Suzanne’s van: the gift that keeps on giving

By Jacob R. Wheeler
Sun editor
It began with a simple proposition: “If you can get her running, she’s yours,” were the words the late Suzanne Wilson offered Crispin Campbell, setting the stage for his memorable west coast road trip 11 years ago in her 1979 Dodge Extended MaxiVan — affectionately known around northern Michigan as “Suzanne’s Van.” Campbell, a cello instructor at the Interlochen Arts Academy and former director of the Glen Arbor Art Association’s Manitou Music Festival, was one of many locals lucky enough to borrow Suzanne’s great white stallion before her artist friend David Grath of Leland purchased it two years ago.

Suzanne passed on last winter, but the legacy she left in this area will be with us for eternity. Part of that legacy are the memories and joys her friends have from borrowing that van over the years and setting out on the open road in search of adventures — a quality that anyone who knew Suzanne would agree fits her like a glove.
The speedometer may not have worked; the brakes may have squeaked; mice may have lived in the floorboards; and the gas mileage may have equaled that of a Hummer. But Suzanne’s van was a thrill. Shakespeare festivals in Oregon, art tours in Florida, baseball pilgrimages in the Midwest, camping in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula — you name it, and Suzanne’s van has probably been there.
To most it was a fun mobile: a classy way to get from point A to point B, even if that meant traveling thousands of miles. But to Suzanne, the van was just-as-often a place of rest when the glamorous, if not hectic, lifestyle of a world-renowned artist became too much.
Her daughter Allison says Suzanne bought it sometime in the late 1980’s for around $2,000 because she thought she’d like to live in it while painting and traveling to art fairs. “But she only did one art fair — the Castle Farms fair in Charlevoix — and sold only one book for $10,” Allison remembers. “After sleeping in a farmer’s field outside of town we packed up and left early on Sunday morning. After that she decided she didn’t like art fairs, so that was the end of the van as a hotel.”
Later on, after Suzanne had helped put the Glen Arbor art scene on the map and bring the crowds to northern Michigan, Allison remembers “she would sometimes sneak into the van and take a nap when things got too crazy in the summer.” Suzanne’s visitors (or daughters) would often sleep in the van in lieu of throwing down money for a hotel or a bed & breakfast. Allison remembers a cozy and inviting setting: “It had carpeting and a wood panel interior, two comfortable cushion beds, a spice cabinet, refrigerator, small stove and sink, and you could stand up inside. The van was comfortable to sleep in because it had three windows and screens covering the windows, so it wouldn’t get hot at night.”
A midsummer’s dream
Campbell’s trek to the Pacific Ocean and then back out east in the summer of 1993 has the distinction of being the longest trip Suzanne’s van has even taken. The vehicle that would help him bond with his two daughters, Elara and Maya, eventually planted the seeds for a budding relationship between Campbell and Carol Navarro, now his wife. After spending $250 to fix the brakes and wiring, Campbell cruised around Lake Michigan and picked up his daughters in Madison, WI. “They kind of dug it,” he remembers. “To them it was a symbol of flower-power, and eventually it dawned on them that maybe their old dad was a hipster after all.”
The three Campbells took I-90 West, stopping off to see the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD as well as the Badlands, and were caught in a snowstorm while camping in Yellowstone National Park. They slept on bunks in the van and used the propane gas stove in a futile attempt to stay warm. “We froze our butts off,” Crispin remembers. By the time they reached Boise, ID, the van was so low on fuel that rust had clogged the gas lines and it wouldn’t start. To improve karma they bought a cassette tape of oldies while waiting for repairs, and entered the picturesque Columbia Gorge in Oregon singing 50’s tunes as the sun set toward the Pacific Ocean.
After visiting Uncle Bruce on the Oregon coast, Campbell treated the girls to “their first quality Shakespeare”, as they saw Midsummer Night’s Dream at the festival in Ashland, OR, before heading south to visit his parents in Santa Rosa, CA — smack dab in the middle of good wine country. Besides the Boise debacle, the only other mishap Campbell encountered before driving Suzanne’s van all the way back across the country to a music camp in Ithaca, NY, was when he accidentally backed her into a light pole in the parking lot in Santa Rosa where his brother-in-law Albert was playing in a slow-pitch softball game. “It mangled up the spare tire holder on the tailgate, and also pretty well deconstructed the ladder going up to the roof,” Campbell remembers. “But other than that it ran great. I have real fond memories of that trip with my kids.”
A rose by any other name
Campbell had so much fun with Suzanne’s van in the summer of ’93 that he borrowed her again the following year for a baseball pilgrimage with the Wheeler and Nargis boys. Instead of navigating Chicago’s turnpikes they put the van on the Ludington car ferry and sailed across Lake Michigan for Manitowoc, WI. The boys of summer rendezvoused with Campbell’s daughters at County Stadium in Milwaukee and grilled out in the parking lot before watching a 13-inning affair between the Brewers and Detroit Tigers.
Motown’s aging shortstop Alan Trammell saved the game when he backhanded a groundball deep in the hole to his right and put enough on the throw to nail Brewer speedster Jody Reed with two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the 12th, and the Tigers won the game the following inning. The happy Michigan entourage didn’t arrive at Dave Early’s doorstep in Lake Forest, IL until long after midnight.
They saw a White Sox game on Chicago’s south side the following day and then headed home. Hours after Suzanne’s van arrived back in northern Michigan the Wheelers held a staining party for the exterior of their house. It was there, on that day, as Campbell tells it, that sparks began flying between him and his now-wife Carol Navarro.
A state of bliss
My own memories of the van are plenty. Every summer I would find Suzanne busy painting in the shade at the Lake Street Studios, and ask if she would let my gang of rambunctious 20-somethings and I take her van up to Bliss Fest — a weekend-long music and camping extravaganza near Harbor Springs. The answer was always an afterthought: “Yes, of course, just as long as you can keep her running. You know, she could die at any second,” was Suzanne’s answer.
So off we’d go, stocking up the van with bread from the Good Harbor Grill, Bell’s beer and granola and fruit from Oryana Co-op in Traverse City, with hackey-sacks, Frisbees and tents in tow.
One year the van became the center of a pow-pow in the Back 40 acres for festival-going friends of ours from all over Leelanau County. Eight cars surrounded Suzanne’s van, and we formed a drum circle around her and danced like crazed warriors with the great white beast as our focal point.
Foreign territory
No car story would be complete without anecdotes of her breaking down in the most random of places. Jason Nargis, a Michigander by birth who now lives in San Jose, CA, remembers a road trip to the Wheeler-Nargis-Oomen-Early property on Peanut Lake in the middle of the Upper Peninsula.
Just after crossing the Mackinac Bridge the treads began peeling off the tires of Suzanne’s vans. After an hour of hugging the shoulder of the highway at 30 miles per hour as the tread flopped on the pavement like a metronome, she finally tore off, leaving the tires naked as a newborn baby. The entourage was forced to pull over at the Airport Motel & Grill near Newberry, the seediest joint any of them can remember. Cockroaches dotted the linoleum floor, and the locals cast dangerously suspicious stares when the visitors went next door to the bar to play billiards.
A muddy affair
The freelance landscape/homebuilder couple Cre Woodard and Mark Ringlever will never forget their trip in Suzanne’s van through the U.P. en route to Ely, MN, which is about as far north as you can go in the continental United States. They stopped to hear the Texan guitar master Chris Smither in concert before Mark backed the van into mud so deep that one couldn’t see the tires, Woodard remembers. They had to jimmy it out with boards and plywood the next morning after the mud froze solid.
Ever since then Ringlever has felt a certain allegiance to the van. He passed it coming the other way on the middle of the Mackinac Bridge once with Suzanne at the driver’s seat and artist Melanie Park by her side. Ringlever tried in vain to flag it down, just to say hello.
Passing on
Two years ago Suzanne sold her van to its current owner David Grath when, as he says, “she sensed that it should have a place in the life of another artist.” Grath had previously run in to Suzanne with her van on painting trips to the Southwest, the Upper Peninsula and Florida, and he knew it was the ideal vehicle for him. Both showing a flare for the unique, $999.99 was the price on which they agreed. Since the van was looking a little roughed up, as Grath says, he made some improvements and modifications, re-carpeting it, straightening out the interior to make extra storage space for his own painting equipment and buying it a new set of hubcaps.
Suzanne died on December 9 — the very day that Grath planned to drive down to Elberta, near Frankfort, where Suzanne lived her final days, and show her the van and possibly take her for a ride. Instead, he has taken it upon himself to keep the van functioning and in prime condition in order to pass it along to the next artist some day. “It should spend its life on the road, taking people from one painting to the next,” Grath says, “in Suzanne’s spirit.”
The Dodge MaxiVan reached 100,000 miles somewhere near Sarasota, Fla. in March of this year, by the way, and shows no signs of calling it quits. “I feel like I’m in a dream vehicle as I drive down the road with my wife beside me and the dog stretched out between us, knowing this van is carrying some of Suzanne’s solid vibes embedded in the paneling, curtains and seats.”
Have your own anecdotes or memories of Suzanne’s van that you’d like to share? The Glen Arbor Sun welcomes letters to the editor. Send them to P.O. Box 615 / Glen Arbor, MI 49636 or email gasun@mikeshouse.us. We’ll continue reminiscing about Suzanne’s van in our next issue, June 17.