This story was originally told during KUT’s ATXplained Live show at Bass Concert Hall on May 21, 2026.
On a hot Fourth of July around a decade ago, Jeremy and Lyn Hendricks went to a parade in Austin’s Northwest Hills neighborhood. That’s when they first saw a boisterous group of women decked out in red, white and bling, performing a choreographed drill routine with vintage lawn chairs.
“[We] saw these crazy ladies marching down the street,” Jeremy said. “And my wife was enamored with it.”
They called themselves the Lawn Chair Brigade. Lyn immediately knew she had to be a part of whatever was going on. Soon enough, she’d joined up.
“She is now the hospitality chair,” Jeremy said of the name Lyn gave herself. “She brings the Jell-O shots to the practice the night before.”
Lorianne Willett
/
KUT News
Jay Shields, left, teaches lawn chair choreography during a rehearsal.
Jeremy has been supportive of his wife’s hobby, but he also doesn’t quite get it. Over the years, he’s often wondered what she’s gotten herself into.
Last year, as Lyn donned her patriotic garb for another Independence Day march, he was still bugging her for answers.
“He asked, ‘Did you ever find out about how the Lawn Chair Brigade started?’ And I was like, ‘No!’” she said at a recent practice. “He’s like, ‘So you’re just part of a cult?’ I’m like, ‘No, I’m not a part of a cult! No cult meets once a year for the Fourth of July parade.’”
Well, you really can’t be too sure. They may not be drinking any Kool-Aid, but Lyn herself is providing the Jell-O shots.
So, I told Jeremy I’d look into it for our ATXplained project. Maybe questions about all-female lawn chair drill teams require a woman’s touch.
The godmother
It didn’t take long to see that this group enjoys somewhat of a celebrity status in Northwest Hills. Longtime troop leader Ann Denkler said she often gets recognized while out and about.
“I’ve given autographs on cocktail napkins in the neighborhood,” she said.
Lawn Chair Brigade members Ann Denkler, left, and Lyn Hendricks, center, participated in the Northwest Hills Fourth of July parade during a downpour in 2023.
Members get a ribbon to pin on their chair every year they march, and no one has more ribbons than Denkler. But even she couldn’t pin down the group’s origins. The brigade had already been up and running for a while by the time she joined in 1999.
“It’s a little bit fuzzy,” she said.
But Denkler went digging to find an answer; she even dusted off her old AOL account and knocked on neighbors’ doors looking for clues. Eventually, she found Marilyn Hill-Henderson, the godmother of the Lawn Chair Brigade, who wrangled the first women to march in the parade in 1992.
“Who would have ever thought that it would keep going and bring so much pleasure to so many people participating and watching?” Hill-Henderson said.
When she moved to Austin in the early 1990s, she was looking for ways to connect with her neighbors. With a background as a high school majorette, she had her eye on the annual Fourth of July parade.
Lorianne Willett
/
KUT News
The Lawn Chair Brigade started marching in the Northwest Hills Fourth of July parade in the early 1990s.
“All that kind of came together when I saw that clip of the guys with the briefcases,” she said, referring to the Fred Hill briefcase drill team. For decades, the group of Michigan businessmen suited up and spun their briefcases with military precision at parades in Detroit and even the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Hill-Henderson thought: Why not do something like that in Northwest Hills? She got the inspiration to do lawn chairs instead of briefcases from the Neshoba County Fair in Mississippi, where people race with their chairs to get the best seat for performances.
“So I had a real orientation to lawn chairs,” Hill-Henderson said. “Seemed like such a summer thing and so Americana.”
She brought the idea to two friends she’d made in the neighborhood, Pattie Meyers and Juliet Vanderploeg. They would get together and watch their children play at one of their houses Friday nights. (“It was probably over cocktails,” Meyers joked.)
Meyers and Vanderploeg were immediately game.
“We all three had experience being in some form of performance in high school,” Meyers said. “I think we all three were sassy little showoffs, frankly.”
Competing origin stories
In the beginning, it was just a few women working up routines in Meyers’ cul-de-sac in preparation for the big parade. They sometimes called themselves the “Tacky Texas Tarts.”
PJ Pierce saw them during their parade debut and yelled out that she wanted to join. She ended up becoming an important member of the group.
“I wanted to do it because it just sounded like silly fun,” Pierce said.
PJ Pierce, right, poses with fellow members of the Northwest Hills Lawn Chair Brigade in 2002.
But this is where the historical record gets a little complicated — because Pierce remembers the group’s origin story differently from Hill-Henderson and her original crew.
“I must have a much better memory than she does,” Pierce joked.
As she remembers it, when she yelled from the side of the road, there were no lawn chairs yet.
“They sat in the back of a convertible, had their prom dresses on, or evening dresses on, with a ribbon that said, ‘Ladies who like parades,’” Pierce said.
Lawn chairs weren’t involved until she joined, she said, although she acknowledges they were Hill-Henderson’s idea.
Hill-Henderson, Meyers and Vanderploeg have no memory of ever wearing gowns.
The group picks up steam
But the women all agree that within a few years, the original trio moved on from the brigade. Life got busy; they were tugged in new directions. Pierce stepped up to keep the group going, and under her leadership, women were joining left and right. Even the occasional man got involved.
The Lawn Chair Brigade became a staple of the parade — so much that, the one year they decided to skip it, Pierce got a call from the president of the neighborhood association. He’d gotten complaints.
“He said, ‘I’ve called to ask you specifically to do the Lawn Chair Brigade!’” Pierce said.
The Lawn Chair Brigade grew in the early 2000s under Pierce’s unofficial leadership.
The ladies were back the next year. They haven’t missed a parade since.
What started as a way for three neighbors to bond became a tradition shared with generations of women. Hill-Henderson passed the baton to Pierce, who eventually passed it to Ann Denkler. And Denkler only continued to grow the group.
It was mostly middle-aged women (at some point, the group nicknamed themselves “The Hot Flashes”). They had an unofficial rule: If you’re menopausal, you’re in. Premenopausal? You have to audition.
All jokes aside, Denkler said, everyone is welcome.
“The common denominator is these are fun women,” she said. “They know how to yuck it up. They all like to strut their inner ham.”
Denkler has even brought some local luminaries into the fold: state representatives, judges and county commissioners.
In fact, so many people joined over the years that a problem emerged: It was hard finding enough lawn chairs. They have to be vintage — the lightweight aluminum kind that are easy to twirl around. Denkler said they’ve scoured estate sales and gone dumpster diving to locate them. Sometimes anonymous supporters will drop them in her driveway.
“I have 21 in my garage,” she said. “My husband threatens to divorce me, but as of now, that’s all talk.”
This surplus means Denkler can always be in recruitment mode — which I found out the hard way when I asked if I could record a rehearsal.
“Only if you perform,” she told me. “Join us, Olivia.”
Into the belly of the beast
Denkler’s ominous tone seemed to give some credence to Hendricks’ cult theory. But I was left with no choice; I had to go gonzo.
That’s how, a few weeks later, I found myself with a crowd of women in the Doss Elementary School parking lot, wearing a blue tutu and red bedazzled tiara, joining in a chant: “I don’t know what you’ve been told, lawn chair ladies have hearts of gold.”
I also got to try out the lawn chair ladies’ suggestively named choreography.
“We’re gonna do the clap, and then we’re gonna do the zipper,” choreographer Jay Shields yelled to the gaggle of women.
I asked as many of the brigade members as I could: Why do you do this?
Most of them answered a lot like Rachel Rogers.
“It’s fun,” she said simply. “It’s good to have some whimsy in life.”
That, I think, is the straightforward answer to Jeremy Hendricks’ question as to why the lawn chair ladies do what they do: Girls just wanna have fun!
But really, it goes a little deeper than that. When I talked to the brigade members, I also heard a lot about camaraderie and sisterhood.
“Every year, there are women I never see; I just see them this one time a year, and it’s like we talked the day before,” Denkler said. “Just that inner connection; it’s fabulous. It’s Estrogen City!”
Lorianne Willett
/
KUT News
Judy Maggio and Jay Shields pose for a photo during practice last April in the parking lot of Doss Elementary School.
It’s a tradition the whole community looks forward to, rain or shine. Even in tough years — like during COVID, when the brigade still got out and marched in the Randall’s parking lot.
Denkler remembers one especially difficult year, when a longtime brigade member passed away from cancer. The woman’s husband paid her tribute by participating in the parade.
“He just showed up in a tutu with a necklace on, and we were almost all of us in tears,” Denkler said. “But he was fabulous. He knew all the routines because he’d been watching his wife for 10 years.”
So yes, the Lawn Chair Brigade is about fun, but fun isn’t always a trivial thing. Silliness can be magic, and joy can be medicine.
If you need a little bit of that magic in your own life, the ladies will be back to their usual mischief this year. You can’t miss them: They’re the ones marching down Far West with the lawn chairs. If you squint, you might even see me among them.
Watch the story told on stage at Bass Concert Hall during ATXplained Live below.