Cottage 207              Back to Book 3
Forker-Smith Family
Submitted by Chip Smith
 
 
If ever I wonder about the true nature of being blessed, I think for a moment about the amazingly fortuitous circumstances of the family into which I was born.  I am lucky enough to be the descendent of my great grandparents, David Mathews Forker and Annie McClure Forker, who purchased the cottage that is now #207 had it moved to its present location on Dana Avenue around the turn of the 20th century.  The original cottage was just the six rooms on the east side of the cottage and legend has it that it was pulled over the snow by a team of horses and propped up onto its “foundation” of cedar stumps.  We’re the only family that’s ever owned #207.
 
My grandfather, David M. Forker Jr., was brought to Charlevoix for the first time as an infant in the summer of 1904, allegedly carried on the train from Cincinnati in a laundry basket.  So began the relationship between the extended Forker family and the Belvedere Club, which is now entering its 120th year, or so. 
 
Dave married my grandmother Elizabeth Nichols, known to all as Betty, in the mid-1930s and brought his young bride north to Charlevoix to summer at 207 with her mother-in-law in 1937.  I can’t imagine spending an entire summer in a new place, with few relationships and stuck under a roof with my mother-in-law.  Maybe that’s how she got to be so tough! 
 
Betty and Dave spent every summer together at the Belvedere until Dave passed in 1979.  Betty made her name for herself on the tennis courts where, as she often reminded me, she never lost a match.  She became part of a tight circle of young brides in similar circumstances – making fast friendships with Dottie Leland (later Follansbee), Helen Fox and others. Later she took up golf and won three club championships in her 70s.  Dave retired in 1974 and the last five summers of his life were spent in Charlevoix playing gin rummy with his group of friends, golfing and teaching an impressionable young grandson how to catch perch. I went to Charlevoix with Betty and Dave and after Dave passed, Betty kept taking me along until I started working during the summer in Cincinnati in 1986.  Sometimes I think she brought me just so she could take me out to Smith’s Little Acres to pick peas or squash or something else.  In those days, it was just $1 for me to play nine holes with her after 4pm, so that was my pay.  I believe it’s fair to say that I was overcompensated for my work!
 
My mother, Peggy, and my uncle David grew up at the Belvedere.  My mother spent summers there for all her life, while my Uncle spent his formative years there before choosing to spend summers at camp.   My parents (Peggy and Charlie Smith) married in 1969, had me in 1970 and brought me north for the first time in July of 1970.  My sister, Margo joined us in August of 1972 and had her Belvedere Baptism in Lake Charlevoix the following summer.
 
As I think back on my own Belvedere experience, it’s worth noting that I was sent north in 1974 with my grandparents for the summer.  My sister didn’t speak very much and the goal was to get big brother out of the picture for a few months so she’d talk more (it worked!). On arrival in June of 1974, the first thing Betty & Dave taught me was how to mix their martinis.  Not that there was much mixing involved – the entire process consisted of get glass, fill with ice, one squirt of vermouth, fill with gin – but that was the beginning of my Belvedere bartending career. Before long I was their go-to party bartender – I knew how Mrs. Fox took her martinis, how Aunt Dottie (Leland) Follansbee liked her bourbon, and that Mr. Gardner liked peanuts with his Coca-Cola. Laurie Alexander was my first babysitter in Charlevoix – making sure I got to and from gang, watching me during cocktail hour and often getting dinner for me.  I was a terrible kid for her, as she’ll attest, but somehow we’re friends to this day! Adele Wellford was another early babysitter, and while I think I was perhaps less of a hellion for her, I am grateful she doesn’t hold those early days against me!
 
Gang was something that I looked forward to every year.  Rob Kinnaird, Jamie Hales and I struck up a friendship in those early years that survives these many summers.  While time (and too much fun) has stolen some of my capacity to remember all of my old gang leaders – a few stand out.  I have an early memory of a little gang leader but can’t remember her name.  What was memorable was that she lived just on the other side of Irish marina, and little gang often went to her house if it was rainy.  What was remarkable, and what I remember to this day, is that she had a polar bear skin rug.  (I’ve no idea why I remember this detail other than that it was the mid-1970s and a bear skin rug accurately reflected the times).  There was Bob Kenny, who developed the “launcher” to chuck water balloons great distances;  Steve Reese, who perfected the art of leaving a dead fish in a garbage can and then “invited” us minions for whom good behavior was an anomaly to get a good whiff of the fish to see if it was indeed dead; Kate Tomkinson, Kathy Howes – good gang leaders both – neither of whom deserved the grief that I certainly caused them.  In those days we spent a lot of time playing capture the flag while gang leaders recovered from the night before – sometimes we’d have to go to their cottages to get them so they could “supervise” us. Oh the 80s!
 
The last time the entire Forker family were all together in Charlevoix was in 2002, when Betty hosted the family party to end all Forker family parties to celebrate her 90th birthday.  Betty, my uncle Dave, my parents, my sister and I were joined by cousins from near (Sandy Orr - cottage 511) and far (San Francisco, Boston, Lexington, and Long Island) as family from all over flew in for a cocktail party at #207 and a dinner party at the Golf Club the following evening. What a weekend that was!
 
Margo and her husband Mike Lober married in 2007, and their boys Jacob and Nicholas have continued to enjoy the Belvedere for about two weeks every summer. 
 
I married Courtney in August 2008, and we spent our “honeymoon” golfing and puttering about Lake Charlevoix in my little Boston Whaler that August. In the years since, we’ve added Rory and Wynne to the Belvedere family. Rory made her first trip north at just three weeks old back in July of 2010.  Wynne’s first trip north was in June of 2013. They have both become passionate about the same things I was taught to love – fishing, tennis, golf, swimming, riding bikes, exploring the woods – and it’s been a thrill to watch.
 
What’s most amazing to me about the Belvedere Club is the immediate bond that people form with the Belvedere and the people there.  From the first time I brought her to stay at #207, Courtney loved the place and started making friends.  During my first political campaign in 2015, I came north after I’d won the primary election to find that Courtney had a whole posse of friends and that they were all gang kids that I’d helped give tennis lessons to long ago.  What a treat it’s been to renew these friendships as adults!
 
I watch our girls and as they get older the love they have for the Club and for their friends there grows exponentially. And the single most rewarding and validating feeling I get is when I watch our girls building friendships with the kids of my friends and knowing many of these friendships will be life-long relationships. 
 
The Belvedere Club is obviously a special place for all of us – the relationships I’ve been fortunate enough to build over the years are those that are dearest to me.  My oldest friend is Rob Kinnaird – we shared summers together as kids and have lived either under the same roof or within 500 feet of one another for the last 24 years in Ann Arbor. Rob taught me where we could steal beer during the summer and that we could sink it in the boathouses to keep it cold when we were teenagers.  He also taught me that saccharine tablets and vermouth are not things a young kid should ever have put into their soda while watching Lost In Space after coming home from gang. 
 
Erik Lunteigen gave me my first job, helping him at the Tennis Courts in 1983 and 1984.  I have served cocktails to three generations of Mullens and Schumachers. I’ve caught fish with two generations of Shwabs, Kinnairds, and Hales. I’ve lost tennis matches to Buntins, Millions, Wares and Bisbees (wish I could say I’d won a few of those!). I’ve canoed the Jordan with Alexanders and Leathermans, Orrs and Kennys.  And I’ve loved just about every second of all of it.  I’ve been lucky to count George Shwab, Dan Hales, and Charlie Kinnaird as mentors and friends and golf partners.   Jeffrey Buntin and Steve Reese have provided great friendship as they recruited me to serve on the Board of Trustees and then as President.
 
Fittingly, the most important Belvedere Lesson I ever learned was imparted by the wonderful Barbra (Babs) Shwab.  Way back in the 1970s, Aunt Babs caught me doing something so stupid that she stopped her car, grabbed my ear, pulled me into the car and took me right into the kitchen at #207 and told Betty what sort of stupid thing I was up to. The lesson being that one of your parents (or in my case, grandmother’s) friends is always watching and won’t be afraid to get you in line! 
 
The exercise of putting these memories to paper has been wonderful.  I’ve had the opportunity to think back over 50 years and all of the folks who have been a part of my Belvedere experience and it’s been hard work distilling it into a few pages that isn’t an interminable read for folks.  What this has left me with is indeed the notion that I have been very blessed to be a part of the Belvedere family and I am ecstatic that my family has the opportunity to continue this relationship for another generation.