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07/08/2007Fun With A Cherry On TopAnnual festival is playground for kids
Mitchell Johnson, 14, holds a photograph from his royalty days as a National Cherry Festival prince for Bertha Vos Elementary School. Now several years older — and with his two front teeth intact — Johnson is still an enthusiastic participant in festival events. TRAVERSE CITY — Lani Bathje can still recall the excitement of National Cherry Festival week, when she and her friends packed in as many events as they could. "I lived in town and a bunch of us kids would go to the corner of Sixth and Union and watch the children's parade,” said Bathje, a teacher at Buckley Schools. "That to me was a big memory, seeing if you could recognize any of the kids on the (school) float. And the bands were always a big hit.” Now Bathje is helping the Cherry Festival make memories for new generations as coordinator of its Children's Events — some 13 games, races, shows and other activities. Designed exclusively for kids, the events are expected to help the festival draw thousands of children during its eight-day run ending on Saturday. "I see a lot of the same kids every year participating so a lot of them are local,” Bathje said. "Most of them come with a neighbor or their child-care facility. There still are some moms around who can spend that time with their children, but in this day and age it's gotten a little harder to do.” For the 20 or so kids that make up the Kid's Club summer program at Alphabet Soup Pre-School, the festival events are tailor-made, said assistant club director JoyceAnn Howard. This year, the children and their chaperones will walk the three quarters of a mile from 14th Street to the downtown area to participate in a handful of events. They include Heritage Day on Tuesday, Fun and Games for Children on Thursday — their favorite, and the most popular event with about 1,000 participants — and the Kid's Sand Sculpture Contest on Friday. "They love it. They look forward to it every year,” said Howard, who equips the kids with sand buckets for the sand sculpture contest and sometimes has them prepare ahead of time by sketching their designs on paper. "We're always excited to do it, but it's definitely a busy week.” At the Grand Traverse Pavilions, classroom themes and even snacks will be centered around cherries this week, said child care services manager Nancy Schmidt. Instead of the usual outings to parks or the library, children will get to go to the festival's Heritage Day Pow Wow and Ultimate Air Dog competition and participate in the Junior Royale Parade. They'll also attend the Intergenerational Picnic hosted by the Pavilions, a multigenerational health care and resident community, as part of the festival. "The children get really excited because they get to be in the parade and the residents are excited because they remember participating, so when we get the two together, the energy is amazing,” Schmidt said. "It's definitely a different feeling this week.” Children are a big part of the annual festival and rightly so, said Kelley Johnson, coordinator of the Junior Royale Parade. "Part of what we do as parents is we always want to make sure they're healthy and happy, and raising them in a community that has things that are fun to do is part of our job,” he said. "I still remember going to the cider mill in Rochester, where I grew up, every fall. In Traverse City, kids grow up with the Cherry Festival. That's part of the memories you have growing up.” Johnson and his wife have been involved in the festival for years and can claim five former school princes and princesses in their families, including son Mitchell, now 14. "We still have the sign from when he was prince (at Bertha Vos Elementary),” Johnson said. "It's on a refrigerator in the garage.” This year, Mitchell Johnson plans to hang out at the festival with his friends, where they'll take in the fireworks and as many of the rides on the midway as they can stomach. He'll also ride with his family — mom Kelli is overall parade coordinator — at the end of the Junior Royale Parade. But his favorite memory is when he was a first-grade prince and arrived late for the cherry pie-eating contest. "I entered as soon as they said, 'Go,'” he recalled. "I ended up winning the contest, without any front teeth and coming in late. It was just a small blue ribbon but it was still pretty cool.” Traverse City publicist Tracy Kurtz clears her calendar for the week to attend festival events with her son Nick, 10, and daughter Audrey, 6. "The children and I have never missed a minute since they were born,” said Kurtz. "We love the parade, we love the midway, but we truly love F&M Park and all of the events there — the clowns and the games and the fire truck rides. We do it all, every day. We live like tourists for a whole week.” While the family has participated in all sorts of events, from turtle races to the famously secret Williams Brothers Cherry Royale Parade entries, Kurtz particularly remembers the year that Nick was prince at Long Lake Elementary and was to ride aboard the school's float in the junior parade. "It was the year of the downpour and the float was a giant bed floating on a cloud for the 'When you Wish upon a Star' theme,” she said. "As we were driving from Long Lake on the way to town, the stuffing was flying out of the clouds and the princess' mother and I had to lay on the bed to keep it down.” Then there was the year Audrey rode her cherry-festooned bicycle in the parade and kept steering into the crowd of onlookers because she was busy waving "like the royalty I tell them they are,” Kurtz said. "Every year there's something memorable for our whole family,” she added. While some children's events come and go — a Pogg tournament based on the once-popular card game lasted only a year — others are perennial favorites, Bathje said. However, the goal from year to year is to provide activities for kids of all ages, including those with special needs. "That's what I love about the Cherry Festival,” Kurtz said. "There are so many things that no kid is turned away. Even the Bubble Gum Blow offers a sugar-free (alternative) for kids with diabetes.”
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