Vince Genna will be honored as grand marshal for the annual Bend Christmas Parade to be held on Saturday, Dec. 6 2003 at noon in downtown Bend.

Genna was the former director of Bend Metro Parks & Recreation District for 37 ½ years, retiring in 1990.

Vince was hired in 1952 by Leonard Lundgren to coach American Legion baseball and assist the City’s Recreation Director, Wayne Hamilton. Eventually the Recreation and Park Departments were combined with Vince as Director.

He was instrumental in obtaining numerous parklands for the City (and eventually the District when it was formed in 1974) at no cost. Vince was famous for begging, borrowing goods, services, and manpower for his park projects. Many of Bend’s park facilities were built with volunteer labor and donated materials.

The City Park and Recreation Department, under Vince’s “watch” received a National Gold Medal Award in 1968 from the National Park & Recreation Association for excellence in the field of parks and recreation. Vince was one of the first to introduce a citywide beautification program to clean up and improve the image of the city by designing and putting into operation several programs and encouraging civic groups, youth groups, and local businesses to take part.

Vince was instrumental in building a volunteer base for parks and recreation that is used heavily by the District. He was able to help people realize the value of volunteering for their community, and have fun doing it.

His favorite expression was “Parks and Recreation reflect the personality of a community”.

Early paradegoers will be entertained before the start of the Bend Christmas Parade on December 6th in downtown Bend.

The Bend High School Jazz Choir called the ‘Dynamics’ will be singing before the parade from 11:15 until parade start (at noon) on the PARR Lumber truck in front of Mockingbird Gallery – Minnesota and Wall. Pamela, owner of Mockingbird, is donating $100 to the choir for their performance.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 1st, 2003 at 8:18 pm and is filed under Oregon Press Releases, Top Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.