History

MSU holds old-fashioned Fourth of July celebration

By Dave Olson
Staff Writer
While American democracy became 211 years old Saturday, many of the citizens celebrating its birthday at Moorhead State University's "Old-Fashioned Fourth" weren't even old enough to vote.

But they could pick whatever color balloon they wanted or cry from the tyranny of their strollers something to the effect: "give me liberty, or give me an ice cream cone!

" The annual event has become a family tradition for many and 1987 was no exception.

Parents and children were in the majority as people walked lazily through the sunny afternoon, passing striped canopied booths, and catching whiffs of popcorn and open-air singing.

At one booth, volunteers from the Moorhead Kiwanis Club tried to collect a quarter-mile length of quarters for a children's camp for cancer victims.

One volunteer estimated they had only collected 96 quarters by late afternoon but he said they were glad to get that to help fund the week-long Camp Trowbridge near Detroit Lakes.

Earlier in the day, several hundred people gathered in Fargo to watch the unveiling and rededication of a Statue of Liberty replica.

The repaired statue, which had stood in Island Park for many years before vandals damaged it, was re-erected near Fargo's Main Avenue bridge. It faces east over the Red River as the original faces east over the Atlantic Ocean.

Fargo City Commissioner Mort Mazaheri spoke at the ceremony stating "30 years ago, for the first time, I arrived in the United States. I looked at the other statue and it gave me a feeling of exuberance and elation.

"And to this day," he said, "every time I look at the picture of that (statue), that feeling keeps coming back to me.

"It's a great opportunity to have this statue (at Fargo) as a symbol of the American dream."