Issue 7 - Summer 2021
Enterprise Water Sports Club
Letter From The President
By: Bear Wheeler
The Elcho Historical Society is doing very well and taking off like a rocket. Many people are joining our muster and most are reenlisting. Though this last year we have lost some pioneers of the area, for our generation they're pioneers, many people are sharing their families histories with us. This is very important to document. We don't want our future museum to be just a collection of artifacts, we want it to be a gallery of the histories of the families that have started and have continued to make this community thrive for the last 134 years. Please share your histories with us. Don't assume someone else did, otherwise you and your ancestors memory maybe forgotten. Send articles, write-ups, pictures (hard copy or digital) to the contact info in this newsletter. When we get it, we will contact you saying that it has been received. Thank you for your cooperation.
The restoration of the Grange Hall museum is coming along, slowly, but still coming along. It's hard to find people to do the work needed. The first hurdle we need to accomplish is to repair the foundation. A stone mason is really the person we needed yesterday. The facelift painting on the front is to attract attention, to get people to notice this ol' ghost. We are having banners made for the sides of the building, so people know that it was a Grange Hall and that it is the future site of the EHS museum. We are still selling raffle tickets for the stunning quilt that Kate Kelly created. A special thanks to Carole Schauer, Greg Mejak, Jennai Rusch, and Kate Kelly for helping me to push the EHS cart along!
In this newsletter as a summer tribute we are featuring the Enterprise Water Sports Club. It's the perfect throwback to our Elcho Boat Shop newsletter from a couple years ago. The Elcho Boat Shop serviced the boats and motors for the water ski club. I'm sure there's many stories attached to that! Enjoy your summer everybody and be safe!
Enterprise Water Sports Club
By: Jon Stillman
Our son and daughter and their families spent the 2020 pandemic summer working their jobs from our Post Lake cottage. One of the tasks they took on was to clear out the garage that had a lifetime of "important stuff” that should have been tossed years ago but wasn't. Among those things were some "old" water skis including a set of the jumping skis that I used when skiing with the Enterprise Water Sports Club (EWSC) during the late 1950s. The kids hung the jumping skis on the cottage wall and this has stimulated a number of great memories.
My parents bought our cottage on Upper Post Lake in 1955. Small world that it is, my classmate and great friend at Wayland Academy was Patty Vaughn. Her parents, the Siegrists, owned Woodland Lodge on Enterprise Lake. Little did I know that my folk's cottage was near Woodland Lodge but discovered in conversations with Patty that our cottage was within ten miles of the Lodge. Unknown to me at the time, the Bubolz family that I knew from my hometown, Appleton, also had a cottage on Enterprise Lake and were close friends of Patty. Allen, Milly, John and Jerry Bubolz lived on River Drive, the same neighborhood I lived in for a time in Appleton. Thus when I arrived at Post Lake in the summer of 1956 I had a base of friends.
The summer of 1956 was magical. While I had learned to water ski a few years before, this was the first time that I would have access to a molded plywood Dumphy boat with a 25 horse power Johnson outboard motor my dad bought to encourage me to spend the summer at the cottage.
This was a year when developing tension between fisherman and water skiers was culminating in the state. The fishing lobbv was strong and the younger people in the community were very interested in the growing availability of boats with sufficient power to pull water skiers. Resolving these differences would require an effort to find advocacy for the skiers.
Gordon Bubloz was a past Senator in the state government and aware of the tension. He had kids that enjoyed the water skiing and Gordon enjoyed fishing and understood the concerns of the fishing community. He served as a mentor for his son Allen who possessed great leadership and organizational skills. Allen was the key organizer of the Enterprise Water Sports Club (EWSC). The idea behind the club was to provide an opportunity for the young people to ski while at the same time providing support for the other outdoor activities to include fishing.
That summer Gordon Bubolz, with his son Allen picked me up early one morning at our cottage and took us to a government hearing in Rhinelander where as young people, we had the opportunity to testify to a committee while serving as advocates for all water sports.
Chas Maney & Paul Connors Enterprise Water Sports Club
The goal was to seek a balanced approach showing there was room for all water sports. Part of our presentation was to demonstrate that as a water sports club - not a water ski club - we were taking actions to enhance the fishing experience such as building fish shelters on the ice and sinking them when the ice melted. We also shared that we planned to run fishing contests in our local community to encourage fishing.
The Boat Shop
The goal of the ski club was to grow the membership and to schedule a platform for doing a water ski show on Enterprise Lake. The club aggressively sought members – initially on Enterprise Lake. The word spread rapidly as some of the key participants on the lake were from Antigo and others who had places on the Lake were from Elcho. Names I remember from Antigo were: Dexter, Alice and Bruce Defnet; and Janice Vosmek. From Elcho, Chuck Handeyside’s granddad had a cottage on the lake and Chuck was influential in getting young people as well as businesses in the local community involved including Bob, Carl and Dee Radke who lived on Otter Lake. Rod Visser from Builders Service was also active. Les Furman from the Red Owl Grocery Store provided food during the shows. Walt Mink and his partner Carl Emery ran a small engine repair shop across the street from the Handeyside gas station. The Handeyside station was located where the current Shell Station is. Walt and Carl were the go to people when we had outboard motor issues. That occurred fairly frequently and as I recall the price was always right for a repair. During the initial year, Gordon Bubolz helped provide gas for the ski and support boats as weII as funding to build the first jump. Later we had volunteer skilled help, held fundraisers and passed the hat at the shows to become pretty self-sufficient as a club.
Early on I was the sole participant from Post Lake as Patty Vaughn got me involved. I was able to get Mary and Ginny McKee who were our neighbors at Post Lake involved that first year. One of the key activities that helped with the membership growth was the Friday night gathering at the Post Lake Roller rink. This was a place where the young people from the local communities as well as the summer visitors could meet and gain friendships. It was really this combination of things and the way the club idea caught the imagination of the community as a whole that led to the success of EWSC.
This first summer we focused on doing a water ski show on Enterprise Lake. This meant we needed to build a ski jump as a centerpiece for the show. The organization it took to do a show was challenging. We tried to be creative with the kind of acts that would impress an audience. Boat drivers had to be trained. The challenges of managing the ski ropes for each act had to be planned and the skiers had to be trained in their respective roles for ensuring they had the right equipment for their respective acts. Ropes for pyramids had to be of different lengths. Trick skis had to be ready along with the special ropes. Chuck Handeyside had to have his disc and ladder ready along with his rope. The jumpers had to halve their special skis and ropes ready. Timing was critical to keep the show moving. It was a challenging task for a group of young people who had never run a project of this size with so many moving parts.
Chuck Handeyside Ladder on Saucer Enterprise Water Sports Club
We needed help with all kinds of activities from gaining permission from cottage owners to allow people on their lawns to watch the show, to arrange for parking help, to developing and distributing posters to encourage an audience. This first successful show, attended by 1,5O0 spectators, led to thinking of a bigger effort in a location that would provide an improved site for future years. This started the planning to move the show to Otter Lake.
The pieces fell in place. The Radke brothers lived on Otter Lake which meant we had a place where boats and limited equipment could be kept. Land owned by Al Berenz and Paul Langenfeldt along the east side Otter Lake was made available to the club. The land had a natural slope and was reasonably free of trees. This allowed for landscaping bench seats so that the audience would have a bleacher seat arrangement starting near the water's edge. Joe Migas was a great friend of EWSC and coordinated and or helped with building the seats and a small broadcasting stand with electrical power for the announcer. A new jump was built and a key feature of the location was that the water got deep quickly close to the shoreline so the jump could be placed relatively close to the stands. This added to the excitement for the audience. A dock was built near the south end of the shore and used as the takeoff point for the acts which by the second season were pretty spectacular. We pulled three jumpers at a time off the jump ramp, did helicopter spins, had spectacular lines of synchronized skiers, did five person pyramids. trick skiing, clown acts and even tried flying a skier on a homemade kite pulled behind our primary show boat which as I recall was a Thompson Wood Hull boat with twin 25 horsepower outboard motors. The real feature of the show was 13-year-old Bruce Defnet who could barefoot ski behind a 25 horse outboard. Added entertainment was featuring 50-year-old Ben Mundl as a slalom skier. In that day and age, a 50-year-old slalom skier was rare. Ben also had two sons who were key participants in the shows.
Preparing for the shows meant daily rehearsal and Bob Radke, who was working in Milwaukee, would return home on weekends to help with boat driving duties. One of my vivid memories that season is when we talked Bob into trying the ski jump since he pulled so many skiers over the jump as a driver. He approached the jump, flew through the air and took a spill on landing as was so common for the first jump. We pulled around to pick him up and asked are you OK. His response, I think I lost a finger. Sure enough he had.
The kind of experiences that we had as a skiing community were remarkable. It pulled the local community as well as the cottage community together in a unique way where we worked hard together and we played hard together. The entire business community supported EWSC beyond expectations.
These are just a few of my remembrances from the first two years of EWSC existence. My last summer to be actively involved was the next year, the summer of 1958. After that life took me in a direction that only allowed for short vacations on Post Lake until later in life. Those first three years as a member of EWSC, remain a personal highlight some 60+ years later.
OTTO TIEGS, WORLD WAR I, THE STORY OF ONE AMERICAN SOLDIER
Otto Tiegs
The recently orphaned Otto Tiegs who was born in 1889 made his way to Summit Lake when he was about twelve or thirteen years old. The story is that his employer in Cecil east of Shawano needed a team of horses walked to Summit Lake. He was very good and patient with horses. When he arrived something here impressed him - or perhaps he impressed the logger who took delivery of the horses. He never could have guessed that over eighty years later he would be the area's longest resident.
Otto made a career as a laborer. He was a lumberman, hired farm hand, gardener, forest fire fighter, seasonal harvester in the Dakotas, carpenter - whatever it took to keep a roof over his head and make a few bucks - but in this period of his life - it was always working for someone else. A good wage was a dollar a day, and you were glad to get that. The lifestyle kept him busy sun up to sun down and came with lots of hard physical labor in all kinds of weather and with all kinds of insects.
With the coming of World War I, it was clear that the few able bodied men would be swept up sooner or later. The USA declared war on Germany on April 2, 1917. Wisconsin had a militia of sorts but with the war the state started organizing National Guard units in many counties. Otto Miller was the commander of the Antigo company and he set about to recruiting it up to its authorized strength - as part of the 4th Wisconsin infantry. The unit started its most basic part time training - standing at attention, marching, left face, right face, pealing off the platoon and the like. Not able to reach their authorized strength from the Antigo area alone Captain Miller went to outlying communities looking for additional recruits. The draft was instituted and some men considered that they might be able to take a bit more control of their fate if they picked a local unit to join and maybe be with friends before they were drafted into a distantly formed unit. Some were drafted and for a brief time they could decide to do their service with their local units. Otto enlisted in Antigo on July 30. He missed most of those weeks of Company G's "training" in Antigo.
On August 9th the entire 4th Wisconsin regiment commenced movement to Camp Douglass where they were issued incomplete sets of uniforms and equipment and did progressively longer road marches for physical conditioning. By the end of September, they found themselves at Camp MacArthur at Waco, Texas, being reorganized into the 32nd Division. Fortunately for us descendants, Company G became the 107th Trench Mortar Battery.
The Division was one of the early divisions to deploy to France. After some training in the use of French trench mortars, the battery deployed in the quiet sector of Alsace to liven things up. With considerable effort, the mortars were schlepped up in positions dug for their purpose in the front lines along with the heavy bombs. They pummeled the German lines for hours. The Germans returned fire with Mustard Gas as the Antigo unit did their job in gas masks in the dark. One bomb exploded prematurely right after launch killing one of the crew and wounding the rest. Trench mortar bombs create an enormous crater so the Germans likely got the worst of the this exchange.
Not long after that great adventure the unit moved off for more live fire training on their way to the Second Battle of the Marne. On July 30, the 127th Infantry Regiment commenced the division's first attack of the war. This was between the small town of Roncheres and the German occupied Grimpettes Woods a few hundred yards to the north. This was open warfare - no trenches. The Shawano Company, Company F, was in that first attack. Otto Tiegs' brother Emil, was killed by German machine gun fire that broke up that attack. A day or two later the 107th was brought in to bury those killed and recover equipment. Otto found his brother who was shot in the head. As sergeants threatened the men to hurry up, Otto fished Emil's pocket watch out of his pocket and they finished their task. It was unclear how the battle was going to the east. Were the Americans winning or were the Germans about to come out of the woods? Artillery was going over head and machine gun bullets randomly dropped out of the sky. Wounded were limping and being helped to the rear. The decay of human and horse flesh was everywhere in the air. The bodies were black and crawling with flies. A picture taken a day or two later at Chateau Thierry revealed that the reality of the horror of war had settled into the men.
With a few detours, the Division and the battery made its way to the Argonne forest. Somewhere in there, the men experienced an incredibly long road march with their heavy packs. It must have been pretty bad to have exasperated Otto Tiegs - the toughest old bird there ever was. Finally, he said, "Enough is enough. This is ridiculous!" A man of few words, Otto's opinions carried a lot of weight. The sentiment spread to the entire battery and everyone sat down on the side of the road. Essentially, they followed the division looking for an opportunity to set up their powerful trench mortars, but it was not to be. The mortars were siege weapons with a fairly limited range and a slow deployment. The battle lines were confused and changing enough that there was no opportunity. They endured the artillery, gas, cold rain, and mud. It was rough, but the attrition experienced by the infantry companies was incomprehensible. Otto said that those battles were so bad that hardly anyone came out alive. Few that survived came out without wounds - many of them ghastly. Some bureaucrat at Waco randomly picked one of the many companies to change to the trench mortar battery - Company G from Antigo. Although their experience was terrible, the unit only had four of five killed during their entire experience - as well as many close calls.
Like many Midwestern units, they were demobilized at Camp Grant, Illinois, and were back in Antigo in a few days for the biggest celebration that the county has ever known. Otto went through the parade and dinners. He swung by to visit his sisters in Shawano. His sister said that they never heard from him in the year that he had been gone. He never wrote. Then Otto went on his way back to Summit Lake to work in the woods and to pick up whatever day job he could get just as before.
THANK YOU
Items Donated:
Venn Family - Many various artifacts, Kathy & Shelly Bergen - Various pictures of Hi-Point, Kathy and John DesJarlais - World War II military uniforms, Kwik Trip La Crosse, WI - Carole Schauer, Elcho, WI -Various Brat Barn Fundraiser items.
In Memoriam:
North Trail Store in memory of John Jacobs
Monetary Donations:
Linda Best (Knuth) - Madison, WI
Building Renovations:
Builders Service, Elcho, WI
Membership Renewals:
Gary Kramer - Portage, MI
Barb & Bob Sagstetter - Marshfield, WI
Vicki & Don Gorzalski - Greenfield, WI
Linda Best (Knuth) - Madison, WI
Walt & Milly Rugland -Appleton, WI
Debi & Greg Mejak - Elcho,WI
Donald & Beth Goerke - Elcho, WI
Bear Wheeler - Elcho. WI
New Members:
Peter M. Rohde - Pewaukee, WI
Erika Mulgren - Pelican Lake, WI & Memphis, TN
Kristene M. Rock Family - Greenville, WI
Karen & Curtis Saari - Elcho & GreenBay, WI
Jennifer Redding & Tom Barnum - Deerbrook, WI & Green Cove Springs, FL
Clare Ramuta - Summit Lake, WI
Gary R. Guenther - Elcho, WI
Brenda & Tom Henley - Oconomowoc, WI
Otto Tiegs III - Bryant, WI
Connie Kiesling – Lily, WI
Nancy & Stuart Linger - Markesan, WI
Perry Michiel - Elcho, WI
Jerrett Praske - Elcho, WI
Bryan Spransy - Elcho, WI
Renee & Norm lrish - Deerbrook, WI
In addition to the specific individuals listed above, we would like to THANK all those that supported and worked on our Brat Barn and Music in the Park fundraising events. Also a big THANK YOU goes out to those that helped scrape and paint the future museum site. We could not have accomplished what we did last year without all your generous time and effort.