Post-war German immigrant creates gifts of wood for all

By Linda Alice Dewey

Sun contributor

In the shade of the old locusts at lovely Dorsey Park on Little Glen Lake lies the original Dorsey cabin. Built around 1860, it’s one of the oldest structures, if not the oldest building, in Leelanau County.

On any given day, from April to October, you might find the cabin door open. There, you’ll see an 83-year-old man working at his scroll saw, creating beautiful, ornate items. He gives away everything he makes.

Sigismund (Sigi—pronounced “Ziggy”) Bossner was born in Poland in 1934 to German parents. In 1939, they were called back to Germany because, they were told, “the Russians were coming,” which was a lie. During the Second World War, they lived with their grandmother near the Belgian-Dutch border. Meanwhile, his father served in the German army, then was captured.

When the war was over, Sigi and his family learned that everything they had been told by his government was untrue.

“We realized it was all propaganda, what Hitler did this to us,” he said. “All the Jews, we didn’t know they were killed left and right.”

Now, all was lost. “We lost the war,” he said. “We had no home; we never would go back to Poland. It all changed; we had no future.”

Sigi apprenticed as a “tool and die man,” as a dream began to grow inside him. “More than anything,” he said, “I wanted to go to the United States of America. I said, ‘The only place I want to be is in the United States and to see the skyscrapers and Niagara Falls’.”

His uncle had emigrated to Detroit five years before, had earned his citizenship and now offered to sponsor Sigi. “You had to have residence and [an] occupation,” Sigi said. Staying with his uncle would qualify the residence requirement, and the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt arranged for him to work at a tool and die shop making $2.20 an hour—big money!

“In December of ’55 I said goodbye to my parents and went to Bremerhaven and came to New York.” He stayed with his uncle in Detroit, whom he knew well, having spent boyhood summers on his farm in Germany.

Eventually, Sigi’s family also arrived, and he moved into an apartment with them on the East Side of Detroit.

The job the consulate arranged was “good work,” Sigi said, “but it didn’t last long. I was not there even a year.” When Sigi had filled out his papers in Germany, he had said he would be willing to join the U.S. Army. Now the Army was calling him up. After a stint in Germany (“I had a good time with the girls,” he laughed. “They all wondered how I could speak German so well!”) and some time in Lebanon, he was back in Detroit with a full discharge and his U.S. citizenship. He met his wife, Shirley, at church. They married in 1961 and had two children.

The little family began coming to northern Michigan in 1966. Their first stay was at Crystal Lake. “In that week,” Sigi reminisced, “we drove around in that area, and we came down here on M-22 and saw that dead-end street here and saw that lake. I said, ‘Look at that beautiful lake. I have to investigate it’.”

A cottage down by the lake had caught his eye. “We stopped and talked with Mr. Hodge, the owner of the [Maple Lane] motel. He said to call in January, and we could rent that cottage.” They spent summer vacations there, then at the Dorsey Cottages. “We eventually were fortunate enough to buy this trailer here in 2000.”

Meanwhile, after 18 years as a tool and die man, Sigi followed his musical talent (piano, singing, choir director) and learned to rebuild and tune pianos—grand pianos—Steinways, Baldwins, Yamahas.

“I was lucky I had the skills working with my fingers with small things,” he said. He had served his apprenticeship in Germany making teeth for zippers—small, fine work. “So that kept me to do the fine work in rebuilding pianos—all the action work, strings, pin block, sound board.”

He did this for more than 35 years. At 70, “I started monkeying around with woodwork. My thinking was, ‘Wood is so much easier to work with than metal. With metal, it’s hard to fix. With wood, you just take another piece and start.” He likens the scroll saw to “a sewing machine that cuts the wood and follows a pattern.”

Soon he was cutting out designs. The first one he made was an elaborate three-dimensional tulip for Shirley. “I went from one thing to the next. I got my magazines every month, got my pattern and instructions and met other guys working with wood. Here, I have a place I go every day and work on wood.

“Years ago I made larger things—a parrot puzzle [colorful, beautiful], a clock [wall clock in the shape of a wristwatch]. I gave so many away.

“I also made rocking horses which looked like a motorcycle we called the “Rockin’ Harley.” One year a car dealership owner bought several and gave them all to the Make a Wish foundation. “All our grandkids have them,” he said. He has five—grandchildren, that is.

“I like to work with all kinds of wood; it’s interesting to do. Wood is very forgiving. And here, I’m so fortunate to have a friend, Tom Wigton, who gives me all the wood! He won’t take money for it.” Sigi knows Tom from the Christian Men’s Bible study group that meets Saturday mornings at the Glen Lake Community Church.

When he has accumulated an armload of trinkets, Sigi lays them out on the seat of his walker and takes them around to everyone he sees at the trailer park and gives them all away.

Lately, it’s been ornaments and trivets. “That’s the latest thing,” he comments. “Last year already I did trivets. It was ornaments for quite a few years, then nativity sets. Everybody has a toast picker.

In the winter, the Bossners live in Clinton Township, where he also gives everyone in the senior group “something” every year.

At 83, Sigi has plenty of health issues, but he doesn’t complain. “I’m doing well now,” he says. “I bless the Lord.” Shoulder, heart, balance, legs—he’s been through a lot, wife Shirley says.

“I have only one eye,” he admits. He lost sight in the other to macular degeneration. But instead of lamenting the loss, he looks at what he does have. “I’m so fortunate to have one eye. I do it [his work], and that’s fine.”

“I’m just fortunate that I can do these things. I’m so good now, it’s amazing.

“At one time,” he concedes, “we were ready to put the sign up here, ‘For Sale.’ And then the owner, Duane Shugart, said, ‘Why don’t you wait a year and see how you are?’

“I’m so glad we did,” he discloses. “I sit here and look out at the lake. People come and sit here and ask, ‘How much do you charge to sit here?’” he laughs.

What does he think of America today?

“Coming from the Eastern Bloc of Europe, coming into this country here, this is paradise for me. I have nothing but good for this country and what’s in it—the way you can go around, the nature we have here, what you can afford. I’m thinking about so many people in other countries; they don’t have anything that we have.

“I treasure every day I have in life.”