Remembering a childhood on South Manitou Island

By Nadine Gilmer
Sun contributor
It seems strange and exciting now to think that there is a ghost town on that strip of South Manitou Island that can be see from the beach along Sleeping Bear Bay. What is today a huge, uninhabited part of the National Park was once just anther small town in northern Michigan. Norma Jean Egeler Marmie spent the tender years of her childhood on South Manitou. She recalls, “You really didn’t know you were on an island except you were surrounded by water.”
Photos courtesy of Empire Area Museum

Norma now lives in Traverse City with her husband David Marmie after spending most of her life in Empire. After her early years on South Manitou she logged three years on Beaver Island and then four on the mainland, in Frankfort. She then made the move to her grandpa’s farm (the Golden Valley Ranch on M-72) east of Empire until she graduated high school and left for Flint to receive her practical nursing degree. Norma eventually returned to Empire where she married Martin Egeler and had eight children. She worked as a cook at The Leelanau School for 21 years until her retirement a decade ago.
Her family had lived on South Manitou for generations before her. “It would have been (back to) the 1800s,” says Norma. Her grandfather, John Tobin, manned the lighthouse, and her father was in the Coast Guard and stationed on South Manitou until he was transferred in 1940 to Beaver Island. He left the family for four years to fight in the Pacific theater during the Second World War and returned safely to his family then living in Frankfort.
Norma remembers her seven-year stay on South Manitou with fondness. “We did have a wonderful childhood. I don’t ever remember not being happy,” As a child, she and her two brothers used the island as their personal sandbox. “We had a wonderful time when we were little. We could roam the woods, build tree houses, go to the beach, and we were free to go to the coast guard station. There was lots of fishing and lots of cookouts. We always did things together as one big family.” Her grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins lived there too. Norma explains, “My grandmother ran the post office and the general store, and my grandpa was in the lighthouse. We used to have a lot of fun running up and down those stairs. My aunt was the teacher in the school, and there were probably 20 families there.
“My mother used to say ‘I wish we could go back to those good old days,’ I just remember good times.”
And back then, living on an island wasn’t so different from living on the mainland. Norma recalls, “Back in the ‘30s we didn’t have a heck of a lot,” so they didn’t need much to make up for the difference in wealth across the Manitou Passage. They had a general store for small things and farmers out in the country for meat and eggs. Norma’s mother had a garden, although it was difficult to keep because the soil in the town was so sandy. The town sat right on the sandy beach, so sandy that the townsfolk had to place boardwalks all around. Closer to the center of the island though, was good soil and farmland.
But for products they could not cultivate on the island, once a month the residents would travel to the mainland for groceries. It was a rough hour-and-a-half long journey on the family’s little boat. They would sail to Frankfort where Norma’s aunt and uncle used to live, and sometimes to Traverse City. There was a schoolhouse on the island, where Norma’s aunt taught, but no church, so the only time the family could worship was when they visited the mainland. Living on an island did change the perception of living space and closeness of people. Norma says that the neighbors were closer. “Us kids had a ball; we were always over at someone’s house.”
She also remembers buying candy with her brothers from Bertha Peth’s house. “I was always afraid of her,” admits Norma. Bertha Peth was an older woman who sold candy and cigarettes in her house. There is a legend about Bertha Peth and her son Sam, who was trampled to death by a bull in 1901, which caused the divorce of her and her husband. The play Barta’s Path, by local writer Anne-Marie Oomen, is based on her story. There is also a legend that a ship nearly full of cholera-stricken passengers stopped to unload on South Manitou and the healthy sailors buried the cholera victims in a mass grave. The screams of the passengers buried alive is still heard on quiet nights. And let’s not forget the most well known legend: Norma owns many books pertaining to the legend of the Sleeping Bears “It became very special to us,” she says.
Now Norma meets with others who used to live on the Manitou islands once a year in July. The group convenes in Empire where they have a potluck, bring pictures and discuss the good old days and members of their group that have passed away.
As Norma says, “It is very special to say you lived on an island.” And her fond island memories of growing up in the ‘30s and ‘40s are reminders of the beauty and rich history of those two little baby bears swallowed up by the glittering blue of Lake Michigan.