Allow me to bring you up to date on what has happened since the last Newsletter in July. As the minutes in this issue show, the members at the Annual Meeting were in favor of trying to establish leases on both the August Beck and George Conrad Hutzler Farmsteads on South Manitou Island. What the minutes cannot show is the great enthusiasm they displayed for the project and the strong sense of urgency to get it underway.

The next day many of the members made the boat trip to South Manitou including your four officers. Many of the members went on the tour which includes the Beck and Hutzler farms. We spent more time there than is usual but were disappointed that we could not enter the buildings.

However, on August 6, Treasurer Joe Orbeck, Zella and I, and the Park's Historical Architect Kim Mann made another trip to the island on the park boat. We were able to enter the two homes and found the Beck house fairly well preserved and the Hutzler home in very poor, if not dangerous condition, showing the results of

Despite the cool and rainy day, we all came away with a sense of great excitement and were sorry to have to leave the island to return to the mainland.

Fortunately, the photographs taken under extreme conditions came out surprisingly well and showed us things that we had missed

After conferring with Vice President John Kolasinski and Secretary Judy Fogle, Joe Orbeck and I met on August 13 with Ivan Miller, Superintendent of the Lakeshore, and Kim Mann, to indicate that the Society was interested and eager to go forward with the process of establishing a partnership with the Lakeshore. One of our questions was whether the Park could have the generator, lights, pump, well, and septic field made operational by the Park maintenance staff. Others questions included whether appliances and furniture from homes on the island taken over by the Park could be made available to us, as well as how materials, equipment, and persons could be transported to the island. Most of the answers were not encouraging, and for the first time Joe and I felt that this process was going to take much longer than we had hoped. Ivan Miller gently reminded me that I had worked with bureaucracies before so I should know that they took longer to finish projects. When I asked whether this was a 30-day or six-month time table, he stressed that it would take at least six months. Where we left it was that the Lakeshore would draft a proposal which we could respond to.

Our son, Dwight, and his family were camping on South Manitou in August along with their next door neighbors and their family. Dwight owns a marine service business in the Jackson area, and earlier ran a K-Mart auto repair center. More importantly, he and his wife, Natalia, are near finishing a complete rebuilding of their old farm house near Grass Lake. On August 21, the two families were able to go through the Beck House and Dwight concluded that the task was "do-able", but would require a lot of work by members of the Society. (More on this in a separate article in this Newsletter)

I talked to Ivan Miller again on September 18, and he indicated that no progress has been made on our proposal so there was no reason for us to meet. As of mid-October when this is being written, there is still no indication of any progress.

One thing that I have learned recently is that the lease can be made by a local park for only 5 to 7 years, although the Regional Office of the National Park Service can make it for much longer. Since the cost of renovation may equal the Society's total resources (although the plan is to raise the money to pay for it), I would not recommend doing the renovation without a longer lease. This would make the approval of the proposal take even longer.

The task of renovating the August Beck house will be a "very large job" according to Society member Dwight J. Morris, 7416 Cain Road, Jackson, Ml 49201 (517) 522-5441, who with his wife, Natalia, are in the final stages of rebuildiing an old farm house in the Grass Lake area.

The first step is to have the Lakeshore make the generator, water pump, well, septic system, water heater, electrical and gas lines operational. Next would be a meeting at the Beck House with a group of five or six persons, including someone from the Park maintenance staff to develop a punch list, room by room, of what needs to be repaired. This would include accurate measurements of what must be done, and what would also be good to do. That meeting would determine what materials, tools, and other equipment would be needed and the logistics of transporting it to the island (which does not have an Ace Hardware!). There will also need to be ways of transporting people and materials from the dock to the job site. The coordination of the tasks and the volunteers would also need attention.

The only way that the Society can complete the necessary work on the Beck and Hutzler properties is to have a great many of us contribute our time, skills, and finances. No one can do all of them, but most of us can do some of them.

To help facilitate this, please fill out the SKILLS LIST INVENTORY insert to this Newsletter to help us determine what skills we have, and what skills we may be in need of. Please send the completed inventory list to Donald A. Morris, 6551 E. Dorado Blvd , Tucson, AZ 85715. (520) 731-1697. We will be requesting assistance for "labor" at a later date Please feel free to comment at the bottom of the inventory list about any concerns/comments or suggestions you may have!!!!! Thank you so much!!!!!