MONROE — Green County Cheese Days has recently announced Lee Binkley and Randy Ninmer will serve as the 2024 parade marshals for The Swiss Colony Cheese Days Parade. This longtime pair of friends served together as parade volunteers for many years.
Binkley and Ninmer met as elementary school teachers in Monroe and have been members of the same Sunday night “choir practice” group (also know as “card club”) for the past 50 years. They were recruited as volunteers by parade chairperson Virgil Leopold in 1978.
At first, the pair was assigned to getting the marching bands organized and ready to go into the parade lineup. Parade day was always hectic and often involved running back and forth between the fairgrounds and Northside School, where the school bands arrived by bus. Ninmer remembers years with as many as 17 school bands coming from as far away as St. Louis, Missouri.
As time went on, responsibilities went beyond just organizing the school bands.
“All of the sudden we’re also lining convertibles and horses and floats,” Binkley said.
In addition to cantankerous band directors — because no one wanted to be the last band in the parade — the pair handled spooked horses and dealt with entitled politicians who showed up late and expected to be accommodated immediately.
Parade day was always chaotic, they said. Leopold was a stickler on keeping the lineup in order, and any last-minute changes were communicated via walkie-talkie to the main stage downtown so the parade announcer was kept in the loop.
Binkley and Ninmer had to be ready for last minute changes, like when a convertible driver would show up with their car but didn’t actually want to drive it in the parade.
“Virgil would look around and say ‘who has a collared shirt?’ and suddenly you’d be driving a car in the parade,” Ninmer said.
There were many memorable moments, like when a nice-looking young girl came into the fairgrounds, wondering where she could get dressed for the parade. When she reappeared as Miss Wisconsin, in full makeup, fancy dress and crown, the boys in the UW-Platteville Band couldn’t help but notice and “they just went nuts,” they recalled. Or when the Brown Swiss Cows, with their bells, were first added to lead the parade.
“We knew it was going to be special, and people had tears in their eyes,” Binkley said.
Both Binkley and Ninmer remember parade day as intense and exciting.
“It was fun to see everyone arrive and have it all come together,” Ninmer said.
“And it was good to see everyone go, too,” Binkley added.
The Swiss Colony Cheese Days Parade takes place on Sunday, Sept. 22. The parade steps off from the Green County Fairgrounds at 12:30 p.m. For information on the route and viewing the parade, go to cheesedays.com or check out a copy of the Cheese Days preview published in the Monroe Times either in the Sept. 11 edition of the newspaper, or in e-edition format online at www.themonroetimes.com.
