A man has founded a vehicle parade called the “Birthday Brigade” in his Virginia community, designed to help kids of all ages celebrate their birthdays during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Birthdays are a real big deal in our family,” Louie Correa, who founded the Birthday Brigade to help local kids safely celebrate their birthdays during the coronavirus pandemic, told the Today Show. “We go over the top with them.”
Louie and his wife, Erin, celebrated their daughter Maddie’s fourth birthday with a traditional party in January right before the coronavirus hit.
“We got to thinking, ‘Oh my gosh there has got to be a whole neighborhood of kids who cannot celebrate their birthdays in the same way,'” Correa said, adding that he “wanted to do something special for them.”
So in March, when the coronavirus pandemic shut everything down, the “Birthday Brigade” was born.
“We drive up to them, but we also sing to each individual child,” Correa said.
Five months later, there is a new theme that goes with each car parade that happens weekly. One week its Harry Potter, the next week, it is the Incredibles.
Louie is always the first one to put on a costume.
As Louie’s 40th birthday approached, his friend Caitlyn Noto-Doan threw him his own “Birthday Brigade.”
More than 50 cars showed up to salute Louie on his birthday.
“A little bit of happiness goes a long way,” he said. “We could have an epidemic of kindness.”
Car parades have been quite a common way to celebrate birthdays while social distancing for both the young and the old during the coronavirus pandemic.
An Ohio World War II veteran celebrated his 100th birthday with a car parade in April, and a community rallied in May to give a seven-year-old boy a birthday parade filled with first responder vehicles.
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