Hector Carmichael

One of Hector Carmichael’s boats on Omena Bay circa 1930’s. – Courtesy Omena Historical Society.

Once there was rich man, a very rich man, who had a son he dearly loved named Charlie, “Doc” for short. Why “Doc”? Perhaps it was short for “Douglas Carmichael” or perhaps it was because he was in constant need of doctors. Charlie had congenital lung disease for which there were few treatments in 1914. It was a happy accident that Charlies family discovered Omena and its clear cool summer air where Charlie could play and have adventures like a normal boy.

In 1920, when Charlie was 6, he, his mom Jesse, and his dad, Hector, finished their vacation in Harbor Springs and decided to swing by to visit their friend Versey Legg in Omena on the way home. They fell in love with Omena, the clear air, the sparkly waters, and before they left that day, they had purchased property near Versey on Omena Point. And by the next summer they had built a cottage there which they called “Birchwood Terrace.”

While Charlie was enjoying the water and freedom to play with other children as well as the undivided attention of his mother, Hector Carmichael was juggling a life of ease at “Birchwood Terrace” in Omena and his important job in insurance back in Chicago.

Catching the Sleeper

On Sunday night, Hector, along with other working fathers who did not have the summer off, would be driven by one of the wives to the train station in Traverse City to catch the “sleeper.”   Hector “always had a very fine supper with linen tablecloths and real silver, and several choices on the menu, serviced by a career black Pullman car staff in the drinking car.” he told Fred Gorham. He went to bed in an old-fashioned Pullman with beds that let down out of the ceiling and came out from behind the seats and was enclosed with green curtains.

When the train arrived in Chicago Monday morning, Hector went straight to the office where, he kept an extra set of clothes. On Friday night the men took a similar overnight return trip back to Omena.

The Good Life

Life was sweet in the 1920’s. The Carmichaels purchased their first boat, the “Restless,” a 41’ cruiser, followed up by a 28’, red mahogany beauty with a 90-horsepower motor. And in 1932, he brought the huge yacht, “the Mignon” to Omena Bay.

Hector was doing well, but the other cottagers were feeling the depression and in the 1930’s one by one they shuttered up their cottages and put them up for sale. Hector Carmichael had the funds to buy them up, buying at least a half a dozen cottages, the Oaks Hotel, acres of land on Omena Points interior, (now owned by the Omena Woods Association), the Omena Pavilion and its surrounding land, (now Omena Traverse Yacht Club), in total owning at least 80 acres on Omena Bay as well as some farmland.

While we now see the legacy his purchases would bring to Omena in the future, at the time people did not see it that way as one by one familiar faces disappeared from Omena. He was making savvy investments at the expense of their misfortunes.

The Oaks Hotel

The Oaks Hotel, which Hector owned through the depression and WWII, was three stories tall, had 22 small, plain rooms all facing the bay. I am sure in that age of no air conditioning, both the breeze off the bay and the bay views made up for the fact that everyone had to go to a separate part of the building for “toilet facilities.”  It had a beautiful two-story porch which ran the entire length of the building with gingerbread arches, and two sweeping staircases.

It was exclusive, soliciting “Gentile Guests” in its advertising. But perhaps it is best feature was the cooking. It grew to be the hotel that many Omenans, not only those with cottages on the Point, depended on for their noon meal, as well as to house an overflow of guests.

Carmichael sold the hotel in the late 1940’s. It remained open under the new ownership for a season or two and then…tragedy! No one really knows for sure how, but a suspicious fire broke out one night in five places at once, and it burned the hotel to the ground. It is rumored that the owners had their car packed and ready to pull out the night the hotel burned down. They still owed Hector a lot of money, and he ended up being the biggest loser. He was too pained to talk about it later.

Shob-wah-sung Boulevard Abandoned

By 1935 the old shore road, Shob-wah-sung Boulevard, was getting increasingly hard to maintain with the increasing traffic from faster automobiles and the annual spring wash outs. Hector headed up a move to abandon that road and make an inner road, the present Omena Point Road, the main access to the cottages, and then he gave all of the beach cottages the land between their lots and the new road.

Part of his motivation for spearheading the movement of the road might have been to improve the lives of the cottagers, but he was thinking of his own properties as well. Both The Oaks Hotel and its growing number of rental cottages would have been more appealing to guests if they did not need to risk their automobiles just to get there.

Charlie Grows Up

Meanwhile Charlie was growing up. The year 1932, when Charlie was 18, was a year in Charlie’s short life that his entitlement proved to be his undoing, and his reputation was tarnished. The Gull Island house had become vandalized to the point that the absentee owner, Dr. Ustick, offered a substantial reward for information about the vandals.

At about that time, Waldo Abbott, Charlie, and their friends made a pleasure trip to Gull Island, and “borrowed” about a dozen chairs from the house, putting them in the Carmichaels boathouse which they all used as a club house. They forgot all about them, left them there for the winter, and when they returned the following spring, their fathers were called and ordered to bring the group of “chair hustlers” to the sheriff’s office in Leland. The boys had been reported as stealing the chairs from the island. “We’re going to hang you if your guilty!” They were told. The fathers hired Traverse City lawyers.

The other boys ended up being released because they were juveniles, But Charlie, who was 18, was not so lucky. Eventually, however, charges were dismissed when it was discovered that Dr. Ustick had illegally entered the Carmichaels boathouse in search of the stolen chairs. Charlie’s reputation was established however, and much of the vandalism which continued at the Gull Island cottage was blamed on him.

The controversial win in a hotly contested boat race.

Ingalls Bay challenged Omena Bay in a race between each side’s half dozen small speedboats with fast outboard engines. Doc (Charlie) looked like the fasted of the two opposing sides with his combination of boat and motor. Charlie had his own 13′ Thunderbird with a 16-horsepower Johnson outboard motor, a vessel that gave him an enviable amount of status in a world otherwise filled with canoes, rowboats, and little sail boats. However, the Ingalls Bay group had a plan. They were to combine the  Graf’s huge heavy 16 horsepower motor with the Fisher’s little racing shell, hoping for a calm day on the water.

But Doc wanted to win. He must have heard about the Ingalls’ Bay plan, and on the Friday before the race, he decided to buy a 32 horsepower Johnson Sea-Horse engine especially for the race. It needed 40 hours to break it in, so he hooked it up to a board in his boathouse and ran it continually from Friday to Sunday, race day. The race began. The Ingalls Bay team rounded the corners closer, but on the straight away Doc and his new engine, going about 42 miles an hour, won the race for Omena Bay. Luckily, there were no accidents, and all reportedly had a lot of fun.

The War Ended

WWII ended, the cottages slowly came to life again, and Hector was approached by a group of teens who wanted to make the Carmichaels old boarded up Pavilion building into a sailing club. He agreed to let them use the building for $1 a year if they agree to not allow alcohol there and would take care of it.

By 1949 the club numbered 39 members who raised funds to purchase the building for $2,000. They needed a parking lot and wanted tennis courts, and Hector leased them land for that for the same $1 a year. Five years later Hector and Jessie quadrupled the Club’s acreage by giving them six additional lots to add to the two already purchased.

But that was not the end of Hector and Jesse’s arrangements with the cottagers. He also had a pump installed to provide five cottages with running water hoping to share the water with The Oaks, however it proved too much for the pump. He purchased much of the inland property (presently Omena Woods Association), and had the platted streets there vacated to lower his property taxes.

Failing Health and Retirement

By 1942, Charlies health must have begun to fail and in 1943 he died. Waldo Abbott heard that Charlies dying request was to be brought into Omena. The story Waldo told is that “just as they arrived at the village limits Charlie sat up and looked out at Omena and passed on.”  Whether or not that is true, Charlie is buried in the Omena Cemetery.

In 1943 Hector retired, and Hector and Jesse, no longer needing to stay near Charlles’ doctors in Chicago, sold their house there and made “Birchwood Terrace” in Omena their primary home. However, they still spent time in Arizona and Florida in the winter.

But his health was failing. In the December 1951 issue of The Breeze, there is an article by Harriette Underwood. H. or Carmichael had been ‘”rushed to Munson Hospital, in Traverse City, where he was now convalescing. While he seems somewhat improved, he was confined to a wheelchair and his right leg was paralyzed.”  Then in the December 1952 issue of The Breeze simply states, “Hector is presently ill with a stroke.”

Benefactor of Omena Point

In the end, Hector looked back at his life with despair. He was heard to have said, “You spend your lifetime accumulating and, in the end, it doesn’t mean a goddamn thing.”  Although he is credited with “having been a “benefactor of Omena Point, helping to preserve its unique natural beauty, quiet, and unspoiled atmosphere,” this competitive man had to win whether it was in business, or in a casual boat race. He had to have bigger and even bigger yachts, more and more land, profited from the losses of others, but was still not happy.

Hector died the following December at the age of 71 having never fully recovered from his stroke. He chose at the end of his life and even in death to remain in Omena. He was buried next to his son Charlie in the Omena Cemetery.

The Grand Dowager

Jesse stayed on in Omena year around after Hector’s death. She was left with few liquid assets and a lot of land, which she had to pay taxes on. She offered it up for sale to the other cottage owners. She was active in the Yacht Club, became one of the “grand dowagers” who dominated there, and part of the “the golden era” which was Omena in the 1950’s. She became the publisher of “The Breeze,” OTYC’s winter letter to members.

In her 1953 newsletter, she showed her Victorian nature in her description of the beginnings of spring in Omena: “In its rather chilly winter dignity, dark green majestic pines, surrounded by white spots of snow banked along the shore, Omena is muted and not quite alive. I am reminded that in a few weeks, there will be spots of bright color moving about, gay laughter wafting across the Bay along with the noise of motors and best of all, the graceful motion of lady Penguins (sailboats) in their ever-changing mood.”  Soon the Sunfish will be bobbing along on the Bay and ours will be the pleasures of Omena.

Courtesy “Omena, A Place in Time” by Amanda Holmes, Omena Historical Society archives and Marsha Buehler for the December 1952 copy of “The Breeze”.