Growing up on Barron Lake, Larry Griffee, who is now retired and living down south, can boast he had a chance to visit quite a few houses while living on the lake.
Why? His dad, Dave, was the local milkman working for United Dairies.
“My dad would get me up at four o’clock in the morning and take me with him to run milk up to people’s houses,” Griffee said. Did he get paid? Not with money, but to Griffee it was something much better. “I got to drink all the chocolate milk I wanted in the back of the truck.”
The Griffee family originally lived on Lakeshore Drive, and in 1954 bought a house on the north side of the lake on Huntley Road near Miars Drive. “We moved because my family expanded. My parents had six boys in a row and then my only sister. It was a big deal on Barron Lake that this family with six boys finally had a girl.”
His father was pretty well known around the lake and in the Niles area. “Everybody knew my dad,” he said of Dave, who was a county commissioner, served on the park board and was a member of the Howard Township volunteer fire department.
Residents in the area also were very aware of the Griffee family craftsmanship. “I think my grandfather and his brother plastered almost the entire town of Niles,” he said. He said his grandfather and his grandfather’s brother were master plasters and built Jay’s Lounge, which was named for his grandfather. They plastered many of the bars and restaurants in the area, including the old BNL that was once across from the Walgreen’s on 11th Street.
Griffee, who graduated from Niles High School in 1972, went into the Navy the following year, serving as a medic. While stationed at the Great Lakes Naval Hospital in Chicago, he would come back to Niles on weekends when he could to work at the family lounge.
While still in his younger days on the lake, Griffee worked at Brady’s Grocery. “Brady’s Grocery was over there across the lake by the marina. I used to be a bagger,” he said. “I remember the Brady brothers gave me a job working for Mrs. Carnes. Everybody knew her. It was like she was everybody’s mother,” he said. Brady’s Grocery was in the same building as the Swinging Doors bar, which long ago was on Lakeshore Drive.
He also reminisced about Alfred Smith, a neighbor who lived on Miars Drive. “He was the kind of guy every lake has. You fished with him on Barron Lake because he knew where all the fish were.” He said Smith and his wife loved children but never had any of their own. “They kind of adopted all those kids in the neighborhood,” Griffee said. “He was like the grandfather of Barron Lake. He would take us all out on his boat and ride us around. He’d teach us where everything was on the lake and tell us a lot of stories about the lake.”
WINTER FUN
Moving to his teen years, he recalls being grounded because he had taken his mother’s new car out for a spin. “Everybody wanted to be the first person to drive across the lake. Well, I got my driver’s license at 16 like everybody else and the first thing I did when the lake froze over? I drove my mom’s car across it,” he said.
“My brother went home and said to my mom, ‘Larry’s driving your car across the lake.’ My mom wasn’t very happy and when I got home I was in trouble for months.”
Then there was the time he and friend Jerry Stephens took Stephens’ car out on the lake. “Jerry’s dad bought him a Volkswagen. I think it was a ’62. So as soon as we thought the ice thickened up, we were going to zoom across the lake. Well, we did and when we got halfway across the lake, the car fell through the ice. It didn’t completely fall through but it did go under the water some. We had to leave the car there until the ice got thicker. Then we were able to get a truck out there and pull his Volkswagen out of the lake. Boy, we were grounded for like forever,” he said.
It wasn’t only cars that went out for a spin on the lake. “There was a man on the lake who would weld a bracket onto people’s motorcycles so you’d have a third wheel. There would be motorcycle races by Beachcombers in the middle of the winter. They’d run circles around the icehouses, too. The fishermen, of course, weren’t very happy with that.”
He said Alfred Smith also used to run his snowplow tractor across the ice to build a hockey rink in the middle of the lake. “We’d play for hours and sometimes right into the night so we put up gas lit lanterns on the corners of the hockey rink, “ he said.
CELEBRITIES ON THE LAKE
Griffee said Dick Addis used to drop his boat in the lake just about every weekend. Addis, a meteorologist for WNDU-TV in South Bend, passed away in 2006. “He was kind of a celebrity to us because he was the weatherman on WNDU,” he said, adding that the man also would take Griffee and his friends water skiing.
“Tommy James, from Tommy James and the Shondells used to come and hang out all the time. Oh yeah, and Tommy Shaw from Sticks used to come there, and Tommy James’ drummer, Jim, who was one of the Payne boys. We’d all go hang out at Beachcombers. It’s where everyone went. Except for the girls from South Bend who used to come up when I was in high school. They’d all go to Kugler’s Beach,” he said. “When we saw the girls over there, we’d take our sailboat over to Kugler’s. We’d call them to swim out to us and then we’d pick them up.”
LIFE AFTER THE LAKE
Griffee served in the Navy for almost 16 years when he was called up to serve as a medic for the Marines. He was unsure if he wanted to go to Kuwait. “I told my general, look, I’m 32 years old. My wife is pregnant and she’s new to the country. Do you think maybe I could kind of skip this deal? He looked at me and said I had 48 hours. I rented a truck and drove my wife to New Jersey to stay with an aunt and drove back to Camp LeJeune (in North Carolina), got on a plane and 40 hours later I was sitting in the desert of Saudi Arabia,” he said. “I was bunked down in a big hole in the ground from Dec. 10, 1990 until Feb. 24, 1991.
He left the U.S. when his wife, who was originally from the Philippines, was four months pregnant and he returned when his son was four months old, with numerous medals and commendations for his service and bravery.
Griffee recalls with great fondness a support group that formed when he was in the service, started by Dr. Leonard, a Niles dentist, and his son, who was one of Griffee’s classmates. He said Mrs. Winton, who was his third grade teacher wrote an article about his service as a medic in the Marines while in Desert Storm in Iraq. “The group invited me back to Niles. They flew me, my wife and my baby back to Niles to meet my support group,” he said. “It was wonderful.”
LOOKING BACK—LOOKING FORWARD
“When I think of some of the stuff we did on that lake, it was crazy. This lake is where everybody came. But the good thing is that we lived there. We didn’t have to come out to the lake like others did because we were already there.”
“We just had to get up in the morning, put on our bathing suit, grab our fishing pole and get the boat. We’d get up at sunrise and come back when it got dark. Our parents never worried about us because it was like all the women on the lake were our moms. If you did something wrong, you were in big trouble because you had 50 moms and dads who were going to beat your butt. Everybody knew everybody. And everybody looked out for everybody.”
It’s been about 32 years since Griffee has been back on Barron Lake, but he does hope to come back to visit just as soon as he can.
As told by Larry Griffee.
Written by Jodi Marneris for the Barron Lake Association website. February 2021
Hi my name is Lisa shinkle my mom was sherrill brady her mom and dad leo and dorothy brady had brady’s store I was born 1960 I remember the lake and store please any pictures or stories I would love to hear ,my uncle david my and aunt Betty. Brady and all the kids were there too.