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Text and photos by Richard Taylor
Dozens of dressed-up kids, parents and even decorated dogs marched around the Ocracoke School traffic circle Friday afternoon as judges selected winners in six costume categories during annual PTA Halloween Parade and Fundraising Carnival.
The ghostly gathering of ghouls included jesters, witches and depictions of the rock, paper and scissors game, Star Wars and Spiderman costumes, kids dressed as old codgers with walkers and many more. Some parents pulled wagons filled with youngsters while others snapped numerous smart phone photos from every angle.
After a few circuits around the circle, Ivy Belch, PTA president, announced winners.
Wearing a yellow safety vest, hard hat and over-sized opaque, paper “glasses,” while carrying an upside-down “information” sign, Petros Burleson, son of Adam Burleson, physical education teacher, won the funniest prize for his depiction of a PCL Construction worker. The costume stemmed from this past summer’s week-long power outage when PCL crews rebuilding the Bonner Bridge dropped a steel casing severing the main power to Hatteras and Ocracoke islands for a week. This was Petros’s ninth year straight winning a costume award.
Prizes were also awarded to Uriah Johnson (scariest), Alyssa Bryant (most creative), Iris McClain, Maren Donlon, Maggie Evans and Katie
Kinnion (most original for Pink Ladies), Asher Mason (best pirate) and to Max Elicker.
Gavin Elicker won best of show for Yamaha 250, depicting a boy dressed as a boat motor walking behind a wagon carrying children fishing. At the end of their fishing line, a dog in a goldfish suit pulled the wagon.
Winners received gift certificates from the Slushy Stand.
On the playground along Back Road, kids navigated an inflatable slide and two bouncy houses while parents mingled with pirates.
Under the school sign behind the circle, Hyde Co. Sheriff Guire Cahoon, Deputies Blackburn Warner and Rob King, and Health Dept. Public Educator Anna Motteler manned a table for hours. The group had hoped to collect expired, unwanted or unused medicines for a Prescription Drug Take Back Event. Due to an apparent lack of publicity, no drugs were recovered Friday, but a medication drop box is always available at the sheriff’s office on Irvin Garrish Hwy.
Activities then shifted to the gym. There artist Jessi Franklin painted cat whiskers and Halloween themed figures on the cheeks and noses of willing kids, while others shot basketballs, “fished” for rewards and tested their skills at various games of chance, hoping to win tickets they could trade-in for booty at the prize table.
Kneeling down on the gym’s floor, Ocracoke Sheriff Capt. Jason Daniels showed kids how to handle bows and arrows at they tried their luck hitting an archery target bull’s eye yards away.
Volunteers helped the PTA sell hot dogs, Mexican food and baked goods in the multi-use area beside the gym. On the basketball floor, Belch played ominous Halloween music before calling winning numbers during the cake walk event. A raffle of numerous donated items ended the inside activities.
Near dusk, Nelson Adams pulled trailer after trailer full of giggling riders around a looping circuit for the Howard Street Hayride.
During Saturday’s Blackbeard’s Pirate Jamboree, fifth-grade teacher Jeanie Owens, her husband, fourth grade teacher Jeramy Guillory and several students sold smoked turkey legs and Ocracoke School cookbooks at Community Square to help finance the fifth-grade spring-time bus trip touring various North Carolina and Virginia historical sites.
Jessi Franklin did the face painting
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