Belle Isle 1947: Days of youth and romance

By Mike VanBuren
From the early December 2013 edition of The North Woods Call

    I’ve been thinking lately about Detroit’s historic Belle Isle Park—and not for the reason many others are.
    Management of the 982-acre island in the Detroit River between the United States and Canada was officially transferred to the State of Michigan on November 12, after nearly 120 years as the largest city-owned island park in the United States.
    At 1,534 square miles, Belle Isle is bigger than New York City’s Central Park, and includes a nature center, inland lakes, lagoons, canal system, wooded areas and a half-mile of swimming beach.  With the management transfer, it becomes Michigan’s 102nd state park.
     Yet that’s not really why it has my attention today.
     In May of 1947—six years before I was born—my parents visited Belle Isle on their honeymoon and captured the occasion in several black-and-white photographs that have been displayed in family photo albums ever since.
      I have looked at those pictures my entire life and marveled at the youthfulness of this young couple that I have always known simply as “Mom and Dad.”
    Those were happy days for them—filled with promises and dreams—a time of life that in the minds of young people will surely last forever.
   But it never does.
   Sixty-six years after those photographs were taken, following many decades of robust health and independence, my mother has been stricken with a debilitating illness that—for now, at least—has stolen her ability to walk, bathe, feed herself and participate in all but the simplest of conversations.
    Along with her personal suffering, the lives of her husband and family members have been thrown into raging turmoil—each immersed in his or her our own not-so-private nightmare—as we struggle to cope with the ravages of memory loss and physical incapacitation.
   Those who have been through such difficulties and found themselves in the unexpected role of sudden care givers know that none of this is easy to handle.  It’s as if some sort of awful latter-day penalty awaits those who live too long and too well.
    When I was a boy of about five-years-old, my parents revisited Belle Isle with some relatives, and took my sister and me along.  On the way to the park, we stopped at a local service station where a big, ugly gorilla—or some guy dressed like one—greeted us as part of some attention-grabbing business promotion.
     The adults in our party laughed and posed for pictures with the hairy beast, but to a youngster unschooled in the ways of the marketing world, the creature looked mean and life threatening.  So I did what any self-respecting kid would do.  I freaked out and ran for Mama.
     I was quickly sheltered from the clear and present danger and, as I recall, the entire family escaped without injury that day.  But I still remember the encounter whenever I see a real or costumed gorilla.  Where’s legendary zoologist Dian Fossey when you need her, anyway?
     Nowadays—as my parents face gorillas in the mist of advanced age, with me following closely behind—there doesn’t seem to be anyone to whom we can run and hide.  Nor can the family and I effectively shelter them—or ourselves—from the horrors of declining health.
     Frankly, that’s something about nature that I hate and can’t fully understand.
    Be that as it may, there are many decisions that will need to be made in the coming days and many responsibilities that will need to be carried out in the face of daunting challenges.  And, no matter how much we  know about the frailty of the human condition, we’re never quite prepared for what it all means.
     Tough questions abound.  Why did this happen?  What can we do?  How much will it cost?  How much time will it take?  And—not insignificantly—what impact will all this have on a mom-and-pop operation like The North Woods Call when the sole proprietor is regularly called away to meet other pressing obligations?
     I don’t yet know the answers to those questions,  but I’ll have to find them soon, whether I like it or not.
    Still, I’d much rather retreat to a sunny spring day in 1947 when colorful flowers were in bloom, and a freshly minted couple was walking hand-in-hand around the Belle Isle Conservatory and creating Kodak memories at the nearby James Scott Memorial Fountain.
     If that were only possible.
    For now. I can only hope and pray that better days lie ahead—in this world and beyond—when youthful loves and memories can be rekindled in a land that knows no sickness and sorrow.