WELLSPRING 2001
A Publication by the Eighth Grade class of Onekama Middle
School 2000-2001
Herbert W. Schimke
by Jade Bolthouse, Richard Cederholm, Clint Martz, and
Christopher Smith
Driving a
model-T and armed with a license at age 14, Herbert W.
Schimke of Onekama could occasionally be found cruising
town. Dad drove me down to the sheriff's at the court
house in Manistee, and I was issued my driver's license.
No written or driving test was needed," said Herb.
Herb, now 78
years of age, says that roller skating, going to the
movies, and fishing also were popular back in his day.
Nearly every Saturday, Herb and his father Bill would
head out to Portage Lake. During the winter months they
caught perch, ciscos, herring, and menomonee white fish,
all averaging about 14 inches in length.
Herb was born
and raised in a two-story home on Milarch Road. "Our
heat was supplied by a wood cook stove used for cooking
heating, the water used for washing clothes, and the
bathes we took in a round wash tub. Insulation was to my
recollection unheard of. There was no electricity until
the 1930's. The toilet was located on the southwest
corner of the barn, 100 feet from the house." The
extra food raised was taken to the village stores and
usually bartered for staples such as flour, sugar or
salt. "One incident that I can still picture
vividly, also happened during the Depression of the late
20's and early 30's. Late one afternoon in the summer, a
man, his wife, and their two children drove into the yard
in what was left of a car. They had one dime, and were
looking for work. When my dad said he didn't need any
more help, the man got down on his knees and begged. He
pointed to the machine-shed saying, 'Please let us stay
and give us one meal a day and I'll work as many hours a
day as you want me to for no pay, just so we can have a
roof over our heads, and one meal a day.' My dad let them
stay but fed them three times a day and paid the going
wage of 50 cents for ten hours of work. They left in the
early fall, and we never heard from them."
Our winters
nowadays are nothing compared to some of the winters that
Herb has gone through. "I remember it was not fit
for a man or beast to be outside. When there was a real
bad storm, the side roads would be plugged for a week. In
the winter of 1943, it took two days with two of the
largest v-plow trucks to clear County Road from Chief
Road to U.S. 31." Herb also remembers the nights
being so cold that the nails sticking down through the
roof boards had frost on them.
"I
graduated high school on May 15, 1941. In October of
1941, I moved to Dearborn, Michigan, and was able to
secure a job at the Hinde and Dauche Paper Company. Six
months later I was transferred to a machine repair
department."
Soon after
Herb had started this job, he was called in on the first
draft of World War II after they lowered the age to 18.
Since Herb was not married at the time, he decided to go.
"I was very, very fortunate in that I actually
didn't go to war, I spent all my time training. As a
matter of fact, 40 percent of my graduating class came
back in pine boxes."
Herb also
recalls that there was a lot of pressure involved in his
training, but it was also quite interesting. "We had
a hundredth of a second to recognize ally and enemy
aircraft and battleships they flashed on the screen. Our
training was intense. We also had to field strip a
50-caliber machine gun within 15 seconds while
blindfolded."
When Herb
finished training in August of 1945 he was qualified as a
radio mechanic, gunman, navigator, bombidere, and a radio
bombardment observer. After the service, he furthered his
education and mastered, plumbing, electrical contractor,
residential builder, and a boiler installer.
"My
generation and my parents saw many changes during our
lifetime. Mine probably saw the biggest change from horse
and buggy, to the landing on the moon, the computer,
robots, transformers, VCR's, Nintendos, and fax
machines." (see photographs of Mr. Schimke as he
made his presentation to fifth graders at Onekama. Photographs from early Onekama that Mr. Schimke brought with him.)
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Onekama Schools
Written and reported by Erica Jach, Jordan Wilson, and
Derek Etheridge
Onekama School
has gone through many changes and locations. From the
first school located on 9026 Erdman Road to the present
day location, Onekama School has had an interesting and
remarkable past.
The first
school, which later became the Noah Deal farm, was
equipped to a few modern-day conveniences for the
students. This primitive building was equipped with a
black board, seats, and a hand-bell. Each student had
their own reader, slate, and pencil. The main courses of
study were reading, writing, and numbers.
Some of the
first students to attend the schoolhouse (as printed by
the Manistee Pioneer Press) were Mrs. Mary Showalter,
Mrs. Ernstine Krahe, Thomas Carey, James Hilliard, and
Mrs. Stephen Jones.
In the fall of
1882 a new schoolhouse was constructed at the northeast
corner of Mill and Spring Streets. This was a one room
building, which in 1882 was raised and another room put
underneath. As student enrollment increased, a little
schoolhouse was brought over the frozen Portage Lake from
what is now the Portage Point Inn in the late 1880's.
This building was used for the lower grades, and is still
located on Main Street in downtown Onekama. This building
was used until about 1908 when two classrooms were added
to the main schoolhouse. As enrollment continued to
increase, many more additions were made to the
schoolhouse. This building was where the first class
graduated from OHS in 1897.
This school
was occupied and made larger year by year until the
people of Onekama realized that having a bigger school
was mandatory. This new school was to be constructed at
the present-day location of Onekama Schools, atop a hill
above 5016 Main Street. This school was a longed-for and
labored -for modern structure.
The new school
was opened on Monday, February 10, 1930, and the dreams
of many became reality. Though Onekama School still
stands tall atop the hill of 5016 Main Street, it has yet
gone through many changes, and more changes are yet to
come. "What is now the cafeteria and the band room
was once the gym. Coming down the south side, down the
main hall were the classroom," stated Mr. John Henry
Kline, graduating class of 1937, noticing the changes.
"It's a lot different, a lot more modernized."
After
continued renovations, and the purchase of the old
Arcadia School for grades 2-3, and the gym being added to
the main building, a large addition took place in 1998,
which added many classrooms and a new Media Center. This
addition accompanied the even more growing enrollment at
the Onekama Consolidated Schools.
Through all
the locations and modernization, Onekama School is still
the great education site of over 600 students, enrolling
more each year. Now Superintendent Beth McCarthy leads
the school more than 100 years after the late E.J.Baker,
who strove for the new school.
Though the
appearance, size, and location of Onekama School has
changed dramatically, the mission of the school has not:
to serve the children of Onekama and surrounding areas by
providing them with the best education possible.
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The Wonderful
Life of John Henry Kline
Written by Erica Jach, Derek Etheridge, and
Jordan Wilson"It was a very
secretive project, nobody knew about it, not even
a lot of the workers knew what they were working
on," Mr. John Henry Kline, a resident of
Onekama, Michigan and proud graduate of Onekama
Schools, class of 1937, states about the
Manhattan Project. "There were a lot of
jokes about it, but all we were told was that it
was going to be used."
The Manhattan project was an
atomic project that was kept very secretive
through the years it took place. Mr. Kline was
working for Alice Cholmers at the time, and had
the project of building gaseous diffusers, which
were necessary for the atomic project. Gaseous
diffusers were large vacuum pumps. Mr. Kline
worked on this project for about a year and a
half, and in this time he remembers President
Roosevelt coming through the shop to see where
they were working.
Mr. John Henry Kline (a.k.a.
Jack) was born on July 4, 1919 in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, and later moved to Onekama, Michigan
in 1929 at the age of 10. He lived on a
family-owned farm on which they grew cherries and
raised cattle. Mr. Kline attended Onekama
school..
Mr. Kline first attended and
started school in the old school building which
was constructed at the present day location, and
was opened in 1930.
Through his childhood and
early teen years, Mr. Kline grew up in Onekama
and continued to attend Onekama School. Starting
work at age 12 or 13, he remembers mowing and
raking yards, and as early as age 13 remembers
first driving but without license. Mr. Kline
states jokingly, "I can remember once I ran
the model-T truck into the barn wall and blew out
tire on it. My dad was a little careful about
letting me use it after that."
Mr. Kline was involved in
many after-school activities, including band, 4-H
activities, and 4-H forestry, which got him his
scholarship to Michigan State University. He
graduated from Onekama School in 1937 and went on
to MSU to study electrical engineering, but later
switched to mechanical engineering. While
attending college at MSU, he met and wed Miss
Virginia Ray at age 21, and continued to attend
while she went to business school nearby. During
Mr. Kline's college years, he worked for the Ford
Motor Company working on hydraulic lifts for Fort
tractors, and making about $6 an hour. Mr. Kline
graduated from MSU at age 22 and began working
for Alice Cholmers. This is the story that leads
up to the Manhattan Project, and the life of Mr.
John Henry Kline.
Mr. Kline, now age 81, and
Mrs. Kline, now age 80, have been happily married
for more than 60 years, and have produced four
children: Richard Kline, past resident of Albian,
Michigan, Marjorie (Kline) Heigh, past resident
of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, George Kline, past
resident of Lansing, and Harold Kline, present
resident of Onekama, Michigan. Mr. Kline is a
proud graduate of Onekama School and continues to
live a very interested life with his wife, one
child, six grandchildren, and nine great
grandchildren.
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Great Depression
Affects Family
by Dustin ThomasThe Great
Depression was a terrible time for all Americans.
Business went into a slump and many people didn't
trust the government anymore. Long lines of
people waited for a bowl of soup and a single
piece of bread. Wealthy investors' stocks
crashed, and they were left with nothing. As a
last resort, some of them even committed suicide.
Some people thought the world had come to an end.
When people think of the depression they are
reminded of unemployment, hungry children, and
hopelessness.
Have you ever wondered what
happened to the people in Onekama and Manistee
during the depression? If you have, this is the
story of a little boy who experienced and lived
through the Depression in Manistee. But Phil
Beauvais did not always live in Manistee. Phil
was born in Royal Oak Michigan, in 1922, and grew
up in a luxurious house with anything he could
ask for. His family owned a long, sleek limo and
their $900,000 home even had an elevator.
His father bought and sold
property, and he had found it was always better
to deal with cash. When the stock market crashed,
his fortune was left unaffected. So for the first
time Phil witnessed the terror of the depression
was when a man they knew jumped off a building.
He was actually on the scene with his father when
the desperate, financially broken man had crashed
through the Model T Ford parked by the curb
below. After that, Phil's father helped any of
their friends that needed money. Soon the
Beauvais couldn't afford to heat their massive
house in Royal Oak.
Their father decided he'd
have to sell it, even if they didn't get very
much for it. They got $30,000. It was enough to
move to Manistee and buy an old house across from
the Ramsdell. Manistee was small, so it wasn't as
hard hit by the Depression as many other big
cities. There was a lot more farmers than stock
investors, and the farmer's only investment was
in the land and the next rain. Though it was a
shock moving from a fancy house in Royal Oak to
the house in Manistee, Phil grew to like his new
home and town. But even the smaller house in
Manistee was getting to expensive to heat. During
the winter, Phil's family had to move to a small
cottage on Portage Point. It had no real heating
except for two wood stoves burning so they
wouldn't freeze. He remembers how angry his
father was when they hadn't gotten enough wood.
Sometimes Phil's father was harsh, but he knew
that his father's life had been hard and that was
why.
Although Phil's family was
one of the wealthier families during the
depression, they still suffered. Many families
started out really poor and had nothing to lose.
Think of what they must have gone through. Phil
Beauvais's family was richer than most but by the
end of the Depression they were all equal.
Despite how hard the
Depression was on their family, Phil Beauvais
does not regret that sometimes they had to
struggle so hard to survive. He feels that the
Great Depression built his brother's and his
sister's characters and helped them to become
stronger and better people.
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Mr. and Mrs. A.
Brooks
by Ashley Brandis, Jackson Carter and Kayla Fink
What do you think
life would be like in the 1930's? Would it be fun? Would
it be easy? Onekama is a special town with a rich
history. It is very different between now and then.
School life was different, Childhood was different, as
well as day to day life. There were rough times, but
actually it sounds pretty cool. There was no violence in
school, or drugs. Everything was very inexpensive also.
We are going to take you back in the past and tell you
what Onekama was like.
We are going to
introduce you to two special people that have lived her
for over 50 years. Mr. Alec Brooks and Mrs. Nancy Brooks.
Mr. and Mrs. brooks came here in 1948 when they got
married. They know a lot about the history of Onekama,
and introduced us to a lot of new things. By sharing
their life we have learned more about the 1930's.
Singing, walking,
and listening to the radio were normal parts of life in
the 1930's Everyone knew how to sing songs from
"Annie" as a child. Mrs. Nancy Brooks said,
"We would gather around the radio and listen to
Orphan Annie as children." Mrs. Brooks grew up in a
suburb of Chicago, and came to Onekama in 1948. When she
got married to Mr. Brooks, she fell in love with the
area. Now they live by the turnaround by the pier. When
they first moved her they had a very interesting piece of
furniture: it was a Ben Franklin metal stove. Mrs. Brooks
had a hard time learning how to cook on the stove. She
said, "I never knew how to cook, use an outhouse,
and I never saw a sand dune." This was all new to
her. They also had to use the old pumps to pump water up
from the ground. Their refrigerator was also down in the
ground so that they could keep meat fresh.
Down where Franz
market now is was an old cherry factory. Mrs. Brooks used
to go down there every other day to get a cherry pie. She
said, "We lived off of cherry pie until I learned to
cook."
As a child, Mr.
Brooks would have to walk a long way just to get milk.
The walk was very hard. He had to go down and up hills
and a man and a buggy pulled by a horse delivered the
milk. Mr. Brooks said, "As a child we would pick up
the milk, walk home, then the next day walk back again.
"The milk was underneath a man's house in a
refrigerator to keep cold. The milk used to come in glass
bottles.
As children there
were lots of different games and sports. In grade school,
they used to play baseball during recess. During school,
they would have spelling bees, and they took turns
writing arithmetic problems on the board and correcting
them. Mr. Brooks used to play this one game where they
would balance a knife on their knee then flip it into the
ground. If it stuck in the ground you got a point, and
then you would go higher and higher until there was a
winner. Other games were Red Rover, Sardines (touch
someone while others were hiding you would tag them then
hide with them somewhere else), Kick the Can, and Hide
and Go Seek. The big fads were Angora sweaters with a
skirt to match, but they were very expensive. For boys it
was long pants because all they wore were knickers.
Mr. Alec Brooks
and Mrs. Nancy Brooks are very interesting and special
people that we learned a lot more about, and also taught
us more. Thank you for helping us learn more about what
life was like and how it was to live. We took you back to
the past and now we bring you back to the present. A lot
has happened over the past fifty years and we should
appreciate all the people that have lived here. Mr. & Mrs. Brooks Visit the
Fifth Grade
Schoedel Farm
by
Dominic Morrill, Ashley Zupin, and Scott TolinSchoedel
farm on M-22 has existed for many years, changing
from orchards to farms to nothing during times.
The owners of the farm have also changed
throughout the years, and it is the people who
have lived and worked the soil that have brought
this farm to life
Schoedel's farm history
began in 1988 when it was owned by the state of
Michigan for awhile. At that time, it was just a
sitting field of nothing except for trees.
In 1910, a man named Charles
Weeding bought the farm. Then a year later,
Charles Schoedel bought it. It was originally an
orchard, but over time, it turned into an animal
farm. In 1911, the old barn was built. That was
the main and original farm. The orchard then
diminished, an animal farm arose, and they first
harvested sheep. Then it changed to a dairy farm.
In about 1930, there was a
second add-on to the Schoedel farm. The
Schoedel's bought the barn across M-22 from the
original farm. In 1969, the second barn burnt
down and from the remains a house was built, and
that is the house that the Schoedel's currently
live in.
Over the years, they lost
many animals to predators and just runaways.
Since the farm has started, 30 animals have been
lost. The farm today harvests sheep, pigs, and
cows.
To this day the farm
continues to be successful. Mr. and Mrs. Charles
Schoedel, the current owners, have watched as the
farm has entered a new century. The Schoedel farm
remains a window into our county's past.
Melissa
and Katie chat with Mr. Joe Aschauer during
"Getting to Know" you activities.
The Wellspring was
funded by a Learn & Serve Grant awarded
through the Michigan Community Service
Commission.
More
articles on Page 2
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The Wellspring:
Notes About the Project
by
Megan McCarthyIn 1981, a former
Onekama teacher named Gail Verplank began a
project with her high school journalism class
called "The Wellspring." Her class
interviewed citizens of Onekama and recorded
their memories. Their stories were published in
two volumes in 1981 and 1982.
This school year, my eighth
grade English students decided to bring back
"The Wellspring" as we gathered the
stories of senior citizens who participated in
Project NetGap and researched the history of our
community. As seventh graders, many of my
students participated in the first phase of
project NetGap, in which they met with older
citizens from our community in Onekama School's
media center and shared their knowledge of
computers and technology. Our
"Wellspring" articles are the life
stories of the senior citizens from
ProjectNetGap.
Our work for the
"Wellspring" began with a critical look
at the genre of memoirs. Students read
professional memoirs, including Maya Angelou's I
Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Sandra
Cisnero's The House on Mango Street,
Cynthia Rylant's But I'll be Back Again,
Jean Fritz's Homesick and many more.
Students then wrote their own memoirs, as they
looked back on their lives and reflected upon the
people and events that have shaped them into the
individuals they are today. With this knowledge
of the power of writing to communicate the story
of a life, we were ready to tackle "The
Wellspring."
In groups of two to four,
students arranged interviews with NetGap
participants. After meeting with the older
citizens, we began the bigger project of using
their responses to write a story based upon the
person's life. Amazed by the amount of history
contained in these stories, students began the
second phase of "The Wellspring" as
they researched aspects our our community
discussed in the interviews. For the historical
articles, we are extremely grateful to Mr. Thomas
Gerhardt. Mr. Gerhardt met with groups of
students at the Manistee Historical Society
Museum and the Onekama Township Hall and shared
with students photographs, newspaper articles,
maps and the history of our community.
We are very proud of our
finished product, this third addition to
"The Wellspring." We feel that we have
successfully accomplished our objectives for this
project: to make intergenerational connections
with members of our community, to discover the
wealth of history around us, and to develop pride
in and a sense of connection to our community.
Through our work for this project, we have
learned the importance of preserving local
history through writing. "The
Wellspring" is our way of giving back to the
community by capturing and preserving the places,
faces, and stories that make our community
unique.
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