Sean Moran spent his childhood Thanksgivings along Detroit’s Woodward Avenue, watching the floats and balloons and bands march past. But it was something else in those parades, something distinctly Detroit, that captured his imagination.
“The thing that really stuck out to me were these old papier-mâché heads that were kind of scary to me as a young kid,” said Mr. Moran, who is now 54. Those caricatures eventually won him over.
The Big Heads, as they are known, are a Thanksgiving staple in Detroit. They include papier-mâché parrots and lions and tigers and — because, why not? — a monkey with a cigar in its mouth. Then there are the human ones: large-noggined likenesses of Henry Ford and Aretha Franklin and Bob Seger and Barry Sanders and other Michigan dignitaries, past and present, living and dead.
Detroit’s Thanksgiving parade is not Macy’s, nor does it try to be. It is also not the most famous event on Detroit’s holiday calendar, a title that belongs to the Lions football game, a Turkey Day mainstay since 1934. But the parade, which predates the football game by a decade, might be the purest encapsulation of Thanksgiving in a city that leans harder into this holiday than most anywhere else.
“We’re homespun, but national-worthy,” said Tony Michaels, the president and chief executive of the nonprofit organization that stages the event.
The event also traces the arc of its hometown. Like Detroit itself, the parade boomed throughout much of the 20th century, gaining national acclaim. Like Detroit, the parade fell on hard times, losing some of its shine but enduring. And like Detroit, where the population is growing for the first time in decades, the parade has found its swagger again, with a larger staff and a freshened lineup of Big Heads (new this year: Kirk Gibson, the former Detroit Tigers outfielder).
“The first year I was in the parade, we went past a whole lot of empty buildings,” said Mayor Mike Duggan, who will be a grand marshal on Thursday as he approaches the end of his 12-year tenure running Detroit. “Every year that went by,” he added, “you could see the growth of the city spreading.”
The parade, which is televised across much of the country even if it’s not as universally recognized as its New York cousin, served as a glimmer of continuity amid Detroit’s transformation. Even as new buildings went up, new people moved in and a new streetcar line was installed on Woodward, the Big Heads and the bands were out there on Thanksgiving.
“When the parade happens, it still feels like the city that we’ve always known Detroit to be — a city for the people that are here,” said Ronald Perkins Jr., who marched in the parade as a high schooler in the early 2000s and now is an assistant director of the All City Marching Band.
A few miles from the growing downtown, the floats and Big Heads live inside a leaky old auto assembly plant that is hard to find even with GPS.
The inside of the building, where workers once assembled Chrysler New Yorkers and Plymouth Gran Furys, is a cartoon come to life, with 40-foot float segments, half-painted elephants and dozens upon dozens of Big Heads, many of which were brought to Michigan from Tuscany by parade supporters more than 50 years ago. Italian-language newsprint is still visible inside some of them.
Their future was once in doubt. When Mr. Moran, who was drawn to the Big Heads as a child, visited the parade’s storage facility about 20 years ago, he found that many of them were in sorry shape. Some had not appeared in the parade in years.
“They were sitting up in the rafters,” Mr. Moran recalled, “with holes in them, dust.”
Detroit in the early 2000s had far larger problems. The population was in free-fall, the auto manufacturers were struggling, and the city was careening toward bankruptcy.
But Mr. Moran saw an opportunity to bring the Big Heads back to life and save a bit of history. He helped create the Big Head Corps and recruited friends and others to join. For a donation, they could choose which head to wear on parade day.
Marching three miles as a Big Head is a singular Detroit experience. It is also, as Mr. Moran put it, “a hell of a workout” if the weather is warm and “not for someone that’s not in decent shape.” These days, Mr. Moran marches in a bulldog costume, one of the original Italian heads, and his 17-year-old son wears a Big Head version of Isiah Thomas, the former Pistons point guard.
The Italian heads have been augmented over the decades with a who’s who of famous Michiganders, including Gerald R. Ford, Gordie Howe, Rosa Parks, Gilda Radner, Bo Schembechler and Coleman A. Young.
The heads are fragile and require regular maintenance, especially the more popular ones that make cameos at other events.
“Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder are usually my top two patients that come in all the time to the Big Head hospital,” said Maddie Duda, an artist who serves as the Big Head surgeon.
Being a Big Head is a uniquely Detroit form of celebrity. A few years ago, Paul W. Smith, a longtime local radio broadcaster who hosts a preparade show, was immortalized in papier-mâché.
“It was kind of like one of those out-of-body experiences,” said Mr. Smith, whose Big Head holds a WJR-AM microphone. “You look and you go, ‘Holy crap, that’s me walking down the parade with one of these huge papier-mâché heads.’”
Mr. Michaels, the parade president, said the event has grown in recent years. The parade now employs seven artists, up from one, and has tripled the length of its floats. More large companies have sponsored floats, and Gardner White Furniture, based in Michigan, has signed on as the main sponsor into the 2030s.
Still, the parade is grounded in the classics, like the Detroit Public Schools Community District All City Marching Band, which has been rehearsing for the occasion for months. Erynn Hinton, a drum major, described the feeling of marching down Woodward as “a little bit surreal,” with the students “realizing how important we are to the city and to the parade itself.”
This year, nine bands will be joined by 29 floats, giant balloons and around 90 fully costumed Big Heads that will dance and pose for photos and hand out beads.
Only one thing could get in the way: Rain. While the Big Heads can withstand stiff winds and the November chill, a passing downpour can ruin papier-mâché.
So far, so good, though. When Aretha and Stevie and the rest of the corps step off on Thursday morning, forecasters expect temperatures in the 30s, with cloudy skies and dry pavement ahead.
Mitch Smith is a Chicago-based national correspondent for The Times, covering the Midwest and Great Plains.
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