Celebrating songs of Leelanau: Hazel Oberhelman’s Leelanau Theme Song
From staff reports
Our story series celebrating songs inspired by Leelanau County and the Sleeping Bear Dunes continues with “The Leelanau Theme Song,” which Leland resorter wrote during the 1940s.
The Leelanau Enterprise first printed the song on September 21,1950. The lyrics, which capture the beauty and natural wonders of the peninsula, have been sung at weekly community sing-alongs at the Leland Country Club and the Leland Yacht Club for decades. The theme has also been sung by marchers in Traverse City’s National Cherry Festival. In 2017, the Oberhelman/Hickenlooper families donated the printing blocks and a copy of the sheet music bearing Hazel’s signature to the Leelanau Historical Society.
Hazel and Arthur Oberhelman began to summer at Fountain Point Resort on Lake Leelanau in the 1920s with their three children, Elizabeth (“Betty”), William, and Ruth. In 1941, the couple built a house of their own at the base of Round Top, on the shores of Lake Michigan at the south end of Leland.
Leland local Rick Nedow recalled meeting the Oberhelmans in 1962 while delivering newspapers: “When I was 10 years old, I had a paper route delivering the Record Eagle’s daily newspaper,” he wrote. “The Oberhelmans were one of my summer customers. At that time, we the locals called our summer residents ‘resorters.’ One day while I was collecting money for the previous week’s delivery, Hazel came to her door and as she finished paying my bill, invited me in to hear her husband Art play their piano. He greeted me and asked if I would like to hear a song the two of them had written. Being an impressionable young lad, I replied, ‘sure.’ Arthur began playing this enchanting song and when he started singing the lyrics, Hazel joined in. They sang together as though they were one, then turned toward each other with a smile that [exuded] this incredible love. I was so overwhelmed, I began to choke up. It’s been 61 years since I heard them play that beautiful ballad and now at 71, can still hear those lyrics play back in my head and [remember] those simpler days when that loving couple shared their treasure with a young boy.”
Hazel Oberhelman passed away on Feb. 9, 1975.
Here are the lyrics to The Leelanau Theme Song:
“Remember the Picnics we had at the springs,
The sails in the moonlight, the Sunday night sings,
The calm of the lake in the dawn’s early light,
Leelanau, Leelanau, Land of Delight.
The blue of the water, the blue of the sky,
The cry of the gulls as they circle on high,
The whitecaps that sparkle, the white clouds above,
Leelanau, Leelanau, land that I love.
Carefree days, starlit nights,
Cherry blossoms, northern lights,
The afterglow when the sun has set,
These are things I’ll never forget.
Remember the first early flowers in May,
The scarlet and gold of an October day,
The path of the moon on a still summer night,
Leelanau, Leelanau, Land of Delight.”
Previous installments in our Songs of Leelanau series featured Ingemar Johansson and Song of the Lakes’ Pearl of America, Laura Hood’s “Eddy Up,” Les Dalgliesh’s “The Ways of Leelanau,” Jeff Maharry’s “Good Harbor Bay,” Seth Bernard’s instrumental ode to the Manitou Islands, Blake Elliott’s “Small Town” and Louann Lechler’s “I’m Proud to Say I Live in Leelanau County.”
