Freddy Fixer Regains The Glory

Helen C. Powell marched in her first Freddy Fixer Parade at 9 years old. A half-century later, she led a revived version of the parade through the heart of New Haven’s black community and helped return the event to its glory days.

Powell was one of four grand marshals for the annual parade, the biggest public event of the year for New Haven’s African-American community. Sixty-three separate groups in town dressed up and rolled or drove or danced or high-stepped along Dixwell Avenue Sunday to the delight of thousands lining the way from Bassett Street to Webster.

Good vibes filled the air, as participants heralded the revival of a parade that began in the 1960s as a mixture of celebration and communal clean-up.

Lt. Sam Brown, a former top Dixwell cop who now is second in command of the police department’s patrol division, said he saw the most participants in years at Sunday’s event. He also said he knew of no trouble or arrests: ​“All went smooth.”

Dozens of volunteers threw down in the months leading up to the parade determined to return to levels of participation of years past. They held weeks worth of lead-up events, including a series of parties this weekend. And they enlisted school groups, social clubs, firefighters and cops, dancing troupes, businesses and churches to field the 63 marching units, 14 of which paraded on floats, at Sunday’s main event (which was followed by a family festival on the grounds of Wexler Grant School).

“We went door to door. We reached out on the phones everyday,” said Howard Boyd, vice-president of the committee organizing the parade this year.

At the same time organizers paid tribute to presidents of parades past, from co-founders Ed Grant and Dr. Fred Smith to Maurice Smith, who almost singlehandedly got the parade going again in the past few years after it had hit a rough patch. Following some hurt feelings earlier this year about the new parade committee, the organizers wanted to emphasize that they were building on the foundation Smith laid. (Smith was not involved with this year’s parade.)

The Elm City Freddy Fixer committee named three honorary grand marshals for this year’s parade: Carol Suber, Dorothea Daniley, and, posthumously, the late Larry T. Young, whose mother and son rode in the procession. And the committee named four grand marshals to lead the four divisions on the march: Stetson Librarian Diane X. Brown, police Capt. Patricia Helliger, homelessness activist Jesse ​“J‑Hop” Hardy …

… and Helen Powell, who said she has never missed a Freddy. Not since she donned a blue-and-white outfit and joined the St. Luke’s Girls Friendly Society on the 1969 march. She eventually served ten years as a parade chairwoman. She said she ​“came out of retirement” to help the new parade committee this year because of how important the parade is to her and to Dixwell and Newhallville.

“It means pride, getting together, seeing old friends,” she said.

Diane Brown grew up attending the parade as well. She said Sunday reminded her of ​“the way it used to be — the community coming together.”

Powell remembered co-founder ​“Ed Grant in the white suit” back in that 1969 parade. She remembered that year’s parade slogan: ​“Fix up, paint up, and clean up.” (This year’s slogan: Families That Parade Together, Stay Together.”)

The original organizers created Freddy Fixer as a fictional character who took a broom to sweep Dixwell clean, and the early parades promoted that activity. ​“We had recycling when I was small. I would go around with the newspapers and cans; that was before recycling got big,” Powell recalled.

Honda Smith of New Haven’s public works department brought that original clean-up spirit back to this year’s parade, too. She enlisted volunteers from the Hillhouse High School Ymegas (a service club of hopefully future members of the college Omega Psi Phi fraternity) and the ​“Ice the Beef” activist group with public works crews to pick up trash from the rear of the procession.

In deed and in spirit, Freddy was back.