COURIER Newsletter Feature Articles are reproduced below for your for your review.
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.
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
The Bayfield Courier Quarterly Feature Article
Apples, Whitefish and Waterclosets: Jim Erickson and Bayfield History by Howard Paap
Jim Erickson Jim with the Children’s Watercloset
One of the more unusual accessions held in the Bayfield Heritage Association’s Museum collection is a child’s watercloset donated by James and Muriel Erickson of Bayfield. This is a scaled down, fully functioning toilet that was manufactured in Chicago by the Andrews and Horn Company, circa 1920. The BHA is pleased to hold this interesting relic of Bayfield’s past and is grateful for Jim and Muriel for the donation. We also express our gratitude to Bill Van Sant for his high bid at our fund raising auction last summer and for his gracious agreement to permanently leave this interesting item in our collection.
The water closet was in the Wachsmuth House on Bayfield’s Sixth Street (now a bed and breakfast) and later installed in the Erickson homestead out in Orchard Country where Jim and Muriel’s children used it until the 1960’s. Stop in at the BHA museum this upcoming season and ask to see it. Jimmie Erickson sits on the Board of Directors for the BHA and recently I visited with him over breakfast at The Northern Edge where he shared his thoughts about the water closet and his life in Bayfield.
Born in Duluth in 1930, his time has been spent right here in Bayfield and the Township, except for one year of work in the DuPont gunpowder plant at Barksdale during World War II. He took up what are classic Bayfield occupations: commercial fishing, charter boat operating, and fruit growing. He began as a commercial fisherman, and immediately after WWII when trolling for lake trout was popular he operated a charter trolling boat. Along with this life on Lake Superior he also was involved in growing apples, strawberries, raspberries, and some vegetables on his township farm. Today, at age 78, he still works on the family farm outside of town. In fact, this past winter he could be seen in the snow-filled orchards, operating a motorized pruning device as he prepared his trees for the upcoming growing season.
In 1948 when his grandfather Martin Erickson gave up his commercial fishing license it was passed on to his grandson, Jimmie. This was the State of Wisconsin’s license #1215, and Jimmie is quick to smile when he tells of it. Obviously, commercial fishing was a great pleasure for him.Jimmie Erickson is a treasure chest full of stories of Bayfield’s past. He recalls the days of growing beans for the town’s cannery, of the days when government surplus food would be shipped to Bayfield by railroad car and distributed to those who needed it. He lovingly recalls his grandparents, Martin and Christine Erickson, who both were early fixtures in the community. But Jimmie Erickson did not do all this alone. His wife Muriel taught school in Bayfield for 29 years and for the past many years has operated her popular orchard store at the Erickson farm. We are pleased that both Jim and Muriel Erickson are members of the BHA.
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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.