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"It's often said that life is strange, oh yes, but compared to what," - Steve Forbert
The first time I recall hearing about John Voelker I was just a kid with no idea about who most of the people my mom or dad talked about were - unless they were important people to us kids, like our playmates, parents of our playmates or our cousins, uncles and aunts.
As it turned out, at one time, John Voelker lived two blocks down from us on the same side of Barnum Street as we were. He had been on my dad's mail route and the two men shared jokes.
I used to walk to grade school past the old white Voelker house, with its blue wooden shudders and wrap around front porch. I'd pass it, like I did the Carnegie Public Library and the Mather Inn as I continued down the "acorn" hill to First Street, then left for three blocks to the brownstone Grammar School, with its big clock tower.
On rainy nights, my brother and I used to pick nightcrawlers in what had been Mr. Voelker's front yard for trout fishing bait, or to sell in our home nightcrawler business for 35 cents a dozen.
What I didn't know then, but would find out later, John Voelker loved to brook trout fish probably every bit as much as me and my brother.
Maybe even more.
But John Voelker was no worm-plunker, grasshopper plopper or flinger of French spinner lures like we were.
He was a member of the orthodoxy.
He was a fly fisherman.
He had written or would write books about trout fishing. Not only that, his books "Trout Madness" (1960) and "Trout Magic" (1974) would become famous among anglers and still are today.
Voelker had written under the pen name Robert Traver. Traver was Voelker's mother's name and "Robert" honored a brother who had died in World War I.
He wrote his first story when he was 12 years old, called "Lost All Night in a Swamp with a Bear." I think I was about the same age - maybe even a little younger - when I wrote "Sandy, the Sandhill Crane."
In 1958 - three years before I was born - one of Traver's "other" books became a national bestseller called "Anatomy of a Murder."
Mr. Voelker's profession was that of a lawyer. He had also been Marquette County's prosecuting attorney before becoming a Michigan Supreme Court jurist.
Voelker had his office above the F.W. Woolworth building in downtown Ishpeming, across the street from the banks - the Miners and the Peninsula.
"Anatomy of a Murder" was a fictionalized retelling of a real-life 1952 killing of a former Michigan State Police trooper turned bar owner by an Army lieutenant.
Voelker defended the soldier - who said he'd acted on an irresistible impulse when he killed the barkeep after his wife claimed the man had raped her.
Voelker won the case and wrote the book that was originally intended to be called "The Trial." I remember seeing a picture once of Ringo Starr reading "Anatomy of a Murder." Wow.
Big-time movie director Otto Preminger acquired the rights to "Anatomy of a Murder" and decided to film the entire movie in Marquette County. It was intentionally filmed in black and white to best depict the natural winter-phase character of the area.
The film was shot over eight weeks during springtime 1959.
Locals were hired as extras for the movie or drivers for some of the cast and crew.
Many of the stars who came to Ishpeming and Marquette for the filming had not made their mark in Hollywood yet, including Ben Gazzara, George C. Scott, Lee Remick and Arthur O'Connell.
"Anatomy of a Murder" would help these actors heighten their profiles.
Main actor James Stewart, whose films included "It's a Wonderful Life," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" was indeed a very big star.
There's a picture I love of James Stewart talking with a man that shows one of the head shafts from the Cliffs Shaft Mine in the background.
In that photo, Stewart is standing very close to where I spent many days of my childhood chasing frogs, turtles and snakes through the muddy and reedy rim of Bancroft Lake.
It's across the road from the summer tansy fields around the old railroad bridge - now removed - over the Carp River.
I would have flipped out if I saw James Stewart anywhere in our county, let alone in my own hometown - incredible.
I found out that the actors stayed at The Mather Inn when they came to Michigan - right on our own little four-block Barnum Street - for what would be the first full-scale on location motion picture.
Duke Ellington wrote the movie soundtrack while staying at the inn and musically mimicked the tolling of the Gossard bells in one of his tunes.
Voelker's house on Barnum and Pine was used extensively in the movie as the home and office of the main character, an attorney and trout fisherman named Paul Biegler -who was patterned after Voelker.
The crew also filmed inside the Carnegie Public Library. The location served as a law library after a collection of law books from Northern Michigan University was brought to the library for the backdrop.
Other film locations included downtown Ishpeming, Michigamme and Marquette, including the Marquette County Circuit Courtroom where the original murder trial was convened in 1952.
So, two of the movie locations and the inn where the stars stayed were all situated along the street I grew up on. The guy who wrote the book who inspired the movie had lived on my street too. Again, wow.
My dad said Arthur O'Connell had stopped him when he was delivering mail on Main Street to ask for directions.
Fast forward, about 30 years and I'm in a college journalism class in Pasadena, California when, at the urging of an instructor, I wrote to Mr. Voelker to seek advice about writing.
He responded urging me to "Write it as you feel it and don't worry about the punctuation and all the others Ps."
My first published article, for which I was paid $25, was a journalism homework assignment in that class that I sold to a local newspaper out west. It was about the rehabilitation of a great horned owl at a nature center. My writing tended to focus on the outdoors, nature and recreational aspects of the natural environment.
I worked as a freelance writer for several publications. I also was a lead tele-center agent and an assistant to a segment producer for the "Unsolved Mysteries" television show before returning home to Michigan.
Back here, I became a general assignment reporter, photographer and bureau reporter for The Mining Journal.
My dad used to read that newspaper every day.
Among the stories I wrote for the paper over 21 years, were commemorative stories on "Anatomy of a Murder" anniversaries.
On March 18, 1991, Mr. Voelker died at age 87.
I never got to meet him in person.
He had a heart attack while driving home from a fishing trip. His car hit a snowbank near the new house he was living in on Deer Lake Road, north of Ishpeming.
He moved there after he left Barnum Street.
My dad and Mr. Voelker now both have headstones in the Ishpeming Cemetery.
In 1997, I began work on a documentary film about the making of "Anatomy of a Murder" in Marquette County called "Anatomy '59: The Making of a Classic Motion Picture."
My film discussed the real-life trial, the bestselling book and Preminger's movie, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards, but was overshadowed by the epic "Ben Hur."
I traveled to New York City, Hollywood and Minneapolis to interview the stars who remained from the movie, including Ben Gazzara, Kathryn Grant-Crosby, Orson Bean and Don Ross.
Mr. Voelker's daughters helped me gain necessary approvals for my film.
My documentary was released on numerous Public Television stations across Michigan on June 29, 1999, the 50th anniversary of the "World Preview" of "Anatomy of a Murder" and John Voelker's birthday.
My film was the highest local fundraising program broadcast on WNMU-TV.
In May 2018, I moved into a new house north of Ishpeming, which happened to be just about a mile down Deer Lake Road from the Voelker home, where his daughter Grace now lives with her husband, Woody.
They have allowed me the wonderful privilege of visiting John Voelker's famous fishing camp on Frenchman's Pond in a secluded part of Marquette County.
I have numerous precious photographs I took and memories of those times fishing there with my brook trout fishing pal. For us to just be able to be there was a great experience, even without the fishing or the photos.
There would ultimately be numerous Robert Traver books, penned either before or after "Anatomy of a Murder." Some of my favorites include "Laughing Whitefish," "Trout Madness," "Small Town D.A." and "Anatomy of a Fisherman."
In retrospect, the connections and proximity between myself and Mr. Voelker are interesting and inspiring. It's so cool to me that though we never met, we had bonds we both would no doubt recognize through writing, Barnum Street, the outdoors, Deer Lake Road and brook trout fishing.
Life is very strange indeed.
Outdoors North is a weekly column produced by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on a wide range of topics important to those who enjoy and appreciate Michigan's world-class natural resources of the Upper Peninsula.