Cherry Republic founder Bob Sutherland writes memoir “Here All Along”

From staff reports

In 1989, Bob Sutherland started Cherry Republic selling T-shirts out of the trunk of his beat-up old Toyota Tercel. He’d park the car under the streetlight at Art’s Tavern and spend summer evenings chatting up tourists at the bar then taking them out to the bungeed-down trunk. They’d hand him $15 for a T-shirt, resplendent with Kristin Hurlin’s original cherry tree and the now-iconic phrase, “Life, Liberty, Beaches & Pie.”

But the road from the car trunk to Cherry Republic as it is today—the beautiful Glen Arbor campus, seven other Michigan storefronts, gift boxes that ship to countries all over the world—wasn’t a straight one. In his new book Here All Along, which publishes this month and is available at the store, Sutherland shares deeply personal stories of loss, wayfinding, wildness, adventure, and hard sticky work that built Cherry Republic.

Both funny and deeply moving, Here All Along shimmers with anecdotes of Glen Arbor of yesteryear and odes to Lake Michigan and Sleeping Bear Dunes. It’s a book for the beach or a cup of coffee and a Montmorency cherry scone. It’s a book for anyone who loves Northern Michigan and knows what it means to find your path by getting a little lost along the way.

Sutherland will hold a book launch at Cherry Republic’s Glen Arbor store on Tuesday, July 14, at 3 pm, followed by a launch at the Traverse City store on Tuesday, July 21, at 4 pm. RSVPs are required to attend. Learn more at CherryRepublic.com.

Here’s an excerpt of Here All Along:

 

“My mother was an Olympic-caliber diver. She was in line to compete for a spot to represent the USA in the 1952 Olympics when her eardrum burst and she missed the trials. She loved to tell us stories of her exploits on the high-diving platforms at Ohio State University and at the high-end resorts that hired her and her dive team to perform for their vacationers. After a decade of working for me at Cherry Republic, she brought in a photo of herself diving to hang up in the store. She was seventy and she wanted people to know her as more than just a cherry ambassador or Bob’s mom.

My mom grew up in a poor coal mining county in rural Ohio. I don’t know how she became such a graceful diver. Maybe from jumping into the old flooded coal pits. She was more athletic than most men ever gave her credit for. I adored her grace of movement.

In late summer, when Lake Michigan was at its warmest after many straight days of eighty-degree sun and no wind (so the warmth along shore didn’t blow away with the waves), she’d get up from her books and notepads and step into Sleeping Bear Bay. Even summer-warm, the water was still too cold for her skinny self. She would groan in her singsongy way, drawing our attention from our sand holes and forts and splashy water games. Soon she was underwater. All her fluffy hair would deflate around her tiny head. And then, she would swim the crawl. It was absolutely beautiful, these arms lifting up from the water and drawing back down without making a ripple, her legs kicking and floating.

When we moved to Glen Arbor, she accepted a job teaching high school at Glen Lake Community Schools. She thought she’d be teaching literature, debate, and forensics, but when she found out there was an alarming number of students who could not read, my mother switched gears. She researched the best way to teach reading and then created specific classes and curricula. After a year, a dozen or so students were given the life-changing skill of literacy.

Reading, time, energy, our extra clothes, a piece of pie: My mother was always giving something away. My brothers and sister and I all remember the women who marched through her kitchen. She was an informal counselor, and psychologists—who were all men at the time—would send women they didn’t know what to do with to my mom. My mom wasn’t a private person. She’d just sit these ladies down at the kitchen table and we kids would give her space as she gave her belief, her trust, her self-confidence, and her patience.

I don’t know what drove my mom to change the world like she did, to transform every life she could. But when she decided to stop and work for me, of all the kids, I knew what I could give her in return: laughter. Humor was the most consistent language in which my mother and I spoke to each other.

Cherry Republic properties are full of humorous signs and silly sayings. I wanted to give my mom something special, to thank her somehow for working for me and for all those stressful days and nights raising six of us kids. We kids were mostly fine, but there was always one of us struggling—many times it was me.

I gave her a staff shirt to wear at work that said across the chest, My son is a simpleton. Selling more than one fruit would be too complicated. She roared with laughter, saying, “You want me to wear a shirt that says I raised a stupid son?” That joke lasted forever. She’d say to customers who came to check out at her register, “My son makes me wear this as my staff shirt. My other five kids are brilliant. They don’t need my help. But this one. Oh, boy.”

On the front of the Cherry Republic Glen Arbor Great Hall, there is a list of 10 warnings from “Attorney General Mr. William Bananaheimer” for customers to read before entering. Incident No. 6 is a warning to customers to get a good look at this lady and remember her face, so they can avoid her cash register when checking out. Whether deliberate or accidental, this woman has been shorting customers of their change since 1961. I loved surprising my mother when I put up the giant banner. For me, it was all a guise to work her image onto the new building as a tribute to her.

She used to say to customers while she happily worked the cash register, “I keep working as a preventative for dementia.” Ironically, when the pandemic forced her to stop working, forgetfulness set in within a year. Within three years, her dementia forced us to put her in a 24-hour-care home in Leland. Within four years, she was gone. It felt like my humor ran dry when she got dementia. I haven’t created a funny sign in Glen Arbor since she died.

Here’s how I like to remember her: Not that long ago, maybe seven years or so, she came running into our conference room when we were having our weekly leadership meeting. My eighty-five-year-old mother has the latest Cherry Republic holiday catalog in her hands. She’s overflowing with sparkle and joy in her eyes. She reads a humorous, embellished passage I’d written about my childhood. She’s laughing so hard she can hardly read, and then all seven of us in the room are joking back and forth, all laughing so hard because everyone is funny—you have to be to work here. Eventually, the room settles down. We can’t stretch the jokes any longer.

I don’t want her to leave, though. I want to be with her like this forever.

Beside my desk in Cherry Republic Headquarters, I have a section of wall that is a tribute to my mom. There are pictures, drawings, and an old letter she wrote to me with some sweet encouragement. In the center of the collage is a photo of her in the middle of a high dive.

This is the photo that she hung in the store for a decade, so customers would realize that she was a whirlwind—more than Bobby’s mom, so much more. She looks so strong and graceful in midair. The entire pool is watching her.”