Sun Bowl parade floats getting back to glory years

The 79th annual Sun Bowl parade on Thanksgiving day will feature some of its highest quality floats ever, which is somewhat of a return to the glory years of the parade back in the 1960’s and early 1970’s.

“If you were a business in El Paso, you had a giant float or you weren’t part of this community,” said Joe Daubach, special events director for the Sun Bowl Association. “The late 70s, when it went from New Year’s day to Thanksgiving in 1978, that was kind of a very big pivotal point.”

Daubach said that move split the community. But in recent years he’s seen a resurgence.

“We looked back at some of the old pictures and said, ‘How can we get back to this?'” Dauback said.

This year Sun Bowl parade floats will feature hydraulics for the first time ever.

“Every year we try to go above and beyond what we did the previous year,” said Jerry Stephenson, a Sun Bowl float builder for nearly a decade. “We work three months for a three hour parade. But when you see everybody, all the little kids that are sitting there smiling, going ‘Oh look at that one!’ as it goes by, that makes it worth all the time.”

For many years all of the Sun Bowl floats were built under one roof in one donated warehouse. But that warehouse was rented out this year, leaving the bulk of the floats being built in this warehouse on East Side Drive in East El Paso. However, Daubach said it would be much better for the quality of the floats to be built under one roof.

“With that you get everybody feeding off each other, learning new ideas, motivating each other,” he said, “and trying to keep up with each other.”

Just like the old days.

“It’s building back up and you the see the resurgence of these big powerful floats,” Daubach said.

If you have an empty warehouse you’d like to donate for Sun Bowl float building, contact the Sun Bowl Association at (915) 533-4416.

This year’s parade begins at 10 a-m on Thanksgiving day and runs along Montana Street.