Community Profile THe Upper peninsula of Michigan
Call of the Wild
Never mind its reputation for snow and cold. The Upper Peninsula is a Valhalla
for outdoor aficionados and the independence-minded who revel in small town
solidarity but embrace modern medical technology.
Anyone with less than a B.A. in geography might think of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula as a kind of Bali Ha’i, that mysterious “special island” hidden in the mist.
The more knowledgeable might recall this 16,452-square-mile piece of real estate
as a territorial leftover the state got stuck with after losing the so-called
Toledo War in 1836. Giving up a thin strip of northern Ohio was the price
Michiganders paid for statehood. Most thought no good would come from owning
this region cut off from “civilization” by cold Lake Superior, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, and—more logically—part of Wisconsin. Some said its weather could be defined as “ten months of snow and two months’ poor sledding.”
Skeptics would soon discover the advantages, and, much more recently, so would
some enthusiastic physicians from other parts of the U.S., some with nostalgic
childhood memories. Richard Armstrong, MD, grew up, coincidentally, in Toledo. “My uncle,” he fondly recalls, “used to spend time at a cabin near Black Lake. I liked Northern Michigan
probably better than anywhere I ever went as a kid. One morning, (a recruiter)
called me. She kept going on and on about this great opportunity in the Midwest
in a beautiful recreational area on the Great Lakes. I said, ‘Where is this?’ She said, ‘In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Now don’t hang up.’”
The opportunity was in Ironwood with another doctor practicing solo after his
father’s retirement. “I flew up from Chicago. He took me out to a fish fry in a local bar.” The next morning, they talked business, inspected the hospital, and Armstrong
agreed to make the move. But, the clincher, as he describes it, was “the solitude, pine trees, sand, smell of the trees, the lake like glass, the sun
coming up in a mist. They reminded me of my feelings when I was a teenager, and
I guess it was that, more than anything, that persuaded me to come.
“(In Ironwood, with Grand View Health System) I did all the vascular, trauma, and
chest surgery, and it was a very good practice,” he reminisces. “We ended up doing a lot of innovative and exciting things. But (after 18 years)
it got to be so all-encompassing that I couldn’t do anything else, so I decided to move.” At the Helen Newberry Joy Hospital in Newberry, population 2,700, Wayne
Hellerstedt, the hospital’s CEO, let him set up an ambulatory surgical practice. “We could perform all the routine things on an elective basis that are safe to do
in this kind of environment.” In return, he would not be on emergency call, there would be Thursday-to-Sunday
weekends in summer, and eight weeks of vacation as well.
Low-key life meets technology
He remembers being “pleasantly surprised” at the hospital’s high-quality technology. “It’s a very nice hospital in a nice little community,” he adds. The move illustrates another happy possibility for some UP physicians.
They’re sometimes able to find work that doesn’t require a 24/7 commitment, although Armstrong isn’t sure that would be a good plan for a young surgeon eager to build an exciting
career.
“We live in this little island of relative medical sanity in an insane country,” he says. “When I talk to my friends who practice in urban areas, they’re tearing their hair out. They want to quit, (but) I really like what I do, and
the patients like me. I come home, and we’re happy, and it’s great.”
The new life means he has time to take his 13-year-old daughter to school, where
she immerses herself in music and drama opportunities. “(And, the family) can have dinner together and ski together in winter,” Armstrong adds. In summer there are long weekends at a log home on a remote
lake. Other Yoopers, as UP residents like to call themselves, revel in such
winter activities as snowmobiling and, like those “Grumpy Old Men” from Minnesota, ice fishing.
There are cultural possibilities, too. Community theater, photography, and arts
groups have sprung up in the area, and there’s a large country club at nearby Manistique.
Farther west, according to Tom Nemacheck, director of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula Travel & Recreation Association, the large Marquette General Health System and Northern
Michigan University not only drive the economy but inspire a thriving cultural
scene. The nationally known Pine Mountain Music Festival offers summer
concerts, drama, and other shows in several cities. Farther north, on the
Keweenaw Peninsula, other entertainment venues include the historic Calumet
Theatre in Calumet and the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts at Michigan
Technological University in Houghton. (Locals nickname Keweenaw “the Upper Peninsula’s Upper Peninsula.” It juts north into Lake Superior.)
Nemacheck admits that cultural possibilities tend to drop off farther east, but
Armstrong has a ready “cure.” He points out, “One of the great advantages of making enough money to be able to travel is that,
if we want to, we can go to big cities like Chicago and Minneapolis. You
immerse yourself in tremendously big places, then come back where things are
quiet and you can actually have a life.”
Lessons from the locals
A “life” is a prized possession for many UP residents. Possibly inspired by early, hardy
immigrants from Cornwall, Finland, the British Isles, and other European
countries, they revel in the uniqueness of the place and the self-reliance that
equips them to cope with harsh winters when the snowfall, at least on the
Keweenaw Peninsula, can reach 300 inches. And they enjoy demonstrating their
independence. That includes a joking kind of patois, a hand-me-down from
Finnish and Slavic immigrants. One sample: “Say yah to da UP, eh?” Translation: “See you at the UP. Okay?” Yoopers also like to twit residents of “that other part of Michigan” by calling them Trolls. That’s because the Lower Peninsula folks live “under the bridge”—the Mackinac Straits Bridge connecting the two parts of the state—as in the fairy tale “The Three Billy Goats Gruff.”
Finlandia University, in Hancock, founded in 1896 by Finnish immigrants, is the
United States’ sole higher education institution associated with their culture. Still-popular
UP foods include the Finnish nisu (pronounced niss-oo), a sweet bread with
cardamom seasoning, and the Cornish pasty (pronounced past-ee), a hearty
turnover filled with ground meat and vegetables. Early miners pocketed and ate
them for lunch while on the job.
What “miracle” was it that turned the 1800s skeptics into believers—and made the UP a prized property instead of a poor stepchild?
A lucrative fur trade had begun soon after European explorers arrived in the
17th century, but it was a young New York doctor who spurred discoveries that
led to America’s first great mining bonanza. In 1830, Douglass Houghton arrived in Detroit. Inspired by reports of a huge,
pure copper “boulder,” he was eager to scour the UP for treasure from the land. Soon, “lower peninsula” Michiganders, contemptuous about the Toledo strip tradeoff, would rethink their
attitudes.
Thanks to Houghton’s reports—and beating the California Gold Rush by about five years—prospectors streamed in to share the hoped-for riches from mining the “red metal.”
By the 1860s, UP mines were producing 90 percent of America’s copper supply. According to Angus Murdoch, author of “Boom Copper: The Story of the First U.S. Mining Boom,” the Keweenaw Peninsula still holds the record for the “immense amount of copper from an infinitesimally small piece of the earth.” It was in the purest state ever discovered, and at one point there were no
fewer than 112 “discernible mining corporations” in just one county.
The UP’s economic history can probably be summarized in eight words: fur, timber,
railroading, copper, iron, fishing, shipping, and tourism. Some, such as
copper, came as booms and all but disappeared; others, such as timbering, are
still viable. Iron/taconite mining in the Marquette area is thriving, thanks
greatly to strong demand from China and other emerging countries.
“The Newberry area,” says Armstrong, “was the big timber baron (headquarters) at the turn of the century to about
1930. They clear-cut the UP. There are pictures in Marquette showing hills
completely bare.” The timber companies have since replanted millions of pines and other trees,
and dense stands abound once again, especially in three national forest areas.
For some physicians, “Upper Peninsula” spells “freedom,” but with it comes a caution. “When you are going to be a rural physician, you had better be very sure of
yourself and a really good doctor,” says Carl Velte, CEO of Munising Memorial Hospital on the north shore of the
big peninsula.
Challenges and changes
Now an independent practitioner in Hancock, on the Keweenaw Peninsula, Sigurds
(Sig) Janners, MD, typifies the happy “loner” and embraces the “really good doctor” concept. Born in Latvia, he was brought by his family to America, grew up in
New Jersey and attended the University of Virginia School of Medicine, followed
by a residency in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He agrees with Armstrong about the lure
of unspoiled nature. “The beauty of the UP is hard to deny because we’re right on Lake Superior,” he says. “My first time to interview was June 1974. I came in on the last plane. The sun
was just setting, and I thought, ‘Is this real?’ The first place they took me was the overlook to the Portage Lake Canal. It was
just so peaceful and beautiful!”
The possibility of “a variety of activity,” mostly generated by the two area universities, Finlandia and Michigan Tech,
made the place doubly attractive to him.
For the local hospital, now the Portage Health System, the timing for hiring new
doctors was crucial. “The reality,” Janners recalls, “was that medical care was atrocious. The hospital was run by the Sisters of
Carondolet, who were very generous, but they were in debt up to their ears.
They left within a year-and-a-half of when I came. The number of practitioners
dropped precipitously to about five of us in primary care for awhile, and there
was no ER.
