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 Omena to work at the cherry processing plant north of town 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 Beach. He did not bother us, and we did not bother him… but Janet Barth reported his whereabouts.
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 Beach. Janet Barth, who was “eyes and ears” of the community and the reporter of Omena News column for the Leelanau Enterprise, called him “Mr. Bushman,” and often reported on his whereabouts in her column, much to the amusement of the locals. “Locals will be happy to know that Mr. Bushman has moved north,” one of her columns reported, and indeed we were!
Janet Barth had a wonderful sense of humor. She was there with her pencil and pad of paper collecting news every day on the porch of the Post Office. Since she got paid by the inch, she was always looking for more to write about.
Born and raised in Omena
Janet lived in Omena most of her life. She was born in 1935, the only child of Robert and Effie Barth, dairy farmers who also raised chickens in a big barn behind their house, which was next to Barth’s Cash Store. (Bob’s brother, Ernie, was the cheerful, talkative, proprietor of the store). Effie, Janet’s mother, had a big garden, made butter and cottage cheese from the cow’s milk, and dried apples in the fall to sell to the summer people. She had a bake shop in her little kitchen and sold baked goods from the front porch. They were hard working people!
Janet had no brothers or sisters, but Uncle Ernie and Aunt Esther and cousins, Wayne, Glen, and Eileen Barth lived right next door. Her cousins were younger than she was, but Wayne, six years younger, did say he would go over to Janet’s and play cards with her when he did not have friends his age to play with. Janet was already in school when Wayne was born, so no doubt she was a worthy opponent in card games.
Janet 3 ½ years old – Janet always loved cats, and had many, some say as many as 21 cats at the end of her life. Here she is about 3 1/2 years old. 1939 photo courtesy Omena Historical Society
Janet goes to school
When Janet turned 5, she started going to Northport School. She graduated from there in 1953, and went on to Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, getting the course work she needed to be a legal secretary after two years.
For the next 25 years Janet worked for Almond Arnold, an attorney in Traverse City. For the first eight years, Janet lived on Webster Street in Traverse City. These were happy years for Janet, but not so happy at home. Her father fell over a step while shoveling snow and landed on his back which broke bones and made him bedridden for a long while. Then in November 1963, Bob went deer hunting in the woods with a friend from Ingalls Bay. They spotted a buck, a big one, and Bob took aim and fired. The buck went down, and then so did Bob. He died right there in the woods of a heart attack at age 68, which people said was the way he would have wanted to go. Janet moved back to Omena to live with her mother, driving back to Traverse City every day for work.
Janet and her parents, Robert Clarence, and Effie Mary (Ranger) Barth. Courtesy Omena Historical Society
After her father died, things were peaceful for a while. Then nine years later her uncle Ernie retired, sold the store next door, and left town. And seven years after her Aunt and Uncle left town, her mother died. Janet was 44 and found herself quite alone. But she had her job…. for one more year that is.
Janet Retires
The following year her boss decided to retire. Janet lost her job. She was too young to retire but unwilling to take the job working for another lawyer her old boss had found for her, or to look for another job. Janet did not want to apply for Medicaid, welfare, or other benefits she probably had coming, according to her cousin Wayne. She lived off her savings for a while.
All the years Janet drove to Traverse City for work, she had old, old cars, cars that had worn tires and needed frequent repair jobs. It was not until her boss retired and gave Janet his second car that Janet finally had a dependable car that she was proud of. It was red and she parked it right in front of her house for all to see.
And she became a part of Omena’s “color.” Mark Frank, who was postmaster of Omena from 1991 to 2009, remembered many of the little quirks of Janet’s that endeared her to the village. For instance, Janet had one of her turn signals on her car go out, and rather than have it fixed, she went around the block several times to the right to end up facing the street she could have just turned left on with a working turn signal.
She loved to joke with Mark when she picked up her mail. She claimed she was “going out with a lawyer.” After that Mark teased her about other “boyfriends” which she enjoyed immensely. She never had a boyfriend that we know of.
With no job, she became a jack of all trades. Besides writing the Leelanau Enterprise Omena column, Janet also took care of the grounds of Omena Presbyterian Church across the street from her house, mowing the lawn before each Sunday Service. And she became the church’s long-time treasurer as well. She did type for people, charging very little per page. And she started a knitting and crocheting business, knitting baby sets, sweaters, hats, and afghans late into the night and trying to sell them from her front porch. She did very complicated patterns and was never afraid to tackle a new design. However, business was slow, and this brought in little income.
Janet in the 1970’s coming out of her barn, the barn where her father raised cows and chickens. Courtesy Lynn Spitznagel, who purchased the barn from Janet and moved it, converting it to a summer cottage for her family on Omena Point Road in 1977. Janet was concerned that the lower part of the barn was beginning to rot, as you can see in the photo. It had to be shortened to remove the rot…but it is still quite tall.
As time went on, Janet developed diabetes, and began having trouble getting to the Post Office and the store without using a cane. A few in the community became her caregiving family, bringing her groceries and her mail, and doing errands for her occasionally.
Where was Janet?
But there was concern when Janet was not seen around town for a few days, and Sunny Colling, the owner of Omena’s Country Store at that time, was worried about her. It was Janet’s habit to stop in and chat with Sunny every day after getting her mail at the Post Office, and they had become good friends. Although Sunny could be grumpy, she had a soft spot in her heart for those in need like Janet. Sunny asked Mark to check on Janet. So, Mark went to Janet’s house, let himself in, and found her on the floor alive but going into and out of consciousness.
He called the EMT’s who took her to the hospital in Northport. And from there, she was moved to Northport’s Long-Term Care for about a year. Mark went to visit her there and said she looked wonderful, no doubt good food and regular care helped her a lot, but she was very unhappy not to be at home in Omena. She died in Long Term Care in Northport in December of 2002. She had spent most of her life in the little white house across the street from Omena Presbyterian Church and was a fixture in our little village for 67 years, loved by everyone, always a cheerful presence.
But her smile always had a haunted look. What was it about that smile? According to her cousin Wayne, Janet was born with a birth defect that prevented her from smiling. Others thought it might have been a cleft palate. Mark Frank added that someone had offered to pay to have it fixed when she was a child, but her father had turned it down. “Pride,” Mark thought. In any case, although Janet joked and laughed a lot with everyone, there was no true smile there. Even in photos when she was a little girl, as beautiful she was, she never smiled in the photos.
I hope she was happy then, loved as the only child of Bob and Effie Barth, with cousins and a jovial uncle living above the store next door. She is remembered by many as a “presence” in the village. A year after Janet died, Phyllis Kilcherman said, “Janet was possessed of quick mind and a dry wit. Friends always elicited a humorous response from her.” This little town loves its colorful characters, and Janet Barth loved it in return.
Courtesy: Mark Frank, Wayne Barth, Omena Historical Archives, including comments by Janet’ Barth herself, and Phyllis Kilcherman, and “Omena, A Place In Time” by Amanda Holmes.