The Grandest Lady at the Easter Parade: Bonnets of Years Past

"In your Easter bonnet with all the frills upon it, you'll be the grandest lady in the Easter Parade..." so goes the song written by Irving Berlin and published in 1933.

Nearly 100 years later, there is no evidence of an Easter parade planned for Sunday on Fifth Avenue, New York City, or even a fancily decorated hat a woman might be sporting to church or lunch.

Were it 100 years ago, lines of cars and buggies would be long outside the large green building in Woodbury where Myra Richards and any number of workers turned out custom made women's hats of all style and material.

An even longer line likely would be stretched around the block at the Ditting Millinery shop on the 200 block of Allegheny Street, Hollidaysburg, where sisters Julia and Anne Ditting offered up hats for any style or season.

Depending on the style of the time, the hats would have an abundance of ribbon, bows, chiffon, a few birds and plenty of berry bunches.

But it was Easter when the hat makers best plied their wares and the ladies of the area took great pride in outdoing one another.

While too young to participate in the hat parade, even if it was only down the main aisle at church, memory serves of a large, high hat an older sister wore one Easter morning. It was bright blue with what had to be yards of chiffon twisted around it eventually forming a sort of peak.

It seems odd but somehow the confection fit into a hat box for ease in transportation and storage.

David Snyder of Loysburg, former editor of the Morrisons Cove Herald, said much of his community was Church of the Brethren, where the white crocheted prayer coverings were never replaced by decorated hats, not even on Easter.

But Cathy Over, a retired school teacher and purveyor of all things history related to the Williamsburg area, said while she is too young to have been drawn into the fancy hat trend, she remembers her mother was fully involved.

"I remember my mother wearing bonnets to church on Easter," she said. "Mother and the other women wore hats to church all the time.

"When my mother died I had lots of hat boxes," Over said.

The hats created at the Woodbury shop must have been noteworthy. They were creative enough to draw customers from afar, at least one customer that is, said Snyder.

"Hedda Hopper bought hats there and she was very famous for her hats," Snyder said.

She was known as the Blair County farm girl who went to the big city and danced her way to success in New York and Hollywood.

In one of his many "Local History" articles, Milton Burgess outlines connections Hopper maintained not only with friends and family in the Altoona area, but also those living in Morrisons Cove, including her first cousin the late Kenton R. Miller and his wife Miriam Miller of Martinsburg.

She returned to the area for visits in 1953 and 1964 and it is believed she made visits to the Woodbury hat shop during these times.

She was born in 1885 on a farm at Hollidaysburg and died in 1966 at age 80. Her final resting place is Rose Hill Cemetery, Altoona.

Burgess lists her as dancing in the chorus line of six Broadway shows then moving to Hollywood where she appeared in silent and talking movies.

In 1913, she married actor William DeWolf Hopper.

But her claim to fame were her hats and her colorful career as a Hollywood gossip columnist. In that role, she hosted numerous radio and television talk shows.