NEWS from SAUGATUCK/DOUGLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY |
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Norm Deam |
John Peters (269) 857-2967 jppubrel@aol.com |
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NORM DEAM SHARES MEMORIES OF
LIVING IN AN 1859 LIGHTHOUSE |
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SAUGATUCK (MI), JULY 2, 2007 -- Many have heard about and seen pictures of the 1859 Saugatuck Lighthouse, which was destroyed by the infamous tornado of 1956, but little is known about what it was like to live there. That missing piece of local lore will be revealed on Wednesday, July 11, 7 p.m. at the Saugatuck Center for the Arts (SCA), 400 Culver Street, during the monthly meeting of the Saugatuck/Douglas Historical Society. The event is open to the public; admission and parking are free. Telling the tale with projected photos will be Norm Deam, 75, who grew up in the Old Lighthouse after his family moved there as rental tenants in 1933 when he was one year old, then bought it as their permanent home in 1937. Isolated on a sandy lakefront with no utilities and accessible only by boat, life was challenging, Deam's talk recalls.
The lighthouse functioned as such until the U.S. Government closed it in 1914, when it was leased to Frederic Fursman, then director of the Ox-Bow School of Painting, for $10/year. He used the lighthouse as a cottage-studio for several people connected to the school, the last of which was Norm's father Arthur Deam, a professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois. After the tornado, the Deam family rebuilt a cottage on that site, atop the old structure's cellar and using what wood and furnishings were recoverable from the destruction. The Deam family continues to use that cottage as a summer home today...still without utilities and accessible only by boat, but now relishing the secluded and simpler lifestyle of earlier years. # # # |
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