Old School Hardware Building opens again as Glen Arbor Athletic Club
By Jacob R. Wheeler
Sun editor
Does the blazing sun outside deter you from going for a run or a bike ride under the elements? Do the summer dragsters and blind motorists behind the wheel scare the daylights out of you? Well now there’s another way to stay, or get, physically fit in Glen Arbor without delving into extreme sports.The Glen Arbor Athletic Club will soon open its doors to locals who want to trim down or beef up in the same historic two-room school house where students were once asked to listen up and jot down notes. Two couples, Paul and Marcia Walters and Terry and Linda Gretzema, who have summered here over the years and now consider themselves permanent locals, stumbled on the idea of opening an athletic club when they realized they wanted to stay active, somehow, during their golden retirement years up north. And what better way to keep the flabs at bay than by working those abs every morning.
“We looked at the demographics of this area and saw a group of people that are very concerned with fitness and health,” said Terry Gretzema, a former sales and marketing consultant who provided much of the business know-how for the project. “Plus the perception of fitness is changing, as many baby-boomers in their 50’s and 60’s are getting into the act,” added Marcia Walters, a former school teacher who hopes to push the educational element of fitness, especially given the club’s setting. “Fitness clubs are no longer just about bodybuilders. We want to create a non-intimidating atmosphere that’s designed for health and wellness, too.”
One of the “classrooms” upstairs will be filled with cardiovascular workout equipment such as treadmills and bicycles, accompanied by a few benches and barbells. This adrenaline-packed room is open to both men and women and will resemble a more traditional workout club.
The other room next door will house the women’s circuit workout – an innovative 30-minute routine that lets women work according to their own abilities and move from one apparatus to the next every minute. Since it is never boring, this workout may appeal to she who has never exercised in her life. Like musical chairs, she changes machines every time the music stops. This separate women’s section offers them privacy.
Yoga and massage classes will unfold downstairs in the basement, in addition to any meetings or membership events that may take place. “We want to promote a laidback, social atmosphere where our members feel like they belong,” said Linda Gretzema, who suggested a town marathon as a possible event the athletic club could organize. The club will also feature a dozen lockers.
Perhaps the most inviting aspect of the Glen Arbor Athletic Club, though, will be its outside deck facing away from M-22, towards the new Fire Hall in the distance. There, members can drink their juice or water while lounging on a lawn chair and watch the sunrise to greet Glen Arbor. Doesn’t sound like beefy giants pumping iron at the local gym, does it?
The history
Despite the massive facelift the Athletic Club is receiving before it opens sometime this month, the Walters and Gretzemas are making an effort to maintain the integrity of the old school house look. “All the modifications are done with the building’s heritage and vintage look in mind,” said Terry Gretzema. “Old schoolhouse lighting will illuminate the rooms, and we will retain the original trim and hardwood. No fluorescent bulbs here. Air-conditioning will be the only modern convenience.”
The Old School Hardware Building was erected in 1932 after another schoolhouse on the same plot burned down the previous year. The new building shuffled students in and out until the 1967-68 school year, after which all the nearby village schoolhouses merged into Glen Lake Community Schools. Glen Arbor had already graduated its last senior class in 1956, whereafter only second graders attended here. The reason for the merger, according to former teacher Charlotte Groesser: “Empire had the debt, Maple City had the kids, and Glen Arbor had the money, so the school systems were consolidated.”
Charlotte said that kids were much more well-behaved then “before the advent of television”, but her son Gary, who graduated in ’53 admits he witnessed some devious pranks. “We tied rags to the school bell so it wouldn’t ring in the morning, and we even pulled the plugs in the gymnasium one night,” he said with a grin. “One time we even stuck a wooden stick up one of our teacher’s exhaust pipes!”
Carolyn Bumgardner was a member of that last graduating class along with only six classmates. It was so small, in fact, that they needed only two cars to drive to Washington D.C. for their class trip. Carolyn attended the Glen Arbor schoolhouse for 12 years and grew into one of the most reliable and respected older students. In fact, teachers often sought her out when they needed assistance. Groesser, who had been janitor when the first schoolhouse burned down in 1931 (she maintains her innocence, even though she admits to piling wood in high stacks near the stoves, where teachers sometimes put their winter jackets!), sometimes asked Carolyn to help teach the younger kids next door. Bumgardner would also take all her schoolbooks and babysit occasionally for another teacher, Bob Garthie, at their home nearby whenever his wife went into labor – which, according to Carolyn, was quite often.
Coincidentally, Bumgardner’s daughter, Zoe Smith, was a member of the last class in Glen Arbor, before moving on to third grade at Glen Lake in ’68. Zoe remembers arriving late that year and discovering a shortage of desks, so she was given one from an old bus garage that still had a hole in it for the ink well. But Smith must not have disliked the experience too much. She stuck around and now works next door with Bill MacLachlan, an electrical contactor and master electrician who ran a television and appliance repair business in the schoolhouse in the early 70’s along with local musician Newt Cole, before MacLachlan opened up the hardware store in 1973. Bill eventually grew tired of the long hours the retail business forced him to stay open, and closed the hardware store in 2000.
Several faces, including the Internet host Big Water & Associates have passed through over the last three years before the Walters and Gretzemas decided to open the athletic club.
