People of Omena

Marsha Buehler recalls her uncle, Paul Center, hitching a ride hanging on to the gunwales for quite a distance. He either fell off or let go but had a “pretty good swim back to shore”. This happened in the late 30’s when Vin Moore and his friends had parties in the Mignon boathouse, and the Sutton’s Bay fire engine caper occurred. They were a mischievous bunch! Photo courtesy “Omena, A Place In Time” by Amanda Holmes. Although her name means “small and delicately pretty,” she was “a monstrous boat,” remembered Martha Fisher Klitgaard, the largest yacht ever to have a… Read More »

Omena’s own Santa on a snowy Christmas Eve arriving by Fire Engine. “They came to the little white church on the hill from all around the countryside by cutter and two horse sleighs, bundled up against the cold with lap robes tucked around them. Under the big candle-lit tree were presents for every child, Indian and white.” Before electricity, candles provided the sparkle to the Christmas tree. Did they sometimes catch trees on fire? You bet they did! Luckily, the candle-lit tree never caught the Omena Church on fire, but there were many fires from Christmas tree candles during the… Read More »

Alonzo’s Sled. Photo credit Joey Bensley. When it snows it reminds me of Alonzo’s sled.  Alonzo Craker lived in Omena in the  1860’s, played in the abundant snow with his two little brothers.  He built his own sled, a little bobsled that he could steer,  to go sailing down the hills on.  He only used it a few years however when he was taken sick with Scarlet Fever and died at the age of ten. The little sled hung in the attic all that winter.  So grief stricken was this little family, that no one would even think of using… Read More »

Land Ownership in the Omena Area in 1881. You can see on the map that George Craker and his son Frank owned the most land in the area at the time. Courtesy “Atlas of Leelanau County, Michigan, 1881 by E. L. Hayes, and Omena Historical Society. George was a short man, about five feet and six inches tall, yet he is huge in the history of Omena. His grandson claimed he never wore a necktie, even to church, although there he is, standing alongside his wife in an old photo in the OHS archives, wearing a necktie. His sharp temper… Read More »

Harbor Bar in the mid 1950’s after Keith Brown bought it from his stepfather, John Putnam and made some additions. The service bay is visible on the right and the bar on the left. Courtesy Omena Historical Society. Kori Wheeler remembers that on Monday mornings when she was growing up her dad would come out and swim with the kids. He was a perfect diver and taught his children to dive and swim underwater. They laughed at his white legs…. white because he did not have a tan there, he never wore shorts as he worked all the time. For… Read More »

The Marbachs – Rob, Will, and Rev Marbach standing on M-22 in front of the parsonage. 1930’s. Courtesy Omena Historical Society. M22 was a busy road in 1928, but unpaved. The road grader went by twice each day, up the hill to Northport in the morning, and back south to Suttons Bay each afternoon smoothing out the ruts. It raised a lot of dust, but that did not bother Bob and Effie Barth, or their cows who crossed the road twice each day to get to pasture and back. And it did not bother Bill and Rob, two little boys… Read More »

The little house Janet lived in for most of her life is across from Omena’s historic Presbyterian Church. Kathy and Mike Bosco now own it and are preserving it from future development. Photo credit: Omena Historical Society archives. “Mr. Bushman” often made the Omena Column of the Leelanau Enterprise in the 1980’s. Who was this Mr. Bushman? We had a homeless man who had come to the village to work at the cherry processing plant during the cherry harvest for a few years. He probably worked nights and usually spent his days sleeping under a bush near the Omena Public… Read More »

This is the waterfront near where General Cutcheon and his wife had their cottage, Maplewood, from 1896 to 1908. He once said that he wanted his town’s future to remain “as evergreen as our forests, and as everlasting as the inland sea.” The first day of autumn is only a couple of days away. You can feel it in the air. You can hear it in the waves and the wind. In September of 1903, Mrs. Byron Cutcheon wrote to her friend Rebecca Richmond from their cottage on Omena Point. She reported that, “The general is feeling the drafts.”  She… Read More »

Clara at her desk in “Pencroft”, her cottage in Omena. Courtesy OHS Archives. The heat was suffocating the summer of 1896 in Traverse City. It was a long-delayed vacation in which the young couple had hoped to get away from the heat, but it appeared it had followed them. By lucky coincidence, they happened to meet an old friend in their Traverse City hotel, who recommended they take a steamer north to Omena to escape the heat. Clara Pierson and her husband, John, took the suggestion, and after their stay at the Omena Inn, they were so taken with Omena… Read More »

David and Sally on the front porch of Tamarack in 1992. Courtesy Traverse, the Magazine, January 1992. Driving around Chicago, looking for work in their little Volkswagen loaded with everything they owned, and having no luck, they parked the car on the street for a short time only to come back and find someone had broken into it and stolen everything they owned. They had hit rock bottom. No jobs, and everything they owned was gone. David and Sally Viskochil were college graduates, had served three years in the Peace Corps, and were down on their luck. They decided to… Read More »