Special guests from Colorado high school to lead Mummers’ line of march

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Students from Colorado’s Arapahoe High School will lead Wednesday’s Mummers Parade. Arapahoe band director Shawn Funk says they don’t want to talk about the Dec. 13 shooting at the school that took the life of a 17-year-old student.

He says bringing more than three dozen students to Philadelphia is good for the kids.

“I’m not here to talk about anything else that happened at Arapahoe, but we want them to be excited about the trip,” said Funk. “We want them to experience this musically as well as historically and culturally and to get as much out of it as they can.” 

The students will be marching in the front of the line of march, something unheard of in mummers circles. Usually a comic group leads the parade. 

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Mark Montinero took the students on a tour of the Mummers Museum. He says it’s great introducing the young visitors to the event.

“There’s no words to describe it. In my comic group I have two 4-year-olds, and an 8-year-old, and my granddaughter, who will be 2 months old in her first parade on New Year’s,” Montinero said. “I get emotional thinking about carrying my daughter around City Hall.”

The students teased their band leader as he tried on costumes at the museum.

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