Fourth of July serendipity

By Barbara Siepker

Glen Arbor is a small world with serendipitous encounters happening all the time. Last summer yielded one such instance, and the result is that the only known 1948 Ford from the Dunesmobile fleet will lead this year’s Fourth of July Parade.

This year’s Parade Marshalls are Frank Hagerty and Carl “Sonny” Andresen, both former Glen Arbor residents with local family history. In around 1958 Sonny opened the Shell Station and his mother ran the Kum-an-Dyne Restaurant (now the Glen Arbor Bed & Breakfast). Sonny purchased the Dunesmobile car #9 of the 1948 Ford fleet and later sold it to a museum in New Mexico where he currently lives, he told Grace Dickinson, Jill Cheney and myself at a Glen Arbor History Group meeting last summer.

Weeks later, Cheney was talking with Frank Hagerty and learned that he was looking for a car from that fleet. The information was passed on and, as they say, “the rest is history”. Hagerty Insurance purchased the pristine, fully restored 1948 Ford and had its logo hand-painted on both sides.

Glen Arbor is very excited to have this car return home and make its debut as the lead car in this year’s Fourth of July Parade.

Siepker owns the Cottage Book Shop and facilitates the Glen Arbor History Group.