Marshall County Making Plans for Bicentennial Torch Relay

Indiana BicentennialMarshall County is accepting nominations for an honor that comes around once every 200 years.

A committee has been formed to help organize events surrounding the Indiana Bicentennial Torch Relay. The event won’t take place until 2016, but volunteers must be found to carry the torch through all 92 counties.

Torch Relay Group member Linda Rippy says the state of Indiana gave Marshall County organizing members the route.

“We were lucky in the fact that we go through four towns that we might not have been able to go through had we tried to do something else,” says Rippy. “You don’t want to backtrack, you’ve only got four hours and they tried to make it as simple as easy as they could, the state did, to make it work for us.”

In Marshall County, the torch will come through in October before heading off to Fulton County. The torch will start in Bremen, carry through LaPaz and Plymouth, and make its final stop in Culver.

20 uniforms are available, meaning only 20 individuals will get to carry the torch. The committee will have the final say on who gets to carry the device.

Rippy says the committee is also looking to get students involved.

“We want the young ones, the ones that are coming up to have something that they can remember by and to pass down to their own history and their own family,” says Rippy. “So it’s not so much about: who’s important? As: who are the people that really deserve to do this?”

Any changes that are proposed to the route must be approved by the state.