Marco in the Middle
By F. Josephine Arrowood
Sun contributor
“Hey, I’ve got an idea.” Any conversation with Cedar area resident Marco Dedenbach will most likely include these buoyant words. For many people, ideas are ephemeral wisps that flicker and die. For the bearded redhead with the ready smile, they’re a call to action. He doesn’t spend much time wondering and worrying about the “ifs” or the “yeah, buts.” For him, it’s all about the how—and most importantly, the who.
“I’m a coordinator,” he says, a connector who values gathering with others to help turn ideas into reality. Whether teaching kids to ski and snowboard; playing drop-in soccer; pulling people onto a dance floor or over the radio airwaves as a DJ; working with at-risk youth; or making sure a local high school honored its graduating seniors in the midst of a worldwide health crisis—he is sure to be at the center of both the people and the project to make it happen.
Working with others to bring about tangible results has always been important to Marco. He grew up in Haslett, MI, and attended nearby MSU, where he discovered his true path while earning a communications degree. He moved to Cedar in 2002 and raised two sons, Isaac and Ezra, who come into his conversations often. Being a father, it seems, has only heightened his awareness of community over the years, and the importance of connecting with others in hands-on, meaningful ways.
“I worked with at-risk kids for a long time, about a dozen years,” primarily through grants and nonprofit groups. He engaged with middle school and high school students in the Youth Conservation Corps in Suttons Bay, and foster kids in the 10-county Northern MI region who were aging out of the system. He was a longtime ski and snowboard instructor with the Leelanau Ski Club as well.
“That was the ‘social worker’ part of my being,” he says. “I need to check in with others, make sure they’re doing all right. Now I do other things to feed that.”
For example, his experience with the Leelanau Ski Club has led him to Crystal Mountain a couple of years ago, where he directs the Crystal Community Ski Club, Learn to Ski/Learn to Snowboard programs, for kids age 5-17, and Race Academy.
“Most people learned to ski from their parents. Now there’s a generational shift; parents see their kids doing it, and they get involved again. It can become a thing the whole family does. If there’s an impact I can have to help kids turn off the screens and go play in the snow, that’s a good thing. There’s a push to bring Nordic [cross country] skiing back, too; it’s good for endurance athletes and runners; it has cardio benefits. We’d love to turn it into a year-round club. Crystal has a lot of resources to leverage; we could do mountain biking, bring in Norte from Benzie, help with national park programming. I’m a coordinator at heart. I love to come up with ideas. I have big visions, big dreams.”
He also channels his ideas into the good groove of music. Known for his love of reggae and world beats, Ras Marco D hosts the “Rockers International” show on community radio station WNMC each Saturday night for 16 years and counting.
“I’ve always loved music. I came into a collection of reggae years ago, and started collecting records,” he says. “I have a broad musical palette. My mom is from South America, so there’s Latin music. Then there’s funk, soul, Afrobeat, hip hop, and more. For me, it’s like a meditation; getting in the pocket. Every show, I try to play something I’ve never heard before. Right now, I’m into Natural Child, which is like psychedelic rock, and Rose City out of Portland, OR. I go to Eugene’s Record Shop [at Studio Anatomy] in Traverse City, try to support the local scene. It’s the only place in town that does an 18-and-up live music show.”
He also spins the vinyl—“two turntables and a mixer, no digital!” at live shows at northern MI venues. With the pandemic shutdown, gigs at Traverse City’s Little Fleet and other indoor spaces have been postponed, but he’s looking forward to some upcoming shows at the Homestead and elsewhere this summer.
In recent years, Marco’s day job has shifted from nonprofit work to carpentry, with a satisfying hands-on, collaborative involvement as well. “I’d started doing some woodworking in college. If I was between jobs, I could always pick up a hammer and make money to support my family. About five years ago, I just jumped into helping a friend, which led to another great job [building a house] on Little Traverse Lake. Since then, I’ve continued down the path of working on cool jobs with good people, and learning a lot about carpentry, doing it full-on. There’s so many things to know.
“I started working with a friend, Ben Shaw, in his cabinet shop, building cabinets and doing some finish work. That led to working with a painter on a house, then work on a timber frame home with [builder] Barry Jones. We were handling 14 species of wood, doing a lot of sanding and clear coating, some finish work. Now I’m with a crew, and we work mostly on custom homes in beautiful locations here in Leelanau County. I feel very blessed to be able to do that. We’re on a job in Empire now, on a little strip of land between South Bar Lake and Lake Michigan. This is the most beautiful spot ever.”
He continues, “The best thing about doing carpentry—or any work that’s tangible—at the end of the day, you can step back and see what you did and feel good about it. Then you look up and see bald eagles, or fish jumping, or sun shimmering off the water. I like to work with other people in the workforce. If you’ve gotta work, you might as well work with people you like, in a beautiful place. There’s a wonderful degree of—a wonderful lack of bullshit when you’re doing this kind of work. You’re not dealing with corporate life, or the office,” he laughs.
“I want to do quality craftsmanship, something more aesthetic. I’m learning so much from people like Ben and Barry, working alongside them, asking questions. You’re building something with your friends, and that is something pretty special.”
This past spring, when the construction trades were shut down for six weeks, he had another great idea. “During quarantine, Ezra and I really dug into exploring Sleeping Bear Dunes Lakeshore. I call it ‘deep hiking,’ where there’s a part of the park I want to check out. There’s no trails there; you literally walk into the woods. It’s amazing how quickly you start to see the game trails, the animal highways, and follow those—all the things people don’t see [because they] don’t walk.
“One thing we explored was just how much beaver activity is in the park. There’s beaver chew, beaver lodges; you can see generations of dams and how they create these ecosystems. So we spent a lot of time hiking and kayaking the waterways; some running, too. Especially with my son having his senior year, his life upended, it was nice to do that with him. We both take great joy being in communion with nature.”
He’s long been a proponent of the active life: getting outside to play soccer with random drop-in groups, or the Sunday adult summer league. Skiing, snowboarding, hiking. And always, always, the family time.
“I’m really thankful for the relationship that we have: very open, loving, that connection with both my sons. Even the awkward, angsty teen years—somehow we all weathered that and have great relationships. We like to do a lot that’s based on being active: Ezra and I hike and kayak, Isaac and I play soccer, we all snowboard together; we go to Northport and the climbing wall there. There’s so much to do—to have that time to hang out with your kids.”
A few weeks ago, he got another typical Marco idea when he saw the isolating effects of the surreal pandemic shutdown on his son and other high school seniors at Leland.
“Ezra hadn’t seen any of his friends since that day when they left school in March. They hadn’t expected that they just wouldn’t be coming back. So I said, ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea!’ I called Dave Carrick at the Cheese Shanty in Fishtown to see if we could use the parking lot. I called Russell Dzuba the harbor master; called the police, the fire department, health department. Parents reserved parking spaces for social distancing. It was awesome and amazing to see these kids together again, to see their joy; most of them have known each other for a dozen years. It was better than I could have hoped, to see the community come through for them.”
Both of his sons continue to be affected by the uncertainty of schools reopening, and how that might look in August. Isaac, 21, completed two years at Northwestern Michigan College on a Commitment Scholarship. There he explored interests in fitness and exercise, developed leadership skills as a dorm advisor, and earned a personal trainer certificate. He lives downstate, plans to attend Grand Valley State University this fall, and is waiting to learn if classes will be online, on campus, or a combination.
Ezra, 18, also earned a Commitment Scholarship to NMC. He had planned to stay in the dorm as well, but for now, has decided to live at home while taking classes. In Leelanau County’s rural setting and hilly terrain, internet coverage can be sporadic for those, like the Dedenbach family, who must rely on old technology like DSL and landlines. It’s another life challenge in extraordinary times. But for Marco, creative community solutions are literally only an idea away.
