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Fred Rydholm’s ‘Superior Heartland’ available at Read Between the Wines

Kenyon Boyer, Ernest Rankin, Richard Sonderegger and Fred Rydholm are pictured in a photo that was taken aropund 1961. (Photo courtesy of the Marquette Regional History Center)

Fred Rydholm was born on East Hewitt Avenue in Marquette on March 11, 1924. He remembered his childhood during the Great Depression fondly. His family was hardworking and of modest means, but generous to everybody. Fred recalled happily sharing meals with the homeless on the family back porch during the Great Depression as a kid.

Fred’s father reveled in recounting entertaining tales, which taught Fred the art of storytelling from an early age. Fred used to reflect on how his dad would tell what seemed like outlandish lies that always turned out to be factual accounts of real events. “He said a lady had diamonds in her teeth. When I met her, she had two big diamonds in her front teeth!” Fred would later marvel at how much knowledge about the region his father possessed. He recalled that his dad “knew more about the Upper Peninsula than anyone alive, I think.”

Fred graduated from Graveraet High School in 1941 and served as a Navy hospital corpsman during World War II. He completed teacher training at Albion College in 1948, then taught downstate in Battle Creek and Vermontville.

Rydholm took a Michigan history class at Western Michigan University in 1950, and wrote a piece on the Bentley Trail, which runs from White Deer Lake to the Huron Mountain Club. He later admitted that it wasn’t a very good paper. His professor’s prodding for more details inspired him to dig deeper into Upper Peninsula history. That critical professor unknowingly blessed the U.P. with one of our great historians, a true giant on the local history scene.

Fred returned to Marquette in 1952. He taught at Graveraet and Bothwell until 1982. He also lectured for the Elderhostel program at Northern Michigan University, exchanging collective wisdom with the attendees. For 15 years, Fred and his wife, June, worked at the Huron Mountain Club in the summer, organizing programs for children. He would keep crowds of kids enthralled with countless tales of local history and stories about nature.

Many of the people he taught to love history through storytelling, now parents and grandparents themselves, consider their years with Fred and June at the Huron Mountain Club or in Fred’s classes to be the best experiences of their lives.

Many have become committed advocates for the Marquette County local history movement. Students of Fred are passing along a passion for colorful local stories to a new generation who are the future of the Upper Peninsula. They are only beginning to know who Fred Rydholm was and what he meant to local history.

Beginning with the inspiration of his early mentor, Helen Longyear Paul, the Curator of the Marquette County Historical Society (the present-day Marquette Regional History Center), Fred Rydholm researched and wrote a 1,600-page, two-volume tome called Superior Heartland: A Backwoods History, first published in 1989. This work remains one of the major treatments of Upper Peninsula history to date, covering the region’s geological past and recorded history through the 1980s.

When Fred passed in his sleep on April 4, 2009, succumbing to mesothelioma, the Upper Peninsula lost one of its greatest citizens. With his tall stature and booming voice, Fred was a larger-than-life figure in local history circles. His enthusiasm for tales of the U.P. was impossible to ignore. Fred’s enthralling stories inspired countless writers of local history. Marquette County has been home to some of the best authors of regional history in Michigan, and Fred Rydholm has been a direct inspiration for many.

Come to Read Between the Wines, Thursday, Nov. 8t, 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the History Center at 145 West Spring St., Marquette. Accomplished local history authors Tyler Tichelaar and Sonny Longtine will read passages from some of their works. Everyday Wines will present a wine-tasting playfully inspired by local history.

Tickets are $35. There will be a raffle for a historical photograph and as well as opportunities to bid on valuable items in the silent auction. Proceeds will benefit the Literacy Legacy Fund of Michigan and the Marquette Regional History Center, who are partners in promoting local history literacy.

Patrons at Read Between the Wines can bid to win a copy of Fred’s “Superior Heartland,” long out-of-print and increasingly difficult to obtain. Together in the Fred Rydholm Gathering Hall at the Marquette Regional History Center, we can talk more about ways to preserve and promote literacy in the Upper Peninsula’s vividly entertaining past while keeping Fred’s legacy alive.

Stop by the History Center for more information. And consider becoming a member. It’s our 100th year. The more of us the better.

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