Blossomtime started with a sermon about fruit trees

It started from a pulpit. In 1906 the Reverend W. J. Cady led the First Congregational Church in Benton Harbor. He told his parishioners to get out and drive through the fruit orchards while the trees were in bloom. He called the blossoms symbols of life renewed. That sermon is the seed everyone points to for the Blossomtime Festival. It grew into a yearly celebration of the fruit country that rings Benton Harbor and St. Joseph each spring.

The festival’s centerpiece came later. In the early 1920s a local fruit processor named Fred Granger and the Reverend Joshua Randall hatched an idea. They wanted a floral parade to show off the area’s growing businesses. The first Grand Floral Parade rolled out on May 14, 1924. It had thirty floats, a couple of marching bands, and a long tail of private automobiles. Catherine Burrell of Benton Harbor was crowned the first Blossomtime Queen that same year. Voters chose her by ballots clipped from the newspaper.

A century on, the parade still does the one thing that makes it distinctive. It starts in St. Joseph and winds through that city. Then it crosses the bridge over the St. Joseph River and finishes in Benton Harbor. Two cities, one parade, marching across the water between them. That is part of why the festival bills itself as the oldest and largest multi-community festival in Michigan. Dozens of communities take part, and each sends its own royalty and floats.

If you want the real flavor, skip the floats for a minute and watch the crowd. Whole families stake out the curb on the bridge approach with lawn chairs and coolers. The marching bands hit the rise over the river just as the lake wind comes up off Lake Michigan. That wind sets every float’s crepe-paper blossoms shaking.