Cohodas: The Story of a Family

CHAPTER XXI
The Lodge

by WILBERT H. TRELOAR
PUBLISHED IN 1977

No story of the Cohodases in the north country would be complete without attention to the almost legendary "Cohodas Lodge" situated on a high bluff rising up out of the waters of Lake Michigamme about 25 miles west of Ishpeming. It is one of the most imposing buildings in the Michigan northwoods.

Started in 1934 and completed a year later, it is two stories high, practically all pine construction with axe-hewn joints that only older Finnish craftsmen of the area could accomplish. Today those joints are just as snug and tightly fitting as they were over 40 years ago when the keys were turned over to Cohodas.

Most of the property around Lake Michigamme was owned by the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company, and over the years, lots have been parceled out by lease to the favored, most of them from the administrative echelon of the firm. Professional and business leaders have also been included. Most of the buildings are built for year-round living, but the summer months find them in greatest use, and a colony of "Michigamme campers" has developed.

The Cohodas property was acquired by Sam in 1929 by purchase from Howard O'Keefe, general manager for Carpenter Cook Company, who was being transferred to Milwaukee. Sam bought 25 acres and sold seven to the Marquette County Road Commission when it put in a new highway that it planned to keep open all winter. Sam offered to give the acreage to the county, but attorneys ruled it would be legally unacceptable as a gift; so Sam sold it for $25 an acre, at a time when back acreage was going for $75 to $100 an acre and lake frontage at $10 a foot.

Today that frontage, depending on availability and location, goes from $60 to $100 a foot.

All the logs were cut especially for the lodge within a radius of 16 miles, and the native stone for the huge fireplace was gathered all within five miles of the lodge site. The stairways leading to the second floor are half logs beautifully cradled in cross pieces. Oregon fir is used in the capping.

Overlooking a commanding view of the lake, it is one of the most pretentious-looking, yet simply designed, of all of Lake Michigamme's colony. The main attraction is the center hall, which is a reception hall, dining room, and meeting place, and has a myriad of other uses. A small dining room on the western end is beautifully, but not richly, appointed. The Cohodases have achieved a unique balance between "showplace" furnishings and the other extreme of "anything worn out goes to camp." The idea has been to make it comfortable and appealing, and in this, they have richly succeeded.

It was first opened, other than for the family, for a meeting of the Western Fruit Jobbers board of directors at their June 1935 meeting, when Sam was chairman of the board. Twenty-four men came in a special Pullman from Chicago, staying from Friday morning until Sunday. The car pulled onto a siding at Ishpeming. Many of the men had never seen snow, and they went home shaking their heads. Ishpeming had a freak snowstorm June 5, and a wet heavy blanket almost blocked roads for two days. "They sure as hell saw snow then," Sam chuckled. "For years after, whenever I showed up at a meeting, whether it was July or August, somebody would ask me how the snow was in Ishpeming."

Louis Cicardi, known as the Apple King of Missouri, was one of the party and a great fisherman. Asked if he cared to go fishing, he declined because it was too cold.

Bill Kavanaugh, as great a practical joker as he was a fruit jobber, asked Sam where he could get a big fish. Sam called Anderson Fisheries in Marquette, found out they had a 35-pound trout, and he asked, "Hold it, I'm sending two guys down to get it."

So the practical jokers bucked the newly plowed highway for a 75-mile round trip to pick up a fish. They managed to smuggle it into the lodge basement without being seen.

Shortly after, Kavanaugh suggested to his partner in crime they try their luck off the Peshekee River bridge and within an hour were back with a 35-pound trout to majestically wave in front of Cicardi. Louis almost sank through the floor. The trout provided a great feast for dinner. They entered into a plot never to tell, and poor Cicardi went to his death mourning the time he missed the really big one "up there by Sam's lodge."

For several years the lodge was the scene of a New Year's Eve party, with Sam and Evelyn hosting approximately 50 guests. For more years, too, the lodge was the scene of a family reunion—especially at Fourth of July, for the entire Cohodas clan. But more than that, it has become the center during the summer months of Cohodas entertainment. Business and personal friends intermix at many parties. His bank board of directors, Rotary Club, incoming and retiring command officers of nearby K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base—all of them have known the lodge, and in their minds, it has become a symbol of Cohodas hospitality.

Sam himself revels in his role as lord of the manor and has found pleasantly relaxing hours in escape from the sometimes oppressive schedules of his multiple responsibilities. It is doubtful if any industrial leader of Sam's acquaintance has ever come to the north country without going to the lodge.

If the weather is at all clement, the great room is deserted in favor of the more chummy, intimate porch, completely closed in, with a bar at one end and enough room for 20 to 30 people to gather around a snack table. To some, it might be the patio; to Sam, it's the porch.

If the party is small enough, and, frankly, favored enough, they get another treat.

For Sam Cohodas, even in his 80s, carries into the kitchen the same assurance with which he battled the giants of the industry for national recognition. He'll look you squarely in the eye and say, "I'm the best amateur cook in the business." If you can accept the words of Dizzy Dean, you have to believe Sam, for the brash pitcher-announcer once declaimed: "It ain't boasting if you been and done it."

And Sam, on hundreds of occasions, has "been and done it." His specialty is broiled lake trout, not because he is limited to this but because he lives in Lake Superior country and thinks the visitors to the area should be treated to the great taste it can offer—fresh lake trout.

Because so much of the entertaining at the lodge involved business interests, Sam sold the property to Cohodas Bros. Company several years ago. This has not affected in any way the warmth of welcome that meets visitors, and it does neatly solve the question of "what's going to happen to the lodge." The answer is "nothing," and in Cohodas hands, it will continue as a symbol of northern hospitality.