Ken Winship calls Clarkston’s annual Labor Day parade “a good tradition,” and he’s pleased to be the 2003 parade grand marshal.
“It’s a shock to me, and it’s an honor,” he said. “Everybody loves a parade.”
Clarkston Rotary President Joel DeLong broke the news.
“He said he had a favor to ask of me,” Winship said. After hearing he news, he told DeLong, “Let me go sit down.”
A 40-year Clarkston resident, 33-year owner of Winship Studio and member of the Rotary, Winship has been involved in many aspects of community service, something his fellow Rotarians must have taken into account when choosing him.
“I was overwhelmed that they would ask me,” Winship said, considering the honor to be a “thank you” of sorts for his years of service. “We’ve tried to service the community with our studio. It’s been a wonderful community to build a business in.”
Winship opened a photography studio in his home in 1970, built his first separate studio on Sashabaw Road in 1972 and remained there until moving to the current N. Main Street location in 2001.
Over his 33 years, the studio has handled an estimated 1,600 weddings, 2,000 family sittings, 20,000 high school seniors, 375,000 underclass photos and countless other assignments. While many studios traditionally use backgrounds on a flat screen, the Winship studio has several three-dimensional sets and a special outdoor landscape to give subjects a choice of portrait backgrounds.
His two children both attended Clarkston schools K-12, and six grandchildren are attending Clarkston schools.
With the Clarkston Rotary, Winship is a former president, has participated in the sale of Goodfellow newspapers (sometimes dressed in a Santa suit) and purchased new Christmas decorations for the downtown area.
Along the way, he also served with the Clarkston Jaycees, chaired the 1974 Junior Miss program, coached t-ball, served as a volunteer firefighter and substitute vocational school teacher.
The involvement in community service is one shared by other local business people, and Winship believes that has been one of the positive attributes of the Clarkston area, especially in the past.
“It was a small, tight group of business people,” he said, and that led to a mutually-beneficial relationship with the outside community. “You know each other in the business community, and that spills over.”
Relatively few small towns have a Labor Day parade, but Winship said the Clarkston Rotary has done it “as far back as I can remember.”
In addition to maintaining a great community tradition, he believes it helps promote the Rotary to the community.
“We hope people who don’t know what Rotary is will stop and ask us,” he said.
That’s important in more ways than one, because the club is always looking for “new blood.” In an increasingly busy society, there is a need for more volunteers, he said.
“The club is only as good as the people in it,” he said. “It’s a fun organization, and it’s a wonderful way to serve the community.”
Winship’s role in the parade is, he admitted, rather simple: “Waving.” However, he said he is working on ways to make his presence in the parade more interesting.
“I’m trying to talk some of my grandchildren into riding with me,” he said.