Yankee Doodle Homecoming

Type	Community
Date	September 20, 1991 to present

The Yankee Doodle Homecoming is Billerica's town festival, held over a weekend each September since 1991, with a parade, fireworks, a fair and events put on by the town's churches, schools, clubs and businesses. It takes its name from the town's claim to "Yankee Doodle": the story of Thomas Ditson Jr., a Billerica farmer who was tarred and feathered by British soldiers in Boston in March 1775 and paraded through the streets to the tune of the song, which the colonists then took up as their own. The story is told in Ditson Affair and the Alarm of 1775.

The town had long remembered Ditson in these terms. A history of the town printed in the 1972 town report said of him, "We remember him still as 'Yankee Doodle'." At the Annual Town Meeting of 1988 Selectman Stephen J. Lentine brought in an article to adopt "America's Yankee Doodle Town" as the official town slogan and to set up a committee of five, appointed jointly by the Town Administrator and the Town Moderator, "to promote said slogan and the historical impact of the Town of Billerica in the founding of our nation." Lentine told the meeting that the town had "lost sight of the historical significance of the Town"; the Finance Committee concurred, and after moderate discussion Article 20 carried.

The first Yankee Doodle Homecoming Weekend was held on September 20 to 22, 1991, organized through the efforts of Selectman Ralph M. Krau with Donald R. Donati of the Little League and Michael Dangora of the Billerica Plan as co-chairmen, as "a community effort with participation of all civic and social entities within the Town." It included fireworks, a bonfire, a football game, a parade, a firemen's muster, flea markets, arts and crafts and road races, and the selectmen reported that it "was a huge success and was at no cost to the Town." The Recreation Department called it "a 'Community-spirited' event of unprecedented proportions": fraternal organizations opened their halls for dancing and suppers, churches held open houses and community suppers and closed the weekend with an ecumenical service, the schools held dances and built floats, and youth sports groups and other organizations ran demonstrations and concession stands. The town's arts council held an art exhibit and talent show.

The second Homecoming, in September 1992, was highlighted by the raising of the Mount Rushmore Flag, a giant American flag, in spite of rain on the Saturday; that fall the co-chairman, Dr. Robert J. Calabrese, superintendent of schools, presented a large photograph of the flag to the town to be hung in Town Hall. Shawsheen Valley Technical High School was recognized as the main sponsor of the 1992 weekend: its construction students provided services, its graphics department designed and produced 20,000 brochures, and its peer leaders brought the technical programs into the parade. Over the next years the weekend settled into a pattern: a parade and floats from the schools, the library, the Historical Commission and the Middlesex Canal Commission; open houses at the churches and lodges; exhibits of old photographs by the Historical Society; canoe races and boat trips on the Concord River; and fireworks on the Sunday evening. In 1995 Town Meeting began to give it seed money through the Memorial Day and Homecoming account, after Krau and Donati, still its co-chairmen, reported on the costs of the first four years. By 1998 the selectmen described it as a weekend that "continues to grow each year and has become an event that families look forward to each Fall."

The Homecoming has been cancelled at least once. The weekend planned for September 2001 was called off "due to the horrific events that occurred on September 11th in our country" (see September 11 attacks), and when it returned in 2002 "a special tribute honored America's heroes." In 2003 visitors from Billericay, England, Billerica's sister town, were guests during the weekend. By 2019 the festival had moved to a new location. A standing Yankee Doodle Homecoming Committee, which meets monthly, plans it each year, and the town's bike path, planned from the 2010s from the Bedford line toward the high school, was named the Yankee Doodle Bike Path.

The name became official in 2016. At the Annual Fall Town Meeting of October 2015 the town voted, 140 to 5, to have the Board of Selectmen petition the General Court for special legislation "to designate Billerica Massachusetts as the Yankee Doodle Town." Representative Marc T. Lombardo of Billerica and Senator Kenneth J. Donnelly filed the bill, House 4251, "An Act designating the town of Billerica as the Yankee Doodle Town," in December 2015. It passed both branches in the summer of 2016, and Governor Charlie Baker signed it on September 7, 2016 as Chapter 260 of the Acts of 2016. On September 27, 2016 the governor came to Billerica for a ceremony outside the Billerica Public Library, where students from the Ditson School led the Pledge of Allegiance and Town Manager John C. Curran and the chairman of the Board of Selectmen, Andrew N. Deslaurier, retold the Ditson story. "We are honored to celebrate and recognize Billerica's rich Revolutionary War history," Baker said.

People

Stephen J. Lentine: Selectman who brought in the 1988 article adopting "America's Yankee Doodle Town" as the town slogan.
Ralph M. Krau: Selectman who organized the first Yankee Doodle Homecoming in 1991; co-chairman into the mid-1990s.
Donald R. Donati: Co-chairman of the first Yankee Doodle Homecoming (1991) for the Little League, and after.
Robert J. Calabrese: Superintendent of schools and Homecoming co-chairman, 1992; presented the Mount Rushmore Flag photograph to the town.
Marc T. Lombardo: State representative who filed H.4251 designating Billerica the Yankee Doodle Town (2015-2016).
John C. Curran: Town manager at the September 27, 2016 ceremony celebrating the Yankee Doodle Town law.
Andrew N. Deslaurier: Chairman of the Board of Selectmen at the September 27, 2016 ceremony.

Yankee Doodle Homecoming

Yankee Doodle Homecoming

People

References