THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, April 18, 1996 TAG: 9604180001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 49 lines
Before Norfolk's annual Azalea Festival - today midway through its 43rd edition - there was the short-lived Crape Myrtle Festival. For many years, the celebration, which honors the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and spotlights its individual member nations serially, was just about the only large-scale municipal party around.
Now municipal and county festivals are as plentiful as jelly beans, in Hampton Roads no less than elsewhere. With increasing competition for a busy public's attention and time, the Azalea Festival has become more and more colorful and packed with more and more high-quality events.
This year's festival features The Netherlands. That small but robust land on the North Sea is represented not only by Emilie Patjin of Amsterdam, Queen Azalea XLIII, but also its ambassador to the United States (who is addressing an international trade luncheon today), Dutch paintings (free at the Chrysler Museum), Dutch fashions (at the Omni Hotel tomorrow afternoon), Dutch craftsmen in a Dutch village exhibit (free at Nauticus, through Saturday), the Marine Band of the Royal Netherlands Navy (which presents a free concert tonight at Chrysler Hall) and Dutch dancers.
As usual, there will be the Azalea Festival Grand Parade (downtown Norfolk, tomorrow 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.), the festival open regatta (Saturday, Willoughby Bay), two air shows featuring the Blue Angels (free, Saturday and Sunday, at Norfolk Naval Air Station) and the coronation of Queen Azalea at Norfolk Botanical Garden (Saturday, admission $3 for adults, $2 for senior adults, $1 for children), which will be followed by a ball that evening.
Fun, all of it, especially because NATO, created to stand up to the Soviet Union in the decades after World War II and the most-successful military alliance ever, is still around to deter or at least contain aggression. The Western nations are closer together because of NATO, and stronger and more secure. Much of the rest of planet Earth is too.
The world has changed dramatically in the past half-century. Communism looked to be the wave of the future when NATO was cobbled together to protect a prostrate Western Europe from a menacing Russian bear. Now communism is a receding wave, and constitutional democracy and free markets are washing over the globe. Enjoy this festive event, brought to you in no small part by a triumphant Atlantic Alliance. by CNB