BELLAIRE -- Mary Kay and Ed McDuffie's written history of Torch Lake is a labor of love, a labor of life, a gift to their community.
For Mary Kay, it's also a dream realized, the culmination of years of work while shadowed by debilitating illness.
"Torch Lake: The History of Was-Wah-Go-Ning" was published this month, nearly four years after Mary Kay, a local historian and the book's lead writer, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease.
Since then, finishing the book and seeing it published consumed Mary Kay and Ed, her co-author and husband of 50 years.
"The lake and history has always been part of my life," Mary Kay said. "I think I've been writing this book all my life."
Ed worked "hammer and tong" with book designer Margaret McCutcheon Wagner, Mary Kay's cousin, to complete the book this year.
"I really wanted Mary Kay to see it," Ed said. "It was her life's work and we wanted her to look at it. ALS set the clock. It was the time bomb."
Their book likely is the most comprehensive and captivating history written about Torch Lake and its communities. It betrays their love and stewardship for the lake, its history, communities and people.
It calls readers and area residents to continued environmental advocacy and protection.
"To our Ancestors who taught us to love, respect and protect Torch Lake, and our readers who must carry on the tradition," the dedication says.
'Lake of torches'
Mary Kay's goal was to preserve and raise interest in the history of the 18-mile-long lake that stretches from Eastport in Antrim County south to Rapid River in Kalkaska County. It's the state's longest inland lake and second largest inland lake at 18,770 acres.
Carved and sculpted by glaciers over 4 billion years, Torch Lake is 300 feet deep in some places. The book traces the lake's geological evolution and tells the stories of those who have lived along its shores over thousands of years and up through 1945.
Its 436 glossy pages are filled with 673 pictures, maps, copies of early documents and early paintings that accompany Mary Kay's accounts of prehistoric and modern-era Indians, Euro-American settlers, surveyors, loggers, pioneer merchants, farmers and summer resorters from 1800 to 1945.
The Ojibwa name for the lake at the time of first white settlement was Was-Wah-Go-Ning, or Lake of Torches because of the Indian practice of using birch bark torches to lure fish to the surface so they could be speared along the shore. Early settlers translated the name into Torch Lake.
Charles Cleland, a Michigan State University anthropology professor from 1964-2000 and curator of its Great Lakes archeology and ethnology museum, called the book "a must" for anyone interested in Michigan history and geology.
He praised its writing, organization, detail, illustrations, and design.
"What this book does is give those of us who live in northern Michigan a way to connect with our historical past through its people, events and a way of life that came before us." he said. "It's well-written and illustrated, and the McDuffies' sense of writing history is seen in its details and accuracy that would be found in few other places."
Cleland, who now lives in Norwood, met the McDuffies in the 1990s after Mary Kay asked him to help determine whether any sites of archaeological interest existed near Antrim Creek before the Antrim Creek Natural Area was developed along Grand Traverse Bay in the northwestern part of county.
Cleland authored "Rites of Conquest: The History and Culture of Michigan's Native Americans" and has been involved in several northern Michigan archeological explorations.
Deep roots
Life prepared the McDuffies to write and publish this book.
Mary Kay is a great-grand-daughter of an early lumber-era family that settled in Bellaire about 1880. She has lived in Bellaire and along Torch Lake most of her life.
She started writing local history in the early 1972 when asked to write a column for a Bellaire weekly. She wrote 23 of the book's 24 chapters.
Ed is a retired biology teacher with a long interest in the lake's geology and area archaeology. He was involved in a 10-year water quality study of the lake. He grew up in a Cincinnati family that summered at Torch Lake.
"I don't speak science," Mary Kay said.
"And I don't speak history," Ed added.
Both are long-time active members of the Three Lakes Association that includes Torch Lake, Clam Lake and Lake Bellaire and is a staunch advocate for protecting its water quality.
Ed wrote the first 14-page chapter on the lake's glacial formation and handled much the photographic work. It is peppered with colorful maps of glacial drift, bedrock topography and drawings that explain how four major glaciers formed Torch Lake over 800,000 years and left behind kettle lakes, cigar-shaped drumlins and moraines, or hills and ridges scattered through the western half of the county.
Focused on book
The McDuffies never mention Mary Kay's illness in the book, but it has been an important back story since her diagnosis in the spring of 2006.
ALS is progressive and incurable. It affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, eventually leaving patients totally paralyzed, unable to walk, talk and at the end unable to move or breathe.
The diagnosis shocked Mary Kay, forced her to examine her options. She realized she could spend the rest of her life dying and feeling sorry for herself, or she could spend it living, enjoying her remaining time with family, friends and finishing the book she researched for years.
She decided to stay alive, and since focused on finishing the book and seeing it published, with help and encouragement from Ed and their three adult children, Tom, Mike and Trina.
"From the start, I decided it was my disease and I would lead it my way," she said. "I prayed to stay calm, positive and productive ... and that prayer soon changed to being patient. I was always productive, but being patient with people was and is hard for me."
Today, she believes the book kept her alive and helped keep her mind off the disease and its attack on her body. She eats with the help of a food tube into her stomach.
She communicates with a computerized keyboard that translates her typed words into a voice. In late November she had an emergency tracheotomy and now breathes with the help of a machine.
On Dec. 2, one day after being discharged from Munson Medical Center, Mary Kay sat in the foyer of her home as more than 20 friends, family and neighbors hauled in about 280 cardboard boxes laden with 2,000 books that weighed 8,000 pounds.
She hopes the book helps protect the lake, preserve its history and encourages an interest in its history.
"There will never be another body of water like Torch Lake," she wrote in the last paragraph of the final chapter. "God has blessed us with the most beautiful spot in the world to live and vacation. It is up to each of us to protect and care for this majestic gift. The Torch Lake we love can never be replaced."
Torch Lake: The History of Was-Wah-Go-Ning retails for $60 and is available at Horizon Books in Traverse City (Dec. 29 in Petoskey), the Alden Store and Alden State Bank.
Copies also can be ordered by calling (231) 620-2243 or by sending orders and checks for $78.60 (includes state sales tax and $15 for shipping and handling), payable to Mary Kay McDuffie, 1340 SE Torch Lake Drive, Bellaire, MI 49615.
Record-Eagle associate editor Loraine Anderson met the McDuffies as an Antrim County News reporter during the mid-1970s. Mary Kay sparked her interest in local history and encouraged it.
