We did it!!  Laura Koch of United 1st Marketing Department put together a great float design for the Fourth of July parade in St Marys and the team from United 1st built the float Saturday morning in the parking lot of Dimensional Stone Fabricators and drove it over to the parade starting point. Dimensional Stone was nice enough to let us store balloons and firecrackers in their air conditioned offices. You see, if the balloons had been outside they would have exploded because of the heat/expansion. We lost no balloons because they were air conditioned. Thank you, Dimensional Stone!!!!

The theme was patriotism, of course. And we were PATRIOTIC with a capital P. The blue balloons were tied next to the red balloons which were next to the white balloons. All were tied to some arches on the float. On the edge of the float was a rail that was covered in red, white, and blue floral sheeting with blue garland on top of blue fringe. We also had a United 1st banner on the back of the float with some more floral sheeting and balloons.
 
Our CEO, Pat Conn, drove the nicely-outfitted white Armada. It had tasteful signs advertising our offerings; FREE e-statements, bill pay. Our VISA Card, our website, like that. We had many participants in the parade giving “zingrings” and candy to the throngs of children and adults who were in attendance. Our participants included: Charlotte Poston, Laura Koch, Marian Sikes, Jannette Velazquez, Katie O’Brien, Carmelita Bradford, Nikki Edwards, Cori White, Sheila Cross, Faith Brown, Linda McGunigale, Shannon Sasser, Kelsey Mitchell, and Ed Walker.  We had a lot of young members riding the float – family members. And, of course, we had our staff photographer taking a lot of pictures.