Meeting an old friend for the first time

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In the summer of 1994, I met a northern Michigan writer—though not in person—who made a lasting impression on me: Leelanau County’s own, essayist Kathleen Stocking. I soon came across Stocking’s first book: Letters from the Leelanau: Essays of People and Place. After examining the front and back covers and conducting my open-any-page-and-decide test, I had to have it. Here was a writer who grew up in Leelanau County, whose family had a remarkable history in the area (notably, the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is named after her father), and who, as I would read, captured the essence of this special place. Little did I know that this would lead to an improbable encounter nearly three decades later.

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Tillers of the Earth: The Steimels

Part five of Rebecca Carlson’s Leelanau Farming Family Series features the Steimel family, which arrived in the area in the 1860s from Germany, homesteading shortly after arriving. By the 1881 Leelanau County plat maps, the Steimels held several different properties in and around Suttons Bay.

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Destination South Manitou Island

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“My first foray onto the shoreline of South Manitou Island as a volunteer lighthouse keeper for Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore became one of my gladdest moments in life,” writes volunteer lighthouse keeper Jonathan Schechter in this essay featured in our July 13 edition of the Sun. “It remains so today, and now, after six tours of duty at that historic 1871 lighthouse overlooking the often-stormy Manitou Passage of Lake Michigan, I reflect on how it all came to be and already look forward to next year. And I will share three confessions.” Read the story for Schechter’s confessions.

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Popps among backbone of Leelanau farmers

Part four of Rebecca Carlson’s Leelanau Farming Family Series features the Popp family. In the early 1980s, Richard Popp and family enter our Orchard Log Books. Like clockwork, late July or early August, the Popp family would appear at our orchard to harvest our tart cherries. The Popp family members would arrive early in the morning driving trucks, tractors, and the shaker to the orchard. My dad and aunt would get excited with all the activity beginning the tart cherry harvest.

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Deering Tree Service flies flags on the Fourth

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Before the parades, the picnics and the fireworks begin, a telltale sign of Fourth of July in Leelanau County are the flags flying aloft Deering Tree Service’s green crane truck and bucket truck on the busy corner of M-72 and Maple City Road. The Deering brothers who co-own the company—Josh, 43, Jack, 39, and Patrick, 34—have flown the Stars and Stripes 80 feet in the air each Independence Day ever since they moved to that intersection in 2012. Deering Tree Service, which turns 50 years old in 2023, has nearly 50 employees, and whoever drives the crane truck on that day is responsible for raising the flag.

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Playgrounds in the cherry orchard

Part three of our Leelanau Farming Family Series, featuring Donny Herman, the descendent of German immigrants, building a life in Leelanau, and many euchre games. Read the first installment “Where are Herman’s trees?” and the second “Life on the Schaub Farm: Cocktail memories.”

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Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear celebrates 25 years of preservation in the Park

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From nearly abandoned and forgotten, the historic Katie Shepard Hotel, formerly known as “The Beeches,” on North Manitou Island is being preserved by Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear (PHSB). The hotel was constructed in 1895 and has been given a chance at a productive new life. The non-profit group, partner of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore since 1998, has been busy at the hotel preservation from 2009–2019, and returning this year to resume its work on this historic hotel. “It is our vision to reopen the hotel that drives our passion,” said PHSB executive director Susan Pocklington.

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O Pioneers: African-American settlers on Glen Lake

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The historical and human significance of the presence of the Johnsons and other African-American families in the Empire and Glen Lake area cannot be overestimated. To be there they would have had to deal with all the exigencies of frontier life, mainly the constant hard work and the ability to maintain good cheer and endure isolation. In addition, to get there in the first place, they would’ve had to have survived slavery, including the physical brutality and the trauma of family members being sold. They would have needed to be diplomatic enough to circumvent the laws that made it illegal for slaves to learn to read, write or own property in order to acquire the skills and the goods they’d need if they were later to escape.

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Spitting pits and breaking rules

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Mary Sutherland, the matriarch of a well-know Glen Arbor family who passed away in January at age 92—and who allegedly holds the record for pit spitting at Cherry Republic—inspired Viola Shipman’s latest book “Famous in a Small Town,” which has received accolades as one of the Best Summer Books of 2023 by the Good Morning America TV show, and Reader’s Digest. Wade Rouse, who uses the “Viola Shipman” pen name, will appear at Cherry Republic on June 23, from 4-5 pm in the Cherry Public House Beer Garden for a book signing and conversation with Bob Sutherland. “When I began writing fiction, I didn’t see many characters like my grandmother or my mom, or Mary Sutherland,” said Rouse.

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Arbor School Lofts has new owners

Tom and Juli Erdmann are the new owners of the Arbor School lofts in Glen Arbor’s historic schoolhouse across M-22 from the town hall. Both of the newly remodeled apartments sleep up to 6. The building was rebuilt in 1932 and in service as a school until 1967. Locals who attended the Glen Arbor school include longtime town hall custodian Leonard Thoreson, now 96. Thoreson remembered that students used to cross the street to the town hall in the afternoons to play basketball.

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