Grand Haven, Mich., emerges as recreation destination

Michigan’s Grand River begins its 252-mile journey to Lake Michigan in rural Hillsdale County in extreme southern Michigan.

 

As the longest river in Michigan, the Grand River flows in a northwesterly direction, passing through Lansing (the state capital) and Grand Rapids (the state’s second largest metropolitan area...shown below), on its way to the perky and quirky community of Grand Haven with a population of nearly 11,000.

 

Pup greets visitors at Barefoot Dave’s in Grand Haven. The store slogan is: 

No Shirt, No Shoes, No Worries.

The first settler to arrive at Grand Haven was Rix Robinson (shown below), a fur trapper and trader employed by John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company.

 

By 1827, Robinson had established 20 trading posts in the Michigan Territory. He obtained rights to Grand Haven area lands in 1833.

In 1835, the Rev. William Montague Ferry (shown below), a Presbyterian minister who was a missionary on Michigan’s Mackinac Island, sailed south to the mouth of the Grand River, bringing family and friends. The group set ashore at Rix Robinson’s fur trading post.

 

Rev. Ferry’s group erected permanent dwellings and a sawmill. They began to harvest acres of towering white pines. Working inland, they took advantage of the Grand River to float logs to their sawmills. They shipped lumber to lucrative markets throughout the Midwest by way of Great Lakes’ ports. The timber industry enjoyed a profitable run here for about 60 years.

The community of Ferrysburg grew up next to Grand Haven, and an increasingly affluent middle class sought relaxation and recreation along the shores of Lake Michigan, Spring Lake and the Grand River.

 

Boaters gather to celebrate the Spring Lake Labor Day Flotilla.

Grand Haven historian Dr. David H. Seibold said the original lighthouse and keeper’s cottage were built on the beach in 1839, but winter storms washed the structures away in 1852.

A second light with an adjoining keeper’s dwelling was built in 1855 on the bluff behind and 150 feet above the beach. Its light was visible for 25 miles under clear conditions.

The South Pier was completed to its present length of 1,495 feet in 1893 and equipped with a pier-head light. However, the bluff light remained the main port beacon until 1905, when a 52-foot steel tower was placed on the end of the South Pier.

In 1907, the tower and light were moved 600 feet back from the end of the pier to its present location.

An iconic catwalk built above the pier made it possible to reach the light during the worst weather conditions.

 

Adjacent to the pier is the 49-acre Grand Haven State Park, a sandy public beach that was established in 1920. The park includes 174 camping sites.

 

Among the natural landmarks in the Grand Haven area is a protected 40-acre sand dune located across the Grand River from the city’s downtown district. It’s named Dewey Hill, after U.S. Navy Admiral George Dewey, and has an elevation of 610 feet.

 The anchor on Dewey Hill is 50 feet tall. Each individual letter is 8 feet tall.

Since 1962, audiences have gathered every evening during the summer season at the Lynne Sherwood Waterfront Stadium to view a free, 30-minute performance of the Grand Haven Musical Fountain, a mesmerizing water and light show synchronized to well-known musical selections. (Lynne Sherwood was a prominent Grand Haven business leader and philanthropist.)

 

Golfers can experience the unique American Dunes Golf Club outside Grand Haven. The course was reinvented in 2021 by legendary professional golfer Jack Nicklaus for new owner Dan Rooney, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel.

 

Proceeds from the golf course benefit Rooney’s Folds of Honor charitable organization, which awards educational scholarships to children of wounded or deceased military men and women.

 

Everyone who has played a round at the course leaves with a renewed sense of American patriotism.

‘Four Chaplains’ is World War II story for the ages

One of the most emotional stories from World War II involved the dramatic rescue work by the crew of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Escanaba to save 122 people from the Dorchester, a U.S. Army transport ship, that was torpedoed on Feb. 3, 1943.

The Dorchester suffered a direct hit from Germany’s U-233 and sank in the icy waters of the Labrador Sea between Newfoundland and Greenland. The two vessels – the Escanaba and the Dorchester – were part of the same convoy that was bound from Newfoundland to Greenland.

 

These ships and their crews remain inextricably linked in military history, according to author James H. Clifford, a retired Army command sergeant major who has written extensively about “The Four Chaplains of the Dorchester.”

Clifford said that two of the “main characters” were Protestant ministers, another was a Roman Catholic priest and the fourth was a Jewish rabbi.

Their heroic actions when the Dorchester was going down were legendary professions of their faith, Clifford wrote.

 

Survivors said the four chaplains “remained calm during the panic following the attack, first distributing life preservers and assisting others to abandon ship, then giving up their own life preservers and coming together to lock arms and pray in unison as the ship disappeared beneath the surface.”

Each chaplain “was drawn by the tragedy at Pearl Harbor in 1941 to the armed forces,” Clifford said. “Each wanted more than anything else to serve God by ministering to men on the battlefield, in this case the airfields and installations of Greenland.”

“Each, when the moment came, did not hesitate to put others before self, courageously offering a tenuous chance of survival with the full knowledge of the consequences,” Clifford wrote.

The eldest of the four chaplains who went down with the ship was George Lansing Fox, 42, of Lewistown, Pa. As a teenager, he served as a medic in World War I. Afterward, Fox entered Moody Bible Institute in Chicago in 1923 and became an itinerant Methodist minister. He trained at Camp Davis Army Air Field at Holly Ridge in Onslow County, N.C.

John Patrick Washington, 34, of Newark, N.J., was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1935.

Clark Vandersall Poling, 32, of Columbus, Ohio, became a minister in the Reformed Church in America, the seventh generation from his family to enter the ministry.  

Alexander David Goode, 31, of Brooklyn, N.Y., followed in his father’s footsteps to become a Jewish rabbi in 1937. He served briefly at Seymour Johnson Field in Goldsboro, N.C., which was headquarters of the Army Air Forces Technical Training Command in 1942. (Rabbi Goode is shown below.)

 

All of the chaplains aboard the Dorchester held the rank of Army lieutenant. From left: Clark Poling, George Fox and John Washington.

Once a cruise ship, the Dorchester was stripped down to become “as austere and dank as any of the tubs ferrying troops to and from the war zone across the North Atlantic Ocean,” Clifford said.

On Jan. 29, 1943, the Dorchester departed St. John’s, Newfoundland, for its fifth North Atlantic voyage. Its 904 passengers included soldiers and civilians bound for airbases in Greenland.

The convoy was aware of U-boat activity in the area. Merchant Marine Capt. Hans Danielsen, who skippered the Dorchester, announced: “Now here this: Every soldier is ordered to sleep in his clothes (including boots and gloves) and life jacket. We have a (U-boat) following us.”

“Three of the chaplains made the rounds of the ship in an attempt to raise men’s spirits. Meanwhile, Father Washington said mass in the mess area that was attended by men of many faiths,” Clifford wrote.

In the aftermath of the disaster, Congress designated Feb. 3 as “Four Chaplains Day.” It deserves recognition and observation.

Coast Guard cutter Escanaba goes off to war in 1942

Early in 1942, the U.S. Navy assigned Coast Guard ice breakers to serve on the “Greenland Patrol” in the North Atlantic Ocean.

“These vessels found themselves operating “in arguably the worst sea and weather conditions of World War II,” reported Coast Guard historian Dr. William H. Thiesen (shown below).

The cutter Escanaba – the pride and joy of Michigan’s Coast Guard Station Grand Haven – was one of those ships.

 

“Initially, the Escanaba was tasked with breaking ice in the waters off the coast of Greenland,” Dr. Thiesen said. “A few months later, she was transferred to convoy duty, steaming between U.S. and Canadian ports, and on to Greenland.”

“In spite of huge ocean waves, heavy icing and lurking German U-boats, the Escanaba and other cutters like her performed well.”

“While lacking the size, firepower and speed of a true destroyer, the Escanaba and her crew truly excelled by rescuing hundreds from Allied transports sunk by U-boats,” he noted.

Credited with two dramatic rescues, the Escanaba saved 155 men, retrieving them from freezing waters.

On June 15, 1942, Germany’s U-87 discovered a convoy about 25 miles northeast of Cape Cod, Mass., enroute to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. U-87’s torpedoes blasted into the Cherokee (shown below), a passenger steamer carrying 169 men.

 

The crew of the Escanaba managed to rescue 22 from the sinking ship, thanks largely to daring lifesaving exploits engineered by Lt. Robert H. Prause Jr., the Escanaba’s chief executive officer.

Lt. Prause, a native of Norfolk, Va., and a 1939 graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., specialized in “technical studies.” The “Cherokee experience” motivated him to “develop a system using tethered rescue swimmers outfitted in rubberized suits that insulated the swimmers from the cold.”

Labeled as “the Escanaba retriever method of rescue,” Lt. Prause’s system worked like this: “Harnessed swimmers attached to lines were sent over the side. The retrievers swam out, tied other lines about the victims or rafts, and crews on the ship reeled in ‘their catch.’”

The first true test came with the U.S. Army Transport Dorchester, which carried 904 passengers and crew. On Feb. 3, 1943, the ship suffered a direct torpedo hit from U-233 and sank in just 20 minutes, sending hundreds of people into the icy waters.

By the time Escanaba arrived on the scene, the Dorchester had vanished beneath the frigid sea. The transport’s life preservers were equipped with blinking red lights to help rescuers locate victims at night. Red lights dotted the water’s surface for miles.

 

Lt. Prause’s swimmers donned their exposure suits while deck crews prepared to retrieve survivors. By the end of the eight-hour operation, the Escanaba had saved 133 lives. Lt. Prause’s tethered rescue swimmer system had worked.

While on a convoy mission bound from Greenland back to Newfoundland, on June 13, 1943, the Escanaba mysteriously exploded and sank within minutes. The Coast Guard said: “The most probable explanation is that the loss was caused by a mine, torpedo or internal explosion of the magazine and depth charges.”

From the crew of 105, three men were rescued from the icy waters, including Lt. Prause. Two survived, but Lt. Prause did not. He was given full military honors and buried at sea.

The City of Grand Haven, Mich., was hit hard emotionally by the loss of “its” cutter, the Escanaba.

Citizens pledged to honor the ill-fated ship and its men by purchasing more than $1 million in war bonds to build a new cutter – the Escanaba II.

Within just a few weeks, the good people of Grand Haven raised a whopping $1,218,000 to replace their beloved ship that was a casualty of World War II.

(That is the equivalent of slightly more than $22,163,094 in 2024 dollars.)

Former Grand Haven Mayor Marge Boon called the local fundraising campaign “one of the most extraordinary civic achievements of World War II.”

On Aug. 4, 1943, about six weeks after the loss of the Escanaba, a memorial service at the cutter’s former berth at Coast Guard Station Grand Haven was attended by 20,000 people, which spoke to the community’s feeling of loss.

Coast Guard officials were so impressed by the outpouring that a cutter currently under construction at a shipyard in Los Angeles, Calif., was renamed Escanaba II.

 

That vessel (shown above) was christened after the war on March 20, 1946, and was originally homeported at Alameda, Calif. The Escanaba II, however, served most of her time at New Bedford, Mass., before being decommissioned in 1973. 

She was replaced by Escanaba III, built in Middletown, R.I. 

 

The commissioning ceremony for Escanaba III (shown above) occurred Aug. 28, 1987, at Grand Haven. The ship’s motto, “The Spirit Lives On,” is a tribute to the original Escanaba.

 

The Escanaba III, homeported in Portsmouth, Va., continues today as an active member of the Coast Guard fleet. 

Each year on June 13, its crew pauses to honor the sacrifice of the first Escanaba through a memorial service on the anniversary of her sinking.

For many years, Raymond Francis O’Malley of Chicago, Ill., one of the two Escanaba I survivors, was “a fixture” at Grand Haven’s Coast Guard Festival, participating regularly in the annual memorial service conducted within Escanaba Memorial Park. The site is marked by the original wooden mast of Escanaba I as well as one of the vessel’s life rafts.

 

Following his Coast Guard service, O’Malley spent 30 years as a member of the Chicago Police Department, retiring as a lieutenant. O’Malley died in 2007 at age 86.

The other survivor was Melvin Arthur Baldwin of Todd County, Minn. After his discharge from the Coast Guard, Baldwin enlisted in the Air Force and saw duty in the Korean War. He died in 1964 at age 42.

While the primary focus of the Coast Guard Festival in Grand Haven is to honor those who sacrificed their lives in the service of their country, there’s also an emphasis of family friendly activities.

One popular spectator event is the waterball tournament, in which teams of Coast Guardsmen and Grand Haven area fire/rescue department personnel duel it out to see who is best at moving a suspended keg-like object along a rope to the other side of the court.

Journalist Avery Jennings said: “Teams use fire hoses to compete in the watery tug-of-war game.”

Grand Haven Township firefighter Marc Santigo said spraying a water hose to move an object is a game of both skill and luck. “It depends on if you’ve got the sun in your face, if you have the wind at your back and if the keg bounces around up there in a way that benefits your team.”

“I’m nudging close to an 11 on a scale of one to 10 for how soaked I am,” Santigo said. “I have small ponds in my boots.”

Kids also enjoy the cardboard boat race that occurs on the Grand River:

Original ‘Coast Guard City’ earns its ‘top billing’

People in Grand Haven, Mich., have a love affair with the U.S. Coast Guard, and they proudly celebrate every summer with a wing-ding Coast Guard Festival that runs for 10 consecutive days.

Recreational boaters tread water in Lake Michigan to sound their horns to welcome the “parade of ships,” a flotilla of assorted Coast Guard vessels, as it approaches the venerable red lighthouse on Grand Haven’s iconic South Pier. Spectators line both banks of the Grand River to cheer the arrival of the Coast Guardsmen.

 

The entire festival is a huge display of patriotism, centered around Coast Guard Station Grand Haven on the Grand River. Coast Guardsmen and their families view the assignment to attend and participate in the festivities as an honor…and a perk.

 

Former Coast Guard pageant queens (above) are honored to participate in the street parade.

Grand Haven is America’s original “Coast Guard City,” a designation that was awarded by the U.S. Congress in 1998. (Since then, 33 more U.S. cities or counties have qualified to become official “Coast Guard Communities,” including Carteret County, N.C., in 2015.)

 

Grand Haven was selected in 1877 as a site for one of the early U.S. Life-Saving Service stations on the Great Lakes.

When the U.S. Coast Guard was established in 1915, Grand Haven became a district headquarters, because of its strategic location in western Michigan. As the crow flies across Lake Michigan, the distance from Grand Haven to Milwaukee, Wis., is about 75 miles, and Chicago, Ill., is about 110 miles southwest of Grand Haven.

Grand Haven’s Coast Guard Festival claims 1924 as its founding date, when a picnic was organized on the base and the Coast Guardsmen held surfboat rowing competitions on the Grand River.

(The centennial Coast Guard Festival in 2024 attracted an estimated 400,000 attendees, a new record. A local television station reported that a downtown ice cream shop ramped up its staffing to have 20 scoopers standing by ready to serve the influx of visitors.)

The community was overjoyed in 1932, when the newly built 165-foot Coast Guard cutter Escanaba was stationed at Grand Haven to patrol the regional waters. The new vessel was constructed at the Defoe Shipbuilding Company in Bay City, Mich.

She was a beauty of a workhorse. Named for the city and river in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the Escanaba performed ice breaking and search and rescue missions on the Great Lakes. 

(For a time, Escanaba’s gunnery officer and navigator was Edwin J. Roland, who is shown below. He went on to serve as Coast Guard Commandant from 1962-66.)

In the winter of 1934, the Escanaba rescued the crew of the lake freighter Henry Cort after the ship had run aground in Muskegon, Mich., during a gale. All 25 crew members from the Henry Cort were safely retrieved by the Escanaba, before the crashing waves broke the battered ship in half.

Admiration for the Escanaba grew, and the annual Coast Guard picnic at Grand Haven became a true festival in 1937.

In October 1940, with the threat of war looming, the Escanaba traveled to Manitowoc, Wis., to be refitted with new weaponry…just in case.

After the United States became engaged in World War II in December 1941, the Escanaba knew her work of providing help and rescue for ships on Lake Michigan had ended; she left to fight in March 1942.

Gladys Brook, a resident of Grand Haven, remarked: “Havenites were proud that our ship (the Escanaba) could help in the war.”

The ship with her crew of 105 Coast Guardsmen reported for duty in Boston, Mass., now effectively flying the flag of the U.S. Navy.