{"id":5630,"date":"2024-10-04T13:13:34","date_gmt":"2024-10-04T17:13:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/?p=5630"},"modified":"2024-10-04T13:13:37","modified_gmt":"2024-10-04T17:13:37","slug":"one-last-ride-on-crystal-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/betsiecurrent.com\/index.php\/one-last-ride-on-crystal-lake\/","title":{"rendered":"One Last Ride"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Or is it\u2026?<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By Aubrey Ann Parker
Current Contributor<\/strong>

Back on July 22, Alisa Vanderberg-Haas (65) put the equivalent of a \u201cHail Mary\u201d pass onto the \u201cBeautiful Benzie County\u201d Facebook group<\/a>, which has more than 12,000 followers.

\u201cI have a favor to ask of our friends on Crystal Lake. Our family has lived on the northwest corner for 70-plus years. Our matriarch is 93, and this will be her last year in the home. Sadly, we had to give up all our boats and toys years ago, as family is now scattered across the country. I am the only family member that visits anymore, and I had an emergency situation last May that cost me the lower part of my right leg. I\u2019m fairly high functioning, but not 100 percent. Due to this, I\u2019m not able to swim, or even get on the beach. We\u2019ve all grown up in and on this beautiful body of water, and now we can only sit on the deck and watch. I\u2019m here for the next 10 days. My question: is there a kind soul with a pontoon boat that would be willing to give my mother one last evening cruise? I tried the marina, but they are booked out until August! Obviously, I\u2019m willing to pay for gas and your time. Bless you and thank you for taking the time to read.\u201d

What happened next was beyond Vanderberg-Haas\u2019 wildest dreams. 

\u201cBy the time I hit \u2018post,\u2019 I swear it shocked my finger,\u201d she laughs. \u201cYou hear the word \u2018viral,\u2019 but now I understand what \u2018going viral\u2019 really means.\u201d

That is because her initial Facebook post garnered 385 \u201clikes,\u201d 130 \u201ccomments,\u201d and 99 \u201cshares.\u201d But things did not stop there.

The offers began piling in; that same day, they were invited on a pontoon cruise. The next day, when Vanderberg-Haas posted a photo of her mother, Elaine Vanderberg (93), on the previous night\u2019s ride with a huge grin on her face and the wind in her white hair, that secondary post received more than 1,200 \u201clikes.\u201d

And since that first fun day, the offers for boat rides\u2014and other modes of companionship\u2014have continued to stream in.

\u201cWe\u2019ve gone on five boat rides, we\u2019ve made what are sure to be lifelong friends, we\u2019ve gone to lunch with these people, we\u2019ve had offers to play cards. One of them texted me just today. I have a whole list of names and contact information for our new friends,\u201d Vanderberg-Haas exclaims. \u201cWe have even found long-lost members of our family. Someone asked, \u2018Are you related to Gertrude\u2026?\u2019 Why yes, we are\u2026\u201d

The Vanderberg family is originally from St. Joseph, 205 miles south of Frankfort\u2014about a 3.5-hour drive. Andrew Vanderberg (deceased) was a steel executive out of Detroit who built a two-bedroom, one-bath cottage on Crystal Lake in the 1950s. It had a furnace but was not made for winter. 

When his son Robert (now deceased), a production manager at a metal-processing factory, married Elaine, a lab tech at the hospital in St. Joe, and they had three children\u2014Scott (69), Alisa, and Kent (62)\u2014Robert\u2019s father decided it was time to add another bathroom and another bedroom, as well as a washer and dryer; there had only been a hand-crank version outside the cottage before that. 

Elaine Vanderberg\u2014a mother of three, grandmother of five, and great-grandmother of two\u2014has lived alone at the original family cottage since 2009, when her husband, Robert, died. (That makes 32 years that she has lived full-time on the shore of Crystal Lake, in total.) As the years passed, the family decided to sell one by one all of the various watercraft that they had, because Elaine could not drive them or service them. 

Little by little, it seemed like the summer pleasures were waning.

On top of that gradual progression, Vanderberg has had a rough couple of years, according to her daughter. She had two back-to-back heart attacks in 2020, she has had a few scary falls since then, and she \u201cwas bandaged from head to toe in June,\u201d says her daughter.
 
\u201cWe\u2019ve got 120 feet of lakefront property, and my mom used to swim every day, but then it got to a point where nobody was even using it,\u201d Vanderberg-Haas says. \u201cMy mother was a person who was out in the sun and gardening. Everything that is her joy has been nipped away, all of her friends\u2014there are all of these people who are now third, and fourth, and fifth generation of the families we knew. But most of the original people are gone now. And she looked so pale and fragile when I saw her in June. She never left the house; she opened the window just a crack. And that\u2019s not her. She\u2019s a strong, stubborn, Bohemian woman. She loves that lake. And I just had this thought one night, at 3 a.m. \u2018We\u2019ve been here all these years. Is there a kind-hearted soul who would take her on a boat ride, get her spirits up?\u2019 Boy, was I shocked by the response we got. From the community. But also in my mom.\u201d

Vanderberg-Haas now teases her mother, \u201cYou\u2019re famous!\u201d

She adds, \u201cBenzie County, you definitely have our hearts. It\u2019s going to be very, very hard when we close the doors there.\u201d

The plan had been to move the Vanderberg matriarch to an assisted-living center \u201cbefore the first snowfall.\u201d 

\u201cBut this whole experience has changed her so greatly, now I don\u2019t know,\u201d Vanderberg-Haas says of her mother, who has some in-home help a few times a week. \u201cShe is stronger, healthier than I\u2019ve seen her in years.\u201d

They even managed to get into the water, both of them. Twice.

\u201cShe went out with her walker into the water, and I was on the dock helping her, then I got in, carefully, with my one leg,\u201d Vanderberg laughs. \u201cJust two old broads out there in floaties and cackling in the sun. I bet we could get mom on the diving board of our new friend\u2019s pontoon the next time.\u201d

After 18 days on Crystal Lake in July, Vanderberg-Haas left to go back to her home downstate. Unlike when she had returned home after her visit in June, Vanderberg-Haas was no longer worried about her mother, who now was walking on her own again, without the assistance of her walker. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"elaine
Elaine Vanderberg (93) has been on five different boat rides and made many new friendships over the past month. Photo courtesy of the Vanderberg family.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI got her a pair of knee braces, and that has helped immensely. She says, \u2018I\u2019m walking like a kid!\u2019 She\u2019s walking upright, learning to listen to her boundaries and stay away from concrete steps, but she has a pep in her step again. I think she realizes that she\u2019s going to be OK,\u201d Vanderberg-Haas says. \u201cThe combination of the love that people have shown her, and the sun, and the blessings of the lake\u2014it\u2019s been a Godsend.\u201d

As mentioned, the Vanderberg women have gone on several boat rides since that initial Facebook post a month ago.

\u201cEveryone has a totally different experience; everyone has their own stories of their time on this lake,\u201d Vanderberg-Haas says. \u201cWe met people who have been coming up here as long as I have\u2014a \u201clast man standing\u201d that inherited the cottage that his grandfather built; women who this is their annual weekly vacation. We\u2019ve gotten the opportunity to share everyone else\u2019s memories on this lake, as well. You have no idea how much this meant to not just my mother but to me, but also to so many people in Benzie County who love this place, this community, this lake. I think that\u2019s why the story has \u2018gone viral,\u2019 because it resonates.\u201d

As someone whose only surviving grandparent is about to turn 92 in just a few days, I can tell you that this story resonated with me in ways that were unexpected. 

\u201cDid you see that Facebook post about the older woman and the boat ride?\u201d my best friend Christina [Harig] Steele asked me a few weeks ago. She knows that I am always looking for \u201cfeel-good\u201d stories to run in the pages of The Betsie Current<\/em>, so she tries to keep her eyes peeled and her ears open for me. 
When I responded that I did not know what she was referencing, she smiled and said, \u201cOh, it\u2019s a good one.\u201d

\u201cSend it to me,\u201d I responded.

After briefly glancing at the Facebook posts, I still did not understand how much this story would affect me. I sent Vanderberg-Haas a message asking if she would be open to an interview over the phone, and that conversation is still replaying itself in my brain, as we get closer to my paternal grandmother\u2019s birthday. 

Grandma Mary [Menovske] Parker has had a rough couple of years, too; like his mother and younger brother before him, Wendell Parker spent the last few years of his life in an Alzheimer\u2019s-inflicted haze. The Parkers had moved \u201cUp North\u201d from the Lansing area and spent more than four decades living full-time on West Grand Traverse Bay on Old Mission Peninsula in a house that they built in the early 1970s, when my father was a teenager. My dad, my uncle, and my aunt all grew up there; all six of us grandchildren grew up there; even a few great-grandchildren got to play in the magical waters when they were teeny-tiny.

Shortly after my grandfather\u2019s diagnosis, though, the house on the bay was sold almost a decade ago. I honestly do not know how long it has been since my grandmother has seen the bay\u2014really seen it. Or been in it. Much like Elaine Vanderberg, I remember Mary Parker swimming almost every day in the summer (or at least wading in to her shoulders) after having spent several hours gardening in the yard or reading in a hammock. When I was around 12 years old and we were sitting together on the deck, watching the sunset, with a cool breeze coming off the water, she told me that it was her \u201chappy place.\u201d

This story has given me some ideas of how I hope to spend the last bits of this particular summer with my own nonagenarian\u2014maybe I can even convince a friend to take us out on their pontoon. 

Regardless, my hope is that this story brings clarification as to how you, dear reader, could spend the last bits of summer with your loved ones\u2014especially the elderly.

\u201cMy mom says I swam before I walked,\u201d Vanderberg-Haas says. \u201cI\u2019ve watched my children, my grandchildren; my younger brother and his three children all grow up here. And now it looks like we might get another summer here\u2014we\u2019ll see how she\u2019s doing. But I have hope after all of this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Featured Photo Caption: <\/strong>Elaine Vanderberg (93) on a pontoon boat just hours after her daughter posted on Facebook asking if any kind stranger would take them boating. Photo courtesy of the Vanderberg family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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