Bantam Jeep Heritage Festival to celebrate the kindness of the woman behind duck movement
The 14th annual Bantam Jeep Heritage Festival is a beloved tradition for Butler County and Jeep lovers throughout the nation.
It’s a tribute to the father of all Jeeps, the Bantam Reconnaissance Car, or BRC for short, the first Jeep that was built in Butler County in 1940 for the U.S. military.
But this year, the event also will celebrate the life and legacy of someone who contributed to the Jeep community more recently, Allison Parliament.
A special rubber duck, an angel duck dedicated to her, will be sold at the event.
Parliament, a dual citizen of both Canada and the U.S., passed away last year at the age of 36. She started the Duck Duck Jeep movement after a trip to Canada in 2020.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, kindness was in short supply. Parliament learned this fact after stopping to get gas during her trip.
“(She) had a bad encounter at a gas station,” said her mother, Cheryl Parliament. “She was frightened there and left.”
Allison, who was bullied as a child due to her height, didn’t let that or the encounter affect her attitude toward others. Rather than avoiding any contact with the public, she reached out in her own special way.
“A few days (after the incident at the gas station) she saw a Jeep that she liked and wanted to let the owner know about her appreciation. With COVID guidelines in place, Parliament grabbed a rubber duck she had in her vehicle and wrote ‘Nice Jeep! Have a good day!’ and placed it on the mirror of the Jeep,” said Parliament.
The owner of the Jeep happened to be walking out when Allison was putting the duck on the mirror and really appreciated the gesture. They both shared the encounter on social media, and the Duck Duck Jeep movement was born, with Jeep owners sharing ducks with other Jeep owners, spreading kindness with little rubber ducks.
“It just became a global craze,” said festival organizer Patti Jo Lambert. “A global movement to spread kindness, like Allison did that day and continued to do. If you see a Jeep driving around, there is a good chance you will see a duck on their dashboard.”
Lambert and Parliament met and became friends, with Parliament attending the Butler County event multiple times, eventually signing ducks in 2024 for charity fundraising.
“We didn’t treat her like the celebrity she had become. We let her just be a Jeep owner, but last year she asked if she could become more involved, so we came up with the idea of her signing ducks that we could sell to raise money for various charities,” said Lambert.
One of the ducks she signed was a massive inflatable duck on the roof of a Jeep owned by Robert Beatty, of Fredonia, who acquired it from a kayak business at Pymatuning State Park.
“A lot of people don't realize that she didn’t make any money at all off of the ducks,” Beatty said. “All she did was go around putting her signature on them, but she didn’t make any money off of the ducks.”
Allison’s mother has continued her tradition of contributing love and kindness to the community by starting the Ducks4Allison charity.
“Ducks4Allison is a charity I started to continue the help Allison tried to do,” Cheryl Parliament said. “It helps teachers and students with materials and needs in classrooms, (along with) funding people going through breast cancer.”
The Allison Parliament Angel Duck will be available for purchase for $10, with portions of the proceeds going to local charities and Ducks4Allison.
The ducks purchased can be used in the annual Duck Dash, a race using a large slip and slide with cash prizes for the winner.
It is no mystery to Parliament why Allison’s gesture caught on in such a big way.
“Social distancing separated everyone, and people were not doing well mentally and spiritually. This little random act of placing a duck on a Jeep with a message filled a void that we were living with at the time,” she said.
Parliament hopes Allison’s kindness will continue to live on through the entire Jeep community and beyond.
“A duck is for all Jeeps and for anyone that needs a little kindness in their life,” said Parliament. “I have seen Allison give a duck to someone that looked tired or sad. It started a conversation that led to (something) meaningful.
“Take time to say ‘Hi.’ We never know when we will make someone feel better about themselves.”
