Brea’s 75th Birthday Marked by Nostalgic Parade, Picnic

A touch of yesteryear returned to Birch Street on Saturday afternoon as the city celebrated its 75th birthday with a parade that drew hundreds of residents.

Girl Scouts wearing period dresses from the years when Brea was still an oil and citrus-farming town walked side by side down the street. Senior citizens who witnessed the city’s steady growth through the years rode in antique cars or sat in hay wagons, playing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” on kazoos.

And all 13 of the city’s surviving former mayors followed Grand Marshal Mickey Mouse in a float with a large diamond-jubilee birthday cake.

“It’s amazing to see some of the things we were involved in during the 1950s,” said Tom Speer, who served as the city’s youngest mayor ever, from 1964 (when he was 28) to 1966.

“There was a lot of push in those days to put single-family housing in here,” he recalled, standing near Brea Mall, which he helped develop. Speer now lives in Colorado Springs, Colo. “You look at vacant ground and imagine what will go there. Then you come back and see it. You’re just . . . kind of awe-struck,” he said.

Much of modern-day Brea also found its way into the city’s largest-ever parade, with 150 entries and 3,000 participants. Police said the parade drew 400 to 500 onlookers.

A traditional band from Brea’s sister city in Hanno, Japan, performed exotic numbers as dancers in colorful masks tried to chase away imaginary evils. Youngsters aged 8 to 10, dressed in black, sequined dance outfits, moved to the sounds of a techno-beat. And the Brea Junior High School and Brea-Olinda High School bands played enthusiastically.

At an all-day picnic after the parade, former California Angels catcher Daryl Miller signed autographs for eager youngsters.

“My kids grew up and went to school here. I went to school here. It’s a way to relive things that have happened in the past,” said camera-toting Peggy Currie, 62, a Brea resident for 50 years. “Brea’s always been a small town.”

But onlookers enjoying the festivities for their flashbacks also expressed concern over Brea’s future, with plans to tear down part of the old downtown area and replace it with a shopping center and 1,000 affordable-housing units.

“It’s changing so much,” Herb Hilgenberg, a 35-year-old engineer, said with dismay as he waited for his 10- and 12-year-old sons to march by in their Pop Warner football uniforms. “Old Brea will be gone soon. The whole downtown area is going to be gone. A lot of people don’t know it’s here.”

Karen Vineyard, a 34-year-old computer analyst who lives on Orange Street, recently received an eviction notice to leave her home by June to make way for the construction of a senior citizens’ complex. “Most residents are upset,” she said. “At least the ones who have to move and can’t find a place.”

Nevertheless, Vineyard sat through the entire parade. “I need to watch for my nephew,” she said.