A lifetime of memories and more to come!
Sisters Judy Peterson and Pat Kurcell have been enjoying time with family on Barron Lake since they were children, thanks to their grandfather, who purchased a home on Breezy Beach in 1950.
“We used to rent a cottage next door (to the house they own now),” Judy said. The Brockman Family had cottages that they would rent to different people from Chicago, and we were one of them. My grandfather knew the man who lived in this cottage, and he decided to he wanted to sell. So, he asked my grandpa if he would like to buy the cottage, and he said, ‘Sure, I’ll buy it.’ He bought it for somewhere around $3,000. H also bought a Lincoln for $3,200. This cottage was cheaper than the Lincoln,” she said with a laugh.
Judy and Pat, and their cousins, Bill and Ken, each year arrived at their grandparents’ home Memorial Day weekend and stayed through Labor Day weekend, noting there were a lot of tears when the summer ended.
“We would stay with our grandma and grandpa, and sometimes our moms would come for a week. Our grandpa died in 1955, but we still came out there to stay with our grandma.”
Both Judy and Pat couldn’t say enough about how much they enjoyed their time at the lake. “We loved coming to the cottage, and every time school would start, we would be so sad because we didn’t want to go home,” Pat said. “We lived in the stockyard area in Chicago, and it was nothing like this. It was just a joy to come here for the summer. We did it until we were like 16 or 17, years old, and then we had to go to work—summer jobs you know,” she said.
The four cousins kept very busy, too. “We swam. We fished. We spent time at Kugler’s Beach. We skied. We did everything,” Pat said. “All we had was a little rowboat and grandpa would take us out there early in the morning until afternoon. We’d come back with the fish, and I’d help scale them. I’m a good scaler. I put the worms on the hook and everything. In fact, I showed my grandchildren how to do it, too. Then my grandmother would cook the fish. She was a great cook,” she said.
Upon the death of Judy and Pat’s grandparents, their moms became the new owners. “They left the house to my mom, Marge, and to my mom’s sister, Helen, who had the two boys. We all shared it,” Judy said.
Each summer was filled with excitement and fun, except for the summer of 2000 when a fire completely destroyed the house.
“We have no idea how it started, but we think it was electrical,” Pat said, adding that the fire happened just a few weeks before Memorial Day Weekend. “We always came here for the Memorial Day weekend so we could get the pier in and get the house ready for summer. The fire happened before we could do all that, so we didn’t get to do anything that year. That was the only year we never were here. It was bad. Everything was demolished.”
It was not a good memory for Judy and Pat and their families, but they rebuilt the home and have been busy creating new memories.
“Every time we’re here, we feel like we’re a million miles away from Chicago. I mean it’s just like you forget everything that’s going on there and you’re happy to be here,” Judy said. “It’s so peaceful here. The people are nice and we have great neighbors.”
The sisters reminisced about some of the adventures in Michigan when they were children. “I remember we would go to the Berrien County Fair and every one of us had a cute, new outfit to wear,” Judy said. Pat recalls visits to Notre Dame. “Almost every year we would get dressed up and go to Notre Dame for the day. We would have lunch and look around the stadium. I remember sitting in the cafeteria and one of the priests came up to my mom and told her what good children we were. I thought Notre Dame was beautiful and I looked forward to going there,” Pat said.
While they did leave the lake for a few outings, most of the time was spent in the lake or at the cottage. “We didn’t always go out. As kids, we just appreciated being here. We always had people to hang with because there were renters here all the time and we looked forward to that. We would ask Mrs. Brockman when “so and so family” was coming, and she’d tell us they would be arriving next week. We were excited because we always liked the kids that came,” Pat said.
The family has decades of memories from their time on Barron Lake and they look forward to many more.
