40 Years of Delivering the Lake

by

This will be the fourth time Lake Superior Magazine has celebrated a new decade for its publication.

Thanks to a strong subscription renewal rate of more than 80 percent, many of you reading this right now may well have enjoyed one, two or perhaps all three of those past anniversary editions.

Because you are family, you likely know the basics of how this magazine was formed and evolved, but just like an old auntie wanting to keep alive the family history, I’d like to repeat them here. And just like that old auntie, I intend to share our scrapbook of memories with you on the following pages and throughout the coming year.

In 1979, in the heart of a recession that depleted

Duluth’s industrial economic base and would reduce its population by 15,000 over 20 years, photographer Tom Jesperson joined forces with business-savvy Patricia Campbell and enlisted the aid of a supportive community to launch a magazine.

Tom jokes that the plan was to create a magazine à la the photography-rich Arizona Highways that would give him an excuse to take a sailboat around the Lake,

and perhaps eventually beyond the freshwater seas, sort of “today Lake Superior, tomorrow the world.”

“To me,” Tom told us for our 30th anniversary, “the magazine was to create a venue to show off my photos.” It’s no wonder, perhaps, that photography has become a hallmark of this magazine and continues to be the No. 1 cited favorite part of each issue in our reader surveys.

The magazine, then and now, was intended as an upbeat look at the environment and people surrounding Lake Superior – a chance for us to revel in the energy and enthusiasm of our go-getters while enjoying the amazing vistas and recreational opportunities the Lake’s four shores offer.

The first issue of Lake Superior Port Cities gave a template for what would follow with stories on the arts, on dining, on recreation and on history – including one about the steamship America, perhaps a foretelling of the soon-to-follow magazine ties to a man well connected to that vessel shipwrecked at Isle Royale. The issue boasted 42 pages and, though it was the spring issue, it came out in summer – proving that publishing your first issue can be a lot like home remodeling, never quite what you expect. (For the monetarily minded, a one-year subscription to the four annual issues cost $5.50 back then – the equivalent of about $20.65 today, so our current subscription rate of $24.95 for six issues PLUS a bonus Lake Superior Travel Guide annual seems like a pretty good bargain … I’m just sayin’.)

Browsing through the advertisers in that issue shows a few businesses that, like us, still survive, the most dear to our hearts being Grandma’s Saloon & Deli – a valued partner that has continued to advertise and support our magazine through all those 40 years.

In 1981, Two years later after its launch, two important events occurred for the life of the magazine.

In Vol. 2, No. 4 (the summer issue), the magazine published its first inside full-color photo, an image by famed nature photographer Les Blacklock. Because of the expense of color printing, the magazine was able to feature a single color photo only with special sponsors, often a bank.

Later in the year, Jim “J.R.” Marshall wrote his first story for Lake Superior Port Cities.  The entrepreneur in Jim loved the potential of the publication and the local “it’s-a-win-win” booster in him relished it as a platform for making people feel great about who they were and where they lived – keeping with the original mission of the magazine itself.  

The progression of Jim first investing in, and later taking financial control of, the magazine seemed a natural one. The tie to him started accidentally with that first issue. Jim, who counted diving among his many recreational pursuits, owned the salvage rights to the America, that sunken steamship featured in Vol. 1, No. 1. As it turned out, too, just as Tom envisioned sailing around Lake Superior gathering stories for the magazine, Jim would do just that, and his powerboat, Skipper Sam II, became as familiar on the shores as their booming captain.

Besides transporting Jim around the Lake, Skipper Sam II would serve other functions on behalf of the magazine as it turned out. After Jim took charge of the magazine, he persuaded his daughter Cindy to move back home from Minneapolis, where she had been working as the first woman in charge of a cable repair crew for Northwestern Bell. In 1984, she agreed to come – for a summer – to help, but only if she could live on the boat. (Spoiler alert: Cindy is still with the magazine, now as president and co-publisher, nearly 40 years later. She lives in a house now, though.)

Back then, there were two full-time staff members, $700 in the checking account and 1,600 subscribers plus any issues that had been sold door-to-door – a truly family business. (Today our press run is 16,000 to 20,000.)

Skipper Sam II also served as matchmaker in 1984 when the magazine hosted local advertising agency representatives, including one Paul Hayden, working with the Bradseth Group. Paul and Cindy started dating after their introduction on Lake Superior Magazine’s version of the Love Boat. (Spoiler alert: Paul and Cindy got married. In 1985, Paul became the first full-time editor and is now co-publisher. They own Skipper Sam II.)

Because of wide travel in the Big Lake neighborhood, Jim had the opportunity

to make real the commitment to cover all four shores of Lake Superior – Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ontario. The magazine netted its first Canadian newsstand distribution in 1982 and printed its first overprint, “Shipwrecks of Lake Superior,” a year later. All of this was leading to a greater Lakewide focus and to a new name. In 1986, “Port Cities” was dropped from the title and Lake Superior Magazine was born (or in this case, reborn). The title launch was done with a press conference on a boat, and tapping his ad agency roots, Paul surprised the reporters by pulling the new issue up from the Lake itself.

The path to growing the magazine and the business has been an intriguing one. We started publishing books in 1987 and now have 26 titles published under Lake Superior Port Cities Inc. We brought out the first Lake Superior Travel Guide annual in 1988 and in 1993 commissioned and produced the first scaled map of Lake Superior to include the highways and highlights from all four shores (more than 5.5 million copies of a free version are in circulation – that’s a lot of Big Lakes out there).

We launched www.LakeSuperior.com in 1995 (thanks to a knowledgeable geek for an editor) and last year relaunched LakeSuperiorCircleTour.com while renewing our commitment to being the defacto Lake Superior Circle Tour headquarters and promoters. A 300+ percent uptick in sales of our Travel Guide last year shows the broad interest travelers have for enjoying all or part of the Circle Tour.

We added a product line we call our Lake Superior Collection with gift and home items to fill the great outlet store shopping space we gained when we moved from a sixth-floor office space in Canal Park to a street-level location on Superior Street in the heart of downtown in 2006.

Oh, and along the way, we hired in 1998 the person who would become our second full-time editor (that would be me) in 2001.

So it hasn’t been hard to fill 40 years. Cindy and Paul are looking toward retirement now, but are searching for the right hands into which they can entrust the magazine and business.

Cindy says when she first considered her dad’s invitation to run the business “for a summer,” she believed the combination of “clean air, plentiful clean water and no traffic jams” made the Lake Superior region a first-class potential for growth, despite that challenging economic atmosphere of the early 1980s. Those attributes make the region even more enticing now, she believes, insisting that “We have more potential today in what we do than there was back then.”

We plan to continue to bring stories and images of this region to you for years to come … with any luck for 40 more years. We’re delighted to have you on board as part of the Lake Superior Magazine family, and we hope that through these pages, whether you live here or your heart lives here, we continue to make you proud of being North.

Now, please enjoy this first installment of our family scrapbook and let me know if you have memories of the magazine to share.

First Words

This opening statement was in Vol. 1, No. 1 issue of

Lake Superior PORT CITIES, published in 1979. This vision continues to be shared by the publishers of Lake Superior Magazine today.

As Port City residents, we are often treated to an unexpected glimpse of Lake Superior as we move through our building-to-building business day. We are instantly oriented in space. “Yes, it’s still there,” we reflect to ourselves as we momentarily escape our daily routine and somehow take comfort in its magnitude and permanence. Lake Superior gives identity to our area. We are autonomous, yet the water extending out before us is bound for the Atlantic Ocean and its passage brings ships from exotic ports of call.

Port cities have crisp edges between the tall grey and the open blue, between the temporary and the permanent, between the head and the heart. Within recent years, one of these port cities – Duluth – has passed through an identity crisis forced by economic change. There is a sense that the crisis is ending and Duluth is alive and confident. And, to those of us who call it home – or home away from home – Duluth is a special place.

Duluth and its sister cities up and down the shore are part of a region that is deserving of affection. The residents remain unpretentious; for after all, we are citizens of small, midwestern cities. There is, however, no need to be apologetic because our qualities are genuine and nature born.

It was discoveries like this, shared over informal conversations, that spawned Lake Superior PORT CITIES. It will be published quarterly to coincide with the seasonal changes that so command our lifestyles. We hope to convey, through visual and verbal means, the natural and cultural essence of our area. Our primary purpose is to promote a greater knowledge and, thereby, deeper appreciation of our area. By covering a wide range of issues and topics related to our region, we hope to establish the magazine as a cohesive element for residents along the shorelines of Lake Superior.

It seems fitting that this premiere issue of Lake Superior PORT CITIES focus on Duluth, our base and our home. This is the city’s tricentennial, and, in acknowledgement, this issue is largely represented with articles of days gone by.

In future issues, Lake Superior PORT CITIES will ramble from Thunder Bay to Sault Ste. Marie. We intend to cover the waterfront, so to speak: the sights, the happenings, the cities, and most importantly, the people.

Lake Effect Love

We certainly can’t guarantee that hanging around or reading Lake Superior Magazine will help you find your soulmate, but Paul and Cindy Hayden, who have had the helm of this magazine for the majority of its 40 years, did meet during a magazine event. Then Paul came on board and then they got married at Glensheen estate in 1985. (The invitation promised “Today the Lake, tomorrow the world.”) Each year on their anniversary, they consider the partnering and have agreed to continue the contract.

As Paul said in 2017, “We’ve had 30 great years together.” (You might want to do the math on that one … Cindy already gets

the joke.)

Bringing Up Babies

When you’re in business a long time, one of the privileges is seeing the growth of families with employees and contributors.

Sila McGuffin, daughter of photographer/adventurers Joanie & Gary McGuffin, first appeared on the pages of Lake Superior Magazine as a sleeping 4-month-old clutching a souvenir paddle on her parents’ canoe. (Dad snuck that paddle into her hand.) Today, Sila is 18 and off to university in Ottawa, with an interest in criminology and political science. Before she left on her new adventure, she and her best friend cat, 16-year-old Guffy, visited Harmony Beach in Batchawana Bay, where she spent much of her childhood summers swimming and enjoying the sand. The latest Lake Superior Magazine story by Joanie, with photos

by Gary, was on Canada’s Great Trail in the October/ November 2017 issue. In the not-too-distant future, Sila promises to do a Lake Superior Journal about “Growing Up Lake Superior.”

Parker John Wainio, the nephew of Editor Konnie LeMay, made his Lake Superior debut as the subject of a View•Point in August/September 2003. The son and grandson of fanatic fishermen, Parker, 17, continues to embrace angling as lifestyle, though he rarely hugs his catch anymore. (He might make an exception for a lunker muskie).

Jack and Candy Rendulich have been part of the Lake Superior Magazine family for a long, long time (more than 20 years ago!). Candy worked doing layouts for the magazine in the early 1980s and Jack continues to be a contributing photographer. You can see his work on the feature about the NorShor Theatre revival in this issue. While baby Dan (in photo at a staff party) never made it onto the pages of the magazine, his younger brother, Nate, now works with his dad’s freelance photography business and a father-son photo feature was in our August/September 2013 issue. The two are much in demand now that Jack has retired from his full-time work as a Duluth firefighter, a job he felt drawn to even while he was a staff photographer on the Duluth News Tribune. These days, though, Jack delights in hiring out for some special portrait work … while babysitting the grandkids.

Long On Advice

Meet Donn Larson of Duluth and Dixie Franklin of Marquette, two of the longest members of our honorary Editorial Advisory Board (you see their names on our masthead).

As a powerboater, Donn Larson has logged many nautical miles on Lake Superior and Lake Huron. He held a Coast Guard Captain’s license and is a member of the Duluth Power Squadron and Great Lakes Cruising Club. For most of their adult lives, he and his wife, Donna, divided home time between Park Point in Duluth and Cloud Bay in Ontario, both on the Lake. Donn’s always been a writer and an entrepreneur from his first job as a copywriter at KDAL radio in Duluth to his partnership in the ad agency Westmoreland, Larson and Hill Inc., from which he retired in 1994. He served on boards from the Duluth Superior Orchestra to the City Planning Commission and did two terms as a city councilor. After retirement, with friend Monnie Goldfine, he published The Will and the Way to capture area achievements after the decline of manufacturing post World War II. He is working with former Duluth Mayor Don Ness on a sequel. He also wrote his autobiography, A Life Worth Living. He received UMD’s Labovitz Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016. Donn still contributes (see his book review in this issue). A longtime friend of Jim Marshal, he assured Tom Jesperson that J.R. would be a good caretaker of the magazine – sound advising from the get-go. Cindy Hayden sought his opinion, too, before adopting the name Lake Superior Magazine.

Dixie Franklin is something of a force of nature when it comes to travel writing and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, her adopted home port. In 1960, she came to K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base in Marquette as a military wife with two daughters and found work in a dental office, though her heart was obviously in storytelling. She sold her first article to a trade publication while a dental assistant, but soon determined that writing would be her full-time career. Over four decades, she has written articles and authored books covering travel, haunted tales and profiles (in Faces of Lake Superior). She’s mentored young writers through various writing associations and was the first woman to chair the Michigan Outdoor Writers. She is currently working on a collection of “never-before-told tales.”

We asked how she came to join the Lake Superior Magazine family, and she told us this story: “Jim Marshall and I met at the Marquette Regional History Center where he was searching for stories to appear in his new Lake Superior Magazine, and I was at my usual prowl on my Wednesday afternoons away from my regular job at a local dental office. Writer meets editor! Lifelong friendship! Along with Jim’s magazine, my byline expanded to include features and news in such publications as Green Bay Press-Gazette, Milwaukee Journal, Detroit News, Midwest Living, National Geographic and books. In 2016, I was inducted into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame. At the age of 90, life moves slower now, but I still wake up with writing on my mind.”

Loyal Readers

When Cindy and J.R. took over the business of the fledgling magazine, there were 1,600 paid subscribers. One of those subscribers was Duluthian Carolyn Sundquist, posing here with her daughter Trudy Sundquist beneath a plaque announcing where Daniel Greysolon Sieur Du Lhut (Duluth’s name giver) lived in Montréal. Carolyn was a founding subscriber of Lake Superior Port Cities after reading an announcement of the new 1979 publication in the local newspaper. “That sounded like a great idea, and I want to support it, a local business,” she says. The fifth-generation Duluthian appreciates the quality of the magazine’s printing and the expanded focus that came when J.R., Cindy and Paul took over. “They were publishing photos from the four shores, that’s really important.” We chose Carolyn to represent our current subscribers, many of whom, we suspect, share her sentiment. She did, you see, live elsewhere after college on Lake Michigan and in Chicago, but “I decided to move back here,” she says. “I know where God’s country really is.”

Bringing up Siiri

We decided Siiri Branstrom, customer service and marketing coordinator, should represent the many employees the magazine has had over the years. After all, she left and returned to work here three times: Her first round while a student at the University of Minnesota Duluth (1986-1988), the second when moving back home from the Twin Cities (1994 until the birth of Ian in 1995) and the third from 2001 to now. (Ian, by the way, is in two of these photos … can you tell?) Our current seven full-time employees average 11 years with the magazine crew.

Gone But Not Forgotten

Longtime readers and supporters know there are many “staff” members we miss, but none so mightly as J.R., our founder and best storyteller, and Huckleberry, our office dog and greeter.

Award Winners

Over the years, we’ve had our share of awards, but three stand out: the UMD Labovitz Lifetime Achievement Award for our owners; Business Person of the Year for Cindy Hayden from  UMD’s School of Business; and Minnesota Magazine of the Year in 2013.