Festival founder to serve as parade’s grand marshal Sandy Mountain Festival honors John Armstrong on July 9

By Brit Allen, The Sandy Standard

Every year, long before the vehicles get rolling onto Pioneer Boulevard for the Sandy Mountain Festival parade, the committee chooses one very special person to act as Grand Marshal of the festivities. This year that person is none other than one of the original organizers of the festival — John Armstrong. 

Though he’s no longer a Sandy resident, retired educator and businessman Armstrong still has great passion for the now 52-year-old tradition, and has fond memories of its founding. 

One said memory, he recalls with laughter, was how he got involved in the festival in the first place. 

“In early 1974, I missed a meeting of the Annual Events Committee (for the Sandy Area Chamber of Commerce) and ended up as chair,” Armstrong explained. 

The idea of an arts and crafts fair that also included all of the fun fair food staples was a brainchild of that committee, and blossomed into what is now a highly attended summer event. 

When first interviewed about the festival for The Sandy Post, Armstrong said the theme of the event was “designed to give the abundance of the area’s craftsmen an opportunity to display and sell their labors” while also highlighting the beauty of Meining Memorial Park. 

When Armstrong was looking for venues for the festival, he said he had this idea in his head of it taking place amongst trees in a forested area, so someone suggested he check out the city park behind Sandy City Hall. 

“When I stepped out on that little parking lot behind city hall, and looked down on what was a tangle of blackberry vines over Tickle Creek, and these beautiful old cedar trees, I could honestly see in those moments the artists along paths; I could hear music; I could smell the barbecue, and corn on the cob, and the elephant ears,” Armstrong explained to The Standard. “I’m not a visionary, but that was a singular experience.” 

From there John proposed the venue to the committee, they considered possible dates, and the buzz about a new Sandy festival took off. 

That first Sandy Mountain Festival included about 50 artisans, as well as food booths, plotted throughout the park similar to how they are today, though the park did not look as it does now. The committee and festival founders hand dug out paths for artists to set up their booths along and pulled many blackberry vines to make the park accessible. 

Aside from John, the members of that first committee were Lynn Ellis (mother of this year’s Sandy Mountain Festival Queen, Shannon Montgomery), Ann Fenwick, Charlene Schwab, Florence Schmitz, Evelyn Anderson, Tom Key, Douglas Meeker, and Parm Berg. 

“It was the right people and the right place and the right timing,” Armstrong told The Standard. “For the genesis of most successful events, it’s a combination of a whole lot of different factors. It’s a vision; and beyond the vision is people. That’s what we had, and what we still have.” 

Over time, the festival has evolved and changed and changed hands, so Armstrong said he’s honored to be considered for the role of grand marshal this year, and will ride in the July 9 parade with his wife, Cheri. 

When Armstrong found out he was selected as grand marshal, he said he was quite taken aback. He has not lived in Sandy for quite some time, originally moving away to North Portland then Eastern Oregon for work. 

“Because I wasn’t a part of the community as I had been in the past, I just had assumed that I would be participating and cheerleading from a relative distance,” he explained. So, when he got the news of his nomination, he said he was “honestly surprised, pleased, and overwhelmed.” 

“I was so pleased and so grateful,” Armstrong added. “It’s very gratifying to see, especially knowing that the festival has been alive and well for five decades, and has survived a lot of changes … how much the festival has meant to individuals and to the community.”