HOLLAND (WHTC-AM/FM) — Now more than ever we need a community celebration, says Kevin Oswald, WHTC and 927 The Van’s market manager.
The stations are hosting a virtual “Tulip Time Festival 2020” from May 1-31, 2020, online at whtc.com and 927thevan.com and on the air.
“We are bringing back Tulip Time Festival with our video archive and hundreds of hours of audio interviews from our many years of coverage,” Oswald said. “We’ll be asking listeners to send us their Tulip Time photos, videos, home movies and stories. We’ll ask them to dress up in Dutch costumes and take photos and videos or of tulips in bloom (remember social distancing!). We will also ask for Dutch recipes.”
He said people are encouraged to share their audio or video recordings or anyone playing instruments or singing some version of “Tip Toe Through the Tulips” — whether from 1929’s Gold Diggers of Broadway‘s tap dance, the 1944 version, also by Nick Lucas, Tiny Tim’s 1967 version, one influenced by jazz, player piano — or one of your own. Dancers can wear klompen, tap shoes, soft shoes, ballet slippers, well, you get the idea. It’s a pretty open category.
“We’ll look to award prizes to the best submissions,” Oswald said, noting specifics will be announced closed to May 1, 2020.
The virtual party is independent of the non-profit Tulip Time Festival, but that festival’s executive director, Gwen Auwerda, said she’s looking forward to seeing “people’s old pictures — the really, really old pictures and hearing about their memories from years one by in town,” she told WHTC, recalling her first visit to Holland’s historic flower festival when she was “five or six years old.”
Auwerda shared two of her own older photos, as well as her memories of scrubbing streets, watching the parades and Dutch Dancers — and dressing up every year.
She also has fond memories of her two children, Rachel and Ryan, marching in the parades through grade school.
WHTC and 927 The Van’s virtual festival is a great way, Auwerda said, for people to enjoy the season while staying safe at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Throughout May, the downtown Holland radio stations will be sharing their own stories as participants and from their unique decades-long experience of covering the festival.
Virtual Tulip Time Festival is a month-long festival set for May 1 – 31, 2020 online at whtc.com and 927thevan.com and on the air.
“Put on your Dutch costume and klompen and join in!” Oswald said.
For more information, call Kevin Oswald at (616) 392-3121 or email him at kevin.oswald@mw360marketing.com.
