Volunteers extraordinaire, Jim and Barb Fowler bid Glen Arbor adieu
By Linda Alice Dewey
Sun contributor
After living in Glen Arbor full-time for 15 years, Jim and Barb Fowler are moving to North Carolina, and the township is throwing a party to acknowledge all they’ve contributed to this community during that time.
“Barb and Jim Fowler have made significant contributions to the quality of life for people in the Glen Lake area,” observes Glen Arbor Park Commission secretary Celeste Crouch.
She’s right. The two first began enjoying Glen Arbor summers in 1989, built their current home in 2000 and moved here permanently in 2004. They became involved in the community pretty quickly, both as a couple and individually.
Now they feel it’s time to leave. It wasn’t a quick decision. “It’s been coming gradually,” Barb discloses on a warm mid-September morning in their lovely home atop the hill at The Homestead. “We moved here to Glen Arbor because it’s lovely, and it was our vacation place…We’re moving to be closer to one of our children, and it’s getting more difficult to travel.”
The Fowlers have four children, all of them doctors and give the credit to the schools in Flint, where they lived for 42 years. “I would like people to know that about Flint,” declares Barb. “People don’t realize how much of a model that was for the country.”
Jim served as athletic director at Flint Northern, a Class A high school and owned an indoor tennis club in 1983, where he also taught tennis. Once Barb raised the children, she went back to school to get her Masters, took a position as social worker with Flint Community Schools, then became a principal at an alternative school.
Jim had played football and tennis at Kalamazoo College, he says, “back when they wore leather helmets.” He was also quite a tennis champ in high school at Kalamazoo Central. His college team went to the state finals three years in a row while he was there.
“That’s where we met—at Kalamazoo College,” offers Barb, who came to K College from LaGrange, Ill. “I was a freshman, and he was a sophomore—at a mixer.”
“I asked this girl next to her [to dance],” Jim explains, “and she refused me.”
Barb continues. “And so he looked at me and said, ‘Well what about you?’”
They both laugh.
“I lucked out,” Jim claims.
When he graduated, Jim went to a job fair, and Firestone Tire offered him a job. “So I was going to be a tire guy,” he relates. Two weeks later, the president of the college called him into his office to meet with the superintendent of the Petoskey schools, who recruited him to teach.
After seven years in Petoskey, he became A.D. at Flint Northern, where he was named Teacher of the Year for Flint, and he was elected to the Michigan High School Tennis Coaches Hall of Fame. “I have a beautiful ring I was presented,” he declares. “I lost it playing golf. It’s somewhere out at Manitou Passage in the weeds.”
After they retired, Jim sold the tennis club, and the couple moved up here and immediately became involved.
By their first Christmas, Barb had attended her first Glen Lake Women’s Club event and had already joined the Friends of the Glen Lake Library. “We’re the volunteers,” she says of the Friends. “The backbone that do the work to provide extra services and financial aid.” She served in various offices there and just finished as president for the past two years during the time of the library’s fundraising and expansion.
“Perhaps Barb’s greatest pleasure has been her work to enhance the quality of Glen Lake Library,” observes Crouch, who applauds Barbara’s activism.
Meanwhile, Jim became the tennis pro at The Homestead for eight years, where he taught, among other duties, like running the Glen Arbor Tennis Tournament for the past 20 years.
Jim says he loves the human interaction that occurs when he teaches. “First thing I ask is, ‘Where are you from?’ You find out things about people. I’ve really enjoyed teaching tennis. I can still do that. Can’t play very much anymore, but I can still teach.”
Both have played in golf leagues, and Barb has sung with the Summer Singers “since Dick Devinney started it,” she says.
They also joined the Empire Methodist Church. “I was board chairman; now I’m in charge of road pickup,” quips Jim. “It’s a great old church.”
Jim was invited to be on the Glen Arbor Park Commission in 2005. At that time, the tennis courts were in bad shape, and the commissioners needed guidance. Jim knew how to get it done, secured a grant for some of the work, and the township received donations for the rest.
After being on the commission for a year, Jim was elected chairman. Having Jim Fowler in that position effected a sea-change for Glen Arbor. “I was able to get people on the board that I thought would be tremendous workers,” he says. “Today, that’s what that board is—a great group of people who dedicate a lot of time. We get $200 a year, you know, for being on the board and sign that check back over to the township. That goes into a fund to be used for whatever.”
During his tenure, the park commission grew from maintaining what they had, to erecting the beautiful new state-of-the-art park that opened to rave reviews last year. “As we got more people,” Jim recalls, “we had a vision of what that park should be like. Of course Rick [Schanhals] was our leader in the building of the new park, and he’d had experience in it before. The rest of us were the ground troops. It took 15 years of building toward that project.”
That wasn’t all. “My big thig before [the new park] was really developing the tennis program into a community where people would feel like they could come down and get involved. Today, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, there’s open tennis, round robin. Same thing now with pickleball Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. It doesn’t matter how good you are. People can join in.”
The other development was the cooperative use of facilities between the township and the Leelanau School, which needed funds to resurface their courts. Spearheaded by commissioner Ron Calsbeek, the township board offered to resurface their courts so the township could use them. Now the public and the school have indoor courts, and the school has use of both facilities.
To honor the park commission, Glen Arbor named all seven commissioners Parade Marshals for the Fourth of July parade this year, but Crouch gives Fowler credit for making it happen. “It has been his vision and leadership skills as chair of the Glen Arbor Park Commission which helped to bring about the recent renovation of the now beautiful Glen Arbor Park.”
There’s more. For Barb, add the Walkie Talkies women’s walking group, since 2000; the knitting group; and the “Barbara Group,” which she co-founded—women named Barbara who get together every June 4 on St. Barbara Day. For Jim, it’s the Empire Lions Club for eight years and Noontiders, where he was president for a year. Finally, each has served on the board in their condo association at The Homestead.
All this in spite of a health scare for Jim a few years ago. He ended up with a new kidney and seems to be fine now.
“We came here for the environment and relaxation, and it hasn’t been very relaxing,” Barb laughs, then becomes more serious. “We love all of the friendships. There’s not one thing we’re happy to leave here. We’ve loved it all. It’s just our timing.”
The two are looking forward to the move but not without some trepidation. “I’m hoping—I’m praying!—that I will find as great a bunch of guys as I have here in Glen Arbor,” Jim says of his men’s golf group. He also loves being in such an active community. “Everyone donates their talents.”
Barb agrees. “Nobody sits back,” she says, then reconsiders. “Well, maybe they do. We just didn’t meet ‘em.”
The party to honor Jim and Barbara Fowler will be held Sunday, October 13, at the Glen Arbor Park from 3-5:30 p.m. In case of rain, the celebration will move to the Leelanau School cafeteria.