SDHS Newsletter

YOU ARE INVITED

TO THE
SOCIETY VOLUNTEERS
"THANK YOU"
CHILI SUPPER
ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 30

The SDHS Board members will again be hosting a chili supper to show their appreciation to all the SDHS members who have volunteered their time and efforts during the year for the Society's many programs and projects.

The event is on Sunday, October 30 at the Old School House beginning at 6 PM. Look for an "e-blast" with more details coming soon.

If you will be attending, please RSVP by REPLYING to this email. If you are unable to attend, please accept the Board's thanks for your support of your Society this year.

SAVE THE DATE

The December Program is the Society's holiday gala, Sunday, December 4th - a lively evening of refreshments and food at the beautiful Saugatuck Center for the Arts. Stay tuned for details.

WHAT YOU MISSED

The Society's October Program, Visitors from Douglas Cemetery To Bring Tales from the Crypt, featured interesting ghosts from the Douglas Cemetery. Shown below are Steve Williford of Christmas Carol fame as Scrooge (with Art Lane in the background) and our own Kit Lane.

A HERITAGE FESTIVAL INQUIRY

"Mr. Stillwell and her son Mike ran a hotel in the 60's and 70's [The Casablanca, as shown in the photo above. Click on the photo for a slightly higher resolution copy] on Butler Street.

Do you know what happened to them? Her former husband was Verne Stilwell, a theater professor at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo."

If so, REPLY to this email and we'll include it in next month's newsletter. The contact for the inquiry is Craig Stilwell, 428 Kedzie Street, East Lansing. MI 48823 email is Stilwell@bus.msu.edu ---"and thank you for the memorable tour."
contributed by Jim Schmiechen

Welcome! The Family History Group meets on the first and third Thursday of every month at 3:30 in the Old School House. Group focus is on building family trees by learning and utilizing digital research techniques. Most research is based on the utilization of digital resources - these resources are the many data bases containing historical information that are accessed via the internet. Some of them currently in use by the group are: Saugatuck-Douglas Historical Society, Ancestry.com, Family Search, Rootsweb, Genweb, New England Historical and Genealogical Society, etc.

Saugatuck-Douglas Historical Society website data bases are reached by going to the On-Line Research Center on the Society's web site. One click leads to a page with listings for some fifty data bases that contain local historical data - others are links that lead to sites containing national and international data. All of this is as close as a few clicks of the mouse. Try it!

There are mountains of historical information awaiting you out there in the cyberworld. Learning to build your tree requires your effort and lots of it - the Society cannot accomplish it for you. But members of the Family History Group are gathered together to support each other's effort. Our experience ranges from novice to experienced and participation ranges from casual to dedicated.

So come and check it out! Our next meeting is Thursday October 20, 3:30 at the Old School House. Contact Jack Sheridan at jack.sheridan@gmail.com or call 857-7144 with questions.

This column will appear each month in the newsletter. Our members plan to tell you about their exciting family tree discoveries. Stay tuned! submitted by Jack Sheridan

HALLOWEEN AT KEMAH - 1933

Names identified by Jane Bird Van Dis and June Force Fox, July 2010: 1) Unknown, 2) Unknown, 3) Virginia Hedglin, 4) Shirley Springer, 5) Unknown, 6) Unknown, 7) Jean Laviollette, 8) Billy Springer, 9) Betty Powers, 10) Elaine Bird, 11) Maybe a Floto, 12)Joyce Force, 13) Vivian Powers, 14) Celia Force, 15) June Force, 16) Jane Bird, 17) Rhea Jean Valleau, 18) Ruth Newnham, 19)? A Kortkamp boy, 20) Unknown, 21) Felicity Fonger, 22) Katherine Jane Van Syckel, 23) Bill Van Syckel, 24) Unknown Number 1 and 19 - both Kortkamp boys, one was Caedmon and the other David)
Click on the image for a higher resolution copy.

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

TOM AND DOROTHY OTTO REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR

	Dorothy Reddy Otto - I was ironing clothes when I heard the news in my parent's home in East Lansing (and I was ironing when I heard that President Kennedy had been shot --- and I don't iron that often). It was just unbelievable that anything like that would happen. The radio was on and I was the first to tell everyone in the family, and they didn't believe me. I was fourteen, and momma had just taught me to iron and I wasn't very good, but I could do handkerchiefs
real good. I remember telling momma that I had just finished the handkerchiefs but the Japanese had just ruined Pearl Harbor. I remember Daddy sitting us down and telling us what this all meant. I had an older sister who was married later to a B-17 pilot, Fran Ferguson. He was shot down and spent
time in the German Camp at Buchenwald. He always contributed to the Red Cross, because the Red Cross taught him how to knit, and he said had he not been able to knit himself socks, he would never have made it when they marched them between camps. Tom Otto - I was up in my bedroom in East Lansing. We had a PA system in the house. We had six bedrooms, and my dad announced on the PA system that we had been attacked by the Japanese. I was ten years old. I had four older brothers and they all went into the service and they all made it back.
contributed by Chris Yoder