Ed and Sherry are both Volunteer Firefighters on the Georgetown Fire Department. Ed has 26 years in the fire service and is a Lieutenant and the Training Officer. Sherry has recently completed her first year of fire service. She has just completed classes to be an EMT-B and is Volunteering with the Georgetown Ambulance as well. Ed is a member of the Sons Of the American Legion at the Dornblazer Post in Georgetown. We are both appraisers for Destination Imagination, a school competition where teams solve challenges with creative solutions from outside the box.

Ed met Sherry playing on the APA Pool League in Danville IL, and after a year or so of casual shoulder massages, finally summoned up the nerve to ask her to marry him. They made plans to sneak off to Niagara Falls, Canada and tied the knot in the mist of the falls on July 8, 2006. As they started their new lives together, Ed informed Sherry he needed help running a small advertising business he had been playing at for several years. Surprise! Surprise!

It was just a dozen or so lighted parade floats and as many lighted ornament displays, all of which require a lot of relighting periodically. It just so happened this year was the year to relight most of them. Sherry, being the adventurous type, learned very quickly how to troubleshoot miniature Christmas lights, start generators and lawn tractors in the freezing weather, hook up and back trailers around anywhere, repair trailer lighting and wiring, climb ladders and overcome some lifelong fears like mixing rain water and electricity. All of this while searching the web for parade contacts to secure sponsors, making and taking sales calls to and from potential sponsors, keeping the books and doing the billing and banking, sorting expenses for taxes and a few other things too numerous to mention. In her spare time she takes care of the house, cooks, does the laundry. WHAT A WOMAN! Meanwhile Ed was out in the garage planning and welding.

Ed is, to put it delicately, over 50 now (Sherry's not) and has been building floats, painting signs, and designing things for over 35 years. He has worked professionally as a Drinking Water and Wastewater Operator for the City of Georgetown IL since Christmas of 1995. Prior to that he spent 14 years as an operator for the city of Minonk IL. He has custom built floats for the Minonk Christmas Parade Of Lights for it's entire 25 -year run. Georgetown has hosted a Lighted Parade for the past 7 years, and we have put as many as 18 units in some of those parades.