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Tom Williams
one through and back to their staging areas as quickly as possible. Although they were a team for several decades, Tom Williams had stepped away from organizing the holiday parade in recent years. Campbell said she’ s glad that before he died in early 2024 organizers were able to honor him for all his efforts, first by asking him to portray Santa Claus in the 2022 parade and then by having him serve as grand marshal in 2023. Campbell’ s role in organizing the parade has shifted in recent years to focus more on aspects like coordinating the judging as the City of Stillwater began providing more direct support and taking on a greater role in organizing the event.
The parade has morphed with a more compact format and a cap of 60 entries due to space constraints in the staging area, she said. The annual theme has been dropped in favor of allowing each entrant more flexibility in creating their own theme to be judged against.
Judges score entries in the Community, Nonprofit, Commercial and Band categories, based on best use of theme, use of lights, originality and overall appearance.
Murphy’ s Department Store owners Terry and Nancy Monroe have been named grand marshals for 2025 in honor of their recently-closed store’ s status
as a downtown institution for 99 years.
The Holiday Parade of Lights returns to downtown Stillwater at 6:30 p. m. Dec. 4 and Campbell encourages everyone to come out and experience this classic piece of Americana.
“ We’ re still a small town,” she said.“ To me it’ s a part of Stillwater, it’ s like stuff you see in movies. If this is home for you,
SwOk that connects you with home.”
STORY BY: MICHELLE CHARLES Stillwater Oklahoma Magazine
PHOTOS from CITY OF STILLWATER
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