For a hometown Plymouth act that launched in 1985 as a spoof, the Fred Hill Briefcase Drill Team ultimately marched far from its Main Street starting point in the Fourth of July parade. It might be said the concept of self-deprecating businessmen left room for development.
After getting the team on its feet for Independence Day, and then other celebrations, Hill approached The Parade Co. in 1988 about joining America’s Thanksgiving Parade, but was rebuffed. He was told the act just seemed too kooky.
A timely story in The Wall Street Journal raised the team’s profile, and with a coincidental change of parade management, an invitation to the group went out in 1989. The team of 16, representing all walks of professional life and ranging widely in age, donned their dark suits, red ties, and Santa caps for the three-mile sojourn over Woodward Avenue.
“We’re like an army of IRS agents,” Hill, a former Green Beret in the U.S. Army, said in 1996. “It’s an absolute hoot — our version of going hunting.”
The owner of Fred Hill Haberdashers took initial inspiration from the 1981 film “Stripes” and a lawnmower consort in another parade. At first Hill’s team wielded umbrellas, but they eventually embraced briefcases, and gave five performances per year after receiving up to 40 invitations.
Sometimes they marched for free. When a fee was received, it went to charity.
Following two heralds with a banner, the 16 marchers went four abreast as Hill directed the team with a drum major’s precision. Besides Detroit at Thanksgiving, they celebrated in the Red Wings’ Stanley Cup parades, commemorated Detroit Metro Airport’s new runway in Romulus, and took a regular spot in Traverse City’s Cherry Festival Parade.
Their routines included singing “Do-Wah-Diddy-Diddy,” Manfred Mann’s No. 1 hit from 1964.
Hill closed his store by 1992, went into real estate, and continued leading the group of men. They perfected such sarabandes as the stutter-stepping “Businessman Boogie” and the “Airport Delay,” in which they sat on their briefcases.
Hailed far and wide, they marched at the Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Ariz., and the Indianapolis 500. Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade included them in 2008 and 2012, before the aging team disbanded to rest their aching backs and knees.
“If you notice, people don’t carry briefcases anymore,” Hill told DBusiness in 2014. He passed away in 2021.
Before too long, though, a drill team revival was conceived. Longtime banker David Provost had belonged to Hill’s unit for a time in the 1980s, until he got married and moved from Plymouth.
“It was a well-tuned fighting machine,” says Provost, the 2025 president of the Detroit Athletic Club. “We had a couple of times where briefcases would get dropped, but it was interesting because we actually practiced (what to do) if somebody dropped their briefcase. One time the parade was really slow, and we had to stand in one spot for 20 minutes.”
Capable of a limited number of routines, they improvised. “We put our briefcases down and went around and shook hands with the crowd,” Provost says. “We’re going to incorporate that into this year’s parade.”
For the 2025 America’s Thanksgiving Parade Presented by Gardner White along Woodward Avenue from Midtown to downtown Detroit, the DAC Briefcase Drill Team will field more than 20 team members carrying briefcases.
“I think the most challenging thing was to find the drum major,” Provost says. “I was very lucky to get a gentleman named Scott Idle who has a lot of drill team experience and a loud voice.”
For Provost, putting the team together substantiates the inkling he had about reconstituting the act.
“We have new members, we have seasoned members, and we’re forming a nice bond in a nice group,” he says. “It’s just another way that the DAC is really a connector in the community.”
