Glen Arbor Fourth of July parade celebrates 50 years

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor

The Glen Arbor Fourth of July parade, which next Thursday will celebrate half a century of annual patriotic celebrations, has come a long way since fire trucks were wrapped in primitive, spray-painted bedsheets.

This year’s parade leaves Glen Haven at noon and typically arrives in Glen Arbor around 12:30. Spectators are encouraged to stake out a spot by mid-morning, as this event attracts hordes of people.

Stan Brubaker, 85, an organizer of the inaugural parade in 1964, recalls that the first parade featured little more than a dozen kids peddling tricycles through Glen Haven (four of those were Brubaker’s children). This was before the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore arrived, so Glen Haven was still populated by private citizens. Marianne Warnes, whose family ran the dune buggies, lived above the general store, and became the parade’s first spectator.

By 1968, fire trucks joined the parade, and kids would ride atop the engines while holding bedsheets spray-painted with patriotic messages — a precursor to displaying American flags. By then, the parade traveled the mile into Glen Arbor, and Linda Peppler recalls that it went through town twice.

In the late ’60s, the Glen Arbor parade ventured all the way to the old Inn at The Homestead resort (near where the Crystal River currently empties into Lake Michigan), but Brubaker says the parade made such a racket that, after two years, it stopped entering The Homestead and confined its distance to Glen Arbor.

Classic cars have always been a key attraction of the parade. The late Frank Westie, a decorated bomber pilot in the Second World War who penned the book Ash Wednesday ’45, a fictional love story about the bombing of Dresden and acts of civil disobedience, was known to drive his baby blue Cadillac in the Fourth of July parade, filled with relatives carrying silly signs.

Brubaker continues to play an integral role in the Fourth of July parade. Mounted on his yellow moped, he lines up parade participants in Glen Haven and rides back and forth along the parade route to keep the group in order.

“More and more people have joined the parade over the years,” says Brubaker. “We have no regulations; anyone is welcome to be in the parade. It doesn’t matter if you’re a politician or the mayor, we just line you up.”

Longtime Glen Arbor residents Lois and Ted Swierad will be the grand marshals at the head of this year’s parade. The Swierads uphold the Glen Lake Chamber of Commerce’s recent tradition of selecting the grand marshal by honoring senior citizens who have served the community for decades.

Lois is a descendent of John Fisher, one of the area’s first white settlers; she and her mother operated the Glen Lake Beauty Salon for over 60 years. Ted, 84, is a Michigan Hall of Fame high school basketball coach for his 427 wins as head coach of the Glen Lake Lady Lakers between 1975 and 1998. His team won the state championship in 1978. Ted moved to the area in 1951 when he was stationed at the Air Force base in Empire. Appropriately, Lois and Ted met at the old Empire High School gymnasium while playing hoops.

Last year’s parade marshals were Frank Hagerty and Carl “Sonny” Andresen, who led the parade seated in the only known 1948 Ford from the Dunesmobile fleet. In 1958, Andresen opened the Shell Station and his mother ran the Kum-an-Dyne Restaurant (now the Glen Arbor Bed & Breakfast). In 2010, our centenarian Lou and his wife Judith Batori marshaled the parade.

Every year, the parade pays homage to days gone by and invokes nostalgia among those lining the streets of M-109 and M-22. In 2011, the “Roaming Boomers”, David and Carol Porter, featured Glen Arbor on the American Association of Retired People’s (AARP) blog: “It also seems that small-town America loves a parade, and the small town of Glen Arbor would host a parade each and every summer holiday weekend. Hundreds would line the streets and watch as a stream of fire trucks, beauty queens, and countless small children on their tricycles would parade by … Barb’s Bakery was certain to sell out of her famous cinnamon rolls before the parade even started. Those in the know would stand at her door upon opening to get one of her treasured, freshly baked, piping hot cinnamon rolls. Hmmm!”

As per tradition, this year’s Glen Arbor Fourth of July parade will also feature a lineup of vintage cars (they precede the marchers so they don’t stall and overheat) and also feature a walking Kazoo Band, which departs from the Christian Science Church, just west of Glen Arbor.