Manson Apple Blossom Festival Grand Marshals

Carla Everett
Carla (Johnson) Everett’s Lake Chelan and Manson Apple Blossom Festival roots run deep. She is a fourth generation descendant of the Little family and the daughter of orchardists. She grew up in Manson, marrying her classmate Dave. While Dave’s education and career in forestry took them all over the northwest, they returned to the area they will always call home for semi-retirement in 1996. Carla then became secretary at North Shore Bible Church affording her the opportunity to meet the few people in the community that she wasn’t related to or hadn’t gone to school with.
In 1946, at just five years old, Carla was introduced to the Manson Apple Blossom Festival as a flower girl at Queen Basra (Peterson) Stevens’ coronation. This ignited her love for the pageantry and celebration that comes with the festival. She was a grade school classmate of fellow Grand Marshal Linda Blessin. The girls performed together in school operettas and the cast rode floats for several years in Manson’s parade.
Carla’s involvement in the festival grew from participant to organizer in her work for the Washington State Apple Blossom Festival in Wenatchee from 1960-1965. She also decorated for Manson’s festival coronation during that time. Upon full retirement Carla invested her time as treasurer for the Manson Festival Board, and she recently transitioned to Historian. Her work collecting, preserving and displaying treasured memorabilia and information surrounding the 102-year life of the festival is truly a passion.
A current member of the Lake Chelan Historical Society Museum Board and volunteer, she loves the opportunity to share history with the community and research questions that visitors pose. Carla will be attending this year’s festivities with her two daughters and is touched by the honor of being designated as one of the grand marshals.
 

Patty Porter
I  graduated from Snohomish High School on a Tuesday and married Hal Porter on Saturday in 1952. Then we were off to the Navy base to start our journey. Together we have four children, and now nine great-grandchildren. The Porters, Pittmans, Timmermans, and Perris are all my family, and they are great fans of the Manson Apple Blossom Festival. From working with friends in the Rock Club, marching with Habitat for Humanity Crew, and supporting the pancake breakfast, I have enjoyed all the events of the festival.
I have helped behind the scenes by creating scrapbooks, sewing royalty sashes, sewing fur capes and blankets, washing slips, selling t-shirts, making and selling fresh donuts, as well as storing the tuxes. When it is parade day, it is just so nice to see everyone have a great time.
Our families come together every year to assist the float designed by Diana Ellsworth and her family create and sometimes repair ‘‘Flora’’ our float. Between low tires, dead batteries, death of the old Volkswagon car that is the float, personally dragging the new trailer home from Utah, and the many trips to the Lilac Parade in Spokane with homemade cookies and muffins for the royalty and float crew, I have enjoyed being a small part of it all. It is time again for my favorite job, helping put the fringe on the float. The sparkle happens when the faces of the royalty light up - it is why we volunteer. Thank you for including me with Linda and Carla to be the Grand Marshals of the festival for 2023.
 

Linda Blessin
The Blessin family moved from Olympia to Manson in 1945, after Linda’s father purchased an orchard and home by the lake.  Linda attended Manson Grade School which had a wonderful music teacher Mr. Petit. Each year he had an operetta, and the students rode on the float in the Manson Apple Blossom Parade.
One operetta Linda   remembers is one where she plays the witch and Carla Everett portrays the princess. After her retirement to Manson, she always refers to Carla as ‘Princess’. As Historian of all the Manson Apple Blossom memorabilia, Carla found that operetta’s program from all those years ago. She discovered Linda had actually played the roll of princess. So much for that.
Linda began playing the trumpet when she was in the third grade. As a fifth grader in 1952, she was the trumpeter for the coronation of the Manson Apple Blossom Royalty. Linda attended junior and senior high school in Chelan and marched in every Manson Apple Blossom parade until graduation from high school in 1959. Linda continued playing trumpet in Kodiak, Alaska where the community band helped produce a musical during the King Crab festivals. She also was a member of the British Brass Band in Wenatchee for a few years. It broke her heart, when out of necessity, she donated her trumpet to the music department at the Manson School District.
Linda went to college at Western Washington University, taught for a year in Edmonds, then married Bob Smith and moved to Anchorage, Alaska, where he was stationed in the U.S. Air Force. The next few years were filled with so much adventure.
Linda was a language development teacher at the Alaska Treatment Center for 13 years, during which she obtained her Masters Degree, she has had a team, which went to the small villages for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to evaluate children. This turned into a full-time position with the BIA.
In 1982, Linda moved to Kodiak Island where she worked as an Education Diagnostician. As a boater in Seward and later in Kodiak, she was very active in the Coat Guard Auxiliary, completing all Coast Guard courses and training. She eventually obtained the rank of Commodore for the 17th CG district all of Alaska. Her work resulted in two federal awards for savings lives.
When Linda retired from Aaska in 1996, she returned home to build a house on the Blessin family’s lakefront property. She begin selling her crafts at the Manson Farmers Market, where she is now president. Each Thanksgiving Day weekend she also was a vendor at the Holiday Extravaganza Craft Show held at the Manson Grange Hall. Linda took on coordinating this event, as well as leading the Manson Apple Blossom Street Fair for many years.
Manson and the Lake Chelan Valley was a wonderful place to grow up. Although many changes are coming to the valley, Linda is very honored to be a Grand Marshal in the 2023 parade, Luau at the Lake. She feels a wonderful “Aloha’ in her heart.