Note
Subject: Jane Van Dis
Interviewer: Helen Van Mell
Date: August 28, 2000
Location: Home of Jane Van Dis, Saugatuck MI
Transcribed: Arthur Ashley, January 2020
I – Today is August 28, 2000, and this is Helen Van Mel from the Saugatuck Douglas historical Society doing a series of interviews with people who have lived in this area and have been important to the area. We have been doing this for sometime for our archives and first zeroing in on a painting by one of our local artists and woman about town, Jane Van Dis, who lives on Lake Street in Saugatuck. She is 79 years old and has been involved with many, many activities through the years here in Saugatuck where she has been most of her life. She’s an excellent painter, not only does she do still life, she does florals and all kinds of things. Now let’s switch to Jane herself who has welcomed us into her lovely home with a collection of mementos from her travels and all the various things that she’s done and, I’m sure, from her many children - how many children do you have?
J - I have five, four boys and a girl.
I - And would you tell me where they’re located?
J - Well, the oldest in David and he lives in Ortonville, which is between Pontiac and Flint, in Michigan. He has four children, two of them at Western Michigan University right now, one a freshman and one a senior. The second one is Michael and he lives here in Saugatuck across the street from me. He’s in charge of the electrical work on the boats that are built out at Denison’s. The third child is Marianne, who lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, and I go down there and visit her in the winter. She (Marianne) has two stepchildren, four grandchildren, and two on the way, twins are expected, in September. And, then the fourth one is Gary who lives in Brooklyn and works in New York for the Condé Nast association, which has about 14 major magazines. He is the vice president and the creative director. He’s not married. Terry is the youngest. He also lives across the street with Michael and he works for a builder. Michael has two children and one grandchild. So, I have quite a family.
I - I should say you have. Tell me how long have you been a widow?
J - I’ve been a widow 25 years this year.
I - And your husband’s name was ...
J - Bert. He came in from East Saugatuck, which I didn’t know existed until I met him. Quite a different community from Saugatuck.
I - And what kind of a person was he?
J - Well, he was a man who never grew up. He had fun all his life. He just enjoyed people - young people, old people, it didn’t matter. He always had a hug for all the old ladies and they loved it. Always had a smile. I don’t think we ever had a serious disagreement. 51 was very young to go.
I - Yes. So, there you were (left alone) with five children.
J - Well actually, at that point they were grown. Terry came 10 years after Gary. Gary had finished college but he was still at home briefly after that and Terry was 12. So I did have Terry to raise.
I - And how did you do that?
J - Well, basically, when Bert first died, we had sold the resort, and there was still money coming in from the resort. We sold a building on Butler Street and money was coming in from that. Plus, because he (Terry) was 12, he could draw Social Security and I as a widow, could also draw Social Security. So we got along fine, briefly. But then I decided I needed to do something to make money, so I bought a house from Ester Lindbergh and painted and paper and cleaned, and worked on it and rented it. And, that was one way I thought that I could earn something. I’d been used to working for myself running the resort and therefore I was leery of working for someone else. Later, I worked down on the waterfront when they opened up the Boat Yard Village, and also in the little house in the front of the Woman’s Club, for people who had printer’s memorabilia. Later, for the Pewter Shop on Butler Street. I guess before that, however, I was a Stanley Home Products dealer for 7 years and I had a number of people working under me; won a great many trips and had a lot of fun as well as earned some money.
I - You have an apartment in the back that you rent out now?
J - Yes, there’s an apartment over the garage. When we first moved here - we sold the resort in ‘68 - no, we bought the house in ‘68, knowing that we were in the process of selling the resort. We rented it for a couple of years and then in ‘70, had remodeling done, finished off the upstairs and the basement, had the front porch glassed in, and moved in Thanksgiving of 1970. So, we’ve lived here since then.
I - Well, what’s your connection with the Bird family? I’ve heard so much about the Bird’s.
J - Well, that’s my maiden name. My great grandparents came here early on, I’m not sure their age, but I do know that they both came from New York state, and Henry Bird, Jr. and Deziah Van Houzen. They were married the east side of Michigan where her parents had moved and then they moved to Saugatuck and were involved in a number of businesses here, lived in a house that now belongs to Lita Graves (7:39). And as they grew older, my grandfather and grandmother move from the frolic up on Allegan Street and moved in with them until they passed away and then it was their home until they passed away. My father was born, well, grandfather actually was born in Illinois, where his father had a farm for a brief time. He was a druggist here for 65 years. He started apprenticing in the drugstore at about 16, and when he was 18, the man that owned the drugstore decided to retire, and grandfather didn’t know quite what to do and some friends in town said ‘why don’t you buy it’. Well, at this time, of course, he had no money because he had apprenticed for a year at no pay, worked a year expecting to be paid and was not paid, so he was very broke. But, a Mr. Ensen offered to lend him the money to buy the drugstore.
I - Excuse me, but where was the drugstore located?
J - Across from the little house in front of the Woman’s Club and across from East of the Sun.
I - So that’s on Hoffman and Butler?
J - Yes. He stayed there many, many years. When he was thinking of retiring, his son John took over as pharmacist, and later his grandson, (9:40) Moppet. After 65 years the store was sold to Trips from Allegan, and a few years later they closed it as a drugstore. Many people now don’t remember it was there and when you think of the length of time it was there, it’s a shame. Grandfather also was involved in shipbuilding. He decided that being inside all the time was not good for his health, and he became involved with a man named Rogers and they had a company, Rogers and Bird, that built some of the biggest boats that were built here, and that was at the foot of Hoffman St. Grandfather was purser on the boat on many, many trips, and while he had someone else watching the drugstore for him, the man put him into bankruptcy. (10:42) He, however, paid back every penny. And, also put all of his children through college. There were seven; the oldest was Harry, 2nd was Carl. Then there was a space of time and they had a daughter, Carol, who died at 3. Another space of time and there was my father Cary and his sister Hazel. Another jump in time, and Alita and John. After that time, Cary, the oldest and his wife, were killed in an auto accident, leaving two little boys, Moffit and Don (11:33?). Moffit was about 3, I believe and Don was a year and a half. They had gone over an embankment. Estel’s sister was pinned on top of the baby, Don, and Moffit was thrown free and crawled up the embankment and found by another car passing by, but the mother and father were dead. And so grandfather and grandmother took on two more children to raise. So, they raised really four families.
I - So, they were all named Bird?
J - All named Bird.
I - Were there a lot of jokes about all the bird’s in the nest?
J - Well, not too much. One thing, my grandmother had a great sense of humor, was a tiny little woman, she could stand under my arm, and my grandfather was a tall man, and of course she didn’t come up to his shoulder. And Mr. Fursman lived in town, an artist, and he said to here one day and he said to her one day, ‘Well hello Mrs. Bird, how are your feathers?’ And she said, ‘Well fine, Mr. Fursman, how’s your fur?’. (laughs) And that’s the kind of humor she had. **13:00**. She would be at Woman’s Club meeting or a Woman’s Fellowship meeting at church, Lady’s Aid those days, and they’d say ‘What’s your name?’ and she’d say ‘Bird’, and she’d jump up on the table and jump off. Run around in the winter without her boots or without her gloves and went to the drugstore everyday after she was older, often cooked their meal there in the back room. Used every scrap of everything, made quilts for the grandchildren and she made lap robes, she made things out of everything she could fine around the house.
I - What I’m most interested in knowing about you, having not known you for so many years as others have, is all the various crafts and arts that you can do and I’m interested in knowing how you learned to do them and where you learned to do them and what they are.
** 14:00 **
J - Well, I guess I always had a trend in that direction. As a child, being an only child and my folks busy running the resort, Bird Sanders (Center?), I had to entertain myself, and I really liked my dolls and I had a patsyette (??? **14:20**) doll I especially liked, and I would make all kinds of clothes for the doll. In the summer when the hollyhocks were blooming, I made clothes out of the hollyhocks. And, we would make costumes out of the leaves for the hydrangeas, and pin them all together with the stems, put the buds on top of the full hollyhocks to make the girls. We had weddings and had all kinds of things using my imagination. I had bug funerals, I had all kinds of things like that, entertaining myself. I always like to draw and they’d ask me what I was going to be and I’d say I wanted to be an artist. Well, ‘ha, ha, ha’, you know you’ll starve in an attic. I guess I wasn’t very good at that stage of the game and had no training because we had no artwork in the schools unless the teacher had you do some little things until the WPA came along and Mr. Kraple who had the Sweet Shop, where the Casual Man has been until it burned, taught art, so I went to him and had some lessons in drawing. Later, my Aunt Hazel came up from South Carolina and she’d get several of our cousins together and we painted a place we called Mrs. Lockametses Cottage (??? **16:00**). It’s on the same street that my grandmother lives on, which is lower Spear Street. So that was fun. We did that in oil and I dabbled a little by myself until I went to college and I began thinking I was going to be a nurse. So I went to the University of Michigan to take a 5-year course. Flunked Chemistry the 2nd semester, decided that not even seen the hospital in Ann Arbor while I was there, I’d transfer to Western and transfer to teaching, which I did. I took all the art classes I could get squeezed in with my science courses. That was kind of the beginning. When the children were growing up, most of my energies went into making toys for them, redoing clothes to fit, making clothes for them, and as time went along I started knitting. Our money was very scarce those days so one Christmas in particular I knit about 20 pairs of mittens to make a little Christmas money. Was always involved in bazaars. We went to the Congregational Church in Douglas and I encouraged them to have a bazaar and made a number of things for it. It just seemed like ever since I’ve been making something. I got interested in dolls; I made many, I collected many; I think about 500 when I counted last summer. I made the Pooh animals after Alita allowed me to have the pattern. In fact, I wasn’t allowed to have it until after she died. She made them for the benefit of the church and she wouldn’t share her pattern with anyone. Finally Margaret gave it to me after she died. So I made those (I - ‘And I have a set’). Good. **18:40**. So it just goes on. I keep wanting to do more things than I have time to do. I’ve talked some classes. When Western has some classes over at the Catholic church, the number of summers I took textile classes and, or fiber, they were called, and water color.
**19:05**
I - Yes, I remember meeting you there. What a wonderful program it was.
J - Yes. I think I have enough credits for a Masters Degree but it isn’t important enough to me to get it, just to say I have a Masters Degree.
I - You’ve also been very much involved with, uh - before we go on we should see some of the pictures of the people who went before you, if we can.
J - All right. Well, this is a picture of my grandmother, great grandmother and great grandfather Bird, Henry and Deziah - (NOTE: picture of BIRD, HENRY, JR. AND DEZIAH VAN HOUZEN.). Her sister Catura (**19:50**); Catura and Deziah Van Houzen. Grandfather was Henry Bird, Jr., which you’d expect he would be senior but he was junior. He did have a son Henry, who was in Douglas. And then, this is a picture of Grandfather Bird, the druggist and his wife - you can see how small she is (NOTE: picture of Charles E. and M?????? (Wright) Bird) **20:26** - and my father and mother. My father was an electrician. He went to Western and taught briefly before he went to war; when he came back he felt he couldn’t deal with students. He just couldn’t do it. He became an electrician and also when I was 3, they bought the Bird Center Resort.
I - Where was the Bird Center Resort located?
J - Just down the street from here, by before Lake Street.
I - Well describe it a little bit; let’s see some pictures first.
J - I was going to tell you about another relative while I have this book out. This is my grandmother, Mary Asling. She and her brother, George, came here in the early 1900’s from just outside Toronto, where most of their children were born. They came to Ublie and Bad Ax (???? **21:18** ????) in the summer because some relatives were living there. Their son then encouraged them to go to Chicago, but they didn’t like it and they went then to Otsego. My grandfather was a funeral director and had a furniture store, which was a thing those days, those two went together. He later came here. I believe he was here not much more than a year when he died conducting a funeral. He had gone down to the boat and receive a body and take it up to the church and grandmother was waiting at the church for the funeral to begin, and on the way my grandfather had a heart attack and died. So grandmother was left to raise the four daughters who were still at home. That was Winnie MacDonald, she wasn’t MacDonald then, of course, it was Asling. But there was Winne and Mae Hedgeland **22:30**, my mother Elsie, and the youngest daughter, Eva. There had been four brothers ahead of them. Luther, who stayed in Chicago and who had 5 children; two boys that died young, and my Uncle Will who lived in Portland, Oregon. So out of that whole family, somehow one of the boys didn’t have any children. The other one - of the grandchildren there was only one boy. He’s now 69; has never married, and the name Asling as far as our line is concerned will be gone. They carried on the funeral business here with the help of Mr. Dykstra from Holland. Grandmother worked with him until her death when I was about 7. Then my Aunt Winnie, who lost her husband, Winnie MacDonald, took over. She worked there until she was well in her 80’s. Then a nephew, Bill Hedgeland, took over. He was there considerable time. Now his ex-wife is still there. So that has been another long line in our family. I tried to find - when I was in England last year - tried to find where they came from. I know that grandfather’s family came from Yorkshire and grandmother’s family from Devonshire. But I couldn’t find a direct connection. It’s a rather unusual name I find, because in the whole Chicago phonebook there is no one, except my cousin. My cousin’s wife, who’s 93, and who still lives in Chicago.
I - Tell us about the Bird Resort and how much work was it, running a resort.
J - The strange thing about the resort - my parents - my mother, of course, had lived just down the street from there, because the funeral home was also on Lake Street. When I was three, the university hospital in Ann Arbor, where my father was working when I was born, was finished. So he came back here to do electrical work on his own, and they decided to by the resort from Mr. and Mrs. Dates, Benton and Albertine. The place was called Bird Center. Michael’s first name was Bird. So it was kind of a coincidence and everyone thinks it was named for my folks but it was not. It was name for the John T. McCutcheon’s cartoon in the Chicago paper.
I - Oh, for goodness sakes.
J - It had been called Hillside Cottages. The people from Chicago who had been coming here year after year, felt it reminded them of that cartoon. So they made a flag and ran it up the flagpole - Bird Center. So the name stuck and stayed that way for many years. In the beginning, if fact until I was 14, we served meals. There were 4 other houses besides the one having the dining room, serving room, kitchen, and I’m sure that in the Dates’ days, early on, we had outside bathrooms. By the time I came along, this building that had the dining room in it had two bathrooms. You got to them from the outside; the men’s on one side of the building and the women’s on the other. My mother always hired a cook, or a baker. Whichever the other could do best, she’d let her do. She, herself, could either bake or cook, so she did the opposite. **36:07**. So she was very, very busy. They always hired a couple of girls to wait on table and make beds. As well as the rooms they rented at the resort; they rented rooms from people up and down the street. Mrs. Dates had moved this way along the street, and she rented some rooms, and she had a little cottage next to it (which had been the Whip-o-will) and that was also rented. A number of the neighbors rented out rooms and they all went to the Bird Center to eat. When I was 14, people began to get fussier. They wanted choices. They didn’t want breakfast or they... just became too difficult to deal with. So, mother decided no to serve meals any more. At that point, Dad made the cottages, two of them particularly, the Turtle Dove and the Cookoo, he put in bathrooms and made kitchens in them so they were housekeeping cottages. The Oriole and the Nightengale still used the bathrooms at the back of our building. The Rookery, the largest building in the front, didn’t have a bathroom either, and those folks went to the bathroom in the other house. Later on, well, my folks had it about 25 years, and Bert and I took it over and we had it for 20 years. We put bathrooms in the Rookery and we put a bathroom in the Nightengale. By this time, my dad had bought the property across the street on the river. We’d always had the use of it for a garden and a dock, but it belonged to the Cooks, who had the large house out near the mouth of the river. She was in a mental institution and he could not sell the property or do anything with it as long as she was living. When she passed away, he sold the property to my father. That was about 1942. Dad built a large property in the center call the Whip-o-will. He made it from a houseboat that he bought up river. He brought it downriver, towing it was a little motorboat. In the process, crushed his hand between the houseboat and a tree. Dr. Walker wanted to take off two fingers and a portion of the hand and Dad said no. I don’t care if it’s still, I don’t know what it is. I want to keep it. And he soaked it everyday and took care of it and it did save his hand. Later he ordered four cottages that came in pieces. They were fastened together in corners and the roofs fastened on, and Dad built small bathrooms in each one and name them also for birds. So we had the Phoebe, the Lark, the Robin and the Wren. **30:45**. And then he decided they should be a little bigger, so he build two more, the Jay and the Martin, which were similar but which were bigger and he built himself. Later when we took over, we move the Nightengale to that side of the street and put in a bathroom. Dad and Bert built a double unit that we called the Thrush and the Linnet. Later on, after that, down on the waterfront at a little lower level, we had built a double unit, the Bobolink and the Chickadd.
I - You’re about to run out of birds.
J - Those were larger, those had two double beds, like, at that time were like a modern motel.
I - Excuse me, but you say these were built at the mouth of the river. Where exactly are you speaking of?
J - Oh, the Cooks lived at the mouth of the river.
I - Oh, where did you mean - the mouth of the river?
J - Where the Dennison property is - the site of old Singapore. He owned that big white house that’s up on top of the hill there.
I - That’s what I was wondering.
J - It was a great deal of work. In the beginning it wasn’t quite so bad because people came for a week or two weeks, they would rent a room in the Rookery for a several nights waiting for a cabin to be open. As I say, they would stay a week or two weeks. We did not give them daily room service. We’d give them fresh towels whenever they came up and wanted them. And at the end of a week we’d give them their sheets and change them themselves. But as time went on, people began staying shorter periods of time - 2-3 days at a time. Many of them - the larger cottages - stayed longer. But that meant a great many more sheets to wash. At one time I counted, and we did 150 sheets 3 times a week. Washed them in two regular washing machines. Ran them through the ringer, you know, the rinse water. Hung them on the line, took ‘em down and ran them through the mangle. **33:15**. Of course, along with this were the towels, and bedspreads occasionally, and rugs occasionally, and so forth. And, we had four children to take care of in our family. I was a very busy woman. Much younger than I am today. Because we had both sides of the street, that meant back-and-forth and back-and-forth carrying piles of sheets on your arm. The carts that they use today didn’t work because you can’t go over rough ground and grass with those carts and we didn’t have cement walkways. It was a lot of work. But I really never minded it. I enjoyed the people. Loved to have people around.
**34:10**
I - The boys had a great deal of energy, wouldn’t you say that’s a true fact?
J - Up until the last few years. I myself am spending more and more time in my chair reading. Or sewing, or knitting or making afghans...
I - But sitting down activities...
J - Much more. Or I work a while and I sit a while, work a while and sit a while.
I - So do I.
J - I mostly now go to Florida for a few months every winter.
I - Tell us about your stays in Florida and what you do there and how you get there.
J - Well, usually drive down - drove down alone a number of years and then I’ve had people ride with me. I’ve had my son drive down with me and fly back. Done it many different ways. I was lucky to stay stay at Jack Hedgeland’s mobile home park, and he let me keep all my things there in a little old trailer that he had and charged me a very reasonable price. So that was fine up until last year, when I had to find somewhere else because he’d sold and found that it was double the price, and a few more things. I have a place now for this year and I’m happy to be going back. While I’m there - I usually make a couple of afghans in the winter. I do a lot of sewing - when we were doing house walks for the woman’s club I did a lot of sewing for the bazaar that we had. I used to sew for the women’s fellowship bazaars before that.
I - When you say sew, what is it that ...
J - Stuffed animals, or I make dolls, or anything that comes into my head, really.
**36:00** - new male voice:
X - You also made costumes for plays, didn’t you?
J - Well, that’s another story. While I’m in Florida, I’m involved a little group that we call the traveling road show. We go to various retirement places and mobile home parks, things like that, and put on shows. We do about 5 or 6 in the 3 months I’m there. That’s a lot of fun. But before that, when the Evergreen Commons started in Holland, B.J. Silverstone offered to do a program for them, and we had already started a group called The Playmakers and had been doing shows here in town and so we put on shows for Tulip Festival at Evergreen Commons for about 12 years. Great lot of fun because she had acts from Broadway, that type of things, that I did all the costumes. That was fun too because it gave me a chance to be creative. Later, when she no longer did the shows there I was still in their shows, but they weren’t quite as much fun or quite as colorful. Also, I’ve been involved 12 years now in Dickens’ Christmas Carol. I’ve been in it and helped costume that every year, too, and now I’m on the board of the group that’s keeping it going. So that’s another fun thing. **38:04**.
I - Well, where do you keep all the costumes that you’ve collected...
J - In my garage. At the moment my garage is full up to the door between costumes and things I’ve been gathering to have a garage sale. Hopefully this next week I’ll have a garage sale and get rid of some of it, and then I have to work at getting rid of a great deal of the costume things, because we’re not doing them anymore like we did. After the big shows quit, we also put on a Mother Goose show, which was fun, and we put it on at the library for the children and went to some nursing homes. We did all the nursery rhymes - all us big grownup people acting like little kids. So I have all those costumes, too.
I - You’ve had a lot of fun doing it, and I envy you.
J - It is fun.
I - Well, you’ve also been involved with clubs; let’s get into the subject of clubs.
J - Well, ...
I - Let’s get started with the Art Club and the origins of the Art Club. Were you in on that?
J - Yes, I was. I think actually, the first clubs I was involved with, however, had to do with my children. I had cub scouts 3 years for each of the boys. In between the last two when there was a 10 year gap, I was involved with a group called den mother’s aides. We helped the new den mothers to learn what to do and how to do and gave them some suggestions, and so forth. And in between there also, I was also involved in campfire, bluebirds and things for Marianne. Also was president of the PTA along in that time, and the woman’s fellowship at church. I felt that those were the most important things at that period of time. When Gary was little, was the first time that we had been able to keep one of the local artists in town for the winter. Mrs. Taylor usually went away and so did Jean Goldsmith, and those were the two we’d been trying to convince to stay home and have a class.
**40:32**
Gary, who’s now 47, was a tiny little baby; we pinned him in the corner with a few little stools and things and worked at Jean Goldsmith’s and first did some ceramics, and then some painting. At that point we had quite a group: Maguerite Bainbridge, Winnie Brady, Jeany Parents; those are the ones I think of right now. We decided that we should have an art club. Jean Goldsmith said there already is one. I guess that May Heath, Steinberg, Jean Goldsmith, and not sure who else, had formed a club and had an exhibit at the village hall for several years, but they never let anyone else know that it was in existence, so we didn’t have a chance to become part of it. So we wrote new by-laws and all of that, and started from scratch. We had a large number of people but we had no money. Claire Allen decided it might be a good idea if we made a calendar. So we did. To this day each year, we make a calendar in black and white of, basically, scenes around the area. That gave us money to continue and we didn’t have to have such things as bake sales. Also about that time, we decided it would be good to have a cloak line show. We had a show in the village hall every year at the end of summer around Labor Day. That was always a very good show but it didn’t do anything to sell anything. So the first year, we had a big chicken wire screen that we leaned against the village hall, between there and the next building, and we hung all our pictures on there. The following year we hung actual clothes lines in the village square, hung paintings on then and hopefully sold some. Only our own members. That grew each year to include more members and more related people, people from anywhere. We began to charge anyone who was not a member and we made a little money that way. We eventually expanded into two shows a summer and various people ran those shows over the years: Janet Van Oss, Peg(gy) Boyce, Ted Kimble, we a few that were involved. Eventually Cathie Moore and I took over the running and I’ve lost track of how many years ago that is - but it’s many and it’s well over 10 that she and I managing that show. It’s grown to about 150 exhibitors in that arts & crafts show. We kind of decided that the 2nd show should become a juried show and fine arts. I said I didn’t want to be involved in that because the main reason was I didn’t want to have to go out hunting people to be in it. For a long time I would have nothing to do with it. Various people would be involved each year. I know Hellen Van Mell was involved at one time, and Claire Keever and many other people took their turns until final... [truncated due to length]
