 Hello everyone, welcome to Love Where You Live, our monthly magazine of everything Cheboygan County brought to you by the Cheboygan County Chamber of Commerce. I'm Betsy Alice, I am with the Chamber, and today we're gonna take a little tour of the holiday season here in Cheboygan County. We're gonna go back and look a little at history. We're gonna go forward and look at some of the special events that are happening in our community, things that you definitely should take advantage of. I'd like to welcome Travis Gross as our first guest. Travis is the executive director of the Cheboygan County Historical Museum here in Cheboygan. Welcome Travis. Thank you, glad to be here. Glad to have you. And you know, I get pretty excited about this part of the year. Right. And I'm sure you do, probably also a little tired. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty easy to get engrossed by Christmas at the museum at this time of year, and it's a lot of time into it, but you know, it's worth it, it's fun. When work is fun, you don't realize you're working, so. Hey, that's the way to be. Just for the people who are watching, if you could give a little history about yourself. Okay. And then about the museum. Sure. We'd love to hear. Yeah, so I'm born in Ray Cheboygan, multiple generation Cheboyganite, graduated in North High School, went off to school, left town for about 12 years. My wife and I came back, she's also a Cheboyganite, high school sweetheart, so came back about 15, 16 years ago, and decided that Cheboygan was our home and this is where we want to be. So can't beat the lake, can't beat the kettles, can't beat a lot of things around here, so. That's right, and the history. Yeah, absolutely, wonderful history, yeah. Yeah. Thanks, and then what about the historical museum? The society itself has been around since 1923, originally the museum, as we call it, was housed in the courthouse. They were pushed out during World War II when the federal government came in for the war effort and they needed some space in the courthouse. So the collection at that time went into storage and it was the early 50s when the historical society struck a deal with the county of Cheboygan and was able to use the Taylor House on Erie and Taylor Drive as the museum. So the Taylor House remained the museum from the mid-1950s until the mid-1990s when our current museum was built. So it's a long rich history, 90 plus years around and it's good. Cheboygan County, as you said earlier, great history in this area, so. Yes, and a lot of organizations really committed and people committed to making that come alive. Yeah, absolutely. Particularly in your case. There are so many exhibits there. I know, it ranges from the circus history, which I find fascinating and a lot of people do. Business history, for those of us, or not me, I've been there, but for maybe some of those who have not visited the museum lately, what are some of those regular? Yeah, so what we deem are permanent exhibits, as we call them, really involve a lot of it. So we go through the whole history of the county. We start with our Native American exhibit, explaining about the Native Americans that lived in the area prior to Europeans arriving. And then we go through time. It's like a march through time through our exhibit halls. We look at the early settlement of Cheboygan County. We have a real, real wonderful exhibit on the maritime aspect of Cheboygan, because really after all, Cheboygan probably wouldn't exist if not for Lake Michigan. So we emphasize that and then, specifically the Rice Coal Company being such a huge part of Cheboygan history and the building of this area. The circus exhibit is a wonderful exhibit. It's one that most people are kind of surprised by, because even locals don't realize the value of the circus to Cheboygan County. At one point, we had several circuses placed home in our city. So it's always fun to talk about that. And there's still a few family members that are around that can speak to working in the circus. So it's pretty amazing. When you think about it, it's like Cheboygan, a circus town? Yeah, so yeah. I think we have a varied and fascinating future here. Yeah, absolutely. Or excuse me, past, not future, but past. Yeah, well, it all plays together, so yeah. I'm not originally from Cheboygan, but I have heard the story that in times past on Thanksgiving night, maybe 20 years ago, plus, families would dress up and wear their long coats and stay warm and go down to pranks. And that's where the tree was lit, the windows came alive, and the holiday season was brought into being. And I can imagine the fascination with that. Our family used to go to Chicago to do that. And I was so pleased to hear that that kind of tradition happened here. And now you have brought that back in our museum. So if you could share that collection with us, just give us some insights into what is there. Yeah, and it is, it's wonderful to hear the stories of the people who remember those windows at Prangies and going down on Thanksgiving Day and watching them. My father-in-law was a police officer in Cheboygan his whole life. And when he was a young beat cop, he would have to work Thanksgiving evening downtown controlling traffic. And it's funny because you hear controlling traffic, you're thinking cars, but he actually had to control the people. There were so many people that came down to see the windows at Prangies. So when we were able to, when the museum was able to get some of these pieces, they jumped at it because we want to keep this tradition going. I'm a bit younger. I don't remember the windows as much. I'm a, what I call myself a Plaza Eight Kid. That's what I remember is downtown at the earliest memories. But so, you know, when we were able to get these pieces, you know, over 300 of them in our collection now, it was fantastic because now we can keep that tradition alive at the museum. We do what Prangies did. Every year the scenes change. We change our scenes every year. There's a different theme every year. Sometimes it makes it a little difficult, but it's also fun because it's always different. And, you know, so when I see families come through, grandparents, parents, grandchildren, and everyone is amazed, you know, the grandparents are happy to remember when they were kids. The parents, you know, are happy to see their children and their parents happy. And the little ones are just amazed. You know, I think in this day of technology and digital everything to see mechanical things, you know, the little ones are kind of amazed by that. And you and I, well, that's, we're used to it, you know, but you know, we can continue on that tradition and it's fun for us to do that. And that's what we should be doing, so. That's true. I think it's a wonderful exhibit. I have been there in years past to see it. I am sure that when you receive these items, some of them may be in disrepair. Some of them are in various states of, you know, readiness for the public. And, you know, I think people would love to know what goes into making that happen and to keeping those things mechanically intact. Yeah, it's a lot of behind the scenes. You know, I mean, the final product everyone enjoys, but they don't understand that we work on this year round. We have volunteers come in, work on the animation, make sure the mechanicals, make sure the motors are functioning properly. People coming in and making different costumes for these so we can use them over and over again building the sets. You know, we have wonderful volunteers and maintenance, our maintenance man at the museum. Unbelievable what they can accomplish. And so it takes, you know, we start, I'll give everybody off January because it's such a hard run for us in December. By February, we're already starting on then the next upcoming holiday memories exhibit. A lot of it is that behind the scenes, getting animation ready and things like that. So yeah, you know, Dan Worth and Jim Lighty and Mark Price, these are volunteers that come in and work on this and what they do is just amazing. I stand back in awe every year. Yeah, they probably never ask for credit. No, not really, you know, I mean, we'll serve them lunch a couple of times throughout the, you know, the few times throughout the main setup in November and we just, everyone's just happy to be a part of it and to see that final product and then to see the people enjoying it. You know, that's the icing and, you know, getting the accolades and, you know, a lot of us are just kind of, well, this is what we do, we enjoy doing it, you know? You're welcome, but this is just fun for us. So yeah, yeah. So if anyone in our audience is inclined toward the mechanical, regardless of their age, I mean, you might get some young people in. They should contact the museum and maybe they can become an apprentice and then move up to actually working on the pre-Christmas craziness. Right, right, absolutely. We're always looking for extra hands, you know? Always, you know, many hands make for late work. So, and there's, you know, there's a lot, you know? We have some of our longtime volunteers that come in and help out, you know, and their roles have changed as they've gotten older, but they're still, they just want to be a part of it and they just want to, you know, see this come and see this put together and see the happiness that it brings. So it's amazing. You know, I mean, I just, I'm taking it back every year. I don't know what else to say. Well, certainly, it certainly makes your job much more pleasant and rewarding to have those kinds of people on board. I know that from experience at the chamber too. It really, the volunteers are the lifeblood of what happens there. We're just merely creating the environment, giving them the praise and hoping they'll come back year after year to help with the work. So, yeah, good for you. Any hints about what it's featuring this year? Are we going to be able to see things like Bruce the Spruce? Yeah, Bruce will be there in the lobby, greeting everybody as they come in. Bruce is a hit. You know, everybody loves Bruce the Spruce. So he'll be there, he's there every year. This year, our theme is a storybook Christmas. So we have seven different displays or scenes, all based on some of our most favorite holiday and Christmas storybooks. So within that, then each has their animation, each has a different scene. And we think it's a unique idea. I will say that the littlest angel display that we have is, in my opinion, the best one we got going on this year. Just amazing what they did with the littlest angel storybook. So I think people will be amazed at that one. Very nice, it kind of goes along with the Bookworm Gardens. Right, yeah. While they're closed for the season, the museum has the storybooks for the holidays. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's great. So, such a treasure for both young and old, and you've created this engaging experience for families at the other buildings on campus, which maybe people haven't gone to as often, can you tell us what hides in those buildings? Yeah, so we open up the Taylor House and we open up the log cabin, our 1862 wine hole log cabin. And we decorate those for the holidays. Our other two historic buildings are closed, no heat, that kind of thing. It's hard to use those. So this year in the Taylor House, the storybook is Twas the Night Before Christmas. Our staff, our education director at the museum develops a scavenger hunt every year. And she comes in with, she has two young, small boys, they come in and they hide things around the Taylor House. And for adults and children alike, you walk through the house, you look at the decorations, but you also do a scavenger hunt. And this year it's based on, like I said, Twas the Night Before Christmas. The log house is a very traditional Christmas based on the little house in the big woods, lower angles, storybook. One of my favorites. Yeah, yeah, it's a good one. And so, you know, that's a very basic, but within there we have the traditional, you know, what it would have been like for a prairie or a immigrant family living in a log cabin in the 1860s to celebrate Christmas. And in there for the little ones and adults alike, we have some old fashioned toys, cup and ball and a checkerboard and that. And so people can spend some time in here and enjoy it. I love both of those buildings throughout the year. You know, I mean, I'm partial to the log cabin. It's just kind of more my style, but the Taylor House is beautiful. And the two garden clubs in town work together with Bernie Markovich or what we call Lead Elf and decorate the Taylor House. Yeah, the Lead Elf. So, and they do a wonderful job. It's amazing again. A group of ladies come in and within a couple of hours they transform the Taylor House into this holiday happy, you know, land, I guess. It's amazing. Excellent. So what about particular events? Do you have any particular events you wanna share that are coming up? Yeah, so, you know, this is the end of our year, holiday memories that we wrap up. January, we take off, kind of get things back in order. We start welcoming in our students for our education program in January. And then in February, we start our third Saturday programs that most people are familiar with. And February, we are doing taverns of Sheboygan County. We thought, how can we not share a little bit of that history in Sheboygan County? There are a lot of them. Yeah, and there always has been. So, beyond that, you know, we'll have our speaker series in March, where we are going to bring in companies involved with food production in the county. So they'll talk about the history of their company, share some of their products and kind of where they're going in the future, how they help with our community. Doing a mom and pop grocery store for a third Saturday. We have our music fest again next year in early September, where we highlight local acts, come up to the museum. We use that as an open house. Everything is free of charge at day. So you can come out. The front porch of our log cabin is the stage. So it's an outdoor event. People get to sit under the trees, watch as bands play. They want to get up and take a walk through any of the buildings or the museum. They're more than welcome to. Just a nice way to kind of say, you know, give back, you know, not everyone can get to the museum. So it's kind of a way to try and draw those people. So, and then it's, you know, always in forever, holiday memories is always in that mix every month. We're working on holiday memories. Yeah, isn't that, and that culminates that Christmas time, so. Yeah, we'll, yeah, 10 programs again next year. So we stay pretty busy up there. Great, great. Good to know and a good place to go any time, but also on the weekends with your children, with your parents, with whomever is visiting you. All of the visitors love the museum too. Yeah, yeah. So these exhibits are incredible. I mean, I just, I'm sitting here thinking, and now when am I gonna get there? When am I gonna get there? How many visitors do you typically receive during the holiday season? For our holiday memories run, last year we had a huge season. We had about 7,300 people come through in the month of December. We're right around that mark, usually, 6,500, 7,000 people in the month. So it's a good run. We hope to always top that. We're doing some new things this year in hopes of attracting some more people, some new people. Storytime with Santa Claus. I had mentioned the scavenger hunt. We've done that in the past, but we tweaked it this year, things like that. So several thousand people come through just in the month. So people can go to the website, find out what the hours are, find out when these activities are. Yeah, we have it on our webpage, we have it on our Facebook page, and it's, yeah, it's all there, so. Great, great. And then what are your hours and what does it cost for a family to come or for a person? We are open starting Friday after Thanksgiving. We're open every day minus Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Noon until five, Monday evenings, we stay open until seven. That seems to be working for us. We might actually expand that in the future. We find that some of the younger families, it's easier for them to come a little later in the afternoon. So seven on Mondays. Admission is $6 adults, $5 active military and seniors, children six to 17 are $3. The little ones are free and of course our members are free. Wonderful. So yeah, you know, I encourage everybody to take a look this holiday season and it's a great way for your family to celebrate. Yeah, absolutely. So thank you so much Travis for being with us. And I'm looking forward to all of it. Welcome back to Love Where You Live. Today we're celebrating the holidays here on Love Where You Live, I'm Betsy Alice. Our guest for the second part of our program today is Jerry Plain, who is the chair of one of our favorite events, Making Spirits Bright, brought to you by our Rotary Clubs in Sheboygan County. And at one point you won the Chamber Champion Award. I think it was a year before last. We did, we were very fortunate to win the nonprofit of the year. And we've been very nicely nominated this year for the Working Together Award. Excellent, it certainly is a Working Together project. It absolutely is. As we will discuss. So tell me how this all started. How did this come about? As a result of a Rotary conference, my co-chair at the time, Judy Slaney, and I happened to be attending this conference and Washington County has a very similar show and had just experienced their first year. And so there was a breakout session at this conference where they were sharing what a wonderful light show that they had in their fairgrounds at that time. And one thing led to another. I think we both had the same idea and we put our heads together after the meeting and said, wow, what a wonderful thing this would be for Sheboygan. The rest is kind of history. It was a lot of work, checking out various venues for consideration, talking to our Rotarians, trying to get them excited about the possibility of doing this and getting all of that approved. And then, of course, to find sponsors the first year to help us make it happen. And it's been a labor of love. No doubt that it takes an immense amount of work. And I'm guessing in that initial stage, probably a lot of what you might call is lobbying. Really convincing people that this would be as fantastic as it is. It was a little bit of a difficult sell, actually, because it was such a new concept for people around here. Apparently, there weren't a lot of people that were aware of these kinds of light shows that were going on and the fact that we wanted to offer no admission and to encourage people to bring items for our local food pantries in lieu of that fee. So, but we proved ourselves, thankfully, there were sponsors that had confidence that we could do it. And you raised a significant amount of money along the way. Tell us how you do that. Well, in addition to our sponsorships, which is basically used for the maintenance and future development of new displays, we also accept cash donations at the park while we're open. And people have been superbly generous with that. A good part of that also goes toward future development and the maintenance. But in recent years, we've been able to give back to the community in a number of fashions by way of some charitable donations. That's really a wonderful thing. I remember hearing numbers as people, even partway through, people driving through and they were telling us the tally. And I was very impressed that, yes, people are generous and she wouldn't come. They very much are, very nice work. When do you start planning each year? There isn't much time off. We now are open through December 31st, and then we have 10 days to take everything down and be totally out of the park. So January 10th is our final day. And then after that, we have about a two week hiatus, a little time off to regroup and then we're starting up all over again, talking about, okay, what do we wanna do this year? So that we can start planning a budget. And again, by April, we're out looking for fundraising dollars in order to help us bring the new year around. So not a lot of time. It's pretty much a year-round effort. It's gonna say kind of like the History Museum. You get a little rest for a month and then you're back at it again. I mean, I don't think people have any idea how much work and how much heart goes into some of these projects. We have such a dedicated bunch of people on our committees and without them giving endless hours, some of them hundreds of hours throughout the year that they spend in one fashion or another. And just without that, it wouldn't be possible. Approximately how many people are volunteering for this? We just did a tally recently because we like to share those kinds of statistics and we feel now that we have well over 1,000 volunteers that help in one fashion or another, whether that's being part of one of our steering committees on our board, businesses and organizations that help us during the event. This year we started something a little bit new where we had organized groups volunteer to help us with the setup, which provided so much of an easier way of doing that than just relying on people to show up when and if they had the time. So all told throughout all of that, we're saying that we have well over 1,000 now. Well, that's excellent. That's what really makes something happen year after year. And such a huge community involvement, bringing so many aspects of the community together to work toward a good goal. And so you mentioned statistics. So one of the questions I had was how many bulbs does it take to make this a winter wonderland? We're keeping it a little bit of a secret. Oh, okay. And the answer will be known. In fact, one of our media sources has already disclosed it if you are searching it out. But the reason I'm saying we have a little mystery is because we have a little blurp on our website now asking people to guess how many lights we have. Okay. I will say that it's certainly over 100,000. Wow. And so we're hoping people go to the website and make a good guess. And as I said, it will be disclosed on the website ultimately, but there is a source out there right now that does disclose it as well. So people have to do a little research. You have to do a little Google research? That's right. That's great. So how many people go through? Last year we had around 73,000 cars. I'm sorry, 73,000 people. 21,600 cars. And I think we're figuring an average about three people in a vehicle. Sometimes there's way more than that. I'm always amazed at how many people can get crammed into a van sometimes because they've brought the whole family and the dog. And they all want to be together to see it. Yes. They don't want to bring two cars so you can't talk about it. Absolutely. That's wonderful. Any other stats? Our food bank also brought in about 73,000 pounds last year. Similar number. Yeah, ironic last year that they were very similar. Over the four years, 228,000 pounds, which Liz Kroll of the Food Bank tells us relates to about five months of supply for all of the food banks or the food pantries that make up the food bank. We have a stretch goal this year. We're hoping to increase that number by 10%, which would mean about 80,000 pounds this year. We're hoping to bring in, so we're encouraging everybody to be extra generous because the need has not decreased by any means. Right, absolutely. I just saw the statistics, the poverty statistics and the people needing assistance. It is growing, so yeah, that's important. So there's something new going on from what I understand at the Query Building. The JC's Query Building, is that an additional part of the program? It's really not new. It's been here since the first year. For some reason, we have difficulty getting people to discover it, despite many efforts. I must be one of those. It's in its fifth year too, just as is the drive-through light show. And it's a fun place to go. We encourage people to go there first before they come to the light show, just simply because of driving directions. There's supposedly a no left turn as you leave the park, which is the way you have to go to get to the Query. So we're suggesting Query first. And a lot going on there. We have a wreath raffle. 13 area designers have donated beautiful wreaths this year that people can purchase raffle tickets for and put their choices in a box next to their wreath of choice. Santa is there. They are only open Friday through Sundays, but Santa is there every night during that weekend. They have nightly entertainment from various musical groups and single individuals throughout the community. We have some light concessions available. And I think the most popular thing over there is on Friday and Saturday nights, the Discovery Trolley is there. And for $2 a person, you can ride it through the park. Oh, fabulous idea. You can board it at the trolley and take a spin through the park in this wonderfully restored heated trolley from years gone by. Well, you know, we have run out of time, but there is so much to say about this incredible light show and all of the additional things you can do at Evergreen Park and at the Query building. So thank you, Jerry, for being with us today. Thank you for having me. And I hope those numbers continue to rise and that this just continues to be as wonderful as it is. Thank you so much. Thanks.