*NOTE: Lee Lawson passed away on March 20, 2022. See obituary.*
Lee Lawson Shares Lake Memories
Part 1 of three short stories as told by Lee Lawson. Aug. 4, 2017. Written by Jodi Marneris.
It was the 1930s when Lee Lawson’s father used the money he received when he was mustered out of the service to buy a lot on Breezy Beach. “We lived in a tent for a while and then my parents built a little one-room house on that lot,” she said. Slowly, her family began to add onto the house and built additional sleeping quarters behind the house. “It was very primitive. There was no running water so we had to use a pitcher pump that belonged to our neighbor, a man we used to call Grandpa Kovach,” she said.
Lawson recalls with great fondness her early years on the lake.
“We’d have a lot of company come up from South Bend and every Friday night we’d have a fish fry. It was great fun. There were two trees on that lot and one of them is still there today,” she said.
In 1947, Lawson’s family moved to the east side of the lake on Huff Avenue, a home next door to where she currently lives. “It had a little cabin on it that people from Chicago owned. I remember the man worked for the New York Central Railroad. Actually, pretty much all of our neighbors on this side of the lake worked for the railroad,” she said. Four years later, her parents bought the house next door, the one she lives in still today. She and her late husband tore the house down and rebuilt it in 1998 and that’s where she raised her children.
Longtime Barron Lake resident Lee Lawson (photo taken August 2019)
As a child, Lawson remembers roller skating at Kennedy’s Resort on the west side of the lake. “The roller rink was actually right up by the water front. You could skate and as you went around you’d see the water right below. We used to see turtle nests. It was just awesome,” she said.
She also recalls the dance halls on the lake. Reid’s Resort was on the property where Kugler’s Beach was situated and the Avalon was on Lake Shore Drive. “I remember when I was about 8 or 9 years old, we’d go to the dance hall on Friday and Saturday night when they had dances. My mother was the popcorn lady. She made and sold the popcorn. My father was the front gate person—we called him the bouncer because he had to make sure people didn’t get in who were too young to come in,” she said.
Orchestras from around the country played at the dance halls. “I remember one of the orchestras we loved so much was Don Pablo. His orchestra was just the best. People would all dance and everyone had such a wonderful time,” she said.
Note: Pablo, born in Mexico City, was conductor of The Biggest Little Band in the Land. His 10-piece band was well known in the 1930s and 40s in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. He died at the age of 82 in 1988.
