"Dedicated to the
Preservation of our
History, in order
that we may pass
the light of our
symbol to the
future
generation."

NEWS FROM THE PRESIDENT

Attached please find a letter from Ivan Miller, Superintendent of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, pertaining to our interest in and participation in the Renovation of the August Beck House - as mentioned at this year's Annual Meeting of the South Manitou Memorial Society. I enclose this letter for your information and education as to our progress in this endeavor. If you have thoughts or feelings related to this matter and wish to share them with our Board of Officers, please write to: Donald Morris 6551 E. Dorado Blvd. Tucson, AZ 85715. Or Phone: 520-721-1697.
 
Thanks for your interest
 
President, Donald Morris

have an opportunity to lease and restore one of the historic farmsteads on South Manitou Island. It will not be without considerable effort and expense. If we take this on, I believe it will be the most important project that we have worked on. It needs a lot of explanation and discussion, and our Annual Meeting at the Empire United Methodist Church is the time and place to do it. We are at an important crossroads in the Society's history.
 
    In the last issue, the Historic Properties Management Plan was introduced and the public was invited to attend information meetings in March, 1998. Our President responded to the Park with the following letter:

 
Are you interested in helping the South Manitou Memorial Society do work on the island over the Memorial Day Weekend holiday? SAY YES! We are proposing, to the National Park Service, to perform some work projects over the holiday weekend. Projects such as: Removing encroaching vegetation around the Cemetery fence; Finish wooden rail fence in front of the Cemetery; Clear brush to the outlying gravesites of Elizabeth Shoemaker, Kitchen girls, and George and Maria Haas; and possibly other projects as time allows. You may come for as long as you desire. We are proposing Friday, May 28 - Monday, May 31. We may or may not obtain housing for this time period. I will know more in another month. We are also hoping to begin painting the Schoolhouse - perhaps this summer! If you would be interested in future outings - let me know and we'll maintain a list of volunteers. Please call, write or email me, Kathy Bietau, with your desire to be a part of this volunteer effort! I will keep you informed as to our plans. Thank you!
 
Kathy Bietau 2400 N. Morse Rd. Fountain, MI 49410 (616)462-8937. email: bietau@carrinter.net.
 

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The South Manitou Memorial Society is considering sponsoring a Memorial Traveling Trunk(s) and donating them to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. What is a Traveling Trunk, you say? It is a trunk filled with educational supplies, materials, artifacts, etc. for use on South Manitou Island during the summer season and for use on the mainland during the winter in the school systems to teach students and visitors about a particular cultural resource area. A Trunk was done in memory of a past park employee about Archeology and Native American History. It has become a very successful project! Ideas appropriate for our group to do would be: South Manitou's Maritime History; South Manitou Lighthouse History; South Manitou's Agricultural History; South Manitou's Fishing History; Individual Family histories; etc. We currently have money in memory of 2 South Manitou Memorial Society Members. The trunks run approximately $100 each, or less.
 
Please let us know your feelings about this idea! Call or write our President, Don Morris.
 

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I Remember When ...."
 
 
    It was early December in 1916 and like children everywhere I was excited about the approaching holiday season. It was to be our second Christmas in our new home our father, Martin Furst, had built for us on the island.
 
    I knew our parents had been mailing out orders to Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward & Company for the gifts my brothers and I were to receive on Christmas morning. I also knew that my parents had given Mrs.
 

Burdick, the lady who had the grocery store down near the big dock, a list of all the candies and nuts they would be purchasing for the holidays. Some of our neighbors had given Mrs. Burdick their orders also. This was done so she would know about how much of these items to order from the wholesale supplier she dealt with in Chicago.
 
    And so it was that on December 10, 1916, Mr. Jim Burdick, the lighthouse keeper, stopped to tell my mother that they had received their supplies from Chicago and that my parents could pick up the things they had ordered at any time. My mother told my father when be came home that evening and he said that he would be making the north patrol from eight to ten o'clock p.m and he would stop by Burdick's store to pick up the order. He told me that he would have to use my sled on which to haul it so I knew that I wouldn't be going out sledding with my friends that evening. I watched as my father tied a big box on my sled and then I asked him if I could go with him as far as Burdick's store. He hesitated at first because he knew that I had been in school that day and I suppose he felt another long slippery walk along the beach might be too tiring for a ten year old girl; besides I had to go to school the next day. Perhaps I coaxed a little more too, so he agreed I could go.
 
    My father had long legs and was a fast walker, but by taking two steps to his one I was able to keep up with him and soon we were at Burdick's store where I was to wait for him to go on to the north patrol post about a mile farther northeast. At the store I watched Mrs. Burdick weighing out all those good things my parents had ordered for our Christmas---hard candies, chocolates, mixed nuts and peanuts with the shells on them. I was so excited and happy, however the store was heated by a large "Round Oak" heating stove and it was quite warm and very comfortable sitting there. I found that I was getting very sleepy and it was hard for me to stay awake as I waited. At last my father returned and we loaded up the box on my sled with all those big brown paper bags of goodies. It did seem like a much longer walk from the store to the station than it was coming down, but we finally arrived home. My mother was quite uneasy about me being up so late so I was hurried off to bed.
 
    My mother told later of how my father sat and shelled peanuts to eat before returning to the station.
 
    I know I must have slept soundly and the next morning I was hurrying to get ready for school when my mother said that it was such a nice morning she was sure the mail boat would be going over to Glen Haven that day. She said she was nearly out of kerosene and that before leaving to go to school I must take our five gallon kerosene can down to the Coast Guard Station and give it to my father so he could take it down to the mail boat which was tied up at the dock near the station. I was very upset that I had to do this extra errand before going to meet my school mates and walking to school with them. It might mean that I'd be late and would have to walk that mile and a half alone so I ran down to the station as fast as I could with that kerosene can and I went to the men's loafing room where I found my father sitting straddled of the back of a chair with his head bowed and resting on his arms. As I rushed in and spoke to him he raised his head and as I gave him the message he sort of moaned. I thought he looked different than when I saw him the night before, but I was in such a hurry to go meet my friends I rushed out of the station and went on to school. It makes me very sad to say that I never saw my father alive again.
 
    That afternoon as my brother Norman (who was two years younger than I) and I came home from school we had to pass Aunt Hattie Barnhart's house which is now the National Park's Visitor Center, and it was just across the boardwalk from our house. When Aunt Hattie saw us she stepped outside her door to call to us that we were supposed to come stay with them as my mother was not at home. When we were inside her warm kitchen she explained that my father was very sick and that he and my mother had been taken across the lake to Glen Haven

in the Coast Guard lifeboat to see a doctor. My younger brother Glenn who was three years old had been left with Aunt Hattie too. She had two children, Beatrice who was a year older than I, and a son George who was a year younger. They had always been our playmates.
 
    It so happened that some time during the fall of 1916 that a heavily loaded steamboat out in the Manitou Channel had hooked on to the telephone cable that ran between South Manitou and the Mainland and broken it, so there was no means of communication for us on the Island, except by using Blinker Light signals between the Coast Guard Station at Sleeping Bear and the Island Station at night. Thus we received no word of my father's condition until the night of Dec. 16, when we received the message that my father had died in the Traverse City hospital after surgery for a ruptured appendix. So instead of the happy holiday season our family had been looking forward to, we had a funeral in Charlevoix, where my father's brother, David Furst, was serving in the Coast Guard and my mother's family lived. It was a very sad time for all of us.
 

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I Remember When ...."
 
 
    In 1915, when the United States Lifesaving Service became a part of the United States Revenue Cutter Service and together they were named the United States Coast Guard, a great change took place in the lifestyle of most of the people living on the Point. Until that time the lifesavers had gone to their homes to eat their meals with their families. As a rule they all lived near the station and they were allowed thirty minutes to go to their homes for lunch or dinner. A large bell was mounted on the southwest corner of the station grounds and whenever that bell was rung it was necessary that crew members respond very quickly to any emergency call. Sometimes a youthful prankster would ring the bell just to see the men come running to the station. As a rule they did that only once as every crew member made them understand it wasn't funny.
 
    The new Coast Guard rules were much more militaristic than the lifesavers were used to. All the Coast Guards were required to eat and sleep at the station. Their uniforms were much different and rules for drilling were much more rigidly enforced. The stations on the islands had no cooks or kitchen equipment. None of the members of the crew wanted to be "a cook". They were a hardy lot of seagoers. Of course all the groceries had to be ordered from the mainland and not one of the Coast Guards wanted the job of caterer. They knew nothing of food preparation or the quantities of groceries to order. There was also the question of who was going to pay the bills. No budget had been allotted for a cook and equipment for a kitchen so this procedure for meal preparation was put in place in order to begin to comply with the orders from the newly established Coast Guard that the men were to eat at the station.
 
    I recall the turmoil all these changes made in our homelife. After a week or so of some very meager meals, the married men in the crew decided they would ask their wives to take turns in coming down to the station to prepare the meals for them. Some of the women had several small children and they refused to take on such a task; however, my mother and a few other women agreed to cook for the crew for the remainder of that year or until the navigation season was over.

    All this change caused my brother Norman and I to be very unhappy because our mother was never at home when we came home from school. She would take my little brother Glenn with her when she went down to the Coast Guard Station to prepare supper for the crew. We had to wait until she had prepared and served supper to the men at the station before she came home to feed us. I can remember my mother going into our root cellar and getting squash and other vegetables, canned food, etc. that had been put away for our winter supply and taking it down to the station to prepare for the men. This did not last very long because the station closed for the season shortly and then our mother and father were both at home. When the station opened in 1916 a cook was hired from the mainland.
 
    The world conditions at the time and the possibility of our country going to war created a lot of changes.
 

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A Poem Taken from the Betty Kramer Collection:
 
 

 

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