War Widow Chairs Brandon's Patriotic Parade

Riverview resident Marie Cain returns for a second year as the chairwoman of the Greater Brandon Fourth of July Parade, an event that, as a war widow, she holds dear to her heart as a way to remind citizens of the need to never forget.

“The patriotic part of the parade is very important to me, for people not to forget that for our freedoms a lot of people have suffered a lot.”

Cain, too, is president of the Suncoast Chapter of the Gold Star Wives of America.

“We’re the widows of war,” she said. “Our husbands died either in combat or after they came home, from the injuries and diseases they received during war.”

Cain’s husband, Bernard, a Vietnam veteran, died 15 years ago, “after suffering for 23- and a-half years, with uncontrollable diabetes and heart attacks and strokes,” she said. The cause, she added, was Agent Orange, which for others “led to a lot of different cancers.”

But her story didn’t stop there. The effects of Agent Orange were passed onto their three children, one of which died as an infant of Spina Bifida. Her son, too,  recently died.

Cain said it is likely the Greater Brandon Fourth of July Parade, run each year by the Community Roundtable, will include at its start representatives from the Westside Chapter of the Nam Knights, a motorcycle club of former and active military and law enforcement personnel based in Eastern Hillsborough County.

Club members in August picked up a piece of twisted steel from the World Trade Center in New York City, a site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That beam is expected to be transported by the Nam Knights in the town’s Fourth of July parade.

“And we’re still planning on having a lot of the soldiers in our area, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the front of the parade, to honor them and to welcome them home as local heroes,” Cain said.

Honored, too, will be the "Pioneering Families of Brandon," which is the theme of this year’s parade.

In addition to its patriotic bent, the annual parade is a chance for families and neighbors to celebrate time together.

"With our busy schedules, everybody's doing something but they're not always doing it together," Cain said. "You drop one kid off at soccer and another one off at basketball or dance. But at the parade, everybody comes together."

The parade brings with it, too, a lot of work.

“As always, we need volunteers to help and there’s different capacities for them to help, mostly along the parade route to help keep control,” Cain said.

The route, as is tradition, will start at the corner of Lumsden Road and Parsons Avenue, before proceeding north on Parsons for a turn west at Robertson Drive. The viewing stand will be along Parsons, in front of the strip shopping center that includes and .

The cost to enter the parade is $75 per unit. The deadline to enter is June 1.

The Suncoast Chapter of Gold Star Wives meets the third Wednesday of the month, at 10:30 a.m., at Sun City Center. Cain said she is hoping to find a sponsor to fund the cost of a $1,200 float for the organization.

For information on parade volunteers and entries, call the Community Roundtable, at 813-661-4350. Reach Cain at 813-415-3495.