MinerAlert
MinerAlert
December 2025
By Sandra Ramirez ’08 ’21
Waking up before sunrise on Thanksgiving morning in El Paso, you can finally feel a crisp fall chill in the air.
You make your way to Central El Paso and see orange barricades blocking more than two miles of Montana Ave. Folding chairs are set up on the sidewalk in front of open pickup truck beds and RVs. Television crews have already run cables and set up cameras to stream one of the largest annual events in El Paso – the Sun Bowl Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Upward of 200,000 to 300,000 people will line the street, hot chocolate or hot coffee in hand. Everyone knows you have to arrive early if you want a good spot.
“I think overall the parade is a huge family event. It's the largest attended event in El Paso,” said Tony Valtier, a 1990 UTEP graduate. “Some people are camping overnight; some are there early in the morning.”
For some, the waiting and the anticipation are part of the fun. Then, finally, the parade begins. The first float is a towering Thanksgiving turkey with a massive cornucopia overflowing with brightly colored harvest vegetables. Valtier has been steering the lead turkey float for the past 12 years.
“Some of those families have been waiting a long time just for the start of the parade,” he said. “When I'm driving down there and they see the first float and the turkey moves, the wings move, he’s talking, there’s music — El Paso’s excited.”
Valtier graduated from UTEP with a bachelor’s degree in communication. He has volunteered with the Sun Bowl Association for 20 years, where he serves on the board of directors and the executive committee.
Most weekends, you can find Valtier leading more than 40 volunteers inside the float warehouse in East El Paso. Many of the volunteers are middle school, high school, and UTEP students he helped recruit.
The volunteers begin dismantling the previous year’s floats as early as April. They try to salvage and reuse as much of the float material as possible.
This year, Valtier helped introduce new technology to float building by working with a 3D-printing team made up of UTEP engineering students. The team used 3D printing to create more authentic and culturally accurate facial features for the Native American Heroes float, which honors Indigenous military veterans.
“I’ve made a lot of good friends here over the past few years, and it's fun hanging out here on the floats and making floats and working on a common vision to make sure that this parade succeeds,” Valtier said.
While Valtier devotes much of his time to the Thanksgiving Day parade, there are many other Sun Bowl Association events throughout the year that keep him busy.
“It’s not just Thanksgiving; it’s the entire Sun Bowl Association,” he said. “The Sun Bowl Association is one of the few bowl associations that puts on events year-round. We have a flag football tournament, we have a pickleball tournament. There’s typically an event every two months, and it does well for the City of El Paso.”
For Valtier, the largest event that showcases El Paso pride is the annual Sun Bowl.
“The football game is every December 31. It’s on CBS. We're on national television for four hours, and that's the biggest advertisement and promotion for El Paso annually,” he said.
This year, the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl Association announced that Arizona State University will play Duke University. Valtier will serve as a team host.