NEIGHBORS: All In The Family

By Sheila Peterson Helmberger

Members of the Ganley family have carried on their vacation tradition for seventy years.

Fifty-one weeks of the year, the Ganley family is like every other family.

Scattered about the country, they are busy with careers, hobbies, homes, and children. Some have already retired, but others are athletic coaches, business owners, and police officers. Like most families, they see each other at graduations, holidays, or weddings.

But it’s what they’ve done faithfully the first week of August for seventy years that sets the Ganleys apart.

In the 1930s, Frank and Mary Mechenich, a young couple from south Minneapolis, packed up their four children, Loretta, Ray, Caroline, and Evelyn, and headed north in search of a family vacation with fun in the sun and time on the water. They planned to find a nice resort and enjoy a week away from the city. Back then, even vacations were a little more work, and cabins often lacked indoor bathrooms and running water. Nevertheless, the six enjoyed the getaway so much they made a repeat trip the next year. And the next. And the next.

Today, members of the family continue that traditional annual trek north. The faithful have included Frank and Mary’s daughter, Evelyn, her husband, Bernard (Bunny) Ganley, and, one by one, their six children. Today Evelyn and Bernard’s children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren know where they’ll be, what they’ll be doing, and who they’ll be with the first week of August.

They’ll be up north.
On vacation.
Together.

Though early vacations for the family were spent on Cedar, Steamboat, Whitefish, Winnibigoshish, Ten Mile, and Shamineau lakes, this year they will return for the twenty-seventh time to Sandy Beach Resort on Gull Lake, north of Brainerd. Each year when they check out of their cabins, they reserve them for the next summer.

Now the group includes Bunny and Evelyn’s sons and daughters-in-law, Kevin and Arlene, Denny and Barb, Mick and Kate, and Jerry and Elizabeth Ganley; and daughters and sons-in-law, Colleen and Dave Nordin, and Terry and Tom Nieszner.

If you’re nearby when this group is together you want to be a part of it—just to share in the laughter, the good-natured ribbing, and the genuine love for one another.

Campfires figure prominently in their recollections. When they gathered last summer in a cabin to speak about their unusual August gatherings, they finished one another’s stories. When someone couldn’t recall the year of a specific event, another family member put it in historical context: “I know, that was the year Nixon was impeached!”

A favorite yarn stars Grandpa Bunny. His children recalled that as their own kids grew old enough to make their initial runs on waterskis, Grandpa Bunny performed play-by-play commentary from shore. He announced the child’s name, age, and where they were from—on a bullhorn.

Boxes of photos, albums, and photo calendars capture the years. Some date all the way back to those early vacations in the 1930s.

While family reunions are not typically the most popular gatherings for younger family members, that’s not true with the Ganley vacations. Grandchildren come from as far away as Missouri and New Mexico. Mick and Kate’s son, Colin, scheduled his trip home from Oxford College in England around the infamous first week in August. Sometimes a family member might need to join the group mid-week or go home a day or two early for other commitments, but Elizabeth Harris, Jerry’s wife, said it’s rare for a member to miss the week entirely. Even world events have not been able to shake the yearly gatherings. Three of the four brothers, Dennis, Mick, and Jerry, were in the Army and did tours of duty in Vietnam. While they were gone, the rest of the group still gathered—maybe needing the time with one another even more.

They say one thing has changed significantly about their vacations. While today they spend time sailing or playing on water toys and riding on personal watercraft, the older members recall when water entertainment was much different. Rowboats were the only floatables.

“And we weren’t that good at those,” someone laughs.

Can a week together be too much of a good thing?

“Sometimes you want to be alone,” says Colleen. “Then you just go to your own cabin for awhile.”

“Yeah, but chances are someone will follow you,” another voice chirps.

They informally gather most mornings for pancakes in Denny and Barb’s cabin, and another cabin houses most of the board games and card games. Those infamous campfires top off lazy vacation days, and in between, there are boat rides and water sports, a round or two of golf, and some shopping. Like most area vacationers, younger kids like to hit the Totem Pole in Nisswa, and nobody turns down a trip to the water slide with a favorite uncle.

The kids, of course, wait for night games. “It’s fun from the time you wake up in the morning until you go to bed,” says eighteen-year-old Meghan.

The family may spread far and wide the rest of the year, but August is coming. And although they lost both Bunny and Evelyn in recent years, nobody spoke about ending the get-togethers at the lake.

When the Ganleys go on a family vacation—the emphasis is on family.