Editor’s note: This article was published in Grand Traverse Scene magazine’s Summer II 2025 issue. Pick up a free copy at area hotels, visitor’s centers, chambers of commerce or at the Record-Eagle building on Front Street. Click here to read GT Scene in its entirety online.
Capture the wind. Meet the clouds. Become obsessed with a centuries-old pastime. Frankfort’s Let’s Go Fly a Kite event puts fun and thrills in your hands.
Youth and adults from throughout the region and states from the East to West coasts discover or rediscover the joy of flying kites.
“It’s like a marionette in the sky,” said Greg Schmid, otherwise known as Frankfort’s kite guy. Schmid has been flying and designing kites since boyhood. He’s a regular presence at Frankfort’s kite events where he shares his passion for soaring through the skies and mentors the young in the art and skill of flying. “The kid is a puppet master. That’s what gets them going,” he said.
Let’s Go Fly a Kite 2025 takes place the last Saturday of June, July and August from 3 to 5 p.m. at Frankfort’s Lake Michigan Beach Turnaround. One hundred free kites are given on each flying day. “We’ve never had leftovers,” said program coordinator Donna Phillips.
Schmid said it’s quite a sight when dozens of kites fill the air. The flying aficionado personally owns a collection of 300 kites. He typically brings a variety to events to demo. They may include stunt or fighter kites, two or four-line models. Event goers are welcome to also bring their own models to showcase.
“Frankfort is the best place in the whole world to fly a kite,” Schmid said. “They’ve got everything — access and steady breezes every day after 3 p.m., like clockwork.”
Let’s Go Fly a Kite launched eight years ago when Ginny Istnick and her late husband, Bob, presented the idea to the Frankfort-Elberta Area Chamber of Commerce. The couple observed a kite festival while visiting Florida. They recognized Frankfort was an ideal spot for hosting a similar event.
Phillips, a chamber employee at the time, took on the task of coordinating the happening. Although she has since retired from the chamber, she continues to organize what has become an annual community happening.
Phillips enlists volunteers to assemble the 300 kites to be given away. Citizens from the local garden club, yacht club, Rotary and others contribute to the endeavor, gathering in Phillips’ backyard for an assembly bee. The Istnicks contributed the initial funding as well as ongoing funding for the event. This year Frankfort Rotary added financial support.
Let’s Go Fly a Kite has generated a wealth of stories through the years. “One of my favorites is the celebration of a couple’s 56th wedding anniversary,” Phillips recalled. “They said they hadn’t flown kites since they were kids.”
Another favorite story involved a woman, her seven daughters and their children. The family group adopted kites, soaring skyward together. “That was a hoot,” Phillips said.
Some parents and kids are both kite-flying newbies. They discover capturing and controlling wind energy can require family teamwork. “There’s a lot of happy kids, parents and older people — laughing and giggling together,” Phillips said.
Kite flying is also a time for digital-free family connections to happen. The screen-free real-world activity immerses flyers in a three-dimensional encounter with natural forces, a rival activity to digital games.
It takes only three minutes to send a kite into the sky. “But you can spend a lifetime trying to master it and I have,” Schmid said.
History enfolds Frankfort’s wind resource. In recent years, the town developed a reputation as a popular wind surfing destination. But for decades, Greenpoint Flyers Association has hosted hang gliding and paragliding from the hills and cliffs surrounding the beach community.
The flying footprint has even deeper links to history. The National Soaring Museum cites Frankfort as a soaring mecca dating to the early 1930s. The town was home to Stan Corcoran’s Frankfort Sailplane company which contracted to manufacture the first military training gliders. Gliders were used in World War II to carry troops, supplies and artillery into enemy territory. Known as “Silent Wings,” gliders were considered America’s first stealth aircraft.
Now approaching 90, Ginny Istnick lived through the years of Frankfort’s flying evolutions. She never tires of witnessing the joy kite-flying creates along the Lake Michigan beach. “I like to see people smile,” she said. “We have enough negativity in the world. Let’s brighten the day.”
Istnick plans to be present at summer 2025 sessions and to remain involved in the events as long as she is able. Schmid and students from Frankfort-Elberta High School Honor Society will be on hand to provide tips and assistance to kite flyers.
The stage is set, and kites are ready for taking on the winds. “It should be another great flying year,” Phillips said.