The way we worked2015

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DAILY GLOBE

THE WAY WE WORKED

2 l SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 2015

THE DAILY GLOBE • YOURDAILYGLOBE.COM

DeCarlo’s love of mining began early

By KELSEY HANSEN

news@yourdailyglobe.com

IRONWOOD — Tom DeCarlo started working in the Geneva Mine on Jan. 1, 1950, at age 23.

The Geneva Mine was run by U.S. Steel and was one of about 13 mines in the area at that time.

And in order to get a job working in one of the mines, you needed to be recommended by someone, DeCarlo shared.

Before DeCarlo started working in the Geneva mine he was working at a sawmill and he shared that he would go to the mines every day, hoping to get a job.

“And nobody wanted to hire me,” he said.

It was through a friend of his first wife that DeCarlo got a job working in the mines. They told him to come up and

On the cover ...

Submitted photo

THIS IS a Semo family photo taken in the backyard of John and Mary Semo, circa 1938. The house (not pictured) is still there, on South Range Road. John's son, Joe, converted a Ford Model A into a hay wagon. This photo is of some of his siblings and their friends, posing with a full load of hay. John Semo Jr. is driving, and Betty, Helen and Charlie Semo are sitting on the hood. Other family members and neighborhood kids are also in the photo.

get a physical.

“And one week later I was working,” DeCarlo said.

When he started working at the Geneva mine, there were about 375 men there. That year, they had hired about 105 new young men, in total.

DeCarlo’s first job while working at Geneva was in a timber gang that he worked for about 6 months.

“There was three of us in the timber gang and we had 10 miners we had to bring their supplies to,” DeCarlo said.

“Timber, lagan, nuts and bolts, all that they needed,” DeCarlo said.

His next position was a ‘swamper’ on a motor, which consisted of him and a motorman.

“We hauled the iron ore from where the miners were and then up the shaft and dumped it all in a big raise,” DeCarlo said.

“And then the skip tender would scrape it all into a big skip that held 10 tons.”

When transporting the iron ore, DeCarlo explained it was loaded up into a trolley with 10 cars all hooked together and each car held five tons.

DeCarlo worked this position for about six months.

His next position was ore mining. “I worked with an old-timer, you know to break you in,” DeCarlo said.

But his time working in the timber gang already gave him the mining knowledge.

He worked that position for one year and broke in three young guys within that year.

DeCarlo told a story about a couple of guys that were in charge of lighting the fuses that he helped save.

“They had two guys on my shift that would drill the holes, put the powder in and then light an eight-foot long fuse,” DeCarlo explained.

“They were walking out and those fuses went off and hit those guys behind the head. And I had to take those guys up to the surface.”

DeCarlo’s next job was as a rock raise miner. These miners would go from one level to the next with a double-boxed raise.

In this position he started off right away at 180 feet and DeCarlo said he got sick.

“I got sick from that powder and I threw up all the way out the shaft,” DeCarlo recounted. “And the boss was laughing at me.”

Raises at that time were as tall as 225 feet. And rock raise miners could only work one of two shifts, days and afternoons, and left nights off to give the

Kelsey Hansen/Daily Globe

TOM DECARLO WORKED in the Geneva Mine in Ironwood for 13 years. He worked several different positions at the mine and enjoyed all of them. DeCarlo is shown in his outfit he wore everyday mining: Hard helmet, overalls, a belt with an 8-pound battery and boots. He also holds an old lunch pail. Beside DeCarlo is his block on the Ironwood mining mural, along McLeod Ave. miners a rest.

DeCarlo also worked mine rescue and had to go to school for a week of training for the position, which he worked for nine years.

“I had to wear a respirator, which you had to purge it and go down with that machine, which weighed 28 pounds,” DeCarlo said.

There were five guys on a rescue team and they worked night shifts, rotating every four hours.

There were a total of 25 head guys on rescue for the mines. And if one of the mines didn’t have enough guys, DeCarlo and his team would go and help out.

DeCarlo recalled one fire way back in the mine at Newport. “They gave me a canary in a cage. And the carbon monoxide will kill the canary before it will kill a man,” DeCarlo shared.

“So I walked way to the other end and pretty soon the canary’s feet came up … he died. So I had to tell the guys there’s carbon monoxide, don’t go in there.”

City of Bessemer, Michigan Four Seasons of Fun!

The City of Bessemer was founded and developed as a result of the discovery of iron ore. Area mining began in 1883, and the City began to attract residents by 1885, including miners who were of Cornish, Irish, Scandinavian, French Canadian, Polish, and Finnish descent. Ore was transported by rail from the Colby open pit mine to the Ashland, WI ore docks. Bessemer’s landscape is crisscrossed by abandoned rail lines serving the numerous and now closed mines. The area was once heavily timbered, supporting a lumber industry. When the mining activity declined, so did the population of Bessemer. In 1966 the last mine in Bessemer was closed. The city has now become a center for winter tourism with three major downhill ski resorts located nearby as well as opportunities for snowmobiling and cross country skiing. The area’s dependable snowfall, terrain, scenic qualities, and accessible public lands support the winter tourism economy. The area economy now consists of the service industry, health care, and small manufacturing.

The Ethnic Commons Park and Trailhead

Honors the different nationalities of people who established the city.

Gogebic County Courthouse Erected in 1888 and enlarged in 1915

For more history and information visit our website

www.cityofbessemer.org

411 S. Sophie St. Bessemer, MI 49911

906-663-4311

Another animal the miners relied on were the mice down in the mines.

“We had mice down there and we’d feed them a little,” DeCarlo shared.

“Because they were your safeguards.

When you see mice going the other way you better go with them.”

The mice could sense when there would be a timber collapse coming and take off running before the miners would know.

DeCarlo said you had to be aware at all times when you were down there.

“The Lord is with you and the Devil is on the other side trying to get you.”

DeCarlo made $2 an hour while working in the mine and would put in an eight-hour day. Overtime work paid $3.

When DeCarlo’s father worked in the Cary Mine he only made $2.56 a day for 8-10 hours a day of work. And his father told him they didn’t have any safety procedures or equipment then either.

DeCarlo’s father told him he used to put a wet rag over his nose when they

drilled. His father worked in the mines for 37 years.

DeCarlo said when they were down underground everyone talked about their families. But when everyone started drinking in the taverns the topic of discussion was mining.

DeCarlo speaks highly of his fellow miners and can tell story after story of his many years working with those men.

Unfortunately, about 99 percent of them are now gone, DeCarlo said.

“They were good guys. Good, healthy men that wanted to work.”

In 1963, DeCarlo, along with 242 other men, were laid off. DeCarlo then started his own business in heating and air conditioning.

Since retiring, DeCarlo makes his own wine and shares his mining stories and history as much as he can and participates in Hurley’s history parade.

“I loved mining. I couldn’t wait to go mining — to put those overalls on and go down.”

Where Working People Eat! • The original building was constructed in 1890.

• In the early years, the business was a dairy store, famous for malts, ice cream, candy, soda-pop and other sundries.

— Over the next few decades it went through several different ownerships.

— In the early 1960’s it was known as Bob’s Dairy Bar • In 1966 the business was deeded to John and Esther Hayes who started cooking the famous Broasted Chicken.

• In 1990 it came into the hands of Bill Jr. and Tracy Pallin and was named Tracy’s Uptown Cafe.

• In 1998 it came under the ownership of Kari Spets — With updates and remodeling in 2000, it is what we know it today, Uptown Cafe.

THE WAY WE WORKED

THE DAILY GLOBE • YOURDAILYGLOBE.COM

Early loggers had wood in their blood

By RALPH ANSAMI

ransami@yourdailyglobe.com

The most fun I’ve ever had in a work setting was the time I spent in the woods with my father.

My dad, Waino, was a logger who operated a logging truck for Victor Saarnio, of Oma, for many years. He also farmed, but logging was a constant throughout his life.

As was the custom of many kids growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, we grew up peeling pulp and helping out in the woods.

In the early 1960s, my mother, Alice, even got into the act, at least for one day, as she peeled pulp right along with her sons, although she didn’t spend a great deal of time in the mosquito-

infested woods that summer.

It wasn’t an easy occupation, by any means. My dad’s brother, George, was killed in a logging operation in Oregon.

It also wasn’t always profitable.

I recall once my father had a pretty decent year and he ended up making around $4,000, which wasn’t bad in those days. The weather and low wood prices often could dictate leaner years, however.

Today, we have feller bunchers, skidders and logging equipment of all sorts, but my father’s philosophy was not to overextend himself with equipment or financially. That meant he made do with what he had, often repairing used machinery or

Submitted photo

PETE PETERSON fells a large tree.

Celebrating

29 Years In Business . . .

fashioning pulp-peeling blades out of old tire irons.

My dad told stories and proudly displayed pictures about logging on the Montreal River Canyon on property that I now own, with the work horses pulling the massive logs up the side of about a 75-degree trail.

We never logged with horses when I was a kid, but the stories of the canyon logging were fascinating.

A huge winch with a thick metal cable was used to crank the logs up the side of the canyon walls.

There was a 10-horse team on the job in the 1940s or ‘50s and my mom’s brothers, the Petersons, were involved in the logging operation along the 200-foot canyon walls, along with the Ansami clan.

Former Iron County Highway Commissioner Bob Peterson recalls my dad telling him that our uncle, Pete Peterson, used an old power saw in which the engine rotated on the bar. “The carburetor was gravity-fed and the fuel tank always had to be up,” Bob Peterson said.

My cousin, Rick Holm, who now lives on County B, across from the canyon, said as he was building his house, my dad drove his Farm-All tractor out to the gorge and brought the winch home, in around 1982.

My dad’s most innovative, back-saving invention was rigging up a log-pulling device from the power take-off of that FarmAll that he used in the woods.

With the cable activated by tightening a rope, clamps at the end would drag in a stringer of wood from deep in the woods. The tractor offered a lot of power and if the stringer was too heavy, the front end of the Farm-All would literally bounce off the ground.

That was quite a sight.

Loggers from throughout the area would view the log-towing system at work and question my dad about details connected with it. I recall it was perfect for lifting logs onto a dray — a sled with poles on the side to contain the logs — and then unload them at the landing.

My brother, Jim, and I grew up working in the woods and we had a particularly enjoyable summer when my dad and his brother, Arvo, operated a sawmill near the Montreal River, near Bergs Road, on land owned by my cousin, Darrell Holm.

With an old International truck hauling away the lumber, we sawed mostly white birch.

My uncle, Arvo, was the

SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 2015

Submitted photo

Submitted photo

THE ANSAMI family logging truck is parked next to the Montreal River Canyon in Saxon, Wis. sawyer and he could get just about every inch out of the log that was possible. It is an art learned through years of experience and my uncle was a master of many trades, including carpentry.

For kids, it meant shoveling the sawdust that fell under the giant blades of the saw. If the shoveling wasn’t fast enough, the sawdust became waist deep.

My dad eventually sold the mill to Bob Wehmas, of Saxon, but after that, his logging career continued.

The year before I entered the world of the Daily Globe in 1975, I helped my dad log off some virgin timber near the Montreal River, across from the Superior

dam.

These were big basswood and maple logs and I was the Caterpillar operator, often skidding the logs across the frozen river, which would be a bit unnerving at times, to say the least.

My dad did the sawing and it was much cleaner work than peeling those sticky poplar trees in the warm summer months. I recall one day when we logged in minus-20-degree weather, with the old Chevy truck and Cats not missing a beat.

We had our little shack in the woods and noon meant games of cribbage along with my uncle and my brother, who was just out of high school back then.

What a treat it would be when

LITTLE FINLAND

a deer would stick its nose against the window of that little tar-paper shack with the barrel stove!

I remember one day when my dad felled a large tree and a family of raccoons came racing out upon impact with the ground.

The sawlogs went to the Steiger mill in Bessemer. After I accepted a reporting job from boss Elmer Tryon and managing editor George Nelson at The Daily Globe, that pretty much ended my logging career, although my dad and uncle worked on as loggers for the rest of their lives, even after serious medical problems.

They had logging in their blood.

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WAINO ANSAMI operates a winch system that dragged logs up the side of the 200-foot steep Montreal River Canyon in the 1940s.

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THE WAY WE WORKED

4 l SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 2015

THE DAILY GLOBE • YOURDAILYGLOBE.COM

Abelman’s grows from modest beginnings

By ALISSA PIETILA

apietila@yourdailyglobe.com

BESSEMER — The Abelman Clothing & Footwear store has been around for almost as long as the city of Bessemer has existed.

The founder of the store, Abe Abelman, came to the United States from Kovno, Lithuania, in 1881 when he was just 21 years old with only “a $20 gold piece in his pocket.”

“Working as a tailor’s apprentice in New York City, he saved $25 and set off for Chicago,” the store’s website said. “After arriving in the Windy City, and working for awhile, he became a traveling peddler and worked his way to northern Wisconsin on foot.”

When he arrived in Bessemer in 1886, he was skilled as a tailor and still worked as a peddler.

During his peddling years, he transported about 180 pounds of merchandise to distribute to loggers, miners and other locals. He first carried it, then hauled it by wagon and later transported it by train.

In 1887, Abelman established the Chicago Clothing Store on Lead Street in Bessemer and sold men’s clothing.

The store, now known as Abelman Clothing & Footwear, moved to its current location on Sophie Street in 1902.

“The building was built by a group of doctors who had their offices upstairs,” current owner and president Bob Abelman said.

At one point the telephone company, a Masonic Lodge and dentist office were also housed in the upstairs of the building.

“In the 1920s, (Abelman) purchased the building and added women’s ready to wear and dry goods when his daughter, Sayde Abelman, returned from college and began managing the ladies (department),” said a written history of the store.

One unique skill Abelman possessed was his ability to speak seven languages fluently. This was “an asset to him in his years of business in an area populated by immigrants,” the history said.

Abelman died in 1952 at the age of 91. His sons, Joe and Maurice, and daughters, Alice and Rose, operated the business as a partnership until their retirements.

Joe and his son, Bob, acted as partners in the business until Joe’s retirement in 1987, when Bob became the sole owner-operator.

Present-day operations

According to the store’s website, “The store hasn’t changed much from the days when Abe was there. It’s still operated on a basis of friendship and good values like businesses were run years ago.”

The store is currently owned and operated by a third-generation Abelman and his cousin’s family. Bob Abelman and manager Jim Gribble oversee the dayto-day operations of the retail business.

“I like working with the customers and staff here,” Abelman said. “Every day is something

Submitted photo

WORKERS STAND inside the Abelman clothing store in 1905.

Visit Ashland

different.”

Abelman said they have many returning customers.

“The ability to change with the times and offer quality products at a great price” is what keeps customers coming back, generation after generation, Abelman said.

When people come into the store who have been there before, they often tell stories of the past visits, he said.

“It is always fun listening to their stories of times past,” he said.

Abelman also said new customers are happily surprised by the store’s wide-ranging inventory. “Customers are surprised that we carry the amount of name brand inventory we carry and the amount of inventory we have,” he said.

The store can also accommodate to customer needs.

“If you don’t see what you need, just ask,” Abelman said.

The store can see what their suppliers have and special order the item if it is a brand the store carries.

The company also continues to expand its merchandise.

“We attend at least 12 apparel and footwear trade shows a year to work with our present suppliers and to add new brands to our selection,” Abelman said.

There are 11 full-time employees and the company has even expanded to offer online options. The store is open six days a week.

The busiest time of the year is the winter months, the last quarter, Abelman said. They are also busy during the Fourth of July celebrations in Bessemer.

For the future, Abelman said he is unsure who will run the store years from now, but hopes it will stay in the family. His children, son Jeffry and daughter Amy, both work out of state, and Abelman said neither has plans to come back and run the family business.

Abelman’s has been serving the area for 129 years with plans to continue serving the Bessemer area for years to come.

According to the website, “From the days of peddling, to the store, to the internet, you can always depend on Abelman’s.”

Submitted photo

ABE ABELMAN, stands outside the store in Bessemer in 1941.

Alissa Pietila/Daily Globe

A SIGN hangs above the retail space at Abelman Clothing & Footwear store on Sophie Street in Bessemer that once told the hours of a doctor’s office that was then located upstairs.

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THE WAY WE WORKED 5 Saxon Harbor has long history of commerce, recreation

THE DAILY GLOBE • YOURDAILYGLOBE.COM

By RALPH ANSAMI

ransami@yourdailyglobe.com

SAXON, Wis. — The expansion of Saxon Harbor in 2006 with construction of a new basin that doubled boating capacity is the latest in a long history of improvements.

Ross Peterson Construction, of Hurley, completed the expansion project that was designed by Hitch, Inc. architects, of Houghton.

The $2.17 million 2006 expansion to the harbor was primarily funded by a Section 154 federal grant set up by U.S. Rep. David Obey, D-Wausau.

In addition to the new harbor basin, the project added shoreline protection, new docks and restroom facilities and American Disability Act-complaint sidewalks.

It was the second expansion project at the harbor, which was developed in the 1930s with construction of a breakwall, dredging and docking facilities.

The original breakwall consisted of wood sheeting walls with tie rods. They were similar to rock-filled cribs.

The old harbor configuration contained a large wooden bridge in the area of the present boathouses.

“We grew up swimming under that bridge. I still have the scars to prove it,” said Saxon resident Rick Holm, speaking of the 1950s and ‘60s.

“There was a rope under the bridge and we would swing on it and drop into the water and swim,” said John Wyzlic, of Ironwood.

That was in the late 1950s.

“There was a deep hole on the south side of the bridge. That was where Oronto Creek went into the old harbor,” recalls Ron Smith, who grew up in Saxon.

Saxon area residents recall a dance hall being located at the harbor. “Wilbert Smith told me that the old Saxon High School gymnasium (now the fairgrounds 4-H building) was originally a dance hall at Saxon Harbor,” said George Hallisey, of Ironwood.

“There must have been a gradual grade to the lake, as my uncle, Barney Smith, mistakenly drove into the lake to turn around while at the dance,” Ron Smith said.

In the early to mid-1900s, the village of Francis blossomed at the harbor.

Jimmy Francis, of Hurley, recalls that his grandfather, Joe Francis, built the Harbor Lights tavern in 1936. His father later operated the establishment.

There were cabins along the lakeshore at one time, but erosion took its toll on them.

The building that still stands next to the park at the harbor was once the site of a boys camp, Jimmy Francis recalls.

Harry Gilbertson and James Francis also operated a charter fishing service out of the harbor on the Yvonne T, a huge boat even by today’s standards, and the Kathie.

The Harbor Lights Lodge was the headquarters for making deep sea fishing reservations.

It was about a 48-footer, with a dual-diesel engine.

The Yvonne T, which once sailed along the Mississippi River, has a colorful history, at one time used by Al Capone’s gang to run whiskey and women into northern Wisconsin from Canada during Prohibition.

The Francis family eventually sold the harbor and park to Iron County for $1.

When the old harbor was still prospering, in 1947, nearby Saxon was a bustling community, with three service stations, eight taverns and the famed Defer building, which contained a movie theater.

Vince Janke was town chairman, Barbara Innis was school board president, Ida Melchert was postmistress and Vern Downey was the school principal.

The Ave, Bott and Marchant service stations were operating, George Meredith was running the Saxon Co-op store and the taverns were Tony Ave’s Monterey (on U.S. 2), Cooks, Don’s, Dolphus Paige’s, Herman Peterson’s, Joseph Francis’, Thomas

SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 2015

Submitted photo

The YVONNE T, a boat with ties to Al Capone, is docked at Saxon Harbor. Note the wooden piers at left.

Baribeau’s and Carlo Peite’s.

There was also a cheese factory that operated in the mid-century in the area of the present apartment building, although it wasn’t mentioned in the 1947 directory.

In 1965, Saxon Harbor was designated as a harbor of refuge for small craft by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It was then that Oronto Creek was rerouted to converge with Parkers Creek.

Funding for the expansion and steel breakwalls was authorized in the 1959 River and Harbor Act. The contract for the 1965 expansion was awarded by the Army Corps and it drastically changed the look of the harbor.

Many believed the harbor was not properly designed by the Corps, and that led to much erosion, even wiping out a baseball field at the park.

The old west wood breakwall was removed and the east breakwall was constructed for $411,210.

Former Iron County Department of Natural Resources game warden Harold Schmude recalls

Submitted photo

EARLY CONSTRUCTION at Saxon Harbor is shown in a photo from the Francis family album. the conversion from the wooden piers at the harbor. He also recalls later making a trip to Madison with Ernie Valkama to urge continued dredging of the harbor basin by the Army Corps of Engineers.

“We told them about the erosion that had occurred along the shoreline because of the new

design of the harbor,” Schmude said last week.

The eroding shoreline resulted in the Harbor Lights tavern being moved from the shoreline to its present location, south of Oronto Creek.

More developments occurred through 1977 with construction of piers and shore facilities to

increase the number of boat slips to 53. A total of 130 feet of the south end of the west sheet pile revetment wall and boat launch were constructed in 1990 and 160 feet of steel sheet pile wall was extended north in 1996 to replace a failing concrete wall.

Today, many of the activities at the harbor are arranged by the Saxon Harbor Boating Club. It was formed in 1974 with 36 members and by 2006, the club boasted 203 members and membership has continued to grow since the harbor expansion was completed.

The club pursues environmental protection of Lake Superior and its rivers and streams, attempts to keep its members aware of changing boating and fishing regulations and seeks improvement of Saxon Harbor and its facilities.

HARBOR

—

Sharon’s C O F F E E C O M PA N Y Ralph Ansami/Daily Globe

A SMALL fishing boat sets sail from Saxon Harbor in the summer of 2014.

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THE WAY WE WORKED

6 l SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 2015

THE DAILY GLOBE • YOURDAILYGLOBE.COM

Farming a way of life for many in Western UP drawn equipment.”

Sandene and Semmerling said the tractor really changed the way farming was done.

“The purchase of the tractor would be the start of a newer way of life for the Finnish immigrants who had left a rather stark life in Finland to follow a dream,” Sandene said.

Electricity also made drastic improvements to agriculture. “(My family) had an outside light installed between the barn and house,” Sandene said. “This provided light for our evening activities as kids, in addition to the intended use of providing light to go to the barn in the dark morning and evening hours.”

By ALISSA PIETILA

apietila@yourdailyglobe.com

BESSEMER — As mining and logging industries expanded into the Upper Peninsula, farming was introduced to provide food for families.

According to Michigan State University records, “The Upper Peninsula’s more limited agricultural potential was not tapped until the mid-1800s.”

One of the longest running farms in the area is Semmerling Farms on the eastern end of Bessemer. It is still in operation.

August Semmerling III, who goes by “Butch,” grew up on the farm and his grandfather founded it in the 1890s. His favorite part about growing up on a farm was riding his horse. Semmerling’s first horse was named Dolly.

The farm has changed “dramatically” over the generations, including equipment and what has been farmed.

“Until 1979, we were in the dairy business,” Semmerling said. “From 1920 to 1955 or so, we were in the potato business, too.”

MSU records said, “It was found that many crops, particularly hay and potatoes, did well in the rigorous northern climate.”

Ed Sandene, who has written about the history of his family in Bessemer, said in the 1920s “...much of the food was home-grown, so only basic items were purchased from outside sources.”

Many of those who originated farms in the western U.P. were from Finland.

Submitted photo Submitted photo

AUGUST SEMMERLING Jr. uses a hand plow behind a horse ridden by his cousin, Jim Grobowski, in the summer of 1922.

According to MSU, “Some groups (of immigrants), such as the Finns, were brought to Michigan in the 1870s to work in mines of the Upper Peninsula; their real interest, however, lay in farming, and settling on the eastern edge of the mining district, they worked long and hard to raise money to buy farms.”

Farming equipment

Sandene and Semmerling both said that equipment changes were a big part of improving farming over the years.

Sandene’s family owned property in

the northern section of Bessemer. The 40-acre parcel his family bought was an area that had been logged.

“The large white pine stumps were blasted away with dynamite so the land could be tilled,” he said.

Sandene’s family farm was primarily used for hay and oats. A small part was also cleared for a house to be built and a pasture for cows.

He said most of the work in the 1920s and 1930s “was done with horses and horse-drawn equipment.”

In a picture from the summer of 1922,

PAUL SEMMERLING, the brother of August Semmerling III, rides a tractor in 1955.

Semmerling’s father is shown using a hand plow behind a horse ridden by his cousin, Jim Grobowski. Sandene said he helped his father in the fields with similar equipment.

In the late 1930s, tractors became available.

“In 1939, dad got his first tractor, an Allis Chalmers B model,” Sandene said of the way farming equipment had improved. “This replaced the team, but the single horse remained for jobs like raking hay. Later on, the rake and other machines were all converted to tractor-

Submitted photo

Submitted photo

ATTE SANDENE sits on his Allis Chalmers tractor circa 1939 at his farm in North Bessemer. He is joined by his wife, Selina, and their sons Elmer and Ed. Farm life changed greatly when tractors began to replace horses.

ED SANDENE’S sister, Olga, left, and his parents, Selina and Atte, stand with their gas engine washer in North Bessemer circa 1940. Washing was done outside during the summer and moved back on to the porch when the weather cooled.

Present-day farming

Present-day farming is greatly improved over the last century in the western U.P., although there are few farms remaining.

Semmerling Farms no longer grows potatoes and does not handle dairy farming.

“Currently, we are a beef cow, calf operation,” Semmerling said, and he is the only full-time worker on the farm.

A typical day on the farm in the winter includes “feeding the cattle and repairing the machinery in the buildings,” Semmerling said. “That’s about what you do in the winter.”

In the winter, they are 35 animals on the farm. The farm also sells a lot of hay, Semmerling said.

“The bulk of my hay customers are in Wisconsin, in Vilas and Oneida counties,” he said. The haying season in the summer is one big change from the typical winter farming day.

“In the summer time, you got your hay to make and planting to do in the spring,” Semmerling said.

The biggest change in the working history of the farm is “finding help,” Semmerling said.

He said over the years, it has been more and more difficult to find workers, which is especially true in the summer, when he hires for haying season.

This could be partially because agriculture’s role in Michigan is significantly less than it was in the mid-1800s and early 1900s.

“In 1860, 85 percent of the population depended upon agriculture for its livelihood; in 1960, only 26 percent of the people lived in the country, and even fewer actually supported themselves through farming,” MSU said.

Though agriculture is not as prominent today, it is still an important part of the continuing history of the Western U.P.

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THE WAY WE WORKED

THE DAILY GLOBE • YOURDAILYGLOBE.COM

SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 2015

l

7

Kolesar serves as firefighter for 30 years

By ALISSA PIETILA

apietila@yourdailyglobe.com

IRONWOOD — Fire departments haveseen many changes throughout the years in the ways they worked.

Bernard “Bobo” Kolesar served as a firefighter from 1951 to 1981, and for the last seven years of his service, he was also fire chief.

Keeping busy

“We had lots of things to do,” Kolesar said. “We cleaned the trucks. Every day we went over them.”

He said the younger guys would ask, “Why should we polish this truck every day?”

Kolesar said, “The reason you want to polish that truck is some time in the night-time you go out and you don’t know where anything is. If you polish it and work on it, you know exactly where this ax is or this nozzle is.”

He said they were also always being updated on new techniques and technologies.

“We were continuously training,” Kolesar said. Over the years, he acquired 32 different training certificates. This included everything from first aid to fire and equipment training.

Firefighters also watched for possible areas where branches and wires could cause fires, maintained fire extinguishers and checked local businesses.

“We had fire inspections of all the businesses every year,” Kolesar said. “At that time, it was over 300 (businesses).”

He said doing the inspections helped learn addresses, too.

“We had to know all the addresses so when someone called in, you would know where to go,” Kolesar said. The calls came directly to the fire depart-

ment, he said.

Kolesar said that sometimes if all the firefighters were out, they would have the police answer their phone, as they were right next door.

Bernard “Bobo” Kolesar 1981

have scheduled days off, still called “Kelly days.”

Today, the IPSD building is on McLeod Avenue in Ironwood, ready to serve the public.

Personal life

Strong bonds

Kolesar said working day-long shifts with the other firefighters created strong bonds.

“We worked 24 hours. We got to be a family,” Kolesar said. “We cooked. We slept there … kept house.

“There were no enemies. We were all family. We had rules there. We never argued politics, we never argued religion,” he said, “because those are things that can make enemies, so we had that rule.”

Kolesar said they “played a lot of smear” to help pass the lulls in the 24-hour work-day. He said others would also come in and play.

Firefighters did get time off, but when and how much changed through the years.

In the 1890s, they worked one day and then were off one day. In the 1920s or 1930s, Kolesar said, “A fireman by the name of ‘Kelly’ introduced a bill to get a day off.”

After that was passed, the firemen got every fourth day off, he said, and later on every third day off.

“So the day off became known as a ‘Kelly day,’” Kolesar said.

Fighting fires

Kolesar said fighting fires by horse-drawn equipment led to the building of another fire sta-

Submitted photo

A 1916 FIRE TRUCK, a ladder truck, drives down the street in a parade in June 1969 in this photo submitted by former fire chief, Bernard “Bobo” Kolesar. tion.

“After they had the station here, they found that Jessieville was a long way away by horsedrawn carriage. So they built another fire station up in Jessieville,” Kolesar said. “That was because by the time they got there … they were losing too much property.”

He used to monitor the records for several fire chiefs. He said in the records, most of the fires in the 1920s and 1930s were either attic fires or chimney fires because “everyone was burning wood or burning coal” in their homes.

Kolesar said they definitely saw more fires in the winter, as people had to constantly heat their homes.

The main goal in building the second station was to save more properties from major damage.

“Our saying was, ‘The first five minutes is the most important.’ You don’t get there in five minutes, the fire has gone from a fire to a big fire,” Kolesar said.

At first, when Kolesar started at the fire department, it was rated Class 10, which meant Ironwood residents had to pay more for fire insurance. He said they were able to work hard and get the rating down to a Class 6.

Fire equipment

Submitted photo

THE FORMER Ironwood City Hall was located on McLeod Avenue near Norfolk Street. Beside the city offices, it housed the police and fire departments.

HITT’S FINE FURNITURE

In terms of equipment, Kolesar said he saw a large change in the trucks, especially.

“The trucks got much better,” he said. “When I first came there, we had to do everything (manually), now these new guys, all they have to do is press a button.”

When he started as a fireman, they had 1913 and 1923 LaFrance fire trucks.

“Just before I got there, they got a 1937 International truck, which was Army surplus.”

“The first year I was there, they got a 1952 LaFrance. It was

one of the best fire trucks there was. (It) came from New York … in a box car,” Kolesar said. “I think our next fire truck was an American Fire Apparatus that we got in 1969. The year that they bought it used to be the number of the truck.”

He said first aid and immediate rescue equipment has really changed.

“When we first went on a rescue call, we had what they call an inhalator,” Kolesar said. “If someone was having a heart attack or something, we’d have to use that inhalator ourselves and we’d have to set it at what we thought that person would take. … We’d have to set our atmospheric pressure for that person.”

Now, they have defibrillators which are much more efficient.

“They do the work themselves,” he joked. He said they did lose some people, but they also saved many.

“It was a good feeling to know that you saved a person,” Kolesar said.

He pretty much always knew he wanted to help people, but as a firefighter.

“I was born to be a fireman, not a policeman,” he said.

Kolesar retired from the fire department in 1981, as his knees were aging and it was hard for him to go up a ladder.

Recent past, present-day

In late 1981, the Ironwood Fire Department merged with the police department into the Ironwood Public Safety Department.

Leroy Johnson became the first public safety director in November 1981 and Cliff Koivisto became the fire chief and assistant public safety director.

Koivisto retired in 1983.

The fire trucks currently at IPSD include a 1982 Pierce 100foot Platform, a 1999 Pierce

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Historic Hurley offers many stories of the hey days of early Wisconsin. Santini Hotel now Dawn’s Never Inn opened their doors in the early 1900s. Depending on who you talk to the three pillared back bar has a unique origin.

One of the history lessons says that it was built by the Brunswick Corporation as a commission piece for a bar in Calumet, Michigan in the late 1800s. The bar was moved around to multiple establishments until it was placed in the newly built Santini Hotel in 1925.

Others believe it was carved in the Houghton/Hancock, MI area.

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Walking in, one is struck by the beauty of the original hand carved back bar. Along with a juke box that has music for every age; there is a working player piano just through the leaded glass saloon doors.

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The Gogebic Range Libraries Welcome The Smithsonian The Way We Worked Exhibition

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Pumper and a 2006 Spartan hazardous materials truck.

Kolesar said the present firefighters work 12-hour shifts and

Kolesar grew up in Ashland Location, near the Norrie School, and has lived in the Ironwood area his entire life.

Kolesar was married in 1947 to Zellamae, and they had three children — Christine, Charles and Brian.

“My wife died 30 years ago, but my kids have been good to me,” he said. “I’m a hunter and a fisherman. I keep myself busy.”

He said he still goes to visit his children each year, especially at Christmas as they live across the country, from the Lower Peninsula, to California, to Florida. Kolesar also has nine grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Patrick J. Niemi has been writing since 1989. His latest novel, South Shore II-The Heavensplitter, is a continuation of South Shore I-The Early Years. Both novels are part of an eight book series. The first novel, Walking Alone, follows a young woman’s decision to enter the convent to become a nun. The second novel, Friday’s Edition, is about a college student who publishes an illegal underground newsletter on campus that uncovers and publishes some deadly secrets about the Dean of Students. The fifth novel, Friday’s Edition II-Animalistic, is currently in process and a 2015 release is planned.

The novels are fiction/suspense and cover wide variety of intriguing and sometimes controversial social issues based upon the author’s personal experiences and observations.

All of his novels can be found in local book stores and on Amazon.com in printed or Kindle versions.

With the amount of resources available at your public library, a wealth of knowledge, information and history can be learned.

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Marenisco Public Library Est. 2011 319 Fair St. 906-787-2501

8 l SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 2015

THE WAY WE WORKED

THE DAILY GLOBE • YOURDAILYGLOBE.COM

Vuorenmaa keeps traditional Finnish weaving practices alive

By RICHARD JENKINS

rjenkins@yourdailyglobe.com

IRONWOOD TOWNSHIP — Irene (Niemi) Vuorenmaa first came to this country as a tourist, visiting America on a visiting visa in 1959. However, she fell in love with the country and — undeterred by her lack of English — immigrated from Finland only a couple years later, bringing with her a number of skills she learned that were essential part of life in rural Finland, including weaving on a loom.

Raised on a small farm in Kortesjarvi, Finland, Vuorenmaa remembers always working hard.

“We did lots of work at the farm,” Vuorenmaa said. “For as long as I can remember — I started walking — I had to go into the field.”

From this early age Vuorenmaa’s mother began teaching her and her siblings the skills they would need to survive on a farm, including teaching Vuorenmaa to weave when she was 11 or 12.

“My mother always said, ‘ if you don’t learn now, you are never going to learn anything,’” Vuorenmaa recalled.

This work ethic kept everyone in the family busy, with her mother often knitting while she

walked.

Vuorenmaa remembers the family having two looms and her and her sister would weave simultaneously to create the fabric the family needed.

Upon immigrating to the the Upper Peninsula, where she helped take care of the mother of her citizenship sponsor in Bessemer, Vuorenmaa met Harold Vuorenmaa on a blind date. The two eventually got married and began a small farm in Ironwood Township. The couple will be celebrating its 55th anniversary in May, she said.

Vuorenmaa has two looms, a smaller two-harness loom and larger four-harness one, both of which can make a variety of fabrics.

“You can make anything. In Finland we used to make bedspreads, table runners, curtains — real fine material, like silky ones,” said Vuorenmaa. “You can make anything. You can even make wall hangings.”

Looms work by “holding one set of parallel threads so that you can cross a second set of threads over and under the first set to form a fabric,” according to a story about weaving in the Mother Earth News. The loom sepa-

rates a number of the threads at a time, creating room for the “shuttle” carrying the second threads to pass through, thereby interweaving the two sets. The interwoven threads are then compacted to keep from separating.

Vuorenmaa explained that the thickness of the fabric doesn’t depend on the loom as much as it does the thread being woven.

While the time to completely weave a project depends on a number of factors including the project’s size and experience of the weaver, Vuorenmaa said it takes her approximately two hours to complete a yard-and-ahalf of fabric.

Vuorenmaa has become such an accomplished weaver that, in 1998, she was invited by the Smithsonian Institution to travel to Washington D.C. for the American Folklife Festival to demonstrate the heritage of both the Hurley-Ironwood area and the Finnish-Americans that live there.

In particular, she enjoys weaving a Finnish pattern that translates to “over the waves,” and makes a pattern in the cloth that resembles waves.

Traditionally looms were built

by husbands when they immigrated as way to get their wives to make fabric for them, Vuorenmaa said.

“That’s what husbands wanted to make their wives when they came to this country,” Vuorenmaa said. “They wanted their wives to work, you know, so that’s what they made.”

Among the handmade looms is Vuorenmaa’s large loom, which she said is over 100 years old.

She got it from a Kimball woman who didn’t want to take it with her when she moved down to Florida.

Vuorenmaa prefers the homemade looms, calling the factory looms “too flimsy” for her preference.

In addition to her appearance at the Folklife Festival, Vuorenmaa’s weaving has also appeared the the Michael Loukinen documentary “Finnish American Lives” as well as receiving the Michigan Heritage Award in 2000 at an event in Lansing. She has also travelled to Madison Wis., in 1998 displaying her skills.

Looking back, she said that the perception in Finland was America was land of opportunity.

“In Finland, they always said

Submitted photo

IRENE VUORENMAA, of Ironwood Township, demonstrates tradition Finnish weaving during the Smithsonian Institution’s 1998 American Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C. in America money grows on trees … for 54 years I’ve been looking for that tree,” she joked.

However, she added that a lot money wasn’t as necessary — both in Finland and America —

when she had both the love of her family and the ability to make what was needed.

“We didn’t have too much, but we had lots of love,” said Vuorenmaa.

Remembering a long day’s work at Penokee Mine

By ED SANDENE

Special to the Globe

Day shift meant getting up at 5:30 a.m. and having that first cup of coffee. After waking up with the caffeine, it was time for breakfast.

Then, get dressed, and wait for my ride, or if it was my turn to drive, I’d get started. There were three of us who shared the driving duties and we would pick up each other. We also picked up a fellow miner at the intersection of the old road and the golf course road and another at the top of the hill, near Rigoni’s Inn. They would pay us a couple dollars a week; remember this was in the late 1950s into the early

1960s.

We drove into the Penokee Mine property which is where the Globe Concrete operation is now. This is where the East Norrie shaft was located. This was the main shaft for the Penokee Mine and that is where we went underground. This is where the ore was hoisted to surface from the 29th level.

We parked on the west side of the last building, which was the dry. This is where we changed into our mining clothes. A door on the southwest corner let us into the locker room where we undressed.

From there we went into the room where our mining clothes

STEIGER’S Timber Operations

were hanging near the ceiling where the heat was. This was so they would dry overnight and be ready for the next day. We were all assigned a numbered spot which had a chain with three hooks. Our clothes hung on the hooks and were pulled up near the ceiling as mentioned. Our boots and helmets went on a shelf and no one dared to infringe on this space. I saw this happen once and the next morning those boots were on the floor.

Once we dressed and looked like miners, we picked up our lamps, which were lined up on the counter at the front of the dry. I picked up mine, which was No. 56. These had been charging

since we came off shift the day before, so they were ready to go back underground. Another item we all needed was something to keep our safety glasses clean.

This was provided for us in the form of rolls of toilet paper. We would roll up a supply and head for the shaft if the weather was suitable.

Then up came the cage with the midnight shift. The top deck unloaded first, then the bottom deck. Then we started our shift by getting on the cage, most of us were creatures of habit. Some went on the bottom deck, others on the top deck. The loading of the men into the cage didn’t take long as this had become a routine

and we each knew where our spot was.

We were packed in tight, 25 men to each deck. The cages at Penokee were large, which allowed for that number of men to be loaded. Our lunch buckets went on our shoulder so they wouldn’t get pressed against us and obviously we didn’t move much. There was an opening above the door about 30 inches or so where we could see the shaft as we went down. It took about 2½ minutes to get down to the 29th level, about 2,900 feet down.

The time varied somewhat, depending on which hoisting engineer was on duty.

When we had descended the

2,900 feet to the 29th level, we got off the cage and boarded the man cars. Then we headed east to the Pabst H shaft, near Jesseville. When we got to No. 4 crosscut which went to the H shaft, we got off the man cars.

Some of the miners walked east and climbed down ladder raises to their work area. Others walked into No. 4 crosscut to the shaft and took the cage to the 31st level. There they went to their various work sites, most above the 31st level. The skip tender stayed on the 29th level and he and I would grease the PENOKEE

Visit Mercer

—

page 11

A Smithsonian Exhibition at the Downtown Art Place and exhibitions across the Gogebic Range

Steiger’s family of businesses is proud to be part of the Bessemer working community since 1939. Steiger Lumber company was first in operation from 1939-45 at the Black River logging camp, moving to Bessemer in 1946. It now operates under the name of Steiger’s Timber Operations.

Steiger Building Supply opened in 1947 in Bessemer. Steiger’s Home Center now operates along US Highway 2 in Bessemer, and is your local Ace Hardware store and building materials source.

April 4 to May 31, 2015

Steiger’s will be participating in the Smithsonian regional history exhibit “The Way We Worked” with pictorial exhibits from its historical collections, along with logging and sawmill items.

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THE WAY WE WORKED 9 Liberty Bell Chalet evolves while staying true to roots

THE DAILY GLOBE • YOURDAILYGLOBE.COM

SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 2015

Joe Pecotte — who joined the family’s business in 1955 — the original restaurant only occupied the space that is now the kitchen.

In 1962, building was expanded according to Pecotte, replacing the neighboring bocce court with what is now the bar area.

“This entire place was just the kitchen that we have now. (The bar) wasn’t here, (the dining room) wasn’t here,” said Pecotte.

Using materials from throughout the region, including copper from the White Pine Copper Mine in Ontonagon County, locally cut cedar and beams from the dismantled ore docks in Ashland to reinforce the ceilings and walls of the new dining a bar area, the restaurant’s decor was modeled on the rustic setting of a ski lodge.

The building was expanded in 1966 to add the large dining room, and again in 2007 to create the attached market.

“It has been going great guns ever since (the 1966 expansion),” said Pecotte.

While the restaurant has undergone a number of changes

over the years, according to Pecotte, the restaurant’s popularity has created a stability for the business as customers frequently return and the word-ofmouth attracts new customers.

“We have a lot of loyal customers, they come back for years and years and years,” said Pecotte.

The area’s status as a tourist destination has also allowed the restaurant to attract loyal diners from around the world, Pecotte said. Customers have told him about meeting fellow fans of “The Bell” as far away as New York and Germany.

Technology has also changed the restaurant business, Pecotte said, both improving the efficiency of the restaurant business and changing the dining experience for patrons.

Having switched from an old “deck oven” that requires food be put in and out, to a “doubletrack” conveyor belt system and a computerized ordering system, the restaurant has made it easier for diners to get their food fast.

“The waitstaff used to go way

in the back corner (of the dining room), write an order down, come up here and get a drink, walk it back there, come back and walk the order to the kitchen … now our computers are all hooked up together,” said Pecotte. “(The technology) took a lot of miles off the waitstaff.”

The rise of cell phones has also changed the dining experience, according to Pecotte.

“Everybody that walks in here has got a cell phone. I notice that a lot of them, a couple will come in and sit down and out comes the cell phones,” said Pecotte.

“They don’t talk to each other.”

Pecotte’s granddaughter, Jessica Frello, who has worked at numerous jobs in the restaurant including as waitress, has also noticed the change in customer behavior caused by technology.

However, for her, it’s the Bluetooth ear pieces that struck her as new.

“Sometimes I think they are talking to me when I’m waiting on them, when they are really talking on their earpieces,” Frello said, laughing.

While the dining experience may have changed, Pecotte hasn’t noticed many changes in the type of people who eat at the restaurant. Although he added that people discovering the restaurant for the first time creates a stream of new faces.

“It’s the same clientele we had 50 years ago, just it was a cycle.

So now, you just get older and you pass on, you know, there is always that bottom cycle coming up,” said Pecotte “It’s always the same people, most of them have been here before.”

While new technology has improved the efficiency of service, it has little impact on the core recipes, which is what customers look for, according to Frello.

“A lot of customers say we have always been consistent and that’s what they love most about this place,” Frello said. “The food we don’t want to change.”

While the staple recipes remain unchanged, Pecotte has noticed a trend toward healthier options among diners.

the Flambeau Trail.

The most popular getaway to the Flambeau Trail started at Saxon Harbor, on the shore of Lake Superior’s Oronto Bay. Also known as the Montreal River Trail, it was the only route inland into the dense virgin forest until the late 1880s.

The trail was an ancient Indian trading and war route that connected LaPointe on Madeline Island to Lac du Flambeau, 90 miles to the south, a plaque at the harbor points out.

The first 45 miles of the trail

was a portage, or an overland bridge, linking Lake Superior to navigable riverways to the south.

When a lively commerce in fur trading began in the late 1700s to satisfy European demand for beaver for hats, the trail became the highway over which goods were exchanged for pelts.

On the shore, French Canadian voyagers transferred cloth, gun powder, and other trade goods brought by canoe from the trading post at LaPointe, into 80pound tote packs. Each voyager carried packs over the the diffi-

cult 120-pause portage, so named for the number of stops to rest — about every half-mile.

The route extended near the present Saxon Falls on the Montreal River, long before the hydro-electric dams were built along the river.

In exchange, millions of dollars of beaver pelts from the Northwest Trading Company post at Lac du Flambeau were toted back to Saxon Harbor, destined for LaPointe, Quebec, or New Orleans, and eventually Europe.

By RICHARD JENKINS

rjenkins@yourdailyglobe.com

HURLEY — The Liberty Bell Chalet ranks among the most iconic restaurants in Hurley. The building on Fifth Avenue off Wisconsin 77 has been served classic Italian recipes to area residents and visitors alike for over 90 years, adapting as necessary, while staying true to the restaurant’s heritage.

Bernadino and Carmella Fontecchio arrived in Hurley from Capistrano, Italy, in the early 1900s. Initially Bernadino worked as a miner and the couple lived above what was then the Liberty Bell Tavern, owned by Serafino Castagna.

Like many of the establishments in Hurley, the tavern catered to the area’s many miners and lumberjacks.

Although this provided the tavern with a large customer base, the market wasn’t without risk as the at-times-wild nature of these working men could lead to them being turned away without food or lodging by the end of a visit to Hurley.

Using the bocce court next to the tavern, the Fontecchios would often distribute free food, made from classic recipes that they brought with them from Italy, to the working men in need.

This hospitality provided a natural transition as the couple took over the tavern in 1923 and turned it into a restaurant-bar while retaining the Liberty Bell name.

Naturally, the restaurant’s menu was expanded to include the couple’s popular Italian recipes.

The restaurant would thrive in the 1960s as the Gogebic Range became popular around the nation as a skiing destination. The early ‘60s also saw the couple’s three children — Fred, Betty and Pat — assume control of the restaurant from their parents.

To reflect the popularity of the area’s ski hills, the name was changed to The Liberty Bell Chalet.

According to current owner

Harbor From page 5 It also sponsors an annual fishing tournament that includes hundreds of anglers who participate on trolling boats, both big and small.

Montreal River Trail

Submitted photo

FAMILY MEMBERS, from left, Betty Lehocky, Carmella Fontecchio, Roberta “Bobi” Lehocky and Dominica D’Andrea stand in the backyard of The Liberty Belle, circa 1953.

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sive to get picked up for a DUI or something like that. It’s injurious to your reputation for another.

They are just not going to get caught, they just aren’t going to take a chance. So that has impacted (drinking patterns) quite a bit.”

Once again, its the prevalence of technology that Pecotte sees as the cause of the change in diner eating preferences.

“There is so much information out there in the digital world, there’s so much out there, people are a lot more learned than they were 50 years ago, so they ask for things and we try and pick up on those needs,” said Pecotte.

Ultimately, for Pecotte, with all the changes in dining patterns, it’s the customer base telling the restaurant what it wants, rather than trying to jump ahead of each trend.

“You can’t force something (customers) don’t want,” he said.

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“They go for lighter things ... salads are big. Of course, pastas are still big,” said Pecotte. “People are a little more calorie-conscious, I think.”

The restaurant has also had to adapt to the recent popularity of gluten-free foods, which requires a special dough that has to be kept away from wheat flour. This not only requires a special set of utensils to avoid cross-contamination, the gluten-free flour is considerably more expensive, according to Pecotte.

One of the most dramatic changes in customer dining habits, according to Pecotte, is the amount of drinking. He attributes the decline in heavy drinking to the higher penalties and social stigma associated with drunk driving in today’s society.

“It’s more of a social event when you have a drink, they are not going to go out and face (a police officer),” said Pecotte.

“First of all, it’s too damn expen-

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THE WAY WE WORKED

10 l SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 2015

THE DAILY GLOBE • YOURDAILYGLOBE.COM

Erspamer serves with Hurley Police Department for 25 years

By KELSEY HANSEN

news@yourdailyglobe.com

HURLEY — Employment in our area has come in all shapes and forms, from mining and logging to industry and recreation. The Hurley Police force has been important to our area over the years.

Ted Erspamer, retired Hurley Police Chief, shared his experience over his 25 years working on the force.

Erspamer started as an officer on the Hurley police force back in 1957, the same year he got married. He said he quit Superior State University to become an officer.

“The police department was paying the same thing as the school teachers were getting. $3,300 a year,” he said. “And as an officer, you worked six days a week.”

Erspamer came out of the Navy and started going to school. His wife graduated the year they got married and he was only a sophomore at that time.

And so he made the decision to quit school and start a job on the police force.

He worked as an officer for

four years in Hurley and then left to move to Antigo to manage a department store for about seven years. that At time, he saw that there was Ted a civil service Erspamer job opening in Hurley.

He took a test and then became police chief in Hurley.

He already had the training and service time from his years as an officer and so all that was required was a test and he was appointed to police chief by the city mayor.

The force consisted of five officers, including the chief, which is about the same as today.

As for the equipment used by the force, when Erspamer first started, there weren’t any twoway radios. The procedure then was a light hanging in the middle of the street along Third Avenue that would be turned on when the fire steward received a phone call, signaling the offi-

cer on duty or the police chief.

Once the officer saw the light come on, he had to go to the telephone box located on Second Avenue and call the station to see what the problem was and respond accordingly.

So part of the duties was to always be driving around and checking on that light.

It was about 1959 when the force acquired radios. “Each officer then carried a radio and had a radio in the car,” Erspamer said.

And it wasn’t until many years after Erspamer returned to the Hurley force as police chief that they got computers.

He said it was about 1980 when they got radio equipment put in the cars.

To begin with, the force only had one car and later added more. Erspamer recalls having more than two cars for most of the time he was chief.

The first cars the force had were Plymouths and it then changed to Chevys later on and then Fords and now currently to Dodges.

As for officers on duty, it was typically just one on at a time.

“We doubled-up from 7 at night

to 3 in the morning. Otherwise, it was always just one officer on duty,” Erspamer said.

And, of course, as chief, he was always on call for back-up, if it was needed.

Each officer carried a gun and mace back then but that was about all, Erspamer said.

And the uniforms were about the same as they are now.

One of the biggest changes over the years was the location of the police station. It was located on Copper Street, along with the old city hall and a jail.

The city hall then moved to the lot behind the Bank Club, off Silver Street, and finally settling into its current location along Fifth Avenue.

As for the crimes during his time as police chief, Erspamer saw everything from murders to attempted bank robberies to drugs.

“I had a guy try to break into the bank and that was kind of funny,” Erspamer recalled. “He was trying to break in through a window upstairs to get to the bank and the window he was going through was a law office.

He thought he was breaking into the bank but he was one

story too high.”

And catching drivers going over the speed limit was not a big concern in his early years as an officer.

“In the early days we didn’t have radar, so we used to put a thing across the highway that when a car drove by it would tell us how fast they were going,” Erspamer said.

“That was the beginning of picking up speeders. But before that we didn’t have anything so we hardly picked up speeders.”

Erspamer also recalls that issuing licenses for the 80 some taverns in Hurley was also a big deal.

One of Erspamer’s favorite aspects when he was police chief was walking the streets and helping the young students from South Side School cross the street.

As for investigative work, Erspamer said he didn’t do too much of that. He always hired an investigator when needed.

The entire time he was chief, he had Kenny Colassaco as his investigator, who later became police chief in Hurley.

As for big differences in the police force today versus what

it was back during Erspamer’s days, he said now they deal a lot with drunk driving and drugs.

The equipment and technology now is a lot better than when Erspamer was on the force.

“But when you didn’t have it, you didn’t miss it,” he said.

Erspamer had a large family with his wife and eight children, five boys and three girls.

Several of his sons continued on in his footsteps, taking on positions in the police force, including the current Hurley police chief, Dan Erspamer, and another son, Robert Erspamer, former Ironwood police chief.

After retiring as police chief of Hurley, Erspamer worked as Iron County Court bailiff for 21 years before fully retiring.

“It was nice because it was stuff I was interested in,” Erspamer said, “taking care of the jurors and listening to the cases. And it was very much a part-time job, but it kept me informed of what was going on in the area.”

Erspamer now enjoys retirement and spends his time relaxing and visiting his children and grandchildren.

White Pine Copper: Brief historical background

By BRUCE K. COX

Special to the Globe

WHITE PINE — The White Pine Mine was the first successful copper mine operating on the Nonesuch copper deposit in Ontonagon County. The earliest attempt to mine on this deposit was made in the 19th century at the Nonesuch mine in the Porcupine Mountains, where a stamp mill was built and copper was mined unitl the operators found they could not recover enough of the metal from the stamp mill to make it profitable.

Copper in the Nonesuch deposit was most often found in the form of minuscule flakes, but as exploration and development took place, it was also found as sheets and small pieces of crystalized native copper. Some of the sheet copper, which formed between layers of shale, ranged in thickness from being thinner than a sheet of paper to several millimeters thick. As the 20th century progressed there were more and more attempts to find processes for extracting minerals from lean deposits, whether of iron ore or of copper.

Calumet and Hecla operated a copper mine at White Pine from 1913 to 1920, producing 18 million pounds of copper and 200,000 ounces of silver before closing down. The mine assets

were sold to the highest bidder in 1929, when Copper Range Company bought 4,000 acres of mineral land at White Pine for $119,000.

Research began several years later for a way to profitably mine the copper sulphide particles, and culminated on March 10, 1952, with the beginning of construction work at the mine; mining operations began one year later.

James Boyd, a future president of Copper Range, was serving as director of the U.S. Bureau of Mines when the opening of the mine was being contemplated. He offered to help if there was anything the government could do “to hasten” the development: A few years later, as administrator of the Defense Metals Administration, he recommended the granting of a loan to Copper Range. Copper was considered a strategic metal, and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation gave Copper Range a loan of more than $67 million, payable over 20 years at 5 percent interest; the final installment on the loan was paid in July 1964.

The first copper ingots were cast in January of 1955, and the mine began to turn a profit in 1961. At its height in 1974, the White Pine mine employed 3,140

people.

A “state of the art” refinery was built following the sale of the mine to Louisiana Land of Exploration in 1977. It cost $78 million and was completed in 1981.

Copper Range began studying the possibility of solution mining in 1993, which would have involved blasting the ore pillars down in the mine workings and pumping a solution of hydrochloric acid into the mine to dissolve to chalcocite. The solution would then be pumped out and treated to remove the copper. Mining operations ended two years later, due to new environmental regulations and depreciation of the infrastructure on the surface.

Copper Range was granted a permit for solution mining in 1996, but environmentalists and Indian tribes raised objections, and the plan was abandoned the following year.

The modern electrolytic refinery was sold to BHP Minerals in 1998 and continued to refine copper, the anodes hauled in from Flin Flon, Manitoba, Canada, until it shut down in 2010.

Over the lifetime of the White Pine Mine, from 1955 to 1995, it produced 4.5 billion pounds of copper and 47 million ounces of silver, which would be worth about $1 billion of the silver and

Submitted photo

THIS AERIAL view of the Copper Range White Pine Mine operation includes a view of the mill, smelter and refinery. $12.5 billion for the copper in sage is taken from Bruce Cox’s Ingots,” published by Agogeebic 2014. book “White Pine: An Illustrated Press. For more information, Editor’s note: The above pas- History of the Mine and its visit gogebicbooks.com.

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SMITHSONIAN THE WAY WE WORKED SCHEDULE

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Fridays April 10th thru May 29th 1pm Every Friday!!

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www.bessemerhistoricalsociety.com

The Heritage Center has normal open hours on weekends from Memorial Day Weekend through Labor Day plus during the Pumpkin Festival and during the 4th of July Festival! *Additional Presentation:

Saturday, April 18 at 3pm in conjunction with the Bessemer Women’s Club Tea, Vintage Fashion Show and Quilt Show!

THE DAILY GLOBE • YOURDAILYGLOBE.COM

THE WAY WE WORKED

SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 2015

l

11

Immigrant woman worked hard to provide for family’s future

By RICHARD JENKINS

rjenkins@yourdailyglobe.com

IRONWOOD — Miriam Rund remembers her grandmother, Hilja SuoSaari Haavisto, as a proud woman; someone who was not only worked incredibly hard her entire life, but was also very proper.

“She was like a ramrod, she just stood straight up. And she believed in work,” said Rund.

Born in Alavus, Finland, in 1885, Haavisto worked as a housekeeper to earn enough money to pay for most of a cost to immigrate to America, moving first to Albany, N.Y., in 1906.

Once there, Haavisto quickly earned the rest of the money needed to complete her journey to the Gogebic Range, moving to Jessieville in 1907.

Upon arriving in the area, Haavisto took several jobs, including as a wet nurse/midwife. She exceled at this position, according to Rund, causing the local doctor to remark that he was never worried about not being able to make a birth due to weather because Haavisto could be relied upon to make it to the house, even when he couldn’t.

“He used to say she always beat him there anyways,” said Rund.

Shortly upon arriving in the area, she married Heikki Haavisto, who had also immigrated to the Ironwood area from Alavus, in 1908.

She stopped being a wet nurse around 1919, Rund believes, when the opening of a hospital in the Jessieville area removed the need for her services.

She also worked at the Oriental Dye Works in Ironwood. Rund explained that like many jobs at that time, there was a degree of nepotism when it came to hiring.

Penokee From page 8 wheel bearings on the skips. One skip was used to hoist the ore to the 29th level and the other one was used as a counterbalance and was reached by taking the cage to the 13th level. After this job was done we went back down, me to the 29th level station and the skip tender to the 31st level.

He then climbed down to his work area which was just below the main level. There he greased the tugger bearings and the sheave bearings. The sheaves are the pulley like wheels on which the tugger cables ran.

Meanwhile, I walked from the shaft to No. 4 crosscut, about 25 feet and then to my loading sub, which was another 50 feet or so.

I climbed up the 8 feet or so and

“All of these places ... you handed (the job) to your relative or you got them in,” said Rund.

While Rund isn’t entirely sure of her grandmother’s exact job at the Dye Works, it was undoubtedly hard work.

“I didn’t know her at the time but she talked about how hard it was on her hands and she ended up with rheumatoid arthritis in her hands,” said Rund. “Her hands and feet were always sore from standing there and breathing in all those chemicals and everything. She always said it was really hard (work).”

While working at the Dye Works, Haavisto also became a house cleaner for a number of area residents.

Among the houses that Haavisto cleaned was the one occupied by the Goudy sisters, who taught at the neighboring Ironwood school. The sisters would give their old dresses to Haavisto, whose oldest daughter would alter them and have new dresses for her and her siblings. According to Rund, the house that the Goudy sisters lived in was so big that Haavisto usually had to be there every day, cleaning one room at a time.

“My mother ... and her three sisters ... were always able to have nice-looking clothes to go to school,” said Rund.

In 1931, Heikki died from a respiratory disease similar to black lung that he got while working in the area’s mines.

When he died, many community members encouraged Haavisto to let her children drop out of school to get jobs and help provide the family. Haavisto, however, was insistent that they receive an education.

“She was going to make sure they graduated,” said Rund.

did the same thing the skip tender did.

If there was “dirt,” which is what we called the iron ore, I soon heard the skip coming up. I should mention that the skip tender was “Minnie,” so called because he had spent time in Minneapolis before coming back to work in the mines.

We worked together for the 6½ years that I worked at Penokee, and I have fond memories of that working relationship. He’s the one that told me on that first day on this job, “Ed, don’t ever come back with a half scraper full, make sure it’s full.” That advice proved worthwhile, as we surpassed previous daily records many times.

Meanwhile, the miners were at their work sites, two in each drift. They would continue what their “opposite partners” had been working on. Obviously, opposite partners are the two

Enjoy your time as you visit our community during the Smithsonian The Way We Worked Exhibition

Submitted photo

HILJA HAAVISTO married her husband, Heikki Haavisto, in 1908 and raised her family in the Ironwood area.

“Going to college, that was up to them.”

In addition to working in houses around the area, Haavisto also was the unquestioned matriarch of the house.

Rund remembers visiting during the summers and being drafted into housework with the rest of the family’s women.

Mondays were the family laundry day, according to Rund, where water was heated on the wood stove and then the wet clothes were wrung through a hand-wringer washing machine.

“No matter if rained or not, Monday was wash day,” Rund said. “If it was bad outside, we had lines in the kitchen and hung the clothes there.”

On those days, Haavisto would get up at 4 a.m. to get lunch buckets for those who were leaving for work, then started cleaning. Halfway through, Haavisto would leave to go to her job, leaving the other women in the family to finish the wash.

Much like her professional life, Haavisto was very exacting when it came to household chores.

“She was very strict at how you hung your clothes. You hung your socks with the heels all going the (same) way. Still to this day, it bothers me if ... the sock is the wrong way. I can’t go into the house I have to come back because ‘grandmas going to get you.” Rund joked. “The underwear was put on the inside lines and you put your sheets on the outside lines so you didn’t see the underwear.”

With Mondays devoted to laundry, Thursday was breadmaking day. Rund remembers Haavisto would get up early and start the bread, go to work, and then come back home and finish the rest of the household work.

Family members would have to make sure the other chores were completed to Haavisto’s standards, as well.

“Their outhouse was so clean,”

said Rund. “They made sure that was just sparkling. My mom used to say that they would just scrub that floor until it was white.”

Even with the numerous jobs and responsibilites, Rund remembers her grandmother still found time to go berry picking, “That was her big thing in the summertime. We picked blueberries, raspberries,” Rund said.

Even though berry-picking a favorite pastime, it didn’t mean that Haavisto relaxed her standards.

“We had to pick them clean,” Rund remembered. “If you didn’t pick them clean, you didn’t get to go and play. You had to clean those and then she could at least make jelly out of them.”

In addition to berry-picking, Haavisto also loved to partake in the Finnish tradition of the sauna. Going to a variety of saunas, she could chat with friends and catch up on the latest gossip.

“The ladies would jibber-jabber, my grandmother went ... to this one, she kind of changed so they got more gossip that way,” said Rund.

The work ethic established by Haavisto is what Rund attributes the long lives of the female family members. “(Haavisto) kept saying that she wanted to work, and I think that’s why all the women — every one of them — lived to be 95 ... my aunts, the ones they married, my grandmother, all were 95. That’s because they couldn’t stop working. They didn’t care about the money part,” said Rund.

Haavisto was finally convinced to retire when her relatives explained it reflected poorly on her family.

“They said it looked funny

that they were sending their mother out (to work every day) in her 80s,” Rund said.

When Haavisto did retire in her 80s, she handed her housekeeping business to her newest sister-in-law, much like the way relatives arranged her entrance into the Dye Works.

The family would also frequently take in boarders, Rund said, especially relatives who were recent immigrants getting on their feet in their new homelands.

In addition to being a hard worker, Haavisto was always very prim and proper, Rund recalls.

She used to carry a long hat pin for self-defense from unwanted male attention. However, her stature in the community ensured she was seldom bothered.

Rund recalls a particular story of Haavisto being harassed by a group of drunken miners in an alley while walking home at night. Upon realizing who she was, the miners profusely apologized for their behavior.

“They were saying different things, until they got close and they said, ‘oh, excuse me, excuse me Mrs. Haavisto, we didn’t know it was you.’ ... They just couldn’t be nicer, they were so afraid,” Rund said.

If work and raising a family of six children didn’t keep her busy enough, she was actively involved in a number of groups and social organizations, including her church, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Ironwood.

“She was a busy lady because she was into everything,” said Rund.

According to Rund, this active life continued until she passed away in 1980 at the age of 95.

men who had just left after finishing their shift. They might have to continue drilling, or charging, or pulling dirt. All of these operations were different depending on whether they were drifting or caving.

The miners put the explosives in the holes drilled at the end of the drift, with the plan of making a tunnel or “drift” into an ore body.

When the ore samples showed the ore content was getting too low, they would stop as they were reaching the foot wall or headwall which is the rock in which the ore body was between.

Another material which showed up from time to time was called “dike.” It is a volcanic material which was sticky and difficult to scrape. The scraper just wanted to ride over it so it took some PENOKEE

—

page 14

Submitted photo

ED SANDENE runs a tugger in the Penokee Mine during his work there during the late 1950s and early 1960s.

AGOGEEBIC PRESS

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SCHEDULE OF EVENTS A Smithsonian Exhibition at the Downtown Art Place & exhibitions across the Gogebic Range April 4 to May 31, 2015

Exhibition Venue

Description

Exhibition

Description

Exhibit Hours

Venue

Arbor Vitae

HERstory: Women's Work on the Gogebic Range Women's work: nursing, teaching & business Tori House Thu, Fri & Sat 11 - 5, Sun noon - 4

Debby's North Country Farm Market Debby's North Country Farm Market

Locally sourced food and antiques Mon, Thurs, Fri & Sat 10 - 4

Vintage Quilting & Sewing Fabric Patch

Customer exhibition of vintage sewing & quilting items APRIL 20 to MAY 30: Mon to Fri 9:30 - 5, Sat 9:30 - 4

1942 Harley Military Motorcycle Northwoods Harley-Davidson

VIntage Motorcycles Tue - Fri 9 - 5, Sat 10 - 3

Township Countryside Museum Erwin Township Hall

106 yr old one room schoolhouse, town hall, museum MAY 2, 9,16 & 23: Sat noon - 3

Ash lan d

Walking Tours - Miners Memorial Heritage Park Tour the remains of the mines of Ironwood Miners Memorial Heritage Park MAY 2 to 31, Sat & Sun 11:30 - 1:30

Lake Shore, Communications & Local History Also an eight block Historical District & Mural Walk E hibit Historical Society Museum Ashland Mon - Fri: 10 – 4 Bes sem er Vintage Glass Bottles & Glassblowing Kikkebusch Glassworks

Exhibit Hours

Lac du Flambeau Legacy of Survival: Boys' School Dorm Museum Healing and overcoming the BIA schools Lac du Flambeau Tribal Offices Mon - Fri 8 - 3

Glassblowing & vintage/antique glass bottles Mon to Sat 10 - 5

Manitowish Waters

Logging, Mining, Schools, Music, Fashion Exhibits A small, well curated curated museum with videos!

Bessemer Area Heritage Center Fri & Sat: 1 to 5

From Pine Logs to Woodsy Retreats Frank B. Koller Memorial Library

The story of resorts & the outlaw John Dillinger Mon & Wed 9 - 3, Tue & Thu 3-7, Sat 9 - noon

Copper Peak Ski Jump & Chalet Copper Peak

Fisher Price Toy Collection Hogan's General Store

Midwest’s largest collection of vintage Fisher Price toys Mon - Sat: 7 - 6, Sun 8 - 1

The only ski flying hill in North America Sat & Sun: 10am - 2:30pm Boulder Junction

Mercer

Pottery Embellishment Demonstrations See how Arlene embellishes unique, handmade pottery Arlene's Pottery & Gallery Fri & Sat 10 - 5

Aerial Tours - North WI & U.P. From the Air Lauer Aviation Daily 10 - 5

Vintage Fishing Guides & Lures Headwaters Restaurant & Tavern

Good food & two photo walls of fishing guides & celebs Daily 11 - midnight

Working Warriors: Military Life Beyond Combat Explores non-combat roles of military service personnel Mercer Public Library MARCH 25 to April 16: Mon, Wed & Fri 9-5, Tue & Thu 9-6, Sat 9-12

Hu r ley

Celebrate Mercer at the Chamber Mercer Area Chamber of Commerce

Iron County Museum & Rug Weaving Demos A large museum, historic court house & active weavers Iron County Historical Museum Wed, Fri & Sat 10 - 2

Call 715-475-7810, 7 days a week, $

Photographic display of Mercer & “Claire d’ Loon” Mon, Tues, Thur & Fri 10 - 4, Wed 9 - 3, Sat 10 - 2 Sayner

Logging Equipment & Silver Street Photos A look at logging & Silver Street in the past Sharon's Coffee Company Mon to Sat 7 - 5

VIntage Eliason Snowmobiles on Display Original 1st Snowmobile Carl Eliason patented in 1927 Eliason Lumber & Hardware APR Mon to Fri 8 - 4; MAY Mon to Fri 7:30 - 4:30 & Sat 8 - noon

Heritage Tours - Authentic Finnish Culture Actual Finnish cottages, sauna, nature trail & gift shop Little Finland Wed & Sat 10 - 4

Vintage Dolls, Housewares, Unifiorms, Snowmobile Paul & Babe the Big Blue Ox. $3 admsn age 10 & up Vilas County Historical Museum May 23 to 31, Daily 10 - 2

Painting the Masters Historical Ironwood Theatre

Ironwood

Snowmobile Museum, Hall of Fame & Library May 23 & 24 cookout & Classic Sled Round Up Snowmobile Hall of Fame Thu & Fri 10 - 5, Sat 10 - 3

Art from the masters, interpreted by local artists.

APRIL 1 to May 31, Wed - Sat, noon - 4pm

Sculpting for Hollywood Pier of d'Nort

Hundreds of large & small movie character sculptures May 4 to May 28, Mon to Wed 10 - 4

Exhibits are open from April 4th to May 31st unless otherwise noted.

Wakefield "The Way We Worked" Downtown Art Place

Who, where, how and why America worked Mon - Sat noon - 4

Copper & Iron Show Art Studios on Aurora

Copper & iron inspired creations by local artisans.

Mon - Sat noon - 4

"Vintage" Book & Card Making: TWWW Souvenirs Create your own souvenirs for your Smithsonian visit Creative Spirits Mon & Sat 1 - 4:30 (open daily 10 - 5) Iron Sculptures and Bead Art Dancing Raven

Four iron working and beadwork exhibits Mon to Sat 10 -4, Sun 10 - 2

Photography Yesterday & Today Focused Girl Photography

Vintage cameras, low cost photo booth, memory board Tue to Fri noon - 6, Sat 10 - 2

Classroom, Post Office, General Store, Dr's Office Showcasing the theme of "How We Worked" Wakefield Historical Society Museum Mon to Sat: 9am - 5pm Woodruff Decades of Hairdressing - Woodruff, WI Salon on Hemlock Weekday 9am - 4pm How We Worked: Massage Through the Ages Vintage techniques, tools & history of massage A New Beginnings Bodyworks Fri & Sat 9- 4

The Way We Work Today (Candid Photos) Photographs of Gogebic Range workers today Historic Ironwood Theatre Wed - Sat, noon - 4pm Building Tours - Carnegie Library Ironwood Carnegie Library

Library History, photos, brochures & banners Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri & Sat noon - 5

Ironwood Depot Through the Years Ironwood Depot Park Museum

Railroading, mining & fashion exhibits Fri & Sat noon - 4

The Longyear Legacy Ironwood Memorial Building

J. M. Longyear, a mining pioneer of the Gogebic Range Mon to Sat 10 - 4

Building Tours - Ironwood Memorial Building A tribute to the opulence that once lived in Ironwood.

Ironwood Memorial Building Mon to Sat 10 - 4 The Way We Heal: One Hospital Over Time The "Hospital on the Hill" & health care since 1923 Ironwood Memorial Building Mon to Sat 10 - 4 3D U.P. - A Stereoscopic Visual Display 3-dimensional view of people of the Upper Peninsula Ironwood Memorial Building Mon to Sat 10 - 4 A History of the Ashland Ore Docks Ironwood Memorial Building

A history of transportation of Gogebic Range iron ore Mon to Sat 10 - 4

The Way We Ate - The Way We Shopped 1900 - 1930 food packaging. History of Co-ops Northwind Natural Foods Co-op Mon, Tue, Wed & Sat 9 - 6, Thu & Fri 9 - 7 Gogebic Range Mining Display Ironwood Memorial Building

Traces the history of mining on the Gogebic Range Mon to Sat 10 - 4

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THE DAILY GLOBE • YOURDAILYGLOBE.COM

THE WAY WE WORKED

SATURDAY, MARCH 28, 2015

l

13

Daily Globe sees many changes in technology

By KELSEY HANSEN

news@yourdailyglobe.com

IRONWOOD — The Daily Globe has been a staple of the Gogebic Range since it first published on Nov. 20, 1919 — not only as the local daily newspaper, but also as a source of employment.

Ron Sell, a former Daily Globe employee, shared his experience working for the newspaper for more than 51 years.

Sell began working for the Globe in 1946 when he was just 12 years old, delivering papers in the afternoons.

He had that job until 1949 and then Ron around 1950-51 Sell he worked in the mailroom for about a year. Sell was in high school at that time.

After high school, Sell then began working at the Globe fulltime in 1952 as an apprentice printer. He was in this position for six years.

“I learned all the jobs in the composing room as an apprentice,” Sell shared.

“And as part of the International Typographical Union, through them I had a six-year correspondence course in which I learned newspaper advertising, layout and design, and English.”

And Sell said that English was his favorite aspect of the job and his best skill.

“English was my best feature because I really knew English frontward and backward,” Sell shared.

“The editors used to come to me to check if something was correct. I used to correct everybody.

Because of this course that I took it was so thorough that I learned everything about English and writing.”

Of the many positions Sell had to learn, at one point there were 14 people in the composing room, he said.

“And I was the only one that could actually do every single job.”

Sell knew how to work the many different linotype machines, including the ad machine, classifieds machine, head machine, the automatic linotype machines, as well as the Ludlow machine.

Sell also helped make up pages when a boss was gone, marked copy for ads, and decided the size and specific typeface for each ad, just to name a few of the duties he knew.

And through the correspondence course Sell took while at

the Globe, he had about six or seven books that he had to go through every single chapter of.

He then mailed each chapter’s work, typically one chapter per month, and they would then mail his score back.

Once he completed his course and apprenticeship at the Globe, Sell then became a journeyman printer for the newspaper.

“At that time, a journeyman printer could go anywhere in the country and get a job. And the jobs were the same at all newspapers throughout the country,” Sell said.

Sell chose to stay in Ironwood, where he was born and raised and continue working for the Daily Globe newspaper.

He still had to know all the positions in the composing room and that included when equipment began to update.

Much of the equipment and processes used at the Daily Globe were what had been used for hundreds of years in printing, particularly the linotype machines.

Of the linotype machines used at the Daily Globe, they consisted of movable type (individual letters).

The moveable type was “individual letters in what was called a California case that held each letter and number with its own spot in the case,” Sell said.

“And we would take letters one at a time and put them into what was called a stick and we would form a line and then put that into an ad.”

All of the cases of letters, called foundry type, had to be purchased by the Globe and each case held only one typeface. So the newspaper had dozens of these cases of letters.

As the newspaper began to update to more modern equipment, they used what was called cold type.

“We would type into a machine and it printed out something like film and a big film case,” Sell described.

“And we would run the film through a developer and it would come out as a printed sheet. And that printed sheet would then be pasted onto a page.”

They had this machine and method for just a few years before the computer finally made it to the newspaper.

“When we were working with lead and hot metal it was dirty,” Sell remembered.

“But when the computers came, we remodeled the composing room — put in carpeting and such, like it is now with little cubicles and desks. And it was so quiet! And clean.”

And Sell said he then worked on building all the ads for the newspaper on the computer.

City of Ironwood Visit these events at the Memorial Building: • Building Tours • Aspirus Grand View • Beaumier Heritage Center • Ashland Historical Society • Marquette Regional History Center

Daily Globe file photo

THIS ARCHITECT’S rendering shows the The Daily Globe building on East McLeod Avenue to be built in 1936.

Noyes founds Daily Globe in Ironwood Frank E. Noyes, editor and publisher of the Marinette (Wis.) Eagle-Star, saw the need for a daily newspaper on the Gogebic Range that was then served by a half-dozen weekly newspapers, including the Ironwood Times and Ironwood News-Record.

He and a pair of business associates from Wisconsin founded the Globe Publishing Company in the fall of 1919.

They secured the current property at 118 E. McLeod Ave. that included a wooden structure on the street that had been the Merchants Saloon. A two-story brick building was built behind that building toward the alley. The press was on the first floor When they were still working on the linotypes, Sell explained that they had a lot of overtime.

Back when there were several grocery stores in the area and they had to run the weekly specials, the stores had full-page ads each.

“All the food items and meat items. All of that had to be built, you didn’t type those out,” Sell explained.

And the ads always ran once a week on Thursdays so Sell said they would put in overtime every Wednesday night to get them all done.

“There was always a lot to do,” he said. “And we always had big papers, 24 to 30 pages.”

And so when Sell then began building ads on the computer, he really enjoyed the quietness of it, as well as the speediness of it, in comparison to hand-building every single ad.

and the mechanical composing room was upstairs. The old wooden building housed the editorial, advertising, circulation and business departments.

Noyes, then in his 60s, enlisted his youngest son, Linwood I. Noyes, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a World War I veteran, to join the business in 1920. The younger Noyes quickly rose to the top and oversaw the construction of a new building in 1936 to replace old wooden structure. It stands today.

After Linwood’s death in 1964, his widow, Geraldine Noyes, became president of Globe Publishing.

One tricky aspect of switching to new equipment was remembering what machine you were working on, in regards to typing.

“The linotype keyboard is totally different from a typewriter keyboard,” Sell explained.

“The most used letters were the closest to each other and the least used letters were farther away.”

So when they switched to cold type, which used a regular typewriter keyboard and while still working with the linotype keyboard, it was a bit of a challenge.

“I had to mentally put myself into what machine I was working on and type a certain way and then switching remember it was a different kind of typing,” Sell said.

Sell officially retired from the Daily Globe in 1999, after 47 years as a full-time employee. He was 65 years old when he retired.

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More construction in 1965 made room for a newer press, with color printing capability from the Eagle-Star. The present Goss Community press was installed in 1977.

The Noyes family sold the newspaper to Bliss Communications of Janesville, Wis., in 1980. Bliss oversaw a remodel of the building in 1995 and many upgrades into the computer age.

Bliss sold the newspaper to Stevenson Newspapers of Sheridan, Wyo., on April 1, 2009.

Today, the Daily Globe has 16 full-time and 15 part-time employees. Sue Mizell serves as publisher.

Jason Juno/Daily Globe

DAILY GLOBE pressmen Bill Westerman, left, and Derrek King, run Tuesday, March 24’s edition early that morning.

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The Way We Worked

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THE WAY WE WORKED

THE DAILY GLOBE • YOURDAILYGLOBE.COM

Women worked to support family life

By KELSEY HANSEN

news@yourdailyglobe.com

HURLEY — The Iron County Historical Museum is a one-stop shop for memorabilia and history for the town of Hurley and surrounding area, including the volunteers who work there.

Many of the volunteers at the museum were born and raised in the area, adding a unique perspective to its history.

Comprised of mainly women volunteers, each one came to the museum with special skills all their own and have blended those into their volunteer work.

Many of those skills were learned and instilled into them by their mothers growing up, both from work done in the home as well as in the workforce.

Ginger Benninghoff has been volunteering at the museum for about 15 years in the weaving room.

“When I think about ‘The Way We Worked,’ I think about the word ‘work.’ My mom was a proponent of work,” she said.

Benninghoff shared that her mother would not allow her and her brother to be idle during the summer months they had from school. They had to work.

And they worked at a girls camp in Mercer starting the week after school ended to right before school started back up in the fall. And it didn’t matter to them not having a vacation.

“I think it was the work ethic that was the important thing and it has followed me through my life, which is why I’m here at the museum,” she shared.

Penokee From page 11 effort to gather a full load.

When the drift reached the end of the ore body, the miners started the “caving” of the ore body by drilling up above the timber in the drift. As I recall, there was some “long hole” drilling at the Penokee Mine.

The holes were 100 feet long and these would be loaded up with the blasting powder and then set off at the end of the shift. I could hear the holes going off, even though they were quite a distance away from the shaft. By

“Mother worked very hard at raising her family. She kept everything together, as mothers do.”

Benninghoff shared that later on in life, her mother also did housework for other families, as well as her own housework, to supplement the income.

“My mother told me, when I was in school, that I had to work hard. And both my brother and I got scholarships for college. She never promoted work ethic with any physicality or criticisms. It was by encouragement and example.”

Benninghoff’s father was a logger and worked hard as well, setting yet another example of a high work ethic.

At the home though, her mother was in charge of the work and she worked extremely hard to keep it in order.

“Mothers in those years did not have 9 to 5 jobs, except for the teachers and nurses. Otherwise women stayed in the home.

When you have a family and a property, someone has to take care of it and it happened to be the mother,” Benninghoff said.

She was in charge of their sauna. Her father was in charge of the wood and made the fire but her mother did everything else, including inviting guests over twice a week.

And there were always freshbaked goods and coffee on the table inside, Benninghoff said.

“It was an inexpensive way of socializing and doing good things.”

Benninghoff was very active

in after-school activities and would be there way past the time to catch the school bus home.

And families only had one vehicle in those days and her father always had their vehicle.

She shared another skill her mother taught her growing up, hitchhiking, which at the time was a safe mode of transportation.

So her mother taught her what to do and what not to do in the car, how to sit, what not to say and Benninghoff said she never had any trouble.

Another volunteer at the museum is Doris Soine, who has been volunteering there for about 21 years.

Soine shared a story about when her family received their very first washing machine, back when she was about 9 or 10.

“It was a gas-agitated washing machine,” Soine said. “And you started it like you start a motorcycle. It was green, black and white-flecked enamel.”

Before her family got the new washing machine, however, they used a scrub board with a big bar of soap and a hand ringer.

“If you rubbed too hard and too long you lost part of your knuckles or a hole in your clothes,” she said.

Soine remembers the day that their washing machine was delivered.

“It was hard getting any metal because it was war years. So it had to be special ordered and you waited at least six months. And we were lucky enough to get one,” she said.

Her father was working 12 hour days and her mother, on top of five kids and work at home, was also doing war work, so they had need for one, Soine said.

And the day the washing machine was delivered, she said she and her siblings stood on the main road, over a mile from their house, and waited for the truck to come.

“And we ran all the way behind that truck up to our house, eating that dust from the road, we were so excited!”

Another Doris who volunteers at the museum as been there for about 15-16 years and ties the fringe in the weaving room.

Doris Morello shared a story from when she grew up in North Gile. Her brother got a job working for the Duluth News Tribune pedaling papers in the morning.

He saved his money from that job and bought himself a bicycle and then taught her and their sisters how to ride.

And once Morello knew how to ride, her brother allowed her to take the bike to South Gile, where the post office was, to get their mail.

“Oh that was a big deal! Oh my gosh was it a big deal,” she shared.

She was about 10 years old when she learned to ride the bike and went to pick up the mail.

And that old mailbox is now in the basement of the museum.

Morello also shared that her family was the only one in North Gile to not have a vehicle. So they always took the Calvetti bus into town.

And there happens to be an old seat from that bus in the basement of the museum, as well.

Many volunteers at the museum can attribute their work ethics to their parents, who

showed them the importance of work and doing a good job.

“Most of my adult life was volunteering, which I learned from my mother,” said Juliette Kangas, another volunteer of the museum.

the time the next shift arrived, the smoke had cleared and they could begin scraping the ore. The ore would be scraped into a raise and would fall down into the loading chute. The scraper would ride over two pieces of rail, which were on top of the raise. They were there to allow the scraper to go over the hole and also to prevent large chunks from being sent to surface. These had to be broken into small enough pieces so they would fall through.

Once the caving started, they could keep pulling ore for a couple of days with the long hole operation. These were the shifts that kept the trammers busy loading cars and bringing them to the Norrie shaft.

In order to keep the ore at the 55 percent iron content level, samples were taken at various times during the mining process.

Ore samples were taken at the areas where the mining was done and also from the cars as they were loaded in these areas. The samples were put in small bags which were marked so a good sample picture would result.

Then samples were taken again on the 29th level, before they went to the main shaft. By this time, the ore had been mixed somewhat, so the result would be different. The motorman had a piece of board with a handle which he placed in the middle of the car. It was about 3 feet long and a sample was taken at each

end. The ore was put into a bag and then sent to surface on the cage. All of the samples would be analyzed in the lab and adjustments were made if needed in the mining areas.

It is obvious there was a rather precise and deliberate method used to sample the iron content. The production of ore had to be maintained at the contractually agreed upon iron content. It was not just a hit-or-miss type of operation, but in fact was a well controlled operation.

It seems likely penalties would result if the ore content dropped below the contractual limit. Ore content of a lesser percentage would have resulted in a higher cost for a couple of rea-

sons. The shipping cost would include the cost of shipping material that was not iron ore, and the steel mills would have less iron and more waste per ton.

At about 2:35 p.m., the miners came up from the 31st level and we walked out to the man cars parked on the main line. We arrived at the Norrie shaft in time to board the cage and go to surface. The timing was so we would get off the cage at 3 p.m.

The workday was from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., collar to collar, in other words from the time we started loading the cage to the time we got off.

Then there was the long walk to the dry, especially long on those cold winter nights after the

afternoon shift or in the morning after midnight shift. By the time we got to the dry, our lamp was unhooked and in our hand. Then it was placed in a sort of trough on the counter, right near the door. The dry man put the lamps on the charger so they would be ready for the next day’s shift.

Then we undressed, putting our mining clothes on the hooks, which were on a chain. They were pulled up near the ceiling where it was warm, so they would dry. Then into the shower, from there to our lockers where the street clothes were, and we had another shift in.

Editor’s note: Ed Sandene is president of the Bessemer Historical Society.

DAILY GLOBE

Kelsey Hansen/Daily Globe

DORIS MORELLO grew up in North Gile and when she was about 10 years old her brother bought a bike and taught her to ride it. It was her job to get the mail from the post office in South Gile and she would bike there. That old mailbox, shown here, now sits in the basement of the Iron County Museum. The seat she sits on is also an old seat from the Calvetti bus she and her family would take into town.

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