Gillett parade will be a family celebration

Children and grandchildren will join Diane Rivard to remember Stuart
By: 
Warren Bluhm
Editor-in-chief

Diane Rivard says it will be a bittersweet July 4 parade through downtown Gillett this year.

She and her husband, Stuart, were selected to ride in a horse-drawn carriage as parade grand marshals in recognition of the couple’s long history of service to the community.

Stuart Rivard died April 13 after a long struggle with myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare blood condition.

Diane Rivard thought that would be the end of the marshal duty.

“I just thought that they’d pick someone else, and they said, ‘No, we’re honoring you both,’” she said. “I said, ‘Well, OK, but I’m not riding by myself.”

The Gillett Civic Club made arrangements for a 12-seat carriage, and it looks like the whole family will be riding in the parade, including the Rivards’ three grown children and seven grandchildren.

“They all plan on being here,” Diane Rivard said.

Stuart Rivard began teaching at Washington Middle School in Oconto Falls in 1973. There he met another young new teacher, Diane Hougaard, and they hit it off. They were married Aug. 10, 1974.

Stuart Rivard moved into agriculture for a few years as a farmer and seed salesman, but he came to realize education was his true passion. He returned to the classroom in Gillett in the mid 1980s, teaching junior high school literature, then moving on to become a reading specialist, elementary school principal and eventually superintendent of schools.

He is probably one of the only school superintendents who held a side job as a bartender, working nights and weekends at Patenaude’s Supper Club for many years.

“Jim Patenaude and Stu were like this,” Diane Rivard said, wrapping her fingers together. “They worked really well together.”

Diane Rivard, meanwhile, took some time off to raise the young children, but came back to work at CESA 8. She worked across the region teaching adaptive physical education to kids with special needs, including students in Gillett, Oconto Falls and Menominee Nation among other schools.

That work led her to see a need for a special event for those children, and she was instrumental in establishing the Victory Olympics, an annual program for students in kindergarten through age 21 that ran for 26 years.

The first Victory Olympics drew 60 participants at the Gillett High School track, but the concept grew to the point where the event was moved to Zippel Park. The final Victory Olympics about six years ago featured 450 participants, Rivard said.

“We had lots of community support. It was entirely funded by donations,” she said. “It got to the point where I’d call and say, ‘Hi, this is Diane,’ and right away they’d say, ‘Yep, put me down for the same amount this year.’”

Stuart was active in the Gillett Civic Club and especially the Fourth of July Committee, serving as treasurer of the annual celebration for many years. The couple were active pickleball players and members of Our Redeemer’s Lutheran Church in Suring, where she helps with the gardening.

The Rivard family will ride near the front of the parade, which kicks off from the school at 2 p.m. July 4 and wends its way through downtown Gillett.

It’s part of the annual two-day celebration of Independence Day that the Civic Club has sponsored for many years. Events and activities are scheduled 4 p.m. to midnight July 3 and 9 a.m. to midnight July 4.

Grandstand entertainment includes a truck pull at 7 p.m. July 3, horse pull at 10 a.m. July 4, and antique tractor pull at 5 p.m. July 4.

Four acts are scheduled on the music stage, starting with a lawn chair concert featuring Back When at 4 p.m. July 3. Outlaw Junkies are scheduled to perform at 7 p.m. July 3, Back When and Scott and Company at 3 p.m. July 4, and Rapid Transit starting at 8 p.m. July 4.

An antique car and truck show is planned from 9 a.m. July 4 until after the parade, and a fireworks display brings the celebration to a close at dusk July 4.