COURIER Newsletter Feature Articles are reproduced below for your for your review.

                           SPRING   2010

Lucy Sense was born and raised on a diary farm in the Arcadia area, also graduated from the local high school, and after their marriage, she and Bumpy took up residence in nearby Winona, where they raised a family of two sons and two daughters, and resided until Bumpy’s retirement. They kept in touch with Bayfield, returning now and then to vacation and visit friends. In 1993 they purchased the historic Hokenson farm home in the Town of Russell, where they reside today. After moving back in 1999, Lucy and Bumpy both began volunteering their time and expertise at the BHA.

Lucy is an active member in the Town of Russell’s Sunnyside Club, the Chequamegon Choir, the American Legion Auxiliary and she oversaw the office operations for the BHA for approximately ten years, while Bumpy served as its treasurer. Just as importantly, Bumpy plied his ample electrical and carpentry skills to the seemingly endless jobs in the new Heritage Center building while Lucy managed the BHA business office.

The contributions of Lucy and Bumpy Sense go beyond the Town of Russell and the city of Bayfield. Today they have five grandchildren serving in our country’s armed forces in both Cuba and the Middle East.

Obviously, the BHA is grateful to both Lucy and Bumpy Sense.

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                        WINTER   2010

The Bayfield Courier Quarterly Feature Article

    Making Bayfield History:  Mark Johnson

                                                        by Howard D. Paap

Imagine being an intimate part of the daily operation of a full-service hardware store right on Rittenhouse Avenue in the heart of downtown Bayfield during the 1950’s, -60’s and -70’s. The town’s daily hustle and bustle would have been a pleasant backdrop to the sounds, smells, and comings-and-goings of the store as you and your family personally saw to the hardware needs of the region’s busy folks. Now imagine living in a house actually attached to the store. Such colorful memories are held, and treasured, by Bayfield’s Mark Johnson.

Mark was born in 1946 in the Ashland Hospital, the year his parents, Leonard and Annette Johnson, purchased the store and its attached house from Britton Burtness. Today this large red brick-faced building, with adjacent house and its small streetside front yard, is one of our prominent downtown architectural markers.

After his earlier years in Bayfield Mark took employment in the Daughtery Hardware store in Duluth, where he worked for 37 years until retiring in 2008. Mark knows hardware. He was born into and grew up in it, and he devoted his entire working life to it. For some of those years he maintained an apartment in Duluth, but he says he really never left Bayfield. Today he still resides on Rittenhouse Avenue in a downtown house his parents purchased after they sold the store in 1978.

“It was nice,” he says, “being downtown in the middle of everything. The movie theater was right there, and at times my mother would give me a dollar so I could go across the street to Sig and Margaret’s Community Cafe for lunch. We didn’t miss anything.”

Mark enjoyed stepping into the nearby office of the Bayfield Press to watch Mr. Dexter melt lead and set type on his linotype machine. Ole Holmes’ Drug Store with its welcoming soda fountain was just up the street, and in the next block were Andy’s Market, Jack Lee’s Clothing Store, the Post Office, and the town’s bank. And he recalls evenings of roller-skating in the Pavilion to Jimmie Clark’s music from vinyl records.

The big truck from Duluth’s Marshall-Wells hardware warehouse arrived on Wednesday and when returning from school Mark would help sort and shelf the new stock. Bayfield’s annual herring season was especially important because it brought ready cash just before the Christmas holiday when the store needed to be fully stocked with children’s toys.

When recalling the importance of hardware stores in Bayfield’s history we soon come upon the name of Mark Johnson and he is still here right in the heart of town.


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The Bayfield Courier Quarterly Feature Article

    Making Bayfield History:  Shirley Johnson

                                                        by Howard D. Paap

            To know Shirley Johnson is to know Bayfield.  At age 86 she still has a sparkle in her eye and remains as busy as ever.  She can be seen driving her shiny blue Ford Focus along our streets on her way to visit a friend, take a turn as a volunteer at the Bayfield Heritage Center, or to call on folks over at the Washburn nursing home.  Shirley has seen many changes in Bayfield, but she still loves the town as much as ever.  She is one of its greatest supporters.

She was born in the Town of Russell in a house her father, Sebastian August Feldmeier built on the family farm on Sand Bay Road.  Her mother, Victoria Englund, was from the Bayfield family that, for years, had Englund’s Hardware Store.  Shirley’s father’s parents owned a dairy farm in Russell Township and she recalls how bottles of  milk would be delivered to Bayfield homes.

            Her father ran a logging operation that cut, split, and delivered firewood in Bayfield.  Red Cliff’s Johnnie Bear, and the Bressette brothers: Hank, Mike, Ted, and Morris, did most of this hard work.

            After graduating from the Bayfield Schools, Shirley attended a business school in Detroit, Michigan, then started a career as a private secretary with the Monsanto Chemical Company in that city.  Later she worked again as a private secretary for Mr. Ed Gall of the Washburn State Bank.

            Shirley married Jack Johnson and they raised a family in Bayfield.  Jack was a highly decorated World War II veteran, who served as a ski trooper in the 10th Mountain Division in Italy, where he saw action in the bloody nighttime siege to drive German forces from Mt. Belvedere before going on to fight in the Po Valley.  He was the son of Blanche and Norman Johnson, who had a series of three grocery stores here in town.  Along with the Johnson Food Shop’s, Shirley recalls Melde’s Grocery, Sig Anderson’s Meat Market, “The Association” where local farmers sold their produce, and Lodl’s Meat Market where Tony Diener slaughtered poultry, hogs, and cattle in the basement area of the Lodl building right on Rittenhouse Avenue.  Shirley and Jack were involved with the Bayfield Troller’s Association that brought fishermen to town after WWII, and, of course, we recall Johnson’s orange A&W Root Beer stand on the corner of Mannypenny and Front Street that was a town meeting place for years. 

This short essay is only a glimpse of Shirley Feldmeier Johnson’s rich and colorful story.  When you see her around town ask for more details. 

              

                     Shirley discussing her family story with Howard

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                         SUMMER   2009 

The Bayfield Courier Quarterly Feature Article

Making Bayfield History: Herb Frank and his Japanese Garden

                                                         – by Howard D. Paap

In the latter nineteenth century there were some people who called Bayfield The Fountain City for the number of water fountains in its yards and gardens. A few of these colorful fountains held live specimens of our region’s famed brook trout during those times when fly fishing on our nearby freshwater streams was a major tourist attraction. (Those times of fish and fountains can be revisited at the Heritage Center’s large photograph archive.) 

Bayfield, of course, still has many attractive gardens and today’s visitors enjoy touring the city to view them. One of the best known is found on the town’s northern hillside (older residents know it as Catholic Hill) at the Herb Frank and Pat Finch home. Herb passed away in December 2007, but Pat continues to work hard at maintaining their beautiful house and large yard with its colorful gardens and commanding view of Lake Superior and Madeline Island. It is a yard well-worth searching-out, and an added bit of interest is that it holds what might be Bayfield’s first, and only, authentic Japanese garden.

Herb was a naval aviator in both World War II and the Korean War, and after a tour of duty in Japan was determined to have a Japanese garden of his own someday.

So, in 1985 when he and Pat came to Bayfield to stay and build their comfortable passive solar house – which, except for the installation of its post and beam framework was actually built with their own personal labor – the Japanese garden was installed.

Almost immediately upon their arrival, Herb and Pat met Jeanie and Jiggs Lamoreoux, two neighbors and long-time Bayfield residents, who quickly became good friends. The Lamoreoux’s helped them settle in to our small town, and due to Herb’s deep interest in education he became a near-fixture at Bayfield schools, assisting in woodworking classes and as a popular part-time bus driver.

A Japanese garden is all about nature, but here nature must only be suggested, not presented in its raw state. Herb Frank’s garden has a real pond with live frogs, and a dry, pebble stream leading to it. A teahouse, footbridge, water basin, and numerous plantings of appropriate shrubs and other greenery are also found, and it holds a beautiful wooden Japanese bench and grandly imposing torii, both built by Herb. 

All of us who knew him miss Herb, but his Japanese garden is a testament to his love of both nature and the small northern town he chose to be his final home. 

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                       SPRING  2009 

The Bayfield Courier Quarterly Feature Article

Tony Kovachevich - Memories of Bayfield’s Floods

                                                        by Howard D. Paap

One of the BHA’s many photographs depicting Bayfield’s several floods shows a young Tony Kovachevich operating a large RD-7 Caterpillar bulldozer at the juncture of Washington Avenue and Third Street. Today Tony is 89 years old and images of the floods are still etched in his memory. Recently he told this writer how on a day immediately after the worst of the 1942 flood was over, he and friend Bill Topping were pressed into service up on Cemetery Hill. He says they and several others worked at least a week to recover rough boxes, caskets and body parts, and helped to rebury them. “We were young and physically fit,” Tony says, “and I guess we were expected to dig in and help get the job done.”

Tony was born in 1920 at his parents’ Red Cliff farm located approximately where the tribe’s Recreation Building and Elderly Feeding Center now stand. His parents were Thomas and Mary Kovachevich, who had 80 acres at that site. Milk cows, pigs, chickens, Angora goats and even turkeys were raised, and Tony tells how the turkeys roamed through the nearby woods and in late spring would come to the farmyard with their newly hatched broods of long-legged chicks. He is especially fond of telling of the different workhorses on the farm and how they were used throughout the Red Cliff and Bayfield communities.

The Kovachevich’s were an integral part of the reservation community, and Tony relates that many weekend fiddle dances were held in his mother’s large kitchen. This was before electricity came to Red Cliff so kerosene lanterns provided the dancers light. He also remembers how his mother and good friend, Mary Baker Roy (Mrs. Joe Roy), would make “coffee” from acorns.

The Kovachevich youngsters attended the reserve’s Catholic grade school, and Tony says they fit right in. This was the large white clapboard two storied building that stood across the roadway from where the present Red Cliff church now stands.

During that long-ago week in 1942 at Bayfield’s cemetery, Tony labored down in the gully that the flood waters cut through the area and was admonished to periodically scramble up to the top to be vaccinated for protection from any pathogens he might encounter while handling the dead.

Tony Kovachevich is one of the very few Bayfield and Red Cliff residents still living who was an eye-witness to all of the region’s famous floods. He recalls many details of the destruction they brought, and hearing him tell of them is to receive a lively history lesson from someone who was there.

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                         WINTER  2009  

The Bayfield Courier Quarterly Feature Article

    A RED CLIFF SOLDIER               by Howard D. Paap

           William Francis Roy

Over fifty years ago William Francis Roy of Red Cliff, Wisconsin, joined the Army. We were at war in Korea and like many Ojibwe men and women before him he wanted to serve his country. But, “Uncle Fran,” as most family members call him, never came back, and his body has not been recovered. The Roy, De Perry and Gordon families did not know the details of their relative’s death until this winter when persons working to locate and recover the remains of America’s military personnel unaccounted for in the Korean War contacted the Bayfield Heritage Association.

PFC William Francis Roy was a member of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 180th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division. During late 1951 he was in Hokkaido Japan, prepared to rotate to Korea where his unit would join United Nations forces doing battle with the North Korean Army. On 1 December 1951, his unit left Japan and sailed to Inchon Harbor, South Korea.

By that time Armistice talks were underway and the war had stalemated. A combat line stretched across approximately the center of the Korean peninsula from which United Nations forces conducted raids into enemy territory. As with all the men of the 45th Infantry Division, “Uncle Fran” came to Korea with only his personal weapon and clothing since his unit was to quickly exchange places with the 1st Cavalry on what was called the Jamestown Line. It was here that the 1st Cavalry left its field equipment in place as the 45th Infantry took over.

According to the official report the family received, “On 12 January, E Company was assigned the mission of conducting a raid against the enemy strong-point on the crest of Hill 290. Under the cover of a diversionary attack by another unit, E Company commenced their attack, was met by an intense mortar barrage, and engaged the enemy in a fierce close-quarters battle with small arms and grenades. During this heavy fighting, PFC Roy and three of his comrades were killed. Shortly thereafter, the enemy counterattacked and E Company was forced to withdraw. Unfortunately, due to the enemy presence and continued heavy hostile fire, the men of Easy Company were unable to recover the bodies of their fallen comrades.”

This fighting took place in North Korean territory in the bitter cold of winter. Today the North Koreans have not yet allowed recovery efforts in their territory, but hopes are that this will eventually change and that someday “Uncle Fran’s” remains will be brought home.

(Copies of the documents from the U.S. Army regarding Red Cliff’s PFC William Francis Roy may be viewed at the Bayfield Heritage Association Center.)

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                         FALL  2008  

The Bayfield Courier Quarterly Feature Article

 The 1924-25 Apostle Islands Indian Pageant

                                                          -By Howard D. Paap

Among the Bayfield Heritage Association’s most recent additions to its archives are several artifacts from the 1924-25 Apostle Island Indian Pageant held in the Red Cliff community. These are especially valuable items due to their scarcity, but also for what they tell us about our community during the vibrant decade of the 1920’s. Stephen Dunker, owner of What Goes ‘Round, our local bookstore, donated the pieces for our annual auction and Mary Phillips was the successful bidder. She donated the items to the BHA for our museum.

The centerpiece of this set of artifacts is a framed advertisement for the pageant, (as shown). Interestingly, its drawing and letters were applied to a veneer of wood. Accompanying this very rare piece are several printed promotional fliers and a newsprint version of the program that gives the names of performers and directing officials, as well as a synopsis of details for each of the show’s several acts.

Guy Burnham, the Ashland newspaperman at the start of the 20th century, called The Apostle Island Indian Pageant “one of the finest things ever seen anywhere.” Joe O’Malley of Bayfield was one of its local promoters, and certificates of public stock were offered as a means to raise the capital required to hold this large production. The plan was to draw tourists from distant cities, most who would use the railroad to come north, and who would come not just for the pageant, but to spend time––and money––in the greater Bayfield region as well as throughout northern Wisconsin. The optimism of promoters was high, and the pageant was successfully performed in 1924, but according to Hale O’Malley and Jim Miller, who were both in the show, after its first week in 1925 was rained out, and although preparations were made to hold the show in 1926, it was never performed again.

The pageant grounds in 1924 with 100's of cars and 1000's of people attending from distant locations

As children, Red Cliff’s Gladys DePerry and Jenny Goslin, and Bayfield’s Tony Kovachevich witnessed the pageant and today remember the crowd of well-dressed pageant-goers who sat upon the hillside beside Red Cliff Bay to view the show. Tony still recalls the sleek Dakota horses shipped in and ridden by Indian actors in some of the skits. (Horses, of course were not part of early Ojibwe culture, but this did not deter the production’s officials from writing them into the script.) The entire production included many Ojibwe actors from Red Cliff, Bad River and Lac Courte Oreilles. 

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                          SUMMER  2008  

The Bayfield Courier Quarterly Feature Article

A Connection to the Distant Past: Bill Deragon and Bayfield

                                                                                     by Howard D. Paap

Spending time with Bill Deragon over a cup of coffee at Bayfield’s Egg Toss Restaurant can be like getting a history lesson of our area. Along with many other Ojibwe-French surnames, the Deragon family name is connected to numerous photos and artifacts in the Bayfield Heritage Association archives, and as such fills an integral role in our collections. Bill was born and raised in Bayfield, and except for several younger years, lived his entire life in the region. Today at age 70 he continues his residency, working as a line cook at the Egg Toss.

Bill was born on Catholic Hill, that is, the hill on the north side of town where the Catholic Church is located, and when asked he can recite the long list of names of former residents of that neighborhood – names that no longer appear in Bayfield’s telephone directory. Most of these families and the homes they lived in are gone. When his parents’ house was destroyed by fire, the family moved to a residence on Cooper Hill just off Manypenny Avenue, but today that structure is also gone.

The precise origin of the Deragon family name is uncertain but many feel it is derived from the French, or Ojibwe, and that it goes back to the early days of the fur trade. Bill’s mother was a member of the Gordon family, her father being James (Makoons) Gordon, who once paddled the length of the Mississippi River in a birch bark canoe. Bill is also a descendant of Michel Cadotte, born in 1764 on Madeline Island and a son of Jean Baptiste Cadotte, the early fur trade partner of Alexander Henry. Along with the Gordon and Cadotte lines, Bill is also related to the Belanger and Bonney families, two Ojibwe-French descent lines in the region. And he is related to two Catholic nuns: Sr. Grace Ann Rabideaux, who recently retired to Bayfield, and Sr. Eustasia, now deceased, who taught school at Red Cliff for many years.

Like other local young men of his time, Bill worked at both the Bayfield cannery and the Allwood Manufacturing Company, two major firms of several decades past. He witnessed the days of the huge herring catches, during which he was paid fifty cents an hour for picking fish from nets in the numerous fishing sheds that dotted the waterfront. He attended Bayfield’s Catholic and public schools, as well as a junior high school in Duluth, and Ashland’s vocational school, after which he served two tours in the United States Army, a portion of that time being stationed in Germany.

Two years ago Bill was called upon to be a co-marshal for the annual Apple Festival Parade due to his long residency and service to both his country and local community. Deragon, Gordon, Cadotte, Belanger and Bonney are names from our region’s rich history that, through people like Bill Deragon, maintain a presence in today’s Bayfield. 
                           
                                  Howard interviewing Bill Deragon at the Egg Toss

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                         Spring  2008

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                           Winter 2008

The Bayfield Courier Quarterly Feature Article

   Ruth Moon and the History of Bayfield  by  Howard D. Paap

Japan has its Living Treasures, and Bayfield has Ruth Moon.  Ruth is not the town’s only living treasure, of course, but she is in our midst and we are glad for it.  Last week I spent an hour or so pushed up to the table in Ruth’s Ashland kitchen, conversing about “things Bayfield.”It was a rare treat.

Ruth’s father was the town barber, who, after taking his apprenticeship from Charlie Green in 1911, went on to operate his own shop for many years.  The Jack Moon Barber Shop was located in downtown Bayfield on Rittenhouse Avenue, in what is now the Inspire art and gift store, and for many years was a popular gathering place for the region’s men folk.

 Jack Moon was a sportsman who helped introduce trolling for lake trout to the area and thanks to his early activities, soon Joe LaBel, and Shirley and Jack Johnson started the Bayfield Trolling Association, an organization that was very important to the town’s economy in the years after World War II.

After graduating from Bayfield’s Lincoln High School, Ruth completed a business course at the Superior Vocational School and in 1949 took employment at the Northern Wisconsin Power Company in what is now Bayfield’s City Hall.  One can quickly get a sense for life in Bayfield back in those times when Ruth Moon talks about electrical power and the hard work it took to “keep the lights on.”  Originally, power was generated at the Town of Orienta dam at Port Wing, but eventually it came from other sources.  Ruth worked for four different power companies over her long 38-year career, finishing at the Ashland office of what is now Excel Energy.

 Today Ruth Moon remains one of Bayfield’s strongest supporters.She remarks with pride that she still maintains her membership in several town organizations that include the Bayfield Heritage Association, the Bayfield Civic League, the Bayfield Presbyterian Church, CORE, and her beloved Rebekah Lodge.  She also is a regular supporter of the town’s annual Apple Festival.

One of the tasks of the Bayfield Heritage Association’s Heritage Center Museum is to preserve the rich and important memories of persons like Ruth Moon.  She is an integral part of Bayfield’s living history.For much more of her story the reader is encouraged to view the video of an interview with Ruth that took place over twenty years ago and is available at the Bayfield Public Library.  A recently made VHS tape to DVD conversion of that interview will soon be available at the Heritage Center.

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                            FALL 2007

The Bayfield Courier Quarterly Feature Article

Marjorie Fisher-Benton:   One of Bayfield’s Early Writers,   

                                                                      by Howard Paap

There is a veritable treasure of artifacts in the basement of the Bayfield Heritage Association Museum, and all speak to interesting aspects of the town’s past.  Some are of the obvious kind like the early hand tools of the famed wood-worker, Theodore Ernst and some are merely papers, folder after folder of them.  Early last fall after I volunteered to help in that basement, by some stroke of luck I was assigned the personal papers of Bayfield’s Marjorie Fisher-Benton and during the length of last winter I worked my way through all of them.  It was a trip I will not soon forget. 

Like many others, after spending her childhood and youthful years here, this woman left Bayfield for college.  Soon it was marriage and along with her husband, spending time managing a shop in New York City’s Rockefeller Center.  Then, as I understand it, winters were enjoyed in Texas with many summers back in Bayfield, and finally in her later years, returning to stay.  Marjorie was one of the founders of the Heritage Association, and I suspect for those who were in at the beginning, her influence can easily be detected today. 

What interests me however, is the detail and breadth of work she did on gathering information on Bayfield’s past.  She left a literal alphabetic array of historic topics from A to Z about “things Bayfield.” Agriculture, Boating, Commerce of all sorts, and the rest of the alphabetic papers fill the folders.  She studied the development of the Apostle Island National Lakeshore, and watched and questioned the establishment of the marina at Red Cliff Creek in the heart of Old Red Cliff.  Surely, if she had survived she would have bird-dogged the construction at Roy’s Point, as well as the shoreline south of town.  She was concerned about the environment but she also understood the need for the region to undertake acceptable growth. 

For some time Marjorie Benton wrote a weekly newspaper column for the Bayfield Press on the history of Bayfield.  I suspect she intended to write that first major history of our town, but unfortunately, she ran out of time.  Her book would not have been a mere photo album of faces and fishing and sailing boats, but a treatise on why and when the town formed, took shape and moved through its 150 and more years.  She would have questioned why certain strategic decisions were made and others tabled.  Surely, she would have caused us to analyze what we are doing today.

Marjorie Benton was an informed observer of Bayfield who left a wide, deep and long paper trail. And she was not alone.  There are other cardboard boxes in the museum basement with different names on them.  Hopefully, readers of this article will think about even more people who spent time here and whose papers might be gathered someday to join those in our museum’s collection. They are part of our town’s story – a story that is only beginning to be told.

                      Howard evaluating accessions

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                                    Summer 2007 

 The Bayfield Courier - Quarterly Feature Article

          Harriet and Vermont Johnson

Vermont was born in Bayfield, but moved to Duluth where he graduated from High School. Harriet was born in Minneapolis and moved to Bayfield when she was a year old.

Although the couple spent their early years apart they met at a dance in Bayfield where Harriet was in High School.  For Vermont it was love at first sight.  Harriet succumbed to his charms and they were married on Christmas day in 1942 while Vermont was on leave from the service.

Both Vermont and Harriet were educators.  Vermont eventually became a school administrator and the couple left Bayfield.  They moved several times, but Bayfield was always close to their hearts.  Vermont’s parents, Blanche and Norman, ran a store in Bayfield, and Harriet’s parents operated the Haugen Oil service station.  During that time Vermont helped to organize the Bayfield Trollers Association and ran a charter boat during the summers.

In 1980 the couple returned to Bayfield and immediately immersed themselves in community work.  Among Vermont’s many accomplishments was his term as chairman of the Building Committee for our new Heritage Center.

Harriet kept busy with her writing and civic organizations.  She worked on writing the history of Bayfield and was the featured speaker at the Heritage Center in February 2007, where she told of her recollections of the flood of 1942 to a standing room only crowd during a snowstorm.

Harriet and Vermont complimented each other.  An evening at their home was a delight.  The stories would begin to flow and hours would fly by.  She once told how a group of young people relieved JP O’Malley of a few apples one night. When he saw the group the next day he asked “How were the apples?”  Harriet said, “they would have been better with salt.” JP said, “Come back again tonight.”  The group went back that night and hanging from the trees were salt shakers tied from the branches.

She told stories of the flood, Indian Pageant, juvenile escapades, and sliding down Manypenny and Washington Avenues on the Mystic, (the king of bobsleds) along with picturesque descriptions of the characters who once lived in the city.  Vermont would add to the stories, embellishing them.  Sometimes Harriet would say, Now “Ver!”, indicating that his version wasn’t quite right.

Their home had an “open door” where everyone was welcomed and the coffee pot was always on.  When Vermont and Harriet died just a few days apart, no one was surprised.  It was impossible to think of one without the other.  They were laid to rest on May 10, 2007 and are now together for eternity.

We hope to publish some of Harriet’s historical writings in future issues of the Courier.  You can read many of them now at the Heritage Center.

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