Return to Wake Robin

by Marnie O. Mamminga

  He agreed.

  It’s no wonder that he became an Eagle Scout. His experiences in the Northwoods afforded him the opportunity to hone his outdoor survival skills and talents—so much so that he was chosen to serve in the Boy Scout Honor Guard at Roosevelt’s 1933 inauguration in Washington, DC.

  Although my father enjoyed the privileges and comfort that came with his family’s wealth, he knew how to build a fire without a match, pitch a tent in the rain, swim with a strong steady stroke, serve as a lifeguard official, apply first aid, tie circles of complicated scout knots, and jury-rig anything that needed fixing. In addition, he possessed a creative flair as a whimsical cartoonist and artistic photographer.

  Most of all, he loved fun and fun loved him. With his strong sense of humor, he appreciated the small ironies of life; observing the humorous, quirky oddities of humanity was his specialty.

  To his elation, he discovered that the Northwoods was filled with the type of fascinating characters he so loved. The old-timers with their whiskers and hats who sat on Hayward’s Main Street benches conversing about life were his favorites. He fondly referred to them as “Sourdough Sams” and, in a symbolic tip of the hat, he adopted that moniker in his own later years.

  Blessed with Scotch-Irish good looks, my father’s dark curly hair, smiling green eyes, and impish grin complemented a mischievous persona that often came into play. As a child growing up in Aurora, Illinois, he delighted in greasing the trolley cars’ uphill tracks or planting a firecracker in a pile of dog poop just to see what would happen.

  All his life, he was intrigued with the innards of car and boat engines, and no doubt as a young boy he found the two-day journey up to Big Spider Lake one big mechanical escapade. (Even years later, as a father of five with the seven of us stuffed in our station wagon and many roadside dilemmas to face, he never tired of the drive.)

  As a teenager in the early 1930s, my father owned the fastest boat on Big Spider, courtesy of his parents. With his roguishly handsome looks, he zoomed around the lake like an Adonis on water. No dull dreamer, he used his ever-present inventive imagination to rev up the motor of his Century Cyclone with his own jazzy adjustments.

  However, it was his engaging personality and sense of humor that made him a friend magnet. From his grade school years on up through Denison University, he established a circle of loyal friendships that would last a lifetime. Many of these friends, especially three Sigma Chis who were as close as real brothers, would make many pilgrimages over the course of forty years to be together at Wake Robin.

  My father as a young man, circa 1930s, ready to zoom off in his speedboat

  It was when my father graduated from college that the world began to change for him. Up until that time, he had been blessed with seemingly charmed years. And then a series of events began to slowly dismantle the carefully built world that Erle and Clara had created for him.

  Life must have seemed full of possibilities the summer of 1938: a college degree under his belt; a cabin visit from his college sweetheart and her family that suggested hints of marriage; plus the promise of graduate school at Ohio State University in the fall.

  But with the heartbreaking death of his father in November, his plans were suddenly altered. Clara, widowed and with the dairy business to run, asked David to leave school and come home to help out. Being the devoted son, he did.

  My grandparents and father with their dog, Peta, in the woods by the cabin, 1937

  In 1944, David married that college sweetheart, Eleanor Alice Shumaker, aka “Woody,” but shortly thereafter the army shipped him overseas to fight in the European theater.

  How convenient that my father was serving somewhere in France. Although Clara was vice president of the company, a stock takeover by aggressive powers within the firm changed the direction and major ownership of the family business. My father returned to a completely reorganized firm that had slyly shifted him and Clara to minority stockholders.

  Although my father eventually became vice president and a member of the board of directors of Oatman Brothers Inc., the new powers decided one cold day in the late 1950s to abruptly terminate that relationship. Without warning, my father was jobless with a wife and five young children to support. The promise of his father’s company one day being his own, as Erle and Clara had planned, vanished in an instant.

  Although he was able to find other work eventually, the shock, sense of failure, and personal loss all contributed to an escalating drinking problem. It took seven long years before he was able to finally free himself from alcoholism’s clammy grip. During that time, Wake Robin continued to beckon as a sanctuary. Perhaps it was his lifesaver during those troubled years, offering a haven of wild beauty, renewal, and calm. Surely my father’s early years on the lake and his scouting days were additional blessings that gave him the survival skills he needed—in more ways than one.

  My father rows on Big Spider Lake after his return from World War II, circa 1946.

  Despite the many setbacks, my father and mother made every attempt to keep the cabin and get all of us up there. Amazingly, we did not miss a summer. With all the added financial difficulties, it took a lot of extra hard work and sacrifice to keep Wake Robin going: taxes, bills, upkeep, and repairs, which were once easy issues, now became a struggle.

  Somehow, and with great effort, the cabin and our family survived.

  My father sent this postcard to my sister Nancy just a few months after she was born.

  Regardless of our misfortunes, or perhaps because of them, we continued to seek a silver lining. One fine summer, it arrived in the form of a sailboat.

  When lake neighbors announced they were selling their sleek wooden Snipe, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. It took $25 from each of my siblings’ and my meager savings accounts, plus our parents pinching back even more, to reach the $350 purchase price. In honor of our group endeavor, we christened our boat Enterprise.

  It didn’t matter that none of us knew how to sail. We would learn.

  My father was enthused by the challenge. Although the boat possessed minuscule leaks, tricky rigging, and endless sanding, painting and varnishing duties, my father was bound and determined to become its skipper. Neither wind nor waves nor a cobweb of unknown ropes could daunt his adventurous spirit. He simply bought a book on the matter and studied up. On his maiden voyage, he set sail by the seat of his white sailing pants, book opened in one hand and the main sheet in the other. The wind took hold, and away he went.

  From then on, there was no turning back. And despite the great effort and sacrifice of vacation time and energy that he and my mother undertook to get it ready to launch every summer, the Enterprise was just that: a family effort that, thankfully, generated good times together. Best of all, there was nothing like setting off on a soft sail to bring a sense of calm.

  Over time we all learned to rig, tack, and sail, honing our skills to the many pleasures and challenges awaiting us on Big Spider’s windswept water. Whether we were lazily singing and sunbathing with teenage friends on becalmed waters, scooting down the lake propelled by a brisk breeze, fleeing the raging winds of a storm chasing our backs, or surviving the drama of a rare capsize, we all thrilled to the sensation of getting in the boat and sailing away.

  Perhaps that is also what my father loved most.

  As any sailor can attest, there is a certain independence and joy that only the wind-and-water-powered momentum of sailing can create. Casting one’s wits against rolling waves, whipping wind, or sultry calm to reach a destination is an exhilarating experience that by pure necessity often blocks out the worries and troubles of the day.

  Enterprise, circa 1960s

  I think my father often found his peace out on the water. Whether he sailed alone or with friends and family, the pure act of rigging and running a sailboat allowed him to at last be master of his situation, to conquer the adversity of the elements, and to sail as one with the wind and nature. All the ugliness and sorrow of life gon
e awry was carried away on the breeze.

  Perhaps, sailing along in those few blissful hours on the lake, he was able to jettison his personal demons and finally feel the freedom to believe in the person others knew him to be: funny, loving, kind, generous, and a darn good sailor.

  Gratefully, after his eventual recovery from alcoholism, his new job provided him with generous amounts of vacation time. He used it all at the cabin—and getting to the cabin, including memorable trips in the late 1960s with chained-wrapped tires in midwinter when the temperatures hovered well below zero so we could ski at nearby Telemark. In a non-winterized cabin with no central heat or running water, it was essentially extreme camping. We loved it. Some of my family’s fondest memories of Wake Robin are those wintry nights with frost on the logs, a coal fire in the stove, and the sound of my father getting up out of his own warm bed to throw another log in the fireplace to keep us comfortable.

  How lovely it would have been if he had been able to enjoy a long stretch of recovery years and sail into a Northwoods retirement, joining the other Sourdoughs on Hayward’s Main Street for a friendly chat. Sadly, it didn’t turn out that way: eight years after recovering from alcoholism, he was struck with leukemia and died eight months later at age sixty-one.

  Ironically, our sailboat Enterprise and my father ended their days on the lake around the same time. After the Seitzes sold the resort in 1967, we no longer had their helpful services to launch the sailboat’s bulk. It became harder and harder to keep it seaworthy and, more often than not, its home was the log garage. Still, every time we rounded the bend to the cabin, its turtled bulk greeted us with a beloved reminder of those sublime sailing moments.

  After our father died, our family made the executive decision, despite our deep sentimental attachment, to haul the Enterprise to the great sailboat heaven in the sky and took it to the dump, its worn and weakened frame long past repair. As with the end of all good symbols of a happiness, it was sad parting.

  I like to think my father and his old sailboat friend have partnered together again somehow, and, like the eagles that often soar aloft on a wind current above Big Spider, so sails my father’s spirit in a sunny breeze of freedom and peace.

  Sail on, Sourdough Sam, sail on …

  TO YOU I LEAVE

  To you, I leave the woodland’s lovely lyrics,

  The shadowy paths where wild strawberries grow,

  The robins’ nests with safely sheltered fledglings;

  Each stately tree that we have learned to know.

  Across the lake, in the shimmer of the moonlight,

  The loon’s weird calling to his mate.

  From the islands, and distant shore lines

  The wild unfamiliar noises of the night.

  The graceful deer in forest of white birchwood

  Poised,—head uplifted, ready to take flight;

  The beaver’s house;—the woodchuck’s scrambling;

  The eagle’s nest—rewarding our search.

  At morn’s awakening—the bell like sound of heavenly woodthrush

  The plaintive pewee’s call, the robin’s rondalee

  When day is done and night, softly falling

  Brings peace and quiet—and all from care are free.

  The glorious morning’s sun red rising;

  The stately blue heron’s route—they always take—;

  The solitary porcupine’s quiet shamble

  Along the paths that skirt the lake.

  To you, I leave the lapping of the wavelets,

  The soughing of the wind through distant pine;

  The soothing silence,—the healing quiet,

  All bring God’s presence to a contented mind.

  Mina Borden Thompson [Clara’s sister], Wake Robin, 1930s

  Wake Robin Welcomes Woody

  1938–2008

  “If thou of fortune be bereft,

  And in thy store there be but left,

  Two loaves, sell one, and with the dole,

  Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.”

  —John Greenleaf Whittier

  Woody and the woods were one.

  The lake and forest spoke to her spirit, and she answered. Beginning in 1938 with her introduction to the Northwoods, courtesy of the Oatman family, she continually sought the beauty and opportunities it had to offer with a grand gusto. Adventure was her rallying cry:

  “Who would like to swim to the island today?”

  “Anyone want to canoe around the lake?”

  “Let’s hike back to Eagle’s Nest!”

  “Get up! Get up! The sunrise is glorious!”

  Forget reading on the swing or taking a nap. Get going! For Woody, no day was long enough to capture all there was to see and do around the lake. A moment was not to be wasted.

  And although we five children often sluggishly resisted her calls to activity, her contagious enthusiasm usually won us over. Once engaged, we knew we were in for a unique adventure.

  Born in 1919, the redheaded Eleanor Alice Shumaker was soon nicknamed Woody after the famed Woody the Woodpecker character. And just like the echo of a woodpecker’s happy tap-tap-tapping on a tree in the forest, Woody’s arrival to the cabin signaled for decades that everyone’s activity level was about to get kicked up a notch.

  That was because for Woody, friends and family gathered together were the “hyacinths to feed thy soul.” Whether it was a fish fry on the island, a picnic on the dock, a party on the porch, a hike through the forest, or a canoe trip down the Namekagon, the generous Woody was often the energetic organizer.

  “It doesn’t seem like summer until Woody arrives,” our lake friends said repeatedly over the years.

  And in truth, through the seven decades of her presence on Big Spider Lake, it didn’t.

  Like the first flaming rays of a sunrise, Woody’s long, red hair no doubt captured David Borden Oatman’s attention in the summer of 1937 when he was working as a lifeguard at Spring Valley Quarry in Granville, Ohio.

  Woody relaxes on the dock in her Red Cross swimsuit during her first visit to Wake Robin in 1938.

  My father always liked to say he attempted a fake rescue on my mother just so they could meet. It worked. With my mother entering Denison University as a freshman and my father a senior that fall, they began their courtship under the watchful eye of Woody’s father, Eri J. Shumaker, an English professor at the school.

  Island picnics on Big Spider Lake were among the Northwoods pleasures my father introduced my mother to during her inaugural visit.

  Love blossomed to the extent that, by the end of the school year, Dave had not only given Woody his Sigma Chi fraternity pin, but Erle and Clara Oatman had even extended an invitation to the entire Shumaker family to visit them at their cabin on Big Spider Lake.

  It seems unusual nowadays to have a whole family tag along just to see your sweetheart, but in 1938 it was the proper thing to do. And so Woody, chaperoned by her older sister, mother, and father, set out in early August for her first journey to the Northwoods. Because the Shumakers were traveling so far, Erle and Clara, always the gracious hosts, suggested they stay a month.

  And so they did.

  Accustomed to the high heat in the Ohio Valley, the Shumaker clan packed only one light sweater each. Upon their arrival they were shockingly welcomed to the crisp Northwoods air. Erle and Clara’s first task as hosts was to borrow an assortment of jackets and wool sweaters from the Moodys and other lake friends for their guests. Ironically, the cold Northwoods provided a warm and humorous icebreaker for both families.

  With jackets in hand, the Shumakers set up camp three doors down at Clara’s sister’s cabin. Harry and Stella Borden Hemb had recently built their own nearby cabin to join the family’s rustic adventure, as did many families of that era. Graciously, they allowed the Shumakers to use it in their absence.

  With easy camaraderie, Erle and Eri were soon out fishing, Helen and Clara were chatting on the dock, and David, Eleanor, and sister Marnie, were rowboatin
g around the lake to view the water lilies and the loons. One by one, the Oatmans introduced their guests to all that they held most dear: dinners at the lodge, fires in the fireplace, visits on the porch, the sunrises, the star shine, the peace, the quiet. The Shumakers were smitten. Apparently, David and Woody were, too.

  The Oatmans and Shumakers enjoy a lovely dinner at Moody’s Camp during their month-long visit in 1938. Left to right: Woody Shumaker; Helen Shumaker, Woody’s mother; Mina Borden Thompson, Clara’s sister; Eri J. Shumaker, Woody’s father; Clara Oatman; Marnie Shumaker, Woody’s sister.

  One of the highlights of their stay was the early celebration of Woody’s nineteenth birthday on September 5. As red leaves began dotting the forest, signaling their vacation’s end, the two families planned a party in her honor before they headed home. To accommodate all, the celebration was held next door at the cabin of Hedley Jobbins, a reclusive, generous entrepreneur and a friend of the Oatmans from Aurora.

  It was a birthday Woody never forgot. And the only one she would spend with Erle.

  Homemade birchbark candleholders lit the evening with lovely light, and wildflower bouquets filled the cabin with fragrant beauty. The families and friends shared fine food, laughter, lively tales, exuberant toasts to each other, and no doubt gratitude for the opportunity to be together. Woody’s birthday party not only provided a festive way to conclude their stay but, for her, epitomized the beauty of nature and the fellowship of family and friends. (Seventy years later, gathering lake friends together was still the activity she treasured most.)

  That first Northwoods sojourn must have worked, for after finishing college and working in Chicago as a corporate secretary, Woody married Dave on February 26, 1944. It was in 1946, on one of their first fall trips to the cabin after my father’s return from World War II, that Woody casually announced that the hilly, rough roads were making her nauseous. One of David’s lifelong friends, Bob Green, who was, along with his wife, traveling with them, kidded her that she was probably pregnant.