subscribesubscriber servicescontact usabout ussite map
 
April 26, 2001

Nature loses a friend

Artist, poet, mentor Gwen Frostic dies at age 94
By MIKE NORTON
Record-Eagle staff writer

     
      BENZONIA - Gwen Frostic, the feisty, fun-loving poet, artist and businesswoman who stamped her love for the natural world on millions of books, framed prints, postcards and sets of stationery, died early Wednesday morning.
      Today would have been her 95th birthday.
      "She was an amazing woman," said writer Sheryl James, who spent a good deal of time with Frostic while preparing her book, The Life and Wisdom of Gwen Frostic for Sleeping Bear Press. "I really came to respect her brains and her guts."
      So did most of the people who came to know Frostic through her lyrical writings or her whimsical linoleum prints of flowers, wildlife and Northern Michigan scenery, or who were fortunate enough to meet her at her remote riverside workshop west of Benzonia. By the 1960s, as the owner of Presscraft Papers, she was one of the country's rare self-made woman millionaires.
      Her numerous awards and honors included the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame Life Achievement Award, the Michigan Tourist Association Distinguished Service Award, and the 1999 Governor's Award for Arts & Culture. Former Gov. William Milliken even issued a proclamation making May 23 "Gwen Frostic Day" in Michigan.
      "She had so many people who cared about her, and we've all been trying to keep our spirits up all day," said Pam Lorenz, co-owner of the Brookside Inn in Beulah. "So many of us were just acquaintances who couldn't give her up once we'd gotten to know her. She became our friend and our mentor."
      Lorenz still remembers the day 20 years ago when she saw "this little lady sitting in the corner" who motioned her over and suggested that she might be able to provide the restaurant with better placemats than the ones it was using at the time.
      Although she hated the idea of retirement, Frostic had been unable to work regularly since October, when she broke several ribs. In spite of several rallies, she had grown more frail in the past several weeks. Friends said she died quietly in her sleep.
      Frostic was born in the Thumb community of Sandusky and grew up in Wyandotte. A childhood illness left her with a cerebral palsy-like condition - a slight slurring of speech and a limp - but she fiercely resisted the idea that this had handicapped her in any way. She studied art education at Eastern Michigan University and Western Michigan University, but it was the tool and die work she did at Ford's Willow Run bomber plant during World War II that gave her the skills she turned into her life's work.
      She began Presscraft Papers in Wyandotte, creating high-quality papers and stamping them with images carved on linoleum tiles. In the early 1950s she moved the business to northern Michigan, and in 1964 moved into her own 250-acre wildlife sanctuary on the Betsie River. Her studio, crafted of native stones, glass and old wood, was an early example of "bringing the outdoors in," and quickly became one of the area's premiere tourist attractions.
      "It's a loss for everybody, except for her," said Vickie Maurer of United Way of Northwest Michigan, who first met Frostic 40 years ago as director of Girl Scout Camp Sakakawea in Traverse City. "She was a terrific person. Very witty, with a great sense of humor."
      Maurer remembers a friend, for instance, for whom the mischievous Frostic prepared a "birthday cake" that was actually Jell-O covered in frosting. And her own sister, who died just last week, once told how Gwen gave her a box of canned goods for a wedding gift - with all the labels removed.
      Fiercely independent to the end, Frostic was frequently blunt and assertive as a businesswoman. "I work with nature," she once said, "because it treats me equally." But she also was capable of great tranquillity and thoughtfulness, particularly when she contemplated the wonders of a sunrise, a heron landing on a pond, a dragonfly hovering in the air.
      "All things upon this earth are developing into new things," she wrote in her 1960 book These Things Are Ours. "From what is here must come what is to be ... there is no other material. This is the fulfillment of the promise of life. Nothing can be destroyed. Everything is being created."