Retirees offer precious free time to serve community

GRAND MARAIS, Minn. – Lake Superior, propelled by a spring nor'easter, throws waves and aquamarine shards of ice onto the rocky shore a dozen yards from a modest shake-sided house.

Two years ago, after decades of living on a tree-lined avenue in Falcon Heights, Duane Hasegawa and Barb Heideman moved here for good.

Heideman's North Shore roots go deep. Her great-grandfather cobbled shoes in Duluth. An old photo shows her mother by a tar-papered tourist cabin in Silver Bay. "I have the old enamel coffeepot they always used, so it's come full circle," said Heideman, 60, a retired chemical engineer.

"You get drawn to the lake," she said. "For me, it's the rocks, and the further up the shore you go, the rocks get bigger. The cliffs get bigger. Planting a tree is pretty hard."

Planting anything, for that matter. Hasegawa, 66, a Denver native who spent 39 years as a pediatrician specializing in oncology and hematology, studied to become a master gardener when he retired. He's ready to go.

"But what we really need is dirt," he said, illustrating a cautionary tale about the North Woods dream: You need to think about things you never imagined having to think about.

The rich, black dirt of their old neighborhood is a daydream here. "Pretty much the only garden tool up here is a pickax," Heideman said.

Winter, however, was what kept drawing the couple to the North Shore.

"For 18 years, we were 'same time, next year' visitors at Bearskin Lodge," on the Gunflint Trail, she said. "When most of our friends were heading south, we were heading north."

They'd casually searched for property, but then a real estate agent showed them a shoreline lot. Heideman, whose exuberant demeanor complements her husband's reserve, whipped out her checkbook on the spot, joking that it took the whole trip home to bring him on board.

That was in 1997. Seven years later, they built a house that they used seasonally before moving permanently in 2012.

They're retired, yet are as busy as they let themselves be.

"Small community actions are visible," she said. "It's not like when you do something in some neighborhood in the Twin Cities and only that neighborhood sees it. We are the neighborhood up here."

Such work may be part of what separates those who dream of Up North vs. Sun City.

"I think people who retire here seek some kind of involvement," Hasegawa said, then, with a slight smile, described a recent morning.

It began with a drill with the county's volunteer emergency response team. "I was just handling the paperwork, really, but there were 50 firefighters and I knew all their names."

Then it was up to the new YMCA to ponder landscaping that he's coordinating, which led to a chance meeting with a library board member who wanted to talk about a plan to sell used books on Amazon.

"That's how business gets done up here," he said. "And there's something kind of cool about it. I feel like I know more people socially here than I ever did at home."

Still, Heideman allowed as how "I'm not sure we're ready to go to the VFW on Friday night. But as a result of our activities, we work with a lot of the locals. You get to know everyone."

Medical care is a special concern in small towns, and especially among retirees conscious of emergency needs. That's one reason to keep an eye on the health of the North Shore Hospital and Care Center, the most remote critical care hospital in Minnesota. (The next nearest is 80 miles away in Two Harbors.)

Hasegawa noted that the hospital's role goes beyond residents' needs. "As a tourist, if you get a fishhook in your eye, you want care right now. Would you go out in the desert with no canteen?"

Still, Heideman feels good enough about the health care here to move her 91-year-old father into the care center this winter. (Hasegawa's mother, also 91, remains in Roseville.)

Would anything cause them to rethink their dream?

"Infirmity," Heideman said simply.

"It's hard work to live here," Hasegawa added.

For now, they keep fit with daily hikes with their two dogs through the forest and across vast whales of exposed rock to Sweetheart's Bluff overlooking the harbor. The hikes also fuel their love of the lake.

"Every day, I get up here and still say, 'Oh!' '' Heideman said. "The lake is always different."