Craftsman Skills of Willard Luepnitz, 87, Can Be Seen Throughout Brevort Twp. Area
By Paul Gingras

Willard Luepnitz pauses in his work at a metal lathe, a machine he has used for 30 years to create and repair parts for projects ranging from farm machinery to fences.

On a mid-August day, under a bright sky in Moran, Willard Luepnitz, 87, gave the new gate at the Malachi Lodge on M-123 a swing. The hinges turned smoothly, the gate shut with a satisfying click, and Mr. Luepnitz turned for home, adding his latest mechanical feat to a list of projects that have spanned most of his life, ventures as small as making nuts, and as large as developing equipment for the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).

A second generation tool-anddie maker, evidence of Mr. Luepnitz' experienced hand can be found throughout Brevort Township. Fences, logging equipment, trailers, snowmobiles, snow blowers, lawnmowers, and other machines work smoothly, thanks to Mr. Luepnitz, who followed in his father's footsteps and discovered satisfaction in his line of work.

A few miles and a few weeks after he built Malachi's gate, Mr. Luepnitz stepped into a dark gray building on Dukes Road, a structure adorned with a bright white sign over the door reading "Luepnitz' Shop" in red letters.

Willard Luepnitz (right) stands next to his father, Paul, in the family's machine shop in Moran. The shop, built in 1930, is still in operation. The photograph was taken in the late '40s or early '50s. Photograph courtesy of Willard Luepnitz)

"This is the shop I was raised in," he said.

In 1918, his mother, Mabel, gave birth to Willard in the family's home, and in 1930 his father, Paul, built the shop only a few hundred feet away.

Back then, all the Luepnitz' equipment was powered by a gasoline engine with a starting crank. The engine turned a line-shaft near the ceiling, and Mr. Luepnitz said that between the time he cranked the engine and the time the shaft began turning, he could cross the room, compose himself, and prepare to work. Wide leather belts engaged and disengaged metal lathes, which Mr. Luepnitz and his father used to make and repair parts for farm equipment throughout the area.

Mr. Luepnitz motioned to leather belts still hanging from the ceiling.

"In 1953, we got power in here," he said, enabling each machine to be equipped with its own motor, making it easier for Mr. Luepnitz and his father to make pins, shafts, bolts, nuts, whatever their customers needed. Today, a 100-year-old lathe stands beside its modern 30-year-old counterpart, and Mr. Luepnitz manipulates each with a fluid familiarity that can only come with decades of experience, but Mr. Luepnitz has not spent his entire life in Brevort Township.

Cheryl Herron and local tool-and-die worker Willard Luepnitz pose at a new fence he helped construct at the Malachi Lodge on M- 123 near Moran. The Lodge is a training facility for business people who work for XanGo Distributors, a juice company.

From 1934 to 1937, in the midst of the Great Depression, he served the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) as a blacksmith. Men arrived in the area from all over the United States, notably Chicago, but unlike many of his comrades, Mr. Luepnitz did not have to go far to find work with the CCC. Just around the corner, on Brevort Lake Road, he joined Camp Round Lake, which contributed to a massive reforesting project in the region.

There, in the midst of tree planters, Mr. Luepnitz built devices "too numerous to mention," he said.

Among them were fireplaces and safety guards for the CCC's pot-belly stoves, and one after another, Mr. Luepnitz produced "planting bars," devices used locally and distributed to other camps that workers used to pierce the earth, enabling them to plant thousands of pine seedlings. The CCC set trees growing in tight, thick rows from Trout Lake to Paradise, and they were tiny. Now, they tower throughout the region and have since been thinned out.

Not only did the Round Lake CCC plant trees, he added, the men also built the Big Brevort Lake Dam, and they relied on Mr. Luepnitz to repair their machinery.

The men did an excellent job, he said, noting that the dam is still operating.

Those were hard times, he added. The CCC worked without the benefit of paved roads or electricity.

When not at work, the young Mr. Luepnitz and his co-workers spent 25 cents to travel by train to St. Ignace. At the time, there were four passenger trains running through Moran, he said.

The CCC camp was a busy place with approximately 200 men who arrived to find work in a devastated Depression economy. The camp also employed a teacher who taught skilled trades, Mr. Luepnitz said.

It was during this time that Mr. Luepnitz met his first wife, Lillian Page, who lived in the village of Santigo, which has since ceased to exist, a village located in the area where I-75 and M-123 cross.

"I never had a car then," he said. "I would walk down there to see her."

The federal government recognized the need for a highway along the Lake Michigan shoreline in the 1930s, and Mr. Luepnitz went to work for a series of contracting companies, such as Iron Mountainbased Bacco Construction.

Working up to 10 hours per day, for 32 cents an hour, he set 10-footlong metal forms from Naubinway to St. Ignace, which were used to create a concrete foundation beneath US-2.

Aside from occasional clouds of mosquitos, it was pleasant working beside the lake, Mr. Luepnitz said, and he enjoys driving down the highway he helped create.

"Every time I go down it, I think about that," he said.

Years later, the highway facilitated his volunteer work. From 2003 to 2005, he frequently drove along US-2 with Ron Bloch, transporting massive amounts of paper for recycling at Manistique Papers, Inc.

During World War II, Mr. Luepnitz served in the U.S. Army, whose machine shops kept him busy working on parts for heavy ordnance.

From the mid '40s through the mid '50s, he relocated to Detroit and worked as a tool-and-die maker before moving to Wisconsin, where he remained until the late '70s, working for businesses such as the robust Broan Manufacturing Company, which emerged in 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression. The Company created innovative ceiling fans and later, melodious door chimes that eliminated the abrasive buzzers that preceded them.

Ultimately, though, Mr. Luepnitz decided that his final home would be his first - Moran - and he returned to the property where he grew up.

"I figured I was born here, and I will die here," he told The St. Ignace News.

Mr. Luepnitz' work appears throughout the St. Ignace area. At one point, using a back road, he hauled his 400-amp direct current welder to the top of Castle Rock.

For two weeks, overlooking scenic forests and Lake Huron, he and an assistant worked in often agreeable, often windy conditions, constructing handrails for his good friend, Jack Eby, who owned the tourist site.

Mr. Luepnitz was effectively the first fire chief in the Moran area, part of a pre-fire department crew, a position to which he was appointed by former Brevort Township Supervisor Louie Litzner.

He held the job for about three months, until the township organized the official Brevort Township Fire Department and appointed Harold Peterson as chief.

While a firefighter, Mr. Luepnitz used equipment he owned for a cistern refilling service. He had a water tank that held 1,500 gallons, placed it on the back of a pickup truck, equipped it with a pump, and the township's first fire fighting vehicle was born.

Mr. Luepnitz put out one very important fire.

Agroup of kids was playing basketball inside the exhibit building at the Mackinac County Fairgrounds. The building was heated with a wood stove. The youths built too large a fire, which got out of control and set the building ablaze.

Mr. Luepnitz and an assistant successfully put it out, and the building remains standing today.

"I did this as volunteer work," he added, explaining that he does not consider himself a born fireman. His ambitions have always been clear, and to this day, Mr. Luepnitz enjoys the challenge of machine work.

When presented with a project, "you sleep on it. You study it. And when it comes out right, it feels good," he said.

Recognizing his talent, area residents have provided him with years of business, although over time, much of his clientele has shifted.

"Things have changed quite a bit," he said. "I used to know all the farmers; I knew everybody. Now I don't even know everyone on Dukes Road." Mr. Luepnitz was raised with

three brothers, George, Robert, and Paul, and three sisters, Margie Johnson, Violet Walker, and Lillian Lawless.

He has been married three times, first to Lillian Page and later to Anabelle Orr, both who are now deceased. His third wife, Ophelia, died at Mackinac Straits Hospital in 2002.

Mr. Luepnitz has two children, Russell Luepnitz and Judy Krell, who live in Wisconsin. He is a member of Masonic Lodge 369 in St. Ignace.