The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page 10

HIPP 9 B-k "Li'i'i KjT.ories" A couple celebrates their 50th anniversary as they relive their lifelong memories. Ciaergjf "Anotner Wmnsrg Cay" i early bird catches the worm as a larger-than-life bluebird starts the day with Mr. Sunshine looking on. I i Itw ,1 10 for ths yea-' Monsoon 500 Farad mt no W4. ft Kk ft-, I v.

V- 5 1 XV Festival director prefers to look; on the bright side: No one was hurt, and offers of assistance are plentiful. to 500 parad.3 FIR5TFAMEIICA First of America Bank "A Winning Imagination" A young child dreams about a winning future through the pages of a storybook, I 8 By Marcella Fleming STAFF WRITER 4, Don't expect to find Elizabeth Kraft-Meek despondent over 10 burned parade floats. She's too busy sorting through offers of aid flowing into her 500 Festival office and appreciating what was unaffected by Wednesday's warehouse fire. "It's terrible. But then, in a way.

It's sort of a miracle: The phones are ringing off the hook. Everybody that we've ever met is calling us and telling us how they're willing to help." The fire didn't wipe out the parade's entire lineup, festival officials stress. There are still 14 bands, eight giant character balloons and more than 20 specialty acts. And not everything burned; some float props were stored separately, as were the four remaining floats. Kraft-Meek doesn't rate Farm Bureau "Indiana Teens: A Portrait of Winners" A living painter's palette is accompanied by Jim Harbaugh, Indianapolis Colts quarterback, and several program award winners.

i y. 4 4 Monsoon "Tomorrow's Winners" A young boy and his dog guide remote control Indy race cars around a figure-8 track. Kroger "Fun Foods Winning Kids" i A kitchen-cabaret is presented through singing and dancing foods that create winning nutrition. this as a crushing blow. "You have to have perspective," said Kraft-Meek, the festival's executive director.

"Unless people are dead, I don't think you can go crazy over something like this. "This parade is connected to motor racing. We've faced worse things," she stressed, noting last year's death of pole-sitter Scott Brayton. "What matters most is that nobody was in that building." Kraft-Meek learned of the i) 4. 4 -I V.

-i- 'V-Mi Festival Director Elizabeth Kraft-Meek mum mm rr. KSBBank-; "The Winning Catch" A young boy lands a whop-' per while Dad and Grandpa look on at the Ul 113) Ml I HUtC "i i Indianapolis Motor Speedway "The Winner's Circle" Last year's winner of the Indianapolis 500, Buddy Lazier, re-enacts his winning moment accompanied by the 500 Festival queen and her court. This float will be replaced. National City Bank "Winners of Note" Features the Star of Indiana Drum and Bugle Corps forming a human musical Maypole. fire about 4:10 a.m.

Festival spokesman Ryan Chelll had been awakened minutes earlier by a TV station, and he called his boss at her Far-Northside home. "1 was out of the house 10 minutes later," she said. She was accompanied by her husband, dentist William T. Meek. By 4:45 a.m., Kraft-Meek found herself at ExpoDe-sign's South Harding Street warehouse.

It would be another 1 Vi hours before the fire would be put out. Kraft-Meek is a seasoned producer of big events: she spent 12 years in marketing for Indy-based mall developer Melvin Simon Associates. She's also a former artist who created and sold her own greeting cards in Chicago while still in her early 20s. So the loss she most keenly feels is for the volunteers and artists who spent hundreds of hours constructing the entries. "We want to honor the sponsors and show what people were trying to produce and create," she said.

"Some of these were Just breathtaking." Festival officials' idea to create makeshift floats with the artists drawings may sound offbeat, but it gets the job done, say Kraft-Meek's counterparts across the country. i "There's not much you can do," said Jamie Lowe, spokesman for Minneapolis' Aquatennial, an annual two-parade event celebrating Minnesota's lakes. "You're never going to build two floats with the expectation that something happens to one of them, and insurance doesn't do any good at the last minute." Precautions can only go so far, said Nancy Atkinson, spokesman for the nation's largest parade, the Tournament of Roses. "As far as a disaster like something you guys had you can be as well-prepared as history allows." Even after 35 years In the business, Wednesday's fire Is the worst in Kraft-Meek's career, "Yes, yes, yes it is," she said. "But we will turn this around." NatlonaiClty BanK Star of Indiana i JCPennej "Hats Off to the Winners" Top hats and spats shine and sparkle as five leading men in racing scarves present the 500 Festival Parade.

This float will be replaced. p1 Staff Graphic PARADE Continued from Page 1 PAIR OF SURVIVORS: The Holidav Inn float (left) and beth Kraft-Meek, executive director of the 500 Festival. "It's a disappointment no question about it," Smith acknowledged. "It's a challenge and you move on." A new plan in place By 11 a.m. Wednesday, the festival organizers and the sponsors of the floats had agreed to a makeshift plan that would honor the hundreds of hours of work that had gone into the floats even if the real thing couldn't be seen.

Because the floats can't be replaced by parade time, the festival will have the designs blown up Into billboards. A crew at Mar-baugh Color Systems Group planned to work through Wednesday night and into today to beat a Friday-morning deadline to complete the artwork. The billboards, done on vinyl, will be draped over frames and placed on trucks so they can be driven along the parade route, giving fans at least a glimpse of what the Indianapolis Colts float (right) are two of the Monsoon 500 Festival Parade floats that weren't destroyed. Wednesday's fire reduced 10 of the 14 floats to ashes at the warehouse at 5906 S. Harding St.

Despite the blaze, parade organizers say the show will go on Staff Photo Frank Esptch 7 VV-- if "I give them compliments for the way they're handling the floats," said Donna Sahm, a construction company owner who attended Wednesday's "Community Day" program at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. "They deserve a lot of credit for getting it together and working around the fire and not panicking." Many offers of help And then there were the calls. The Walt Disney Co. called offering its assistance, Smith said. So did Six Flags Theme Parks.

Another call came from First Plus Financial, which had been planning to bring Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino to town for the race. Wednesday, the company offered Marino for parade duty as well. Local groups also offered their help, including the United Harley motorcycle club, Kraft-Meek noted. At Bank One, where employees had put more than 200 hours into building the bank's float, the loss was softened somewhat by offers of assistance, said Linda Paul, vice president of community affairs. One group sent a fruit basket to the bank with a note saying.

"We're thinking of you guys, call if we can help." Two other companies called Bank One by 6 a.m. to offer help. "That's what makes Indianapolis a very special place," Paul said. "That, to me, is maybe the positive. It highlights what they (Indianapolis residents) do so well.

They rally when they really have to." Kroger Co. has had a float in the parade for at least a dozen years, but the loss of this year's version wasn't the important thing Wednesday, said Sonya Saunders, communications man- the rain on Saturday." That may still be an Issue. The National Weather Bureau's extended forecast called for a chance of thunderstorms. Staff writers Rodger Birchtield, Marcella Fleming, Ft. Joseph Gelarden, Nicole Y.

Woods, Richard D. Walton and Bill Theobald contributed to this report. chance decision spared a piece of history. The float was to have carried the car driven to victory in last year's 500-Mile Race by Buddy Lazier. But because Speedway officials decided not to provide the car until the last possible moment, it escaped the blaze, said Speedway spokesman Fred Nation.

Nation said plans no longer call for Lazier's winning entry, now on display in the Speedway's Hall of Fame Museum, to be in the parade. While parade participants worked to reshape their plans, TelX, the company producing the broadcast of the parade, had its own work to do. i ager at Kroger. The important thing, Saunders said, was that no one was Injured in the fire. "We can rebuild." she said.

Kroger's float this year had Interactive aspects and was to feature seven students from the Indianapolis Public Schools. "We'll still have our people on it," Saunders said of the billboard-bearing flatbed the company now will use. "We're just trying to decide how to pose them now. We're looking for no, scrambling for ways they can be involved." Winning car spared While the fire claimed the Indianapolis Motor Spejway's float, a iiugiii nave uccii. Meanwhile, 20 workers at ExpoDesign were prepared to build two new floats: One would carry last year's race winner, Bud-dy Lazier, and the other would carry the 500 Festival queenl and her princesses.

Under the makeshift plan, even judging of the floats wiU take place just as the parade's master plan had prescribed, Smith said. By Friday, Judges will review drawings of the floats and other details, such as the music that was to have accompanied each unit. The parade's reorganization drew immediate praise from the pufjlic "Obviously, it's going to affect the telecast," said Chico Fernandez, senior vice president and general manager of the company. "We're looking for creative ways in which to try to re-create what existed once." The broadcast, he hoped, would focus on the community effort to stage the parade despite the fire. The program is expected to air across the country, as well as in France, Japan and England.

Instead of the real floats, the broadcast will show the float designs. "We thought this whole thing (parade coverage) was put to bed," Fernandez said. "My biggest concern, to be honest wjh you, was Sell no longer needed items through STAR and NEWS CLASSIFIEDS CALL 633-1212 1.