Just before rain started to fall, families gathered for a bike parade in Petoskey’s Bayfront Park. Kids decorated their bikes with colorful streamers and drawings. Some of them dressed in costumes like tigers and dinosaurs.
They laughed and rang bells as they took off from the starting line. A few would later win prizes like gift cards and new biking gear.
But this wasn’t the first time Petoskey held a children's bike parade. It was a tradition here until the middle of the 20th century.
And on this day, over three dozen children from Emmet County and beyond, along with area nonprofits, helped revive the decades-old event, and honor the legacy of a local woman who rode in those early parades.
REMEMBERING LYNN
Lynn Duse was best known as the second-generation owner of the Circus Shop on Mitchell Street — a children’s clothing retailer opened by her mother, Edna Brown McCartney Danser in 1946.
Generations of Petoskey residents bought clothes from the Circus Shop and rode "Happy," an iconic merry-go-round horse.
As a girl, Lynn worked in the shop with her mother.
She’s photographed on the cover of a July 1958 edition of the Northern Michigan Skipper. She’s wearing a long white dress with a bright smile on her face. It was taken near the harbor, and she poses with a high-wheeled penny farthing bicycle.
The magazine called her a lover of theater and modeling as well as “cherry sodas, dentine gum, big thick dramatic books with small print, movies and pizza.”
Her brother, Abbott McCartney, remembers her being “fiercely independent” and the best sister he could’ve asked for. Once, when they were kids, Lynn and some neighborhood friends sold seashells they collected by the beach to buy young Abbott a birthday gift.
“That shows I had a loving sister at a very young age trying to take care of me but also it shows that she had early retailing skills because she knew where to sell merchandise on the busy streets,” McCartney said.
Lynn got the opportunity to travel the world. She met her husband, Luciano on a trip to Venice. She worked in top department stores in Chicago and San Francisco.
Even after all of her adventures, she returned to Petoskey to take over the Circus shop with her mother, this time with help from children of her own.
“She was always so great with children,” Marnie, Lynn’s daughter said. “She’d just have to say hello and their faces would light up. Not everyone has that ability but she did.”
Beyond the Circus Shop, Duse was an active and charismatic community member. Her memories of growing up in town made her a natural fit in the Petoskey Historical Society Board of Directors
“People in Petoskey knew and loved Lynn for her positive attitude toward people,” Petoskey Mayor John Murphy said. “Whether it was someone who vacationed here during the summers and would come up and stay at cottages or the longtime locals she would remember your name and family.”
Murphy said Lynn took it upon herself to make Petoskey a welcoming place.
And she did until the day she died in January at 80 years old.
The loss was felt by the longtime residents of Little Traverse Bay.
REVIVING TRADITION
Abbott loved seeing his sister ride in the Fourth of July parade when they were children in the 1940s and 1950s. Lynn would decorate her bike with streamers on her handlebars and baseball cards click-clacking in the spokes of her wheels.
“There would be the high school band and firetrucks and a special section for children to ride with decorated bikes,” Abbott said. “Lynn remembered that … and that’s why she wanted to recreate it.”
Sometime in the year before she died, Lynn approached multiple community members with the idea of bringing back the children’s bike parade.
One of those people was Cindy Okerlund, a retired teacher at Harbor Springs Public Schools and the founder of “Pedaling with a Purpose” — a program that takes Emmet County fourth graders for a day of classes on the Northwestern State Trail.
“We met a couple times, but then we ended up getting an email from her saying that her husband wasn’t well, and it just needed to be on hold right now. So we just kind of stepped back, but I had it on my calendar in January of this year to call her about it,” Okerlund said. “The day I had planned to call her was the day Lynn passed. She passed away six months after her husband.”
The planning group didn’t stop meeting. Now, the goal was to organize the parade in Lynn’s honor.
CELEBRATING LIFE
On Saturday, children fly down the sidewalk on their colorful bikes. They wave at the judges for the decorating contest as they pass by — Marnie, Abbott and Murphy among them.
After the parade, a crowd of children sit criss-cross in the grass, awaiting the winners of the raffle to be announced.
And as it starts to rain, Marnie’s 2-year-old son Malcolm plays with a balloon right in front of the stage like no one is watching.
Marnie said her plan was always to close the Circus Shop after her mom passed. “I never wanted to do it without her,” she said.
But residents can still see relics of the store in the Petoskey Historical Museum in Bayfront Park, including “Happy the Horse” next to a photograph of Lynn's mother.
Lynn Duse may be gone but the parade she wanted so badly will live on as an annual event.
Members of the Petoskey Historical Society Board of Directors said the event will happen on the second Saturday of each June with hope of growing partners and participants.
For more information visit the historical society’s website or contact Top of Michigan Trails Council.
“To me, the parallel to Lynn’s life was George Bailey from ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ ” Abbott said. “She had her chances to leave but her roots were here. And she applied herself fully, to make Petoskey the great thriving community that it is.”
