Halloween at Kemah - 1933

Costumes, games and special treats were the fare 78 years ago this month, when twenty-five area children celebrated Halloween at Kemah in 1933. The Commercial Record reported:

"The moon lent its image and a suitable squint in its wicked eye with a dark feathered owl pecking at the other one. There were dangling skeletons minus rattle, grinning pumpkins with broken teeth in need of the dentist but otherwise uncommunicative, black cats without a miau and nobody seemed afraid to cross their feline paths."

Mrs. William J. Springer (Alys/Alice) and children Shirlee/Shirley and Bill were the hosts for yet another special event for children and their wonderful Pleasant Street home.

The Springers had purchased Kemah (an Indian word meaning "In The Teeth Of The Winds") in June 1926 as a summer home from F. S. Thompson and had major renovations done on it by their neighbor, architect and artist Carl Hoerman. The Hoermans were to become fast friends, traveling with the family on a trip through the Southwest and through Europe.

Jane Bird Van Dis lived down the hill under Kemah and says she remembers Shirley standing on the hill and calling out "Jane, Jane Bird, come up and play". June Force Fox's mother worked for the Springers at the house. She recalls that Shirley and Bill were in school at Saugatuck at one time and that Mrs. Dodie Wilson was Alys Springer's best friend in the area.

When the father, William J. Springer (b. 1883), died on Feb. 10, 1941 at their Chicago home, Shirley was attending Columbia College in Missouri, and Bill was a cadet at the Culver Military Academy in Indiana. Wife Alys, who had been ill for some time, died tragically from a heart attack in June of the same year, age 37. Both rest in Saugatuck's Riverside Cemetery.

Alys (Brown) Springer at Kemah

Johnson Fox reported when he came home on leave from the war that he had heard that Bill (William J. Springer Jr.) had been killed in an explosion while loading ammunition. His name is included on the "WWII West Coast Memorial" in San Francisco, CA with a date of May 7, 1944. Other sources place the tragedy at Hunter's Point, CA.

During their years in Saugatuck, the Springers made a decided impact on the village, even though they were only part-time residents. Mel Hershaw remembers Shirley driving around town in her car (a Lincoln Zephyr, he thinks) with her pet sheep riding in the seat. Locals did hear she had married, but no one seems to know anything further, or recalls her coming back for a visit. With a birth of Sep. 12, 1924, if Shirley were living, she would have just recently celebrated her 87th birthday. We cannot help but wonder what a wonder trove of photos she might have from the family times in Saugatuck.

With a little internet effort, I managed to track down one of Shirley's closest girl friends from Chicago, Joanne Boynton. She reports that Shirley (or Shirlee, as she began to spell her name) did marry and then divorced. Her second husband was Johnny Maines, a rodeo circuit star, and there were no children. Shirlee herself, always a dare-devil, joined in the rodeo activities and even rode bulls. She had a farm around Palatine, Illinois and Joanne (who had become Mrs. Edward Chrisman) would bring her kids so the family could ride horses. Shirlee passed on some time ago. So it seems the Springer Saugatuck memorabilia, if it even existed, is out of reach to us.

--contributed by Chris Yoder

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