Boyne Falls celebrated its 51st Annual Polish Festival from July 30 through Aug. 2. Visitors, with pierogi in hand, donned red and white t-shirts, participated in carnival games and danced along to the Kielbasa Kings’ accordion melodies under the Polka Tent.
The four-day festival aims to bring together the surrounding community through a celebration of Polish culture. Signature events include a weekend carnival, a car show, the Grand Royal Parade and, to conclude the festivities, the festival’s signature 4-Wheel Drive Mud Run.
Alice Loper, who serves as the treasurer on the festival’s committee, said one of her favorite parts of the celebrations is the unifying effect they seem to have on visitors.
“Seeing how much the community comes together is one of the highlights of the festival,” Loper said. “It’s just a real community base. All the members of the committee, we all know each other. We also get to see our past committee members, we get to see the history exhibit, the flea market — everything is just so much fun.”
Loper added that guests enjoy the festival’s music, food and Mud Run the most out of all the events.
“The Mud Run’s huge,” Loper said. “Usually we get around 2,000-3,000 people. Our community loves it so much so we bring it back every year.”
Loper also mentioned the “Class Booths” as one of the main ways the festival engages with the local community. Generations of Boyne Falls students occupied the four booths on festival grounds, each one designated for a specific class year. A small group of students from each grade work at their class booth, dishing out food to raise money for the senior class trip to Hawaii.
Sophomores Amaya Becker and Jesse Markillie spent the weekend serving festival guests from their booth for the second year in a row.
“Everybody loves it,” Becker said. “I think it really brings together our classes and just the community of people because everybody just knows everybody.”
“This year we have waffles with Nutella and stuff like that, last year we just had simple Mexicanfood,” Markillie added. “And the seniors always sell Polish food. It’s the most money-making food.”
On the menu this year at the senior booth were classic Polish dishes such as golabkies and kielbasas, as well as one new item — breakfast-style pierogi sweetened with maple syrup.
The Polish Festival originated with the centennial and bicentennial celebrations of Boyne Falls. After those two years, Christine Thomas, one of the founding members of the festival, was inspired to make it an annual celebration.
“I was involved with the centennial and the bicentennial, and then we decided, ‘Hey, we got something going on here, let’s start the Polish Festival,” Thomas said. “There was a group of us, we met and were deciding, ‘Should we call it the Galumpki Festival, or the Pierogi?’ and we just said ‘Well, why don’t we just do Polish Festival?’”
Thomas said witnessing the formation and solidification of a community during the centennial and bicentennial motivated the festival’s creation.
“We were bringing in the community and family,” Thomas said. “People were coming home. It was like a family reunion. People found out they were related to people they didn’t know they were related to.”
Craig Geml, owner of Polish Pride of Michigan, a company which sells Polish-themed merchandise at Polish festivals, is one example of how the festival engages the cultural community on a broader scale.
“My family is very deep in the Polish community in Detroit for many years, from my great-grandfather all the way down,” Geml said. “My daughter still dances traditional folk dance, they’ve been to Poland to perform over there.”
Some of Geml’s products include classic Polish eagle t-shirts, among more non-traditional merchandise. Stacked in folded piles under his store tent were shirts with phrases such as “Polish Party Queen.”
“I think the Polish Fest is one of those things the community looks forward to like a Friday night football game,” Geml said. “There’s a wonderful group of people who are running this festival now, they’re just the best people and everyone should come down and enjoy Boyne Falls Polish Fest.”
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Pierogi and polka highlight the Boyne Falls Polish Festival
Reporting by Anna Di Iorio-Reyes, The Petoskey News-Review / The Petoskey News-Review
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Anna Di Iorio-Reyes, The Petoskey News-Review | USA TODAY Network
