Category: Chapter 2: Fay and Thelma

Fay and Thelma

Fay and Thelma married on a cold December day in 1923 two days before Christmas when he was 18 and she was 17. Maybe it felt like a new beginning for both of them. They could both be dreamers, perhaps being married was like the movies or the fashion magazines. Maybe it made them feel like they were all grown up.
 But their marriage has all the markings of a practical arrangement.

Like Fay, all the single Bradley men were married in 1923.

Alfred, after being a widow for four years and moving on from his stint as a pool hall operator, remarried in February and was back on the farm in Ionia. His new wife, Della, was also a practical choice – a hard working farm girl who was never quite good enough for the rest of the  family. Brother Roy was married in July to a local girl named Liddy and my mother always talked about how he “tortured that poor woman.” And, thus, Fay was without a familiar home and marriage to Thelma must have felt like “why not” to this carefree boy.

That the wedding was two days before Christmas has all the markings of Mabel’s unending practicality – a trait she instilled in the generations that followed her. It probably made sense to have the wedding near the holidays so that everyone didn't need to make more than one trip down from Boyne City to Ionia.

When the festivities were over, newly married Fay and Thelma waved goodbye to Mabel and Lew and started their new life with good jobs at a factory in Ionia.

It didn't last long.

Family Life Begins

Within five months, Thelma was pregnant with my mother and by the time she was born, Thelma and Fay were living with Mabel and Lew back up north.It’s not at all clear why the young couple ended up in Boyne City, but Mabel always had a lot of influence over Fay and she must have yearned to have him back in her sphere.

Thelma in the 1920s

Barb as a Toddler

Sometime in the late 1920s, Fay was named Deputy County Clerk in Charlevoix, a beautiful little town on Lake Michigan that was a convenient 20 miles down the road from Boyne City. Lew’s younger brother George was the Charlevoix County Clerk at the time and it looks like a few strings were pulled to get Fay a job that would keep him right where Mabel wanted him.

In his mid-20s, he was able to use some of the business skills he had picked up at technical school, but mostly Fay was a charmer and a job with the public probably suited him just fine.

George Roderick

Fay, Thelma and the two girls lived with Uncle George and Aunt May for a while after moving to Charlevoix so they were still under the family wing. Mabel insisted that they join her and Lew in Boyne City every Sunday for dinner. But, finally, within a few months the young family rented their own house on Clinton Street, a good address in downtown, and they were on their own at last.

The young family still ate Sunday dinner every week over at Mabel and Lew's
Fay and Thelma moved to Charlevoix in the 1920s after Fay became Deputy County Clerk
Fay and Thelma rented their own first house in Charlevoix on Clinton Street

Charlevoix

A passenger ship comes through Round Lake to the Pine River Channel heading for Lake Michigan. Lake Charlevoix is in the background.


CHARLEVOIX WAS A BIG PART OF MY GROWING UP, EVEN THOUGH I NEVER LIVED THERE. WE VISITED OFTEN AND ALL THE STORIES ABOUT MY PARENTS' CHILDHOOD WERE LIKE CHAPTERS IN A NOVEL. NEITHER LOVED THEIR HOMETOWN, BUT IT LEFT THEM WITH MANY MEMORIES, BOTH GOOD AND BAD.

Charlevoix was (and continues to be) one of the northern Michigan lakeside towns that served as the summer playground for wealthy families from Midwestern cities like Chicago, St. Louis and Detroit. Dating back to the 1890s, Charlevoix has drawn rich families trying to escape the heat of the cities. Its location on three lakes (Michigan, Round and Charlevoix) and its proximity to other towns of its ilk, like Petoskey and Harbor Springs, made it the ideal getaway for those with a lot of idle time.

Summer resorters could arrive by train on the D&C rail line starting from Detroit or the Chicago and West Michigan Railway. They could also come up by boat through the Great Lakes on huge passenger steamships like the S.S. Manitou, S.S. North American or S.S. South American.

The Train Depot in Charlevoix

Life was grand for wealthy families with names like May, Wrigley, Loeb and Gamble. They built summer cottages along the infamous Michigan Avenue, which may not have been quite as grand as the East Coast mansions in Newport, Rhode Island, but they came close.

Each had private beach frontage on beautiful Lake Michigan. Most had large front porches where residents could idle away the pleasant summer days watching the parade of others walking along the tree-shaded street.

It was private and exclusive.

Michigan Avenue home of David May, founder of May Department Stores of St. Louis
Typical front porch of Michigan Avenue mansion

In the small downtown of Charlevoix the Beautiful, as it was later coined, there were also luxurious summer hotels, exclusive dining clubs and expensive seasonal clothing shops. Pleasure boats arrived daily in the summer, navigating through the Pine River Channel and docking in the marina. One of the earliest regulation golf courses in the country was built for the summer residents. 

Yachts of summer visitors docked at the marina in the center of town

This small town on the beautiful lakes was created to serve at the pleasure of the scions of Midwestern industrialists and retailers. The wealthy left their summer enclave well before the freezing winters of the north set in so it was always paradise to them.

The Social Clubs

Even more private and exclusive were the Belvedere and Chicago Clubs. Both founded and built around 1880, these were clubs created as summer communities for wealthy Midwestern families who preferred being with their own kind.

The Belvedere Club was founded by Baptists from Kalamazoo who created the summer home association that ultimately contained 89 cottages on a large piece of land between Round and Charlevoix lakes. It offered its residents, who leased the cottages, a beach, a tennis club, parks and gardens, and a casino dining club. Some of the cottages had amazing views of Lake Charlevoix and some overlooked downtown. Built during the lumber boom, each cottage had a unique design with flourishes to reflect the owner's wishes.

The Chicago Club was of similar intent, but was founded by the First Congregational Church of Chicago. Made up of 31 cottages on 40 acres of land, the Chicago Club was also located on Round and Charlevoix lakes. It had tennis courts, a golf course and a clubhouse with a living room, dining room, and library. During season, meals were served in the dining room three times a day from a modern kitchen, and the beachfront on Lake Charlevoix included a swimming dock, seasonal boat docks and cabanas.

Neither summer community welcomed Jews, blacks or Catholics. Nor did any of the wealthy summer residents hobnob with the locals. The locals were there to serve, and our family was of the serving class.

Thelma’s relationship with both the Belvedere and Chicago clubs would end only when she reached her 70s. Both Fay and Thelma would separately own different restaurants in town in the years to come. They became part of the fabric of Charlevoix. For Thelma it would be a lifetime affair.

Dining Room at the Belvedere Hotel 1920s

For Fay, World War II would change many things and he would never return to Charlevoix the Beautiful.

Family Man

By all accounts, Fay was a diligent Deputy County Clerk. He showed up every day and he did his work well. He was much younger than the others in the office, but there was no indication that he was bored or restless in the job. He always loved being the object of affection for those who were older and one can imagine that he reveled in attentions provided by the middle-aged female clerical staff. 

The county clerk's office, where all of life’s events are recorded, must have been a gossipy place and the Fay I knew as an older man would have loved that environment. If he had ambition, he had already achieved his need to be off the farm and working in an office.

For a couple of years, Fay and Thelma seemed to be making a go of living on their own. Photos of the time show Barb and Shirley growing past babyhood and enjoying their childhood. Fay is often seen in pictures with the girls, but Thelma seldom makes an appearance. Maybe she was taking the photos.

Mabel, of course, is regularly present. Neither Mabel nor Lew ever drove or owned a car, so the young Bradley family must have made regular trips to Boyne City for a visit.

The very next year, Lew’s brother George, the Charlevoix County Clerk who pulled strings to get Fay a position in his office, was tried and found guilty of embezzlement. It was a big blow to the whole family, but none more so than Fay. No one in the family ever suggested that George was innocent and most felt that the two years he spent in state prison were justified. But Fay always felt his fate was altered by George’s impropriety and faulted the incident with the languishing of his own career. 

He spent the next 12 years in the County Clerk’s office and never rose above the position of assistant.

A Swinging Town

In the later 1920s and into the 1930s, when Fay and Thelma were trying their hand at being independent, Charleviox was a swinging town. As a way to cater to the summer residents, nightclubs popped all over northern Michigan, complete with headliners from down state and dancing every night.

Although Prohibition was still the law of the land, speakeasies with illegal booze were open secrets. And even though gambling was illegal, casinos flourished.

High-ranking organized crime gang members from Chicago and Detroit had shown up with lots of money and opened up playgrounds for the well-heeled called the Colonial Club, Club Manitou and the Ramona Club Casino among others. A converted lumber barge was known to have served as a speakeasy and nightclub while it sailed nightly on Lake Charlevoix between Boyne City and Charlevoix.

Club Manitou, 1930s

Though locals were not allowed in any of the high-end clubs, a certain attitude started to set in. Charlevoix and the other northern Michigan tourist towns were places to go for fun. Nightclubs catering to locals and middle-class visitors opened, swing bands played almost every night and every town had at least one movie theater. 

Although it was a conservative place in many ways, locals kept the nightclubs hopping and it was pretty easy to find a drink if they were so inclined.

Fay had always loved music, dancing, theater and the movies. He played the piano and loved the radio. He was gregarious and had a lot of friends. Some were only visitors in that northern Shangri-la, but many were locals. 

The nightlife was where he wanted to be and as entertainment became more abundant, Fay and, at first, Thelma were out whenever they could be, dancing and drinking and having fun.

During this time, Fay also showed a real interest in local theater and snagged key roles in a number of productions. As early as 1930, when Fay was just 25, he played the lead role in “The Youngest” a comedy by Philip Barry that dealt with a rich, provincial family who can’t accept the unconventional ways of the youngest member of the family. Fay played this unconventional character against the role of tall, lanky OP North, the town’s physics teacher and the leader of the M.E. (Methodist Episcopal) Literary Club as the Oldest.

It was the beginning of a Fay’s enthrallment with acting and many years of working with North where Fay was frequently cast as the leading female character. It was still somewhat unseemly for women to work in theater, even if it was local.

As the Depression set in, those serving the wealthy class stayed in pretty good shape. Some of the hotels failed during this period, but others popped up. Charlevoix was a town of endless entrepreneurship, there was always someplace new trying to make a go of it. With Fay in a secure job in local government and Thelma always willing to do service jobs like laundry, waitressing and cooking, they seemed secure money-wise. 

But, ultimately, Fay was never wise with money and there was always another place to go, another drink to buy, another reason to stay out late at night.

Soon, it was only Fay going out at night. Thelma started to worry about money and felt they should be home with the girls as they were starting to grow up. They would bicker and Fay started feeling like it was a lot better to stay out at night rather than go home. By 1934, their fighting got louder and they even separated for a few months.

During their first separation, Fay had no problem finding others who wanted to play and he was attracted to those who could go on all night. Enter Raymond Walker.