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Wednesday, April 13, 2022
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At long last, the Easter Coming to your TV Parade returns Saturday Health & Wellness Guide CHAMPS AGAIN
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FIREBOAT HONOR
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SIBLINGS' LEGACY
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BY PAUL MARYNIAK AFN Executive Editor
L
ike the coach of a Super Bowl team three days before the big game, Mike Schmitt hasn’t been sleeping soundly lately. There are just too many things to do, too many things that could go wrong that he needs to make sure don’t. Come 10 a.m. Saturday, April 16, at the corner of Warner Road and 48th Street, Schmitt’s fretting will hit a crescendo – as it has 29 previous years– as the Ahwatukee Kiwanis Easter Parade steps off for the 46th time. Following the parade, the Kiwanis will hold its Spring Fling from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. at Ahwatukee Park, 4700 E. Warner Road to raise money for its many activities benefitting teens in group foster homes. “I go to sleep thinking ‘Where are we going to put this and that? Will they show up on time?'” Schmitt, Parade Boss for his 30th year, said Friday. He had just come back from the main post office in Phoenix to accomplish “what I consider one of the major goals of parademaking” – mailing the positions and directions to each of the 70 entries that comprise the largest Easter parade and oldest continu-
ous one in Arizona.” There were still things to finetune and last-minute details to nail down – like figuring out where each entry waits before stepping off. That’s no small task as some units are pretty big – like the 200 Ahwatukee Little League players and two bands, each numbering at least 100 members, from Desert Vista and Mountain Pointe high schools and their feeder Kyrene middle schools. Some things were already in place, like the pooper scoopers who will follow behind the Gilbert Days Rodeo Queen and her court as they and their steeds prance down 48th Street for the first time in Ahwatukee. But other details still can’t be tended to until Saturday morning– like picking up speakers and tables from Mountain View Lutheran Church, the oldest veteran unit in the parade. Those speakers and tables will be positioned at public address stations at the Ahwatukee Country Club and the corners of Ahwatukee Drive and Kiowa and Pawnee streets so commentators, including veteran announcer Becky Lynn, can tell onlookers what entries are passing by as the sounds of “The Chicken Dance”
These two pairs of Ahwatukee residents, Jack Kundera and his 12-year-old son Avery Kundera, and Adriana Smith and her 10-year-old daughter Kamryn Smith, will be dancing into people’s living rooms worldwide at 8 a.m. Friday, April 15, on Channel 5 as two of the 12 teams competing for $100,000 in the two-hour debut of the new CBS series, “Come Dance With Me.” The show pairs a parent with their son or daughter under the direction of three accomplished choreographers as a panel of judges eliminates a team a week. How Ahwatukee fielded two of the three Phoenix area teams on the show – the other is from Mesa – is explained on page 22. (David Minton/AFN Staff Photographer)
see PARADE page 9
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