Wellington Holiday Parade To Honor Longtime Organizer
Dennis Witkowski As Grand Marshal On Sunday, Dec. 9
By Deborah Welky Dennis Witkowski has been organizing the parade since it began in the 1980s.
e Wellington’s Holiday Parad n is 35 years old — older tha lf. the Village of Wellington itse Presented by the Central Palm of Beach County Chamber e Commerce, this year’s parad e on Sunday, Dec. 9 will giv its attendees a chance to thank is visionary organizer, Denn ed Witkowski, who will be honor as this year’s grand marshal.
As self-effacing as he is popular, Witkowski never would have agreed to such a thing, so the vote was taken when he was absent. “Dennis missed a committee meeting, and we took that opportunity to make him grand marshal,” laughed Mary Lou Bedford, CEO of the Central Palm Beach County Chamber of Commerce. “Typically, the grand marshal rides in front, but because Dennis organizes the entire parade, he’ll come up right before Santa Claus at the end.” Witkowski envisioned the parade when Wellington, then an unincorporated community, was in its infancy. As people began to move to the area, and the first chamber of commerce was formed, he wanted a signature event to bring the western communities together. He brought his idea to the chamber board, and the rest is history. “It’s half of my life. I’m 71 now,” Witkowski said. “In the beginning, my line was that I did it because I wanted to give
something back to the community that had been so good to me.” Over time, however, Witkowski came to a realization. “It’s not only doing something for the community — the parade gives me so much. The parade feeds me, I don’t feed it. It’s so rewarding; it gives me a warmth all over. I love it! I look forward to it all year,” he said. “It’s a love of my life; the next thing to family to me. It’s like an extra child — something I birthed and helped grow up. It’s part of my fabric.” Witkowski estimates that when the parade was born in 1983, there were about 6,000 people living in Wellington. The first few parades attracted about 3,000 spectators. “Now we have 3,000 participants in the parade, and about 20,000 spectators,” he said. “We have 10 marching bands, up from two. When we started, there was no commercial business on State Road 7 at all. There was one orange orchard near Forest Hill where
you could get a glass of orange juice and look at an alligator. Now there are 60,000 residents in Wellington alone, and the parade is the same great blending of the community that it has always been — the deputies and firemen working in concert with the Village of Wellington and the chamber to make it the seamless event that it is.” Witkowski is particularly proud of the fact that many of the early decisions made regarding the parade were good decisions — the staging, the dispersal, the order of march and, of course, the route. Not much of that has changed in 35 years. The Holiday Parade will step off at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 9, and run along Forest Hill Blvd. from the original Wellington Mall at Wellington Trace to the Wellington Community Center. “A few times over the years, people wanted to consider a different route,” Witkowski recalled. “They talked about moving it to different communities, or wellington the magazine | december 2018
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