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This is Carole 11 News at 10.
First high atop her thrown on ts
majestic cloak is aquatennial is
Winston and Queen of the Lakes.
They are images of a Minneapolis that used
to be shadows of a more innocent time.
More than a half million view
the Grande Parade, a spectacle
to amaze and delight. These
are scenes from a 1961 film touting the
right of summer known as Awkward Tennio.
It was the happening pre the Tw,
pre the Vikings, Pre any other
major celebrations, this pretty
miss has journeyed away from Os.
People came from all over the world really,
to be part of this celebration.m
Alvinson was 18 that year and fh
out of Anoka High School and genuinely
stunned to be crowned Queen of the Lakes.
For the new queen,
it's a moment to cherish a life.
I never expected to win.
In fact, I had called a friend of mine
in Anoka to pick me up the next morning.
At 10, I said my bags are all packed,
I'm ready to go home. The
title came with a big job.
Pam would spend the next
year traveling the globe,
extolling the virtues of the Aka
Tenny. They were given good coverage,
by the way. Those days,
everybody cared about Queens.
Maybe they all do it again.
But those days they did.
And they would.
Interview them in every
city we stopped in.
This was in its true heyday.
Star Tribune reporter Barbara Flanagan
spent many years covering the festival
and even escorted some of the
Queens on their overseas journe.
Many of them were from smaller
communities around Minnesota,
and they were having the times of their
lives they really were. And I did too.
100,000 spectators crowd the shs
of Lake Calhoun.
Virtually every lake and park
in the city got in on the
celebration that came to be knon
as the 10 best days of summer.
Hydroplane racing, ski jumping,
sailing regattas.
And they're off canoe derbies.
And if you missed the first par,
you could catch the torchlight version
floats, fans waving beauties.
Lot of kids would come down
there and sit on a nerve.
Father's shoulders and Frank
Anton is one of hundreds of volunteers
who keep the festival running smoothly,
pushing Skipper pins to raise m.
That 1959 pin is special.
That was the first year Frank volunteered,
and he's been back every year s.
Once you get involved at Aquatio
that it gets in your blood and
you just. Continuing, Frank
says the businessman who hatched
the Aquatinnial modeled it aftea
fair they saw in Winnipeg in 19.
And they saw this outstanding parade and a
lot of different activities and and they
brainstormed the idea of with a question
being why can't we do the
same thing in Minneapolis July
20th, 1940, First Aquatinnial
opened with the Grand Day Parade
and by today's standards,
the news coverage was over the .
In those days, we believed in
mentioning everything in the pa,
so we would write pages and pages and pages.
During World War Two,
the Grand Day Parade took on
a definite military tone.
Crowds and Nicolette Ave.
continued to grow with each passing year.
Everything on that Saturday afternoon
kind of had to kind of close don
because the parade just took ov.
Floats became a form of art.
Dayton's launched the Showboat,
a fur company recreated
Minnehaha Falls on wheels.
Snyder's drugs rolled
out a school of mermaids.
And this stunning replica of the
US Capitol was also from Dayton.
The late Joe Wright would spend
a year working, you know,
planning the next year's float.
The Aqua Tennual did more
than just entertain people.
It helped mold Minnesota's image
as a water sports paradise.
Nothing did a better job of
that than the Aqua Follies.
The world famous Aqua Follies
draws 40,000 annually to for 24
years, Theodore Worth Park was
home to the stage spectacle.
The crowd was looking at
Olympic quality diving.
Fred Smith was stage manager foe
Follies, beginning with the very
first season in 1941. It was so
packed that we held it over.
The Aquatanial ended and
we went on for a week.
World champion divers shared the
spotlight with topnotch dancersd
synchronized swimmers known as Aqua Deers,
and Fred built many of the prop.
They used floating flowers
that on cue became fountains.
Then they took little hoses from the side
of the thing and they plugged
them in like that. So you had.
Water coming out of the roses.
Early headliners included Buster
Crab and Olympian who also apped
in Tarzan movies and What a Swi,
But by far the crowds favorites
were the Comedy Divers.
They would do very daring funny
things and crazy costumes.
One guy would be like a baby ana
baby buggy up on the 33 foot tor
and and he'd go flying out of te
thing and down into the water.
The Follies ended in 1964. 4
decades later, the Aquatennial s
no longer the only game in town,
but new traditions emerge,
such as the Milk Carton races at
Lake Nokomis, and every year yog
women still vie for the crown fr
a chance to share the Aquatennil
story with the world.
John Crowman, CARE 11 News.