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Provo • The hot muggy weather Saturday had many sitting out the Freedom Festival parade in their lawn chairs.
But that didn't mean they didn't cheer and applaud the nearly two-hour stream of floats, marching bands, and assorted parade entries.
Gentlemen in straw boater hats and other turn-of-the-century garb emceed the event, but some floats blended the old with the new.
Dressed as Mary and Joseph, a young pair aboard a float labeled Orem Institute of Religion waved to onlookers as their biblical companions pumped fists to Best Day of My Life, a folky pop hit from the band American Authors.
The parade was only one of a host of festival events culminating in Saturday night's Stadium of Fire show featuring the rock band Journey.
Don Jackson, visiting from Phoenix for his niece's wedding in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' Provo Temple, said he was surprised by the high level of community involvement in the festival. He had spotted families camping out for a good parade vantage point Friday evening.
On Saturday, Jackson said he is proud to be American. But he is disheartened, he said, by displays of confederate flags he has spotted on trucks and other vehicles in both Utah and in Arizona, especially in the wake of the racially-motivated shooting that killed nine people at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina in June.
"We need more stuff done" by Congress to bridge racial divisions, Jackson said. "I don't know what we can do to take care of it, but something needs to be done."
Elsewhere along the parade route, Elvin Fajardo, an 18-year-old and a graduate of Provo High School, flipped for the crowd at a trampoline gymnastics demonstration.
Fajardo moved to Utah two years ago with his mother, little brother and sister, he said. It was the first time he had left his home in the Bronx, the northern New York City borough.
Fajardo is passionate about refining his acrobatic tricks, but it's been a struggle adjusting to life in his new home state.
"There's a lot of white people here," said Fajardo, who is black. Sometimes, he said, "if you're like, my type of skin, they look at you a different type of way, like you're a bad person."
Even so, Fajardo plans to stay. He is saving up to attend the University of Utah, where he hopes to walk on to the school's gymnastics team, and is considering a career with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Fajardo lauded the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage nationwide. It affirms that same-sex marriage "is just normal people doing what they need to do," he said.
Maria Pombo, who attended with her children ages 4 and 10, shared what she most values about the United States: the stability of its police departments. It's much different here than in her native country, Argentina, she said.
Pombo, speaking through a family member who translated her Spanish to English, said she feels safer than she felt in Buenos Aires, which she left 15 years ago.
"In Argentina, they don't respect the police," she said. "There's more security here. It's more peaceful."
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