LEELANAU GEARS UP FOR THE 4TH
America will celebrate 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence Saturday.
The community kicks off the holiday a night early with a public fireworks display at dusk — around 9:30 p.m. — Friday, July 3, at Hancock Field Park in Leland.
The annual Glen Arbor parade departs from Glen Haven and travels down M-109 into downtown Glen Arbor, where the festivities continue with family activities. Lineup begins at 11 a.m. Saturday, July 4, with the parade arriving in Glen Arbor shortly after noon.
Classic cars, local floats and community displays make up the annual afternoon procession through downtown Leland. The parade runs from 3 to 4 p.m. Saturday, along Main Street.
Northport closes out the holiday on the water with a public fireworks show at 10 p.m. at Haserot Park.
Earlier this week, there were questions about whether historic flooding in Northport would impact the big weekend celebration.
As of presstime, Northport Village President Chris McCann, said the fireworks and other activities will go on as planned.
The National Cherry Festival is marking its 100th anniversary this year with a new addition to its Fourth of July lineup that kicks off the festival.
A roughly 30-minute nighttime spectacular combining drones, fireworks and pyrotechnic airplanes, making its debut Saturday night along the shore of West Grand Traverse Bay.
“We are calling it a night extravaganza,” said Kat Paye, executive director of the National Cherry Festival.
The show is being produced by the Traverse City Boom Boom Club, the same group behind the festival’s traditional Fourth of July fireworks display, in partnership with Great Lakes Drones and two airshow pilots who will fly planes rigged with pyrotechnics.
“We have a roughly 30-minute display of fireworks with drones included from our friends at Great Lakes Drones, and then also two planes that have pyrotechnics that they fly and shoot off fireworks while they’re flying through the air,” Paye said. “It will all be a big choreographed show all together on July 4th.”
The idea has been in the works for well over a year, and pulling it off required coordinating several moving pieces.
“The most challenging part is to get all of the creative brains together — from airshow pilots to drone operators, and our beloved firework guys,” she said.
The festival’s airshow director, Christian Smith, and airshow announcer Luke Carrico first floated the idea years ago, Paye said, with this year’s centennial — and the nation’s 250th birthday — providing the occasion to finally bring it together.
With the festival kicking off Saturday, Paye described a mix of excitement and nerves.
Beyond the new night show, Paye pointed to several returning festival favorites. The bed races return Thursday night, July 9, ahead of the parade. The milk carton boat regatta is back July 8 with more than a dozen boats built by local families and businesses.
“I know one family took theirs out over last weekend and actually did a trial run, and they were super excited it floated,” Paye said.
She also highlighted a historical exhibit on the lower level of the Hagerty Center, tracing the festival’s roots back to the original Blessing of the Blossoms a century ago.
“It’s a great way to see where we have come from and where we are now over the last 100 years, and what the cherry growers really built,” Paye said. “It is such an honor to be able to celebrate our favorite fruit in this region, being cherry capital of the world.”
Northport resident Doug Whitley is stepping in to read the nation’s founding document at the Northport post office.
Whitley has read the declaration roughly 70 times since May in preparation, and has already arranged something new for the occasion. The village will block off the road in front of the post office for 45 minutes during the reading. Northport typically draws around 50 people, and he is looking forward to guiding them through what he sees as a layered document most Americans only scratch the surface of.
“The declaration is in three parts,” he said. “There’s a preamble, 27 grievances against the king, and then for me personally, the best part is the end — when they write ‘the representatives of the United States of America.’ That’s the first time that phrase appears anywhere in the document. Throughout the rest of it, the references are just to the colonies.”
Whitley added that the trickiest part of reading the declaration aloud is Jefferson’s vocabulary — words like consanguinity, perfidy, usurpations and magnanimity that were common in the 18th century but trip up modern readers.
His favorite line, and the one he hopes carries the country another 250 years: governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
At complete schedule of holiday activities can be found in Sect. 3, Pg. 6.
