his house again to lend a hand a second time.

The following year he returned as chairman.

Brandon LeClair has a love-hate relationship with his father's obsession. For most of the year, he considers the celebration the biggest annoyance in his life. But come the July 4 week, Brandon, like his father, gets that surge of energy to work nonstop. He realized this the summer of the LeClair sabbatical from the celebration.

"I didn't like that year," he said. "It was too boring. I can't go from the extreme of being up until 3 every night setting up everything to having no involvement at all."

The First Family of the Winslow Fourth doesn't rest when the fireworks roar to a close.

Clean-up duty begins the following day -- and that cleanup is considerable.

And even after the brooms are put away, work continues in the LeClair household.

"The most important thing," Ron LeClair said, "is you have to send thank-you cards to all the sponsors, all the donors, all the bands, all the people who help put on the Fourth."

Colin Hickey -- 861-9205

chickey@centralmaine.com

Bookmark and share this story: digg del.icio.us Reddit


Reader comments

There are not yet any comments. Post your comment and it will appear here.

You must be a registered user of MaineToday.com to post a comment. Register or log in.