AKA
07-18-2021, 02:28 AM
From the St. Cloud Daily Times
Saturday, July 25, 1981
Page 4A
An afternoon with Beaver Cleaver’s dad
Jimmy Olsen’s Planet
Times Editorial Page Editor
GRAND RAPIDS — There’s a large crescent-shaped island out in the southern bay of Wabana Lake — Beaumont’s Island. Pines and poplar crowd the water.
The bow of my rented boat scraped a tiny lip of sand on an inlet toward the island’s northern side. I stepped ashore without getting my feet wet and slung the anchor rope around a convenient pine. Nailed to another tree nearby was a sign — “No Trespassing.”
“All he can do is tell you to get off,” my wife had said while I loaded my camera equipment and briefcase into the boat before crossing the one-half mile of water to the island.
Maybe, I thought. But telling me to “get off” wasn’t all he could do. He might just be a real crack shot with a squirrel gun, for example. Not everyone enjoys a friendly chat with members of the press, after all.
Wabana Lake, named after Chief Wabonegwewis of the Chippewa nation, only has three resorts. John Uradnik owns one of them and it was he who first told me of Beaumont’s Island.
“That’s an island out there,” he pointed across the water. “It doesn’t look much like an island from here, because it’s kind of long and narrow and blends with the opposite shoreline. But that’s Beaumont’s Island, and Hugh Beaumont still lives there. He’s on it right now.”
Where did I know that name, Hugh Beaumont? It was like hearing a few chords from a familiar old tune and not being able to place it. But John read the consternation on my face.
“Hugh Beaumont was the father on Leave It to Beaver,” he volunteered.
As I walked past the deserted caretaker’s cottage close to the inlet, I felt like a trespasser and silently wished John had never mentioned Beaumont’s Island. It was quiet. Too quiet, as they say in the movies. Breezes from the lake caught in the pines and turned the poplar leaves into rustling wind chimes, yet it was still. The stillness a house has when no one is at home.
I found the path from the cottage to the main house higher up. It was then that I thought of turning back. Beaumont hasn’t been in film since I was in high school — nearly 20 years ago — and he suffered a crippling stroke which cut short his career. A man has a right to find an island somewhere and to be left alone.
But I grew up with Leave It to Beaver and so did millions of other now middle-aged Americans. Hugh Beaumont (Ward Cleaver) was the patient father we all wished for and I had forgotten his name. It was time to renew the acquaintance, so I climbed the hill to his house.
My first knock rattled the screen door, clattering through the trees. But no answer from within. A second knock, and a third.
“Com’ on in,” said a familiar voice.
He didn’t seem surprised to see me, but smiled and gripped my hand, brushing aside my apologies for intruding.
“Sit down. Would you like an ashtray?”
We talked quite easily together. About the day and the four-pound northern I’d caught in the morning. And finally, about him.
I tried to avoid phrases like “in those days” out of courtesy and because Beaumont, like any actor, was too clever to tell his age. He hasn’t worked since the Beaver series ended in the early 1960s and he was crippled, but I still didn’t want to put everything in the past tense.
Beaver reruns still play across the country and I was surprised when Beaumont said the series only ran six seasons originally. “Of course, we did 39 shows per season,” he said. “Now they do 13.”
There was no television in Beaumont’s home and he made it quite clear he didn’t want one. “American television is nowhere,” he said later. But that’s not a terminal affliction, he points out. “I predict we will go back to family-type shows. It goes in cycles. Bit by bit by bit it went down” stairstepping the air with his left hand, “and bit by bit by bit it will go up.”
Beaumont directed many of the Beaver shows, and besides acting in them, found time to work toward becoming a Methodist minister. And although he was never ordained, he spent years in the pulpit and has fashioned a personal faith. Beaumont’s religion is a bit like Beaumont’s Island — isolated but friendly. “I spend a lot of time thinking about God,” he said, “and I’m asking the same questions I asked 30 years ago, and I don’t get any answers.”
Now he believes the only way it all fits together is with reincarnation. And he’s had some dreams about it.
But Hugh Beaumont is a hard man to put together. A model father on television, a spare-time preacher, an island dweller, a director and, I learned later, a Trekkie. Star Trek, not Father Knows Best, was his favorite TV show.
And when our conversation wandered to politics, he confided he once had a close call with a candidacy for the State Senate in California. But he laughs about it now and says he was too smart to actually run for office.
What about his old actor friend, Ronald Reagan? “He’s a marvelous person,” Beaumont said without hesitation. “He was always good at helping the little guys — the bit players, extras and so on.” Those were the days when Reagan was president of the Screen Actors Guild, and Beaumont hopes now that as President of the United States he won’t forget the “little guy.”
“It’s too much big business now,” Beaumont worries.
After the stroke, which left him nearly paralyzed on his right side and decades away from active involvement in Hollywood, Beaumont might appear a good candidate for an island. He’s been there each summer for 30 or 40 years — he’s not quite sure — but it hasn’t dulled his wit or kept him from looking to the future.
“I may do a picture,” he said. “A reunion of the Beaver family with the original cast.” CBS is looking at the possibility of a made-for-TV movie which could be in the works as early as this fall. And there’s no doubt in my mind it would be a hit.
But the window shadows were lengthening on Beaumont’s Island and I knew it was time to go. Two hours had slipped by and we had already covered so many topics I’d never be able to pick just a few to write about. But there was one more question.
“What goes through your mind way out here?” I asked.
“This place comes to mind,” he said, looking slowly around the room, taking in the worn plank floor, large stone fireplace and beamed ceilings. “It has feeling, I think.” Then he added after a pause, “I re-did it, and it’s good … it’s home.”
On my way down the hill, I stopped to take a picture of the green house half hidden by the forest. I knew something of the man who lived there and I’d been welcomed, but when I got back to my boat, tied near the “No Trespassing” sign, I still couldn’t shake the feeling of isolation.
“This may be my last year on the island,” Beaumont had said. He couldn’t get around outside anymore without his “stick,” and it was becoming too difficult to make it up the hill from the lake.
All of a sudden that struck me as odd — the island without him. It would be just another chunk of land sticking out of the water, like hundreds of others common to lakes in northern Minnesota. Wabana would lose some of its mystery and John Uradnik couldn’t point to it with the same pride.
But as long as I think of that island in Wabana Lake, it will be Beaumont’s Island.
Saturday, July 25, 1981
Page 4A
An afternoon with Beaver Cleaver’s dad
Jimmy Olsen’s Planet
Times Editorial Page Editor
GRAND RAPIDS — There’s a large crescent-shaped island out in the southern bay of Wabana Lake — Beaumont’s Island. Pines and poplar crowd the water.
The bow of my rented boat scraped a tiny lip of sand on an inlet toward the island’s northern side. I stepped ashore without getting my feet wet and slung the anchor rope around a convenient pine. Nailed to another tree nearby was a sign — “No Trespassing.”
“All he can do is tell you to get off,” my wife had said while I loaded my camera equipment and briefcase into the boat before crossing the one-half mile of water to the island.
Maybe, I thought. But telling me to “get off” wasn’t all he could do. He might just be a real crack shot with a squirrel gun, for example. Not everyone enjoys a friendly chat with members of the press, after all.
Wabana Lake, named after Chief Wabonegwewis of the Chippewa nation, only has three resorts. John Uradnik owns one of them and it was he who first told me of Beaumont’s Island.
“That’s an island out there,” he pointed across the water. “It doesn’t look much like an island from here, because it’s kind of long and narrow and blends with the opposite shoreline. But that’s Beaumont’s Island, and Hugh Beaumont still lives there. He’s on it right now.”
Where did I know that name, Hugh Beaumont? It was like hearing a few chords from a familiar old tune and not being able to place it. But John read the consternation on my face.
“Hugh Beaumont was the father on Leave It to Beaver,” he volunteered.
As I walked past the deserted caretaker’s cottage close to the inlet, I felt like a trespasser and silently wished John had never mentioned Beaumont’s Island. It was quiet. Too quiet, as they say in the movies. Breezes from the lake caught in the pines and turned the poplar leaves into rustling wind chimes, yet it was still. The stillness a house has when no one is at home.
I found the path from the cottage to the main house higher up. It was then that I thought of turning back. Beaumont hasn’t been in film since I was in high school — nearly 20 years ago — and he suffered a crippling stroke which cut short his career. A man has a right to find an island somewhere and to be left alone.
But I grew up with Leave It to Beaver and so did millions of other now middle-aged Americans. Hugh Beaumont (Ward Cleaver) was the patient father we all wished for and I had forgotten his name. It was time to renew the acquaintance, so I climbed the hill to his house.
My first knock rattled the screen door, clattering through the trees. But no answer from within. A second knock, and a third.
“Com’ on in,” said a familiar voice.
He didn’t seem surprised to see me, but smiled and gripped my hand, brushing aside my apologies for intruding.
“Sit down. Would you like an ashtray?”
We talked quite easily together. About the day and the four-pound northern I’d caught in the morning. And finally, about him.
I tried to avoid phrases like “in those days” out of courtesy and because Beaumont, like any actor, was too clever to tell his age. He hasn’t worked since the Beaver series ended in the early 1960s and he was crippled, but I still didn’t want to put everything in the past tense.
Beaver reruns still play across the country and I was surprised when Beaumont said the series only ran six seasons originally. “Of course, we did 39 shows per season,” he said. “Now they do 13.”
There was no television in Beaumont’s home and he made it quite clear he didn’t want one. “American television is nowhere,” he said later. But that’s not a terminal affliction, he points out. “I predict we will go back to family-type shows. It goes in cycles. Bit by bit by bit it went down” stairstepping the air with his left hand, “and bit by bit by bit it will go up.”
Beaumont directed many of the Beaver shows, and besides acting in them, found time to work toward becoming a Methodist minister. And although he was never ordained, he spent years in the pulpit and has fashioned a personal faith. Beaumont’s religion is a bit like Beaumont’s Island — isolated but friendly. “I spend a lot of time thinking about God,” he said, “and I’m asking the same questions I asked 30 years ago, and I don’t get any answers.”
Now he believes the only way it all fits together is with reincarnation. And he’s had some dreams about it.
But Hugh Beaumont is a hard man to put together. A model father on television, a spare-time preacher, an island dweller, a director and, I learned later, a Trekkie. Star Trek, not Father Knows Best, was his favorite TV show.
And when our conversation wandered to politics, he confided he once had a close call with a candidacy for the State Senate in California. But he laughs about it now and says he was too smart to actually run for office.
What about his old actor friend, Ronald Reagan? “He’s a marvelous person,” Beaumont said without hesitation. “He was always good at helping the little guys — the bit players, extras and so on.” Those were the days when Reagan was president of the Screen Actors Guild, and Beaumont hopes now that as President of the United States he won’t forget the “little guy.”
“It’s too much big business now,” Beaumont worries.
After the stroke, which left him nearly paralyzed on his right side and decades away from active involvement in Hollywood, Beaumont might appear a good candidate for an island. He’s been there each summer for 30 or 40 years — he’s not quite sure — but it hasn’t dulled his wit or kept him from looking to the future.
“I may do a picture,” he said. “A reunion of the Beaver family with the original cast.” CBS is looking at the possibility of a made-for-TV movie which could be in the works as early as this fall. And there’s no doubt in my mind it would be a hit.
But the window shadows were lengthening on Beaumont’s Island and I knew it was time to go. Two hours had slipped by and we had already covered so many topics I’d never be able to pick just a few to write about. But there was one more question.
“What goes through your mind way out here?” I asked.
“This place comes to mind,” he said, looking slowly around the room, taking in the worn plank floor, large stone fireplace and beamed ceilings. “It has feeling, I think.” Then he added after a pause, “I re-did it, and it’s good … it’s home.”
On my way down the hill, I stopped to take a picture of the green house half hidden by the forest. I knew something of the man who lived there and I’d been welcomed, but when I got back to my boat, tied near the “No Trespassing” sign, I still couldn’t shake the feeling of isolation.
“This may be my last year on the island,” Beaumont had said. He couldn’t get around outside anymore without his “stick,” and it was becoming too difficult to make it up the hill from the lake.
All of a sudden that struck me as odd — the island without him. It would be just another chunk of land sticking out of the water, like hundreds of others common to lakes in northern Minnesota. Wabana would lose some of its mystery and John Uradnik couldn’t point to it with the same pride.
But as long as I think of that island in Wabana Lake, it will be Beaumont’s Island.