In his new memoir, “Here All Along: Finding my way to Cherry Republic,” Bob Sutherland, the founder of Glen Arbor’s iconic company, wrote about the Beach Bards Bonfire and his role leading children’s hour during the 1990s. The Beach Bards holds its final summer evening of by-heart storytelling, poetry, and music on Friday, Aug. 21, at 8 pm near The Leelanau School beach, one mile northeast of Glen Arbor. Here’s an excerpt from “Here All Along.”
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.” 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.