Oxford Day celebrates community with parade, events

Oxford Day serves a lot of purposes — it is a homecoming, a tourism draw, a marker of the start of the town’s busy summer season. But above all else, event organizers said, Oxford Day is a celebration of community.

“The primary thing is community and giving people a reason to come out of their houses and connect,” said Kathleen Case, the event chair of this year’s Oxford Day, which took place on April 27.

Though exact numbers had not yet been calculated, volunteers said they thought this year’s event had drawn a record crowd, citing overflowing parking lots and the large number of entries in the Oxford Day parade, which Case described as the “backbone” of the event.

Participants from dozens of different organizations marched down Morris Street shortly after 11 a.m. on Saturday, including five marching bands from local middle and high schools.

First responders and representatives from local nonprofits and businesses waved to hundreds of onlookers, who lined the street in downtown Oxford.

The grand marshal of this year’s parade was Jennifer Stanley, who was honored for her decades of service to the Oxford Kids Camp, which Case said “probably 75% of those watching the parade had some connection to.”

This year’s Oxford Day featured events beginning shortly before 8 a.m., with Talbot Hospice’s annual memorial walk, and lasting well into the afternoon. There was a dog show, free walk-on rides on the Oxford Bellevue Ferry, a marketplace of vendors in Town Park and a pickleball tournament, among other attractions.

“Everybody is involved in this, and it’s really a good thing,” said Julie Wells, a former Oxford Day event chair. Wells watched the events unfold from the Oxford Museum, which opened an exhibit celebrating its 60th anniversary just in time for Oxford Day.

A lot goes into coordinating an event of this scale, Case said.

“There are 13 chairs under me,” she said. “... There are over 70 volunteers.”

Case said Oxford Day would not be possible without the work of these volunteers and the support of the town. Looking forward, she said she felt encouraged by the success of this year’s event.

“This year has been really an amazing joy and surprise,” Case said. “Last year was kind of our first year back into the swing after COVID, and we felt we had pretty good turnout, pretty good participation. But this year we had much more, so it feels like people are really finally coming back out and connecting and wanting to be part of these community types of events.”