Since 1994, the Lake Superior Magazine Achievement Award has been given to individuals and organizations that have contributed significantly to the well being of Lake Superior and its communities.
Fred Stonehouse joined other Michiganders crossing the Mackinac Bridge on Labor Day weekend this year.
Lake Superior Magazine has given an annual Achievement Award since 1994.
OK, I admit it. It seemed a little awkward to present our annual Achievement Award to someone who’s been part of our Lake Superior Magazine family for so long (he even has a story in this issue), but then I started calling around and quickly knew for certain our choice of Frederick Stonehouse is the right one.
“I can say in a couple of different ways that he has been a role model, but that’s not the right terminology to use,” says Bruce Lynn, executive director of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, based in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Bruce credits Fred’s book on the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald not only with captivating him as a youngster in 1977, but also for helping to inspire both him and his friend, maritime author/photographer Chris Winters, to careers in preserving maritime heritage.
PAUL L. HAYDEN / LAKE SUPERIOR MAGAZINE
Just a few of Fred’s more than 30 books on maritime history, including one of his latest, The Last Laker.
Bob O’Donnell, a spokesperson and member of the Association for Great Lakes Maritime History that honored Fred in 2006 with its Joyce S. Hayward Award for Historic Interpretation, sees the Marquette-based maritime historian as a careful chronicler of heritage on the saltwater and freshwater seas, and, perhaps as importantly, a skilled storyteller able to give life to that heritage.
PAUL L. HAYDEN / LAKE SUPERIOR MAGAZINE
The Last Laker, which he signed when it first came out.
“What kind of distinguishes Fred,” Bob says, “he’s not been afraid of taking maritime history into a couple of different genres.”
Documenting haunted lighthouses, Bob points out, Fred “was first to approach it as an historian rather than a ghost story writer.”
Bob goes on to list Fred’s accomplishments as teaching maritime history at Northern Michigan University, his hundreds of maritime heritage presentations around the country, on national television and even aboard cruise ships, and especially his masterwork on the history of the U.S. Lifesaving Service, Wreck Ashore, saying “That’s the one thing I really give him credit for.”
“He’s still very active on storytelling and outreach,” Bob adds, “so he can bring maritime history alive.”
Smithsonian Journeys, the cultural travel division of the Smithsonian Institution, has frequently tapped Fred as a speaker for its Great Lakes and ocean cruises. “We’ve been very lucky to have Fred as a Smithsonian Journeys Expert,” says Karen Ledwin, vice president of program management for Smithsonian Journeys. “He’s just a wonderful storyteller and his knowledge of the region is very deep. That is a tremendous asset when we’re bringing our travelers to the Great Lakes.”
In other words, after speaking to a variety of people about the contributions that Fred Stonehouse has made to researching and recording maritime heritage and to promoting and serving his adopted Marquette community, we wondered why we hadn’t chosen him sooner.
Few people know that the well-known Great Lakes maritime author and historian started life on a very different shore – the Jersey shore of the Atlantic Ocean.
Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Fred acknowledges that the very smell of the ocean conjures images of his childhood. “Nothing brings back memory of home like saltwater.”
When it came time to choose a university in 1966, Fred decided to do what a buddy of his had done – apply to Northern Michigan University in Marquette.
“I grew up on the sea coast, so I wanted something that had water.” And, natural to that age, something sufficiently far enough from home for independence.
Fred studied political science and broadcasting and later would earn a master’s degree in history at NMU.
After his undergraduate years at college, he joined the U.S. Army, but returned to Marquette when he retired from his military service. That was hardly surprising, since as a soldier at a dance in the National Guard armory in Ishpeming, he met and fell in love with Lois, a woman from Negaunee. In typical Fred style, he claims he was struck by the “good looking blonde” and asked her to dance. Thirty-eight years of married life later, she’s still his partner and they have a son, Brandon, who works for Delta Airlines as a load planner and also is a certified pilot.
Back in Marquette, Fred became a teacher at NMU and began to write books about his maritime history of the Great Lakes. He came naturally to his curiosity for vessels great and small, what makes them float and what makes them sink, but he’s especially interested in the people who sail on them. “When you grow up on the Jersey shore, at least for me, that was all around you.”
What continues to excite him about the topic, even after more than 30 books on maritime subjects, is that the story of people and the water is as old as human beings themselves.
“From the very beginning, there was this relationship with water. Everything is on the water, everything involves the water.”
In North America, exploration and economic exploitation began with water transportation. “It really is, in my view, the history of who we are and what we were and how we’re going to go into the future.”
Fred has been called upon to reveal and unravel maritime mysteries and histories for such varied entities as National Geographic, the History Channel, the U.S. National Park Service and Parks Canada. He has given presentations around the country and on ships for Victory Cruise Lines as well as Smithsonian Journeys.
His work has garnered numerous awards. Besides the earlier mentioned honor from the Association for Great Lakes Maritime History, he’s been honored as the Marine Historical Society of Detroit’s “2007 Historian of the Year” and by Underwater Canada, Our World Underwater, the Marquette Maritime Museum and the Marquette County Historical Society (with both of which he continues to be active). In 2014, he was named a “Distinguished Alumnus” by Northern Michigan University and, in 2017, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Preservation Society named him for the C. Patrick Labadie Special Acknowledgement Award.
Maritime history, though, has not been Fred’s only passion. He is politically outspoken and an elected member of Marquette’s City Commission, currently serving as mayor pro tempore. Everyone can appreciate his unabashed promotion of his city. (I personally get frequent emails from Fred pointing out yet another “Top 10” or “Best of” national listing that Marquette has made.)
He’s particularly proud of how his “gritty” city has transformed itself and especially its waterfront into a showpiece for residents and visitors. “We’ve been used as a poster child by the Great Lakes Commission about how to do it.”
Fred has contributed to that transformation by being part of the team, as he puts it: “All commissioners must work as a team to achieve success. We build on the success of others and hope others will build on ours.”
He ticks off more of Marquette’s many attributes: “almost 40 percent of our adults hold a college degree or better. We retained 90 percent of our public lakeshore for (communal) ownership. … Now you’ve got something that is for the people – a recreation base. We still keep a little bit of that (industrial) history with us, but it’s not the consuming aspect that it once was.”
Fred’s balance of recognizing and celebrating our history while strategizing and anticipating the future makes him a true asset to our Big Lake community. For his vision and passion about his city by the inland sea and for his energy and dedication to preserving our Great Lakes maritime heritage, we are proud to honor Fred Stonehouse with the 2018 Lake Superior Magazine Achievement Award.