Percheron-pulled stage coach to make big statement at end of Old-Fashioned Christmas Parade
Once again, viewers of this year’s Old-Fashioned Christmas Parade will have to stay to the end to see Robin Dunn’s team of Percheron draft horses and the stage coach they pull.
It’s that true-to-detail reproduction of a 19th century Wells Fargo Overland stage coach that earns Dunn her spot at the end of the parade. For many of the parade’s 24 years, Dunn’s stage coach has provided Santa Claus with his ride from the Douglas County Fairgrounds to downtown Lawrence. The visual pop that the Percheron stage coach provides is greatly appreciated, said Marty Kennedy, president of the Old-Fashioned Christmas Parade LLC.
“Robin brings a great vehicle, a great team of horses and just a lot of history and character to our parade,” he said.
Parade funding looks good through 2017
A local business stepped up to provide funding needed to ensure this year’s Old-Fashioned Christmas Parade would go off Saturday as scheduled, said Marty Kennedy, president of the Lawrence Old-Fashioned Christmas Parade LLC.
“We’re on track to get funding from the city for our 25th annual parade next year,” he said. “We’ll have the parade Saturday, and the 25th anniversary parade is happening, also.
Kennedy said the parade gets good support from businesses and individuals. Donations to the parade can be made through the Lawrence chamber of commerce, Kennedy said. Contact information can be found at the LLC’s web site lawrencechristmasparade.org.
The parade started a new tradition in 2015 of having Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus bring up the rear of the parade on horseback, Kennedy said. As the second to last parade entry, Dunn’s coach will give the Claus couple visual framing.
Dunn, who has been in the parade in all but its first year, said she will still have a couple of important gift-bearing passengers in her stage coach Saturday as the parade starts at 9:30 a.m. from the Douglas Fairgrounds, arrives downtown at 11 a.m. to travel from Seventh to 13th streets on Massachusetts Street before making its way back to the fairgrounds.
“There will be a decorated Marine and Blue Santa from the Lawrence Police Department in my stage,” Dunn said. “It’s something we started last year for Toys for Tots.”
The parade will be a special anniversary for her team of Bruce and Bill. Dunn said the 6- and 7-year-old team of brothers made their first public appearance in the 2015 parade. It was a bittersweet experience for Dunn, as she had retired her older team of Percherons shortly before at the Governor’s Christmas Tree Lighting at Cedar Crest in Topeka.
“The last time I went out with them was when I delivered the governor’s Christmas tree,” she said. “The governor drove them around Cedar Crest. That’s a pretty good way to go out.”
She had to put the older team of Buck and Bill down earlier this year when one of the horses developed cancer and the other was in failing health from old age.
“It was time,” she said. “I had them for 15 years. That was a tough day. They lived to a very old age for draft horses. They were full brothers who were trained together. When one goes, the other one would never make it. They work alike and think alike. That’s what made them so good together.”
Knowing the sad day was inevitable, Dunn bought a younger team with very similar names three years ago after checking out and rejecting four other teams for her farm south of Baldwin City.
A full-time farmer, Dunn was busy in the field last week harvesting the last of her soybeans. Her roots go back four generations on the farm, which a sign near the entry to the long lane to her house identifies as a “century farm,” or one that has been in the same family for 100 years. She earned her place in that lineage by selling a Southern California landscape company she founded to raise money to buy the farm from her father.
One of the first things she did when she returned 23 years ago was reintroduce draft horses to the farm, Dunn said. Her grandfather, one of the first farmers in the area to completely switch to mechanical power from horsepower, tearfully sold the farm’s last draft horses in the early 1940s, she said.?”I always wanted a team of horses,” she said. “I went to a sale and bought the first team in the ring.”
It was a team of Belgians, Dunn said. Twelve years ago, she sold them and bought Bill and Buck, because the black Percherons looked better with her wagons and stagecoach.
The horses, like the Dunn’s Landing special events center she offers at the farmstead and bed and breakfast her brother manages across the road, are an extension of her farming operation and a way to introduce farm culture to a populace increasingly removed from the realities of food production, she said.
It’s the event venue that gave Dunn the opportunity to train her young team for the fall festivals and parades she attends by giving wagon rides popular with her customers.
“They’re a very young team, younger than I usually start with,” she said. “I’ve worked with them a lot. They’ll be pretty good when they get to be middle-aged. I’m pretty happy with them.”
While on the reins with the new team, she tries not to compare them to Bill and Buck, Dunn said.
“I try not to, but you find yourself doing it,” she said. “Bill and Buck will always be with me, but these boys have their own personalities, and they are a good team. These boys can still step up and show when they need to.”
They’ll get their chance to show at Saturday’s parade as they pull the stage coach the route’s 7-mile roundtrip distance.
“It’s a long route,” she said. “We joke that if your team isn’t broken, it will be when you get back to the fairgrounds.”
The red stage coach Dunn has had in the parade the last 16 years is as much a show as the team. The Missouri craftsman who built it for her visited a Nebraska museum with a surviving Overland stage coach to ensure all its details are correct, getting called to account when he went under display ropes to take measurements, Dunn said. Its authentic details include two straps of 120 feet of leather on which the coach rides and act as springs.
“It’s actually not a bad ride,” she said. “It swings, not bounces. Of all the old wagons, it’s probably the most comfortable. I wouldn’t want to ride in it across country, though.”
She’s actually never been in the moving coach, having spent her time exclusively in the driver’s box of the coach.
If her showy coach and team consigns her to the rear of the parade, that’s fine with Dunn.
“I get to see the whole parade before I leave the fairgrounds,” she said. “I love to see them all. There is always so much diversity in that parade — the horses, the wagons and the way they are decorated.”