‘HowYouLiveLong’

Sverre Falck-Pedersen

by BEN JONES

BRETT KOSMIDER

If you’ve spent some time in Door County, there’s a good chance you’ve crossed paths with Sverre Falck-Pedersen. You might have encountered him in a line of fast-moving cyclists on a town road, heading up the peninsula. You might have spotted him running on the so forest trails of Peninsula State Park. Or perhaps you saw him destroying his age group during a local triathlon and making it look a little too easy – especially for a guy in his seventh decade.

“It’s the old mountain-climber story: It’s because I can still do it,” Falck-Pedersen said. “A guy can have a billion dollars, but that won’t improve his health. And it’s not about how long you live, it’s about how you live long.”

Falck-Pedersen is 73 years old, but at a glance, he might pass for one of his younger training partners. Part of this is undoubtedly genetics: He is 100% Norwegian, born not long a er his parents came stateside. He’s demonstrated exceptional athletic talent his whole life and won national championships by developing his own unusual Door County training style.

But that’s just part of Falck-Pedersen’s story. With his wife and family, he’s built a life in Door County that’s not just about speed – it’s also about slowing down and living well.

“You have to like your life,” he said. “You’re the one that comes to each of these crossroads and makes a decision on which direction you’re going to take. It’s on you.”

Falck-Pedersen grew up in Chicago, and while attending high school there, he participated in an assortment of track events, including a mile relay team that quali ed for the state meet.

Then, serving in the United States Air Force from 1968 until 1970, he was deployed to Vietnam, where he worked in heavy construction.

“My parents couldn’t a ord school, so the game plan was for me to go into the service, grow up a little bit and get some bootstrap money to go to school,” he said.

As Falck-Pedersen entered the Air Force, he felt he had some un nished business with running, so he ran laps on an air base to stay t. When he le the service in 1970, he enrolled in Parkland Junior College. There, he joined the track team and quali ed for nationals in the 4x400, the intermediate hurdles and crosscountry. He nished his education at Knox College and later spent a decade with Ohio-based Interlake Steel as a metallurgist.

In 1981, Falck-Pedersen took a prehoneymoon trip to Door County with his new bride, Christine. That trip lasted just a few days, but they returned for good in 1986, purchasing a historical home and a cluster of cottages in Fish Creek.

“On a whim, I just called a realtor and asked if there was anything that could be turned into a bed-and-breakfast, and she said yes,” Falck-Pedersen recounted. “We literally made arrangements to come up the next week.”

The couple worked as innkeepers for about 25 years, raising their daughter, Annalise; operating the Thorp House Inn; and later running the Fish Creek Beach House, another lodging property.

Also in 1986, Falck-Pedersen responded to a newspaper advertisement for a Gibraltar High School cross-country coach. He began helping Dale Laviolette – a Gibraltar teacher and former All-American swimmer who was then the team’s head running coach – with the coaching and continued at Gibraltar in various coaching roles for 25 years.

Falck-Pedersen also competed as a runner himself, reaching a national level, despite his busy schedule as an innkeeper and a lack of traditional workout facilities.

Because of the inn’s seasonal demands, Falck-Pedersen could put in his best training during the winter months. He constructed a small gym in an old chicken coop, complete with a treadmill, sauna and weights. He ran hill sprints in Fish Creek, and he turned many laps in the halls of Gibraltar High School.

But school hallways bear little resemblance to a championship indoor track because they’re lined with lockers and have corners, not turns. In one spot at Gibraltar, the hallways don’t quite line up – a hazard when you’re running at full speed.

“You have to make a jig le ,” FalckPedersen said.

Train

This unorthodox training regimen worked, though, because in 1994, he won a national championship in the 1,500 meters for the 45- to 50-yearold age group. Over the years, he also earned several other championship medals and podium nishes in national running and cycling events.

Falck-Pedersen’s achievements came with a price, however. Although he hasn’t yet had a knee or hip replacement like some of his friends have, he has plenty of scars. If you glance down at his muscular cycling legs, above the running and cycling tattoos, you’ll see long strips of athletic tape running along his hamstrings.

“I’m held together with CBD balm and KT tape,” he said with a laugh.

Falck-Pedersen has had enough injuries from running and bike crashes to keep an emergency room busy. Over the years, he’s su ered pulls and strains, 38 rib breaks, ve collar-bone breaks and two scapula breaks.

But as he’s aged, he’s also developed a workout routine that helps to keep him healthy and on the go because it includes a lot of work on mobility.

“At my age now, it’s not about li ing heavy weights,” Falck-Pedersen said. “It’s about multiple reps and range of motion. You see old people taking baby steps – it’s because they have no range of motion. Everything I do is for range of motion, which is why I look like somebody who runs instead of somebody who is just hopping.”

Falck-Pedersen’s schedule includes a lot of endurance work, but the activities vary each day. On Tuesday, for example, he pedals a bike rickshaw in Peninsula State Park as a volunteer for a group called Cycling Without Age, which gives people who cannot bike the opportunity to enjoy a ride.

A er that, Falck-Pedersen heads out for a 50- or 60-mile group road-biking ride. In fact, he does something athletic almost every day: road biking, trail running or mountain biking.

“He’s an inspiration,” said Brian Fitzgerald, a longtime training partner and friend. “He’s just been so consistent for such a long time. He’s very knowledgeable on how to stay t and how to stay sharp. He’s had his fair share of injuries and crashes, but he always bounces back.”

But what really stands out to Fitzgerald is how Falck-Pedersen is so willing to help others.

“He’s helped so many people get into biking,” Fitzgerald said. “I’ve got a lot of respect for him as a person. He’s just good energy.”

On Fridays, Falck-Pedersen leads a spin class at the Door County YMCA, and on nice days, he drives his brightred replica 1966 Shelby Cobra 427 to get there. Like its driver, the car is vintage, but also very fast. Yet a er driving the car from class one recent day, he said he’s not just chasing speed.

He and Christine spend winters in Venice, Florida, near where their daughter, Annalise, now lives, and their Door County home has shi ed to Egg Harbor, overlooking the bay. Falck-Pedersen said the view is spectacular.

Although he loves to train, he compartmentalizes his training to allow plenty of time to simply slow down and watch the clouds over the water.

“I’ve always said that I’m the fastest person and the slowest person,” FalckPedersen said. “I’m the lizard on the rock. There is nothing that I enjoy more than just sitting on my lounge chair and looking out at the water and just appreciating it.”

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Jamaican Door blends the Hatch family’s Jamaican and Door County heritage

by ERICA BOUSKA and MYLES DANNHAUSEN JR.

Driving by Roots Inn and Kitchen in Sister Bay, an aroma wafts out from behind the building. “Jamaican Door, 5-8” reads the chalkboard sign out front.

Wandering toward the diffusing smell of jerk chicken, you might expect to find the back door of the kitchen cracked open or one of the county’s many food trucks parked there – not a guy in a baseball cap and glasses peering into a smoker in a pickup-truck-bed-turned-trailer, with one white folding table as his only prep surface. There also might be a beer in his hand.

Jamaican food in Door County might initially sound like an oxymoron, but for Jamaican-born Georgina and fifthgeneration Door County native Carlin, it’s a marriage of both of their homes.

They met when Georgina spent a summer studying abroad in Door County during college. A reggae band was playing at Husby’s, a short walk from where she and her friends were staying. Carlin was a bartender there at the time, and after getting off his shift, he spilled a drink on Georgina.

A summer romance, engagement, marriage and two kids later, they and their family live in Sister Bay at Carlin’s grandfather’s old farm – raising animals, farming and bringing Jamaican flavors to the Door.

Flavors of Home

“Honestly,” Carlin said, “the initial embers of it were to bring some part of Jamaica up here for Georgina.”

Jamaican Door started in 2015, but Jamaican food had already been a part of the Hatch family. Georgina’s relatives sent her seasonings and other treats to stave off homesickness, and she just started cooking. They had jerk chicken at their kids’ birthday parties or took a little grill to Pebble Beach.

“Just fun stuff,” Carlin said.

Moving from a small family’s traditions to a company – and much of their growth since – has been a matter of the right door opening at the right time, he said.

Starting first at a shared kitchen in Algoma with the help of Mary Pat Carlson of Wildwood Market, Jamaican Door began selling its jerk sauce. A year later, in 2016, it had its first food service at the Baileys Harbor farmers market.

“That next door just keeps on getting opened,” Carlin said.

The family’s fingerprints are on every aspect of Jamaican Door. The signature jerk-sauce recipe is from Georgina’s brother-in-law Oneil, and the pimento in it – more commonly called allspice in the United States – is shipped from an uncle’s farm in Jamaica.

When they got started, Georgina helped on the grill, but she has an eye issue that’s easily aggravated by smoke. Now Carlin is the person out front grilling and serving, and Georgina focuses on the recipes.

“Standing in parking lots grilling things,” he said, is more in his wheelhouse.

In the early days, they had Carlin’s parents or a friend watch their kids for the night, but that changed as they expanded their pop-up service.

Balancing Act

The Hatches do it all while juggling care for their two children: Phoenix, age 9, and Carlin Jr. (CJ), age 8. Balancing schedules is a challenge for any food-service family, but for the Hatches, it’s particularly difficult.

Phoenix was born with Marshall Smith Syndrome, an extremely rare genetic disorder in which individuals typically have advanced bone age, di culties gaining weight, distinctive facial features and intellectual disability.

“It’s so rare that no doctor who has ever seen her has ever seen another patient with the condition,” Carlin explained. For Phoenix’s doctors and parents, that means her growth is a journey of discovery, and nding support and resources presents its own set of hurdles. They found a niche Facebook group of about 25 other families from around the world who share their stories, and they’ve connected with a research program in the Netherlands where a doctor is studying the disease. Their care team has continued to grow with them.

“I can’t say enough about Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, and the care she gets, and Door County Medical Center has been incredible,” Carlin said. “It has been dicey at times, and they’ve been great.”

“Dicey” means they’ve had to resuscitate Phoenix at school twice, and she has had inpatient care at Children’s Hospital at least seven times. A er an incident last fall, Georgina decided to put her growing cosmetology career on hold to accompany Phoenix to school at Gibraltar to help care for her.

Georgina has also started a YouTube channel to share Phoenix’s journey –the good and the bad – in the hopes that other families might discover it, nd comfort in it and gain knowledge from it.

In addition, Georgina has been appointed to a special advisory board at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin to share her experiences and learning in her journey raising Phoenix. This summer she’ll travel to Washington, D.C., with Phoenix to advocate for policies to help special-needs children and their families.

“It’s certainly not easy,” Carlin said, “but we rely a lot on faith. I wasn’t particularly religious growing up, but I think the Lord puts things on you to bring you to him, and that’s kind of what happened. For me, it’s trying to know what’s out of your hands, and what you can control, and being OK with that. We try to focus more on our blessings than our challenges.”

Those blessings include a community that supports their business and their family – none more valuable than Phoenix’s classmates.

“These kids are so much better than we were,” Carlin said. “We didn’t know any better, but Phoenix is an important part of the class with these kids. They’re so compassionate. The ‘otherness’ that kids with special needs have felt in the past isn’t there for her. It’s hard for Phoenix to get to class on time because everyone wants to say hi to her. It’s inspiring to see that inclusivity.”

The oldest person living with Marshall Smith Syndrome is in their 30s, Carlin said, and despite Phoenix’s medical scares, he said he sees no reason to believe she won’t. Phoenix’s vocabulary is expanding, and she now communicates with a combination of signs and words.

A Family Kitchen

Just down Highway 42 from Roots is Northeast Wisconsin Technical College’s (NWTC) Learning and Innovation Center, and inside is a shared commercial kitchen that Carlin and Georgina – as well as numerous other local producers – use to create their food products. Jamaican Door was the first to use it, migrating from NWTC’s Sturgeon Bay location.

They use the space about once a week for a small amount of food preparation for their pop-ups, but mostly to bottle their two sauces: their original jerk sauce and a cherry variety that Gerogina worked for more than two years to perfect.

“We’re in Door County,” she said with a laugh. “You’ve got to add cherries.” Back home, she said, they usually add whatever’s in season to the sauces they’re making. The cherry-infused sauce also honors Carlin’s great grandmother Amy Seaquist, of the Seaquist Orchards family.

While their mom and dad worked on bottling sauces and grinding seasonings, CJ sat in the kitchen playing games on his tablet, with Phoenix coloring next to him. As they explained the process, CJ asked how they get the sauce in the bottles, and Georgina turned to him to explain. This is, after all, very much a family endeavor.

Jamaican Door at Cornerstone

Jamaican Door will have a permanent home for four or ve days a week this summer at the Baileys Harbor Cornerstone Pub. That will include a special island-inspired drink menu and a beer collaboration with Bridge Up Brewing Company. The Hatches expect to be open for Memorial Day weekend.

“How long do you marinate the chicken?” I asked.

“About three days,” Carlin said. “You have to give it time to really take in that avor,” Georgina said. “The longer the better. Can’t be too long.”

CJ piped up from the cooking game he was playing on his tablet.

“I’m putting pepper on!”

“Are you?” Georgina said.

“Yeah, look at this,” CJ said, and ipped his tablet around to show us a pizza he was decorating.

“What a design!” Carlin said.

“A beautiful one,” Georgina added. The Door County community is also ingrained in Jamaican Door. Its logo – a chicken with deer antlers – was created by a friend. The Hatches are still told they’re missed at the Baileys Harbor farmers market, even though their last appearance there was ve years ago. One regular, Frank, makes sure he’s wherever they are, right as they start serving at 5 pm.

“We’re very committed to the community,” Carlin said, “and trying to nd a way to make it happen here.”

Whether in the kitchen or in a parking lot, Jamaican Door is a harmonious mash of two places that are nearly 2,000 miles apart.