POWELLSVILLE – After a week of storms, the 16th annual Powellsville Community Awareness Day couldn’t have asked for better weather under sunny skies and spring-like temperatures here Saturday.

More than 200 observed the town parade held in the morning then carried over the C.G. White School for food vendors outside and gospel singing and praise-dancing indoors.

This year the festival committee featured Grand Marshall Annie S. Taylor, a retired dietician at Roanoke-Chowan Community College who bills herself as the “first female gospel promoter” in the local area.

“I thought my daughter was joking when she told me I was the Grand Marshall,” Taylor said. “When I realized she was serious I was just overjoyed. God is truly blessing ordinary people to do extraordinary things.”

Taylor said she enjoyed the grinning, waving, and taking in all the festivities of the day.

Honorary Grand Marshall was author Janice Cole Hopkins. A minister’s wife, Hopkins calls her writing “Christian fiction”. She has authored a trilogy called the “Appalachian Roots” series which tell of life in 19th century western North Carolina: Cleared for Planting, Sown in the Dark Soil, and Uprooted by War, framed against the backdrop of the Civil War.

“I’ve always had a vivid imagination, and, like many writers, my characters become real to me,” Hopkins writes on her blog page. “I live with them as I share their stories. I’ve even been known to shed more than a few tears when their hearts break, and I have a good laugh at myself afterwards.”

Hattie M. Askew, founder of the Community Day says the idea is to not just celebrate the arrival of springtime, but also to bring folks together to share in the joy of community.