By Jacqueline Widmar Stewart
Reflections on the Shores
By Jacqueline Widmar Stewart
Once you walk Lake Michigan’s shores, the dunes get ingrained.
It wasn’t until I returned after an absence of some 20 years that I realized how much sand had stayed in my shoes. Having grown up in a little town at the southernmost tip of the Lake, I left to study in Colorado, Greece, Germany, Michigan, Yugoslavia, and then California, where I have lived with my husband for the past almost 40 years.
A good part of my reluctance to return had to do with the loss of my mother, Jewel Widmar. The dunes were so much a part of her, and she of them, that I feared the area must have turned desolate without her there anymore. Instead, I rediscovered the reason behind her love of the lakeshore.
Finding a fully functioning national park at the Lake fulfilled one of Mother’s dreams. Even though it meant that she would lose her own home when the park removed houses from the lakefront, she championed preservation. In 1966 she had called me with great excitement to say that legislation for the park had been passed, but neither of us was there all the years afterward to watch Beverly Shores turn into parklands.
My husband Blair’s family affairs brought us back to northern Indiana in the mid 1990’s. In 1997 we rented a house on Lake Michigan and celebrated the 90th birthday of my dad, John Widmar, a full 20 years after Mother’s death. Those who attended the party claimed a long history at our Beverly Shores home on the Lake, including a son of one of my many Chicago cousins. In the countless hours that John Weber had spent on Lake Michigan, he had developed such a passion for the rocks and fossils along the beach that he ended up with a PhD in geology from Northwestern University.
A few years after the birthday party I began collecting information to share with guests to our newly acquired beach house, some miles up the Lake from Beverly Shores. John brought over a stack of materials he used for his class on the geology of Lake Michigan. While flipping through maps, drawings and diagrams, I was suddenly hit by a realization. The charms of Lake Michigan’s southern shores stem from their glacial past.
Things I had long known but not understood became clear. Fossil-rich beaches, the kaleidoscope of ecosystems, even the unique quality of light that bounces from water to sands to clouds could be traced to glacial effects. It struck me too that Mother’s love for the shores had radiated to us in myriad forms, in ways that would have delighted and surprised even her.
Both Mom and Dad had come from modest means. Children of immigrants to the US at the turn of the 20th century, their fathers worked in the coal mines of southern Illinois. The highest grade either had completed was the eighth. Education for their own children proved paramount to them nonetheless.
Just after elementary school they both ended up in Chicago and met at the Slovenian Lodge in the late 1920’s. Married at the young ages of 16 and 21, they had my sister Joan when Mom was 18. Soon thereafter they left the City for an exciting new settlement of seemingly endless opportunity called Beverly Shores. The family remained a threesome for 12 years until my sister Suzanne arrived. When I joined them three years later, they gave up all hope of getting a son and named me after Dad.
Beverly Shores had been inaugurated by Chicago developer Robert Bartlett, a man of grand ideas for a resort town within easy reach of the City. Along with the replica houses carried by road and barge from the 1933 World’s Fair, the early town boasted a hotel, golf course, and riding stables. My parents built a small abode at the crossroads of Broadway and US 12, and ran a gas station and, for a short time, a small eatery at home.
Long after my parents halted the restaurant business, people continued to search for it. Mother cooked with her own fresh garden vegetables and even after we moved into the four-level house that they built on the beach in the late 50’s, she worked at her gardens in both places. As Dad kept the freezers full of meat from a hunting buddy’s abattoir and their own expeditions together, Mother became legendary for her preparations for pheasant, moose, elk and once even bear.
All the adults in the family prided themselves on gathering in the wild as well as in the garden. Until late in her 80’s my grandmother would need to be driven to her favorite woods a few roads away from the old house, where she would reappear at the end of the day with overflowing pails of tiny blueberries. My Dad would don his hip boots on the hottest days of summer and take off in his pick-up truck, to return several hours later with gallons of huge, succulent blackberries from his secret patch. Mother hunted mushrooms, slipping out of the house before dawn when the conditions were just right.
From the 4th of July to Labor Day our place buzzed nonstop. Relatives would come for a week at a time to visit Gramma Knese, who lived with my parents for over 30 years. While the adults picked, pickled and prepared, the kids swam and skied.
Nowadays our Jewelhouse on the beach draws friends and family in the swimming season almost like the old days. Akin to my experience in writing The Glaciers’ Treasure Trove, my work on the guide to my grandparents’ homeland has led to some startling realizations. Who would have imagined that Lake Michigan life could bear such striking similarity to Slovenia, especially when it comes to education, food, and nature?
The sands of time do shift with a strange familiarity.
About the Author
Beverly Shores native Jacqueline Widmar Stewart began her school days in 1951 as a student in the first class of teacher and community leader Carol Ruzic. After finishing Elston Senior High School in Michigan City, Indiana, in 1963, Jacqueline completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in French and German from the University of Colorado and a Masters Degree in French from the University of Michigan. Following her marriage to Blair Stewart in 1970, both earned law degrees at Stanford University. Now in a symmetrical twist of fate, their two children Blair Andrew and Julia Suzanne are working toward advanced degrees at Stanford.
At Menlo Park, California, Jacqueline worked as staff writer at Sunset Magazine before entering law school in 1972. Later as a lawyer she worked at the San Jose firm of Wylie Leahy Blunt and McBride, at the City of San Jose as Deputy Attorney, at the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District as counsel assistant, and at the Santa Clara County Small Claims Court as Judge pro tempora. With Blair in Palo Alto she ran the Widmar & Stewart gallery of tapestry that they collected internationally. As a founder of an educational nonprofit corporation, she managed the East Palo Alto Kids Foundation for ten years. With the new millennium Jacqueline began writing guides to highlight areas of historical and ecological interest. Her first book, The Glaciers’ Treasure Trove: A Field Guide to the Lake Michigan Riviera, covers the five parks along the southern shores of Lake Michigan, with age-old tales of glacial formation and the century-long story of saving the dunes. In conjunction with the book, she has given library talks in St. Joseph, Three Oaks and New Buffalo, Michigan; Michigan City, Valparaiso, LaPorte, South Bend and Miller, Indiana; and in Chicago, Illinois.
From Moja Slovenija
Jacqueline Widmar Stewart is a descendant of Slovenians who immigrated to America at the turn of the last century. By profession she is a lawyer, but for many years her education has led her to various parts of the US and Greece, Germany, and Slovenia, and she ultimately graduated with an undergraduate degree in German and French, a masters degree in French literature and a law degree. Her great passion in the last years has been to become a writer about themes and places that she particularly loves.
Childhood on Lake Michigan
Jacqueline’s mother and father descended from Slovenian parents who went to the US at the beginning of the last century. They met at the Slovenian Lodge in Chicago and married very young, her mom at 16 and Dad at 21. Soon they left Chicago and settled in Beverly Shores, a town on the shores of Lake Michigan, now part of a national park. There they built a house and for a time ran a service station and small restaurant. Even though they had only elementary schooling, the education of their three daughters was of paramount concern to them. Jacqueline, their youngest daughter, first decided to study French and German at the University of Colorado. The following year she completed a master of arts degree in French literature at the University of Michigan.
First visit to Slovenia
With an exchange program through the University of Colorado, Jacqueline pursued studies in Bonn, Germany. When her parents visited her in Europe, they decided to come down to Slovenia. Jacqueline found wonderful surroundings and relatives here, but also discovered in them a part of herself and her roots. Because she couldn’t converse with her kin in their native tongue, she grew determined to learn the language of her grandparents. First she tried to find a university in the US that taught it, but none did. So she contacted the Consul of the then Yugoslavia in Chicago and he arranged for her to study in Ljubljana. In 1969 she went to Slovenia where she spent the next year at the University of Ljubljana.
Career in the legal world.
In 1970 she returned home and married Blair Stewart who encouraged her to study law. Both earned their law degrees at Stanford and established their new home in California. After graduating from law school in 1976, Jacqueline first worked at the San Jose law firm of Wylie Leahy Blunt & McBride, later for the City Attorney’s office in San Jose, and then worked as counsel for the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, as well as sitting as judge pro tempora for the Small Claims Court in Santa Clara County.
From Lake Michigan to Slovenia
Jacqueline knew even after long years away from her childhood home that the shores of Lake Michigan held special significance. A love of nature and the people there led her to write about it. The book entitled “The Glaciers’ Treasure Trove: A Field Guide to the Lake Michigan Riviera” tours five parks at the southern tip of Lake Michigan and introduces the geology, history and culture of the area.
Writing the book allowed her to know her native lakeland in a new way and to see similarities between the place of her birth and her Slovenian heritage. Her second book centers on Slovenia. Her need to share Slovenian food and traditions makes the book much more than a tourist guide. It also evinces her love of Slovenia, her history with the country, the beauty of the natural settings and the camaraderie of warm-hearted people.
“For friends you have to make time”
To the Widmar homelands on the sunny side of the Alps she’s been paying visits regularly since 1988. Above all she prizes the hospitality, the joie de vivre, the outdoor living, the time that people take for each other, their friends and relatives over good food, drink and song with good fun and humor. She feels herself both Slovenian and American, even though she doesn’t consider moving back to Slovenia. For her husband, son Blair Andrew and daughter Julia Suzanne at home she cooks Slovenian style, with potica and apple strudel sharing the spotlight as family favorites.