I remember when I was helping with my very first inaugural. The weather was so cold! It was windy, raining, and snowing, so the roads and the assembly area were a slushy mess! The day before the inauguration started out at Hargrove Inc. at 7:00 AM. We spent the day prepping floats for the move to Downtown DC. Later that evening, we started pulling floats down Rt. 50 into DC around 5:00 PM. It probably took about an hour or so to get to the assembly area. We began to assemble the floats in preparation for the next day. All was going well with the assembly of parade floats… except the Eagle float.  

The eagle body stood atop a self propelled float unit, and was driven down the assembly area. We needed to attach the head, tail, and two very large wings with the help from a crane that was on site. The head and tail went together just fine. Let’s just say the wings were a different story! 

We rigged one of the eagle’s wings to the crane, and lifted it up and set it onto the eagle body. That went alright other than the wind was rocking the eagle around. Then came the second wing. The wind was still blowing pretty hard, but the second wing was rigged to the crane and lifted into the air. The wing was lifted into the air and we had to pull and orient the wing to the right position to assemble. With the combination of the wind and us trying to configure it just right, the wing let loose from the crane and dropped 20 feet to the hard and slushy asphalt below. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but the wing itself was damaged and bent up. At this point, it was around 11 PM. We assessed the damage and welded and repaired the best that we could. Once we fixed what we could, we re-lifted the wing with the crane and fought for hours through the night. Mr. Hargrove was with us the entire time. 

This is when I gained a great deal of respect for him. He stuck it out all through the night with us. It wasn’t until the secret service made him take a break and welcomed him into their private office trailer to warm up and sit down for a bit. We stayed up the entire night working on getting the eagle worthy of going through the parade, but it was still very windy. The Eagle was 30 feet tall, fully assembled, so there was a lot of surface area to catch wind. The Eagle would rock side to side. It proved to be too much of a concern for safety with the wind that it did not go through the Inaugural parade. We still went on and worked through the day with the other parade floats. I can’t remember which float I drove, but I remember Mr. Hargrove driving the Texas float. 

When the parade was over, we broke everything down and headed back to Hargrove Inc. We got back around 2:30 AM – that was 43 consecutive, round-the-clock hours with no sleep and lots of hard work. But, Mr. Hargrove was with us the whole time.