Les Cheneaux Historical Museum Curator Annegret Goehring To Retire
By Amy Polk

Annegret Goehring of Hessel will retire from the position of Les Cheneaux Historical museum curator January 30. She will turn 80 this year, and has worked as curator for 20 years, volunteering for more than 10 years before that.

"A museum is not a curiosity shop. It should be an educational effort to help us, young and old, to understand our lives today, and the lives of yesterday."

These words are the opening lines of a statement taped to the wall of the Les Cheneaux Historical Museum office. They hang above Annegret Goehring's desk and have guided her more than 20 years as curator. She will retire from the position January 30 and admits the idea of retiring "has been very hard."

"I know I will miss it," she said. "I will miss the people and talking to all the people who came into the museum."

Written by her late husband, Gordon Goehring, the words above the desk have served as a mission statement, calling for written explanation with objects and photographs "to help us to realize the interesting and important ideas represented by these few items." Throughout her more than 30 years involvement with the Les Cheneaux Historical Association as both volunteer and curator, Mrs. Goehring has worked hard to do that, reminding all how unique and important the area's history is.

Her deep vision of history and its significance to the Les Cheneaux Islands will be the most difficult trait to replace, as the historical association looks for a new curator this winter.

"The historical association board really owes a lot to Annegret," said its president, Mike Miller. "For many years, she has been the backbone of the organization and has helped make it what it is. She will be greatly missed, and it will be challenging to have someone come in and continue the work."

Mr. Miller cited Mrs. Goehring's growing role as a historical reference, and a vital connection to preserving historical memories of residents she interviewed before they passed away. He hopes she will be available for people to continue calling on her for historical information, and when association members have questions during the museum transition.

The historical association plans to unite management of its two museums under the direction of one person. Until this year, the association's Historical and Maritime museums, both in Cedarville, have had two curators. The board thinks it will be more efficient to have one director, continuing to staff both museums with summer employees and volunteers. The board has not yet identified a replacement for Mrs. Goehring, Mr. Miller said. Her last day is January 30 to give the board time to hire someone and train them before the busy summer season, he said.

"We will meet at the end of the month to discuss the direction we want to go in, and what the next steps will be," Mr. Miller said. "We definitely want to have someone in there by April."

The association also wants to create digital records of the historical collections, Mr. Miller said. Two Lake Superior State University students will help with that project to obtain college credit, starting as early as the first week of February. They will set up a program for entering historical data and archival information.

Mrs. Goehring says she originally got involved with the association because of her husband, who was serving on the historical association

board and was its former president. He and a number of volunteers

worked to get the area's collection of historical artifacts from a warehouse on a dock in Cedarville to a building that could be used as a museum. Mrs. Goehring volunteered to arrange artifacts and displays in the newly established Les Cheneaux Historical Museum in Cedarville during the late 1970s. The first museum was in a log cabin donated by Nancy Avery Follansbee of Hessel, situated on land donated by Edison Sault Electric Company. The century old cabin is still there, now attached to a log addition designed by the late Aarre Lahti, a seasonal resident and noted architect.

The focus of her work at the museum has been coordinating displays, writing explanations of displays, categorizing and filing photographs, and maintaining local family trees.

"I think, really, my main interest and the thing I like most is making the displays understandable and readable," she said.

She attributes her characteristic attention to detail to her art education and the technical nature of her former employment as an technical illustrator of hardware in Ohio and a bookbinder in Germany.

Mrs. Goehring was born in Germany in 1928 and spent much of her youth there, where she learned book binding and graphic arts. In 1950, her family moved to Ohio, where she married Gordon Goehring, a studio potter from Akron. He brought her to the Les Cheneaux Islands, where she became interested in local history, especially the family stories she collected for the Les Cheneaux Centennial in 1984.

"The history I come from in Germany is so old," Mrs. Goehring said. "So I was really surprised when I came here and learned how short the history is here and how many of the people who are part of the history were still around, even Gordon's family, which has been coming here since 1902."

The Goehring family's annual trips to their small island near Hessel stimulated her latest and final project for the historical association, collecting and recording the histories of Les Cheneaux Islands summer families. Since she will leave before she can complete the project, she will continue the work on a voluntary basis from her home.

She believes two of her greatest contributions to the museum were assembling family trees and categorizing the thousands of historical photographs donated to the museum.

"I feel the photos are pretty well organized, so anyone can find them by subject or number," she said. "I really think photographs are the most correct historical record of streets, houses, people, and activities."

With that in mind, she worked with the late Jack Kausch to put many of those photographs on film, producing five video accounts about the area, including "Les Cheneaux En Bateaux" (Les Cheneaux in Boats), "From Ice to Islands," "Boat Building in Les Cheneaux," "The Tanner Collection," and "Harry Harris - World of Birds."

Other museum work included assembling collection exhibits, coordinating events, overseeing the storage of items, and encouraging archival standards and policies. Ten years ago, she developed and secured funding for the association's Artist of the Week program, an economic and cultural initiative to showcase local artists and stimulate art sales.

In 1998, Mrs. Goehring received the Charles Follo Award from the Historical Society of Michigan for "her dedicated approach to Upper Peninsula history, and tirelessly promoting the history, culture, and economic development of the Les Cheneaux area." The award was given in part for Mrs. Goehring's involvement in forming the Eastern Upper Peninsula History Consortium. The organization has brought 20 area museums and historical groups together to share work, information, and resources, and she helped develop a brochure to promote all of the area's museums in one publication.

She plans to continue her work in that organization.

That year she also was named Les Cheneaux Citizen of the Year by the Chamber of Commerce.

She believes the Les Cheneaux Centennial in 1984 was a turning point in the community's appreciation for local history, inspiring many local residents to take an interest in their past, and preserve family history.

The Les Cheneaux Centennial Committee was the first to identify important historical buildings and landmarks, and to recognize them with signs. Mrs. Goehring identified and recognized a second group of historic homes with commemorative signs in 2004.

Mrs. Goehring has helped organize and host past Upper Peninsula history conferences, including one in the Les Cheneaux Islands that took participants to the historic Les Cheneaux Club on Marquette Island, where a collection of nearly 30 century-old buildings comprise one of the oldest summer resort associations in Michigan.

She has applied annually for history and culture grants that have paid for storage and display units, Artist of the Week, and performing arts and culture programs through the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs.

She was instrumental in getting state and federal grants for building the addition to the museum in the late 1980s, and obtained funding to install two historical kiosks at parks in Cedarville and Hessel through Michigan's Sweetwater Trail program.

The Michigan Historic Preservation Network started the Sweetwater Trail program in the 1990s to highlight local history along the state's lakeshore, and Clark Township is now included in a map that identifies points of historic interest. She also told hundreds of local Elderhostel participants about the area's history, a job she said she greatly enjoyed.

A member of a local quilting group, she has also coordinated the annual Historical Association Quilt Raffle, a fundraiser for the organization.

She has also worked on the Les Cheneaux Islands Wooden Boat Show and its Festival of Arts Committee, arranged and coordinated lectures on local history and culture, participated in state and Upper Peninsula conferences, enrolled the Historical Museum in the statewide Michigan Log Cabin Day, coordinated the Christmas Open House and holiday tree auction, advised emerging local museums and historical groups, and spoken at educational events.

The Les Cheneaux Historical Association plans to hold a summer reception for Mrs. Goehring when most of the area's seasonal residents are here.