Scott and ruth steele walker

When Scott Walker encountered Ruth Steele as a young man, he also fell hard for Leelanau Township, where her family has lived for four generations. He remembers: "It was like meeting Ruth: Love at first sight."

Today, almost 40 years after their marriage, Scott and Ruth Steele Walker are semi-retired in the same Omena home overlooking Grand Traverse Bay where Ruth's father was born. After countless hours of volunteer devotion to this area, they have decided to name as a benefactor in their will the Leelanau Township Community Foundation, whose aim is to protect and improve the very tip of Michigan's Little Finger.

Ruth is pretty sure the Foundation helped pay for her snappy woolen Northport High School band uniforms, and remembers that her father, Verlin Steele, served on its board in from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, and her mother, Catherine Steele, served an additional 19 years. But, she says, "There's no way my father, mother, or anyone, no matter how bright or well-meaning, could have imagined what Northport has become, with both ups and downs. For example, affordable housing is a big issue now. When I was a kid, there were empty homes in Northport. Nobody was buying up and reinventing them as vacation rentals, pricing out people of more modest means."

Ruth served 19 years on the Foundation board, the last as chair, and it was as a board member she became aware of the power of what's called "legacy giving," naming a foundation in an estate plan. Despite many huge achievements in its 70-year history, "there's so much more we can do," Ruth says. The economic crisis of 2008 cost the Foundation, and it's now working to grow the pot from which it makes grants.

"Just because you live in an idyllic area does not mean everyone's life is idyllic. There are huge needs here. This is a way for people to give back without having to neglect the areas they came from. I often point to Grand Rapids, where we lived for decades, and where the old billionaires club got together to rebuild that city: Meijer, DeVos, Van Andel. We don't have a lot of people here who have that kind of money, which means the rest of us need to jump in and do something in our own small way.

"It will be put to good use. I remember my dad coming home complaining of certain people on the board who wanted to save up the Foundation's money. He told them: 'It's not doing any good if we're not giving it away.'"

Gene and Kathy Garthe

In the 1860s, Gene Garthe's Norwegian ancestors settled hundreds of acres near the budding town of Northport, cutting its trees to fuel Lake Michigan freighters. Garthes have populated this place ever since, most recently protecting and preserving it.

Today, Gene and Kathy Garthe live in his great-grandfather's house, tend his ancestors' fields and orchards and watch sunsets against the same horizon.

Growing up, remembers Gene, "there was never any money to support anything" but the church, Bethany Lutheran. As the years went by, Gene and Kathy took the giving habit into the larger community in appreciation of the many organizations that make Leelanau Township a wonderful place to live. They became supporters of various local non-profits, including and especially the Leelanau Township Community Foundation, which they have named in their estate plan.

Says Gene: "This is our way of tithing for the greater community."

Kathy was asked to join the LTCF board in 1997 when she became CEO of Northport's Memorial Hospital. "It hadn't been on my radar before," she admits, but the hospital counted on grants from it for new technology. She and Gene have supported it annually ever since, along with 9 other mostly-local non-profits that promote sound agriculture and a strong sense of place. She rejoined the board in 2015, after retiring as a vice-president from Munson Health Care.

Says Gene, "I want to see quality of life maintained here. We have a lot available to the common person - beaches and tennis courts and parks, regardless of their income. But we've got to figure out how people can live here without making a whole lot of money."

"Why leave a gift to the Foundation?" adds Kathy. "We know the Foundation connects with and strengthens with all other non-profits that support our community. And at this point in our lives, what we leave as a legacy matters as much as what we do day to day."

Rick and Barbara Foster

At first, young Grand Rapids cardiologist Rick Foster liked vacationing up here with his wife Barbara because it was too far away to be called back for emergencies.

But soon, Rick and Barbara, a teacher and trainer, became smitten. Its beauty and peace offered so much to a couple who years earlier, during a brief stint in Seattle, had become what Rick calls “outdoor people.”

Full-time residents of Northport for five years now, the Fosters hike, bike, cross-country ski, and kayak the land and water close to the home they built in 2002, camping in a small tent as it went up. There, they were embraced by beach-front neighbors who insisted the Fosters join them in a weekly picnic at Music in the Park. “We didn’t know anybody else,” Rick remembers, with tears in his eyes, “and so we did.”

They are now regulars now at the weekly summer event, where they are enthusiastic and nimble dances. But they have also planted themselves in the community by joining its group efforts to improve. Barbara is vice-president of the Village Voices where, Rick quips, “she sings and I try.” He is vice-president of the Lions Club and serves on the board of the League of Women Voters, plus on an affordable housing committee.

They have made annual contributions to the Leelanau Township Community Foundation for many years, even before they moved here full-time, after getting to know board members Chuck Kalchik and Basil Antenucci. Those men, both now passed, taught the newcomers how important the Foundation is to their community’s past, present, and future.

Now, the Fosters are including the Foundation in their estate plans. They are pleased the Foundation helped the township set priorities, and also that it supports Northport’s new trail system. But they hope in the decades to come the Foundation pursues ways to make this spit of land attractive and affordable to more than retirees. “Work force housing is a passion of mine,” says Rick. “I’d like this to become a sustainable community, and you can’t sustain a community without young people.”

Tim Ascroft and Jann Parsons

Tim Ascroft traveled all the time for his work downstate, and his wife Jann Parsons gave 100 percent to teaching elementary school kids in Perry, near Lansing. The Leelanau Peninsula meant two things: Relaxation and peace.

The couple began visiting here in 1983, staying first in a tent at the state park. The next year Jann saved boxtops from shredded wheat to win a stay at David Chrobak’s Millpond B&B in Northport. A beautiful breakfast in his yard, a drive to nearby wineries - and they were smitten. After that, says Time, “Every time we came up we drove around, wasting gas, looking for property.”

By 1993 they owned a cottage at Cherry Home Shores. Within a decade they called Northport home, although Tim kept a condo downstate while he continued in the machine tool industry. For the past two years he has had the shortest commute of his career, 14 miles roundtrip to Mastercraft in Northport, where he does computer-aided engineering and design.

Just as they were celebrating their 25th year here, they decided to make permanent their affection for and commitment to this area by pledging funds from their estate to the Foundation.

“What I love,” says Jann, “is that the Foundation does all the work, researching who has needs. I support it, and it supports all those organizations. That’s the beauty of it. I can sit back and says, ‘Yep, looks good.’” She’s not averse to making her own decisions, though, having served on the Cherry Home board, as vice president of the local chamber of commerce, and as a school tutor.

Time likes that members of the Foundation board “aren’t just out for their own self-interest. They look out for all of us.” Jan knows all but one member of the board, “and I know they’re really good people.” Plus, she says, the Foundation’s administrative costs are low “so it doesn’t eat up all the donation.”

Both are impressed by the Foundation-supported projects, like the new streetscape, the mural at the marina, scholarships for graduation high schoolers and Leelanau UnCaged. Says Jann: “I’ve wanted to feel I could make a difference in somebody’s life. We don’t have really deep pockets like a lot of people, but we hope there’s enough left at the end to help someone, somehow.

Ty and Kathy Wessell

When her husband suggested looking at a job in “a little town at the tip of the little finger,” Kathy Wessell was ready to go.

Well before marrying him in 2001, while teaching and starting a family in Traverse City, she regularly took visitors to the village, during the era of its big fish boils. When new husband Ty, an East Grand Rapids school principal, asked how’d she feel if he sought the superintendent’s job, she replied, “Are you kidding? That’s magic land up there.”

Since they built a home for themselves on a hill in Northport in 2005, he has run the schools, worked for the larger intermediate school district, and run a clearing house for social services in the county. She has worked the town’s afterschool program, sold gifts at the Pennington Collection and “slung wine” at a local winery. Together they ran the food pantry for Leelanau Christian Neighbors. She sits on the Northport Planning Commission.

And he has planted about 15,000 daffodils that bloom in waves around their home each spring.

As their love for the area deepens, so has their service to it, in time and money. He ran for Leelanau County Commission in 2014 and has been re-elected three times since.

From that perspective, he says “I’ve come to be even more appreciative of Leelanau Township. I think we’re different than other communities, more diverse, and more involved. Older people get along better with younger people, and new people with older people.”

They pledged a portion of their estate to the Leelanau Township Community Foundation after a former board member “convinced us we could do lots of good without having millions of bucks,” Kathy recalls. “It jus makes sense. And I’m surprised there are so few of us” who have made that decision.

Ty calls their pledge “a thank you to the community for being what you are,” while believing it can become even better. And, he says, “Part of this is very selfish,” quoting Abraham Lincoln who famously said, “When you do good, you feel good.”

Dennis and Kim Armbruster

Dennis and Kim Armbruster, both environmental scientists for the State of Michigan, explored several possibilities for retirement, everything from what he called “a mobile existence” to staying put in Lansing,

But every time they visited Traverse City, and wandered north to taste wine, “it tugged at our heart,” he recalls. A native of big cities, Kim felt so welcome and comfortable in the smallest community she ever knew that when “We’d start driving home to Lansing, I would whimper that I didn’t want to leave.”

Soon they were staying regularly at the Sunset Lodge in Omena, enjoying its proximity to a big city with good theater. Both are theater devotees, after three decades of annual pilgrimages to Stratford, Ontario’s theater festival.

By 1994 they had bought 20 acres of mature woods west of Omena, and by 2010 moved into the home they built on its highest spot, with a view of the woods and Grand Traverse Bay.

Since, they have taught on the Inland Seas Schoolship, monitored streams for the Leelanau Conservancy, and worked as volunteers for Leelanau Christian Neighbors and the Northport Wine Festival. Dennis served six years on the Omena Historical Society Board, and Kims is the president of the Omena Women’s Club.

After moving north, they shifted more of their charitable giving from national and international efforts to local ones. That led them to pledge part of their estate after their deaths to the Leelanau Township Community Foundation.

Kim joined the Foundation board in 2018, which she calls “a real eye-opening experience. I’ve learned so much more about the different ways the Foundation can have an impact. I was impressed and gratified to see how quickly the Foundation was able to respond to the sudden and unprecedented need posed by COVID-19, by injecting much needed funds into local businesses and non-profits.

“Being small and local, the Foundation is more in touch with community needs,” Kim says. She and Dennis agree there’s no one they trust more than the Leelanau Township Community Foundation to protect and enhance the area they chose to call home.