"Washington Island turned on lights for Christmas in 1945" from the December 23, 1976 Door County Advocate
By JOHN ENIGL
Washington Island turned on lights for Christmas in 1945
By JOHN ENIGL
Not long ago, I read in the Washington Island column written by Sarah Magnusson that Ray Krause had celebrated his 80th birthday. As we approach the Christmas season, I thought about this gentleman I know so well and how he brought about a dramatic change in the Christmases on the Island and changed the lives of Islanders for all time to come.
How did Ray Krause bring about these changes? By bringing the Age of Electricity to the Island.
C. H. Thordarson, the electrical wizard, produced developments in the field of electrical transformers that are used world-wide. He owned Rock Island, all but the 17 acres which were reserved for Coast Guard use, from the 1920's until his death in 1945. Thordarson always said he could send electricity through the air from the mainland to light Rock and Washington Islands. "But," he said, "nobody would be able to have a radio anywhere nearby, because of the interference!" So Thordarson, genius though he was, was forced to install a power station on Rock Island, which included three or four Kohler light plants. (They were still there in 1948 when I walked over to Rock Island on the ice.)
I should probably explain that I was principal of the Washington Island Elementary school from 1947 until 1949, and that Ray Krause had preceded me in that post just a few years before. When I reached the Island, it had already been electrified, and Ray Krause was settled into the job of running the R.E.A. ( Rural Electrification Administration) cooperative. A modest man, he underplayed the role he had in bringing the electric plant to the Island. But I got a lot of information from the November, 1947, copy of Wisconsin R.E.A. News, and the Islanders themselves.
A new pole and transformer brought lights to the Detroit Harbor grade school. Picture taken in September, 1947.
As a young man, Ray Krause went to what, in its last years, came to be known as the Door-Kewaunee County Teachers College in Algoma. He studied to become an elementary teacher and graduated in 1915 along with my uncle, Ed Bavry.
Ed Bavry says, "In those years, if you had passed eighth grade as Ray Krause and I did, you could go to 'normal school,' as we called it then, for three years and become a teacher. Your first two years consisted of a sort of re-hash of the first eight grades to make sure you knew the material you would be teaching. The third year consisted of 'pedagogy' — teaching methods. The practice teaching was done in the fourth grade at Algoma high school, next door."
Ray did some teaching on the mainland, and served at West Point in World War I. Then he came to the Island to teach, as "a stepping stone to a bigger job," as he said in an interview for the R.E.A. News back in 1947.
Once on the Island, however, he came to see that the "bigger job" was right there. I can well see how he came to feel that way, because I started my teaching career there, just before the days of television. At times I forgot there was an outside world. There were so many things going on, you had the whole world right there. It is a fascinating place. About eight miles long and five miles wide, it is just barely large enough to be a legal township. And, unlike the township I grew up in, Egg Harbor, it has to provide everything for itself.
For example, in Egg Harbor township, if there was a fire too big for our truck to handle, we could always call in Sturgeon Bay. (Egg Harbor's fire department, today, of course, can equal any other). Washington Island could never call in for help—it had to provide for itself entirely, with the aid of such people as Dr. Imig of Sheboygan. I'll never forget the night the cheese factory burned — and the new fire truck Doc Imig had arranged to deliver to the Island sat on the ferry dock at Gills Rock, waiting for a calm day so Arni Richter could take it over.
There were the stores — grocery stores such as Milton Cornell's, general stores such as George O. Mann's, the Koyen brothers', and, later, Roger Gunnerson's. What planning it must have taken to make sure they didn't run out of an essential item — and that they didn't overstock on an item of little demand! There was no hope of drawing in customers from elsewhere by having a sale. When an item became out of style, it remained on the shelf. (I saw hatpins and starched collars at Koyen's in 1950). It took a sharp businessman to make a living on the Island, and some of those I knew nearly 30 years ago are either still in business or recently retired.
Then, too, the Island must maintain its own roads. It never has been lucky enough to have a state highway running through to carry most of its traffic, as has the rest of Door County. Some county help is provided with road maintenance, but a large part of the job must be paid for the local people. Police protection, too, must be handled largely locally. There is no chance to call "Baldy" over to the Island in the middle of the night— although, on second thought, I'm sure our sheriff would find a way to get there. But think of the time lost! However, crime was, and is, almost non-existant there, so law enforcement expenses are very low.
Then, too, the Island had to pay the salaries of two ministers — and at the time I was there, there were seven or eight hundred people to support them. And their tasks were a little different from the average minister's, in a community where nearly everybody was related to everyone else, where no one locked his house or took his keys out of his car, where brotherly love was an everyday feeling, not a rarity.
As you can see, Ray Krause discovered a very self-reliant community — and one of the oldest settled regions of Door county. Besides being a teacher and community leader he became interested in bringing to the Island something he had taken for granted on the mainland, electricity.
Paul Goodman says, "I know what people did before, and I know how Ray Krause came to be with the R.E.A. He sold Kohler light plants and wired houses while he was still teaching. The Kohler light plants were the deal where, on the most expensive ones, when you turned on the light switch, the generator started. Haldor Gudmundsen had one.
"My dad had a 32 volt system," Haldor remembers. He had a Windcharger (generator turned by the wind which charged up wet-cell batteries). Ray Krause wired up the house for that.
"When the R.E.A. came through, we converted the whole deal to that. They knew it was coming through eventually, so the house was wired adequate for that. All we had to do was put in 110 volt light bulbs (and get all 110 volt appliances, of course)."
(To explain how the same wiring could be used, you should know that the lower the voltage used the heavier the wire must be because the current carried by the wire must be greater to do the same amount of work 110 volts would do. In Europe they used 220 volts, partly because thinner wire can be used — higher voltage, lower current — less copper — cheaper. But a 220 volt shock is many times more deadly than a 110 volt shock, so we don't use 220 volts here, except for major appliances. The heavy 32 wiring was more than adequate, therefore, for 110 volts.)
Just how the Island came to get the R.E.A. plant is a story in itself that I would like to tell in a later issue, after I have talked to two Islanders who know its history well, Oliver Bjarnarson and Roger Gunnerson. For now, I will just tell you that, from organizing in 1940, it took five years just to get the generating equipment. World War II had started, taking all such equipment for military use.
Then, by a stroke of luck, the Waushara Electric Cooperative decided to sell a 125 KVA alternator, powered by two direct-coupled Cummins diesels. The Washington Island Electric Cooperative was in business.
Thus it was that on Dec. 20, 1945, when the lights were going on again all over the world, that Ray Krause cranked up the Cummins diesels and turned the lights of the Island on, just in time for Christmas. For the young men and at least one young woman, Theresa Gudmunden, (now Mrs. Bob Rainsford), returning from military service in far flung lands, that came back to an island that had entered the electrical age. For the first time, their parents could go down to Mann's store and buy a set of Christmas tree lights to operate on 110 volts A.C. and leave them on to welcome their children home.
Not only did the coming of the R.E.A. plant mean that all the Island would have light, but that it could have all the appliances that operated only on 110 volts AC, denied to the Island before.
Until Washington Island's REA electric plant was put into service, even large resorts such as the West Harbor Resort had no bathrooms, only outside toilets. Note the lack of outside lights or power lines. The car is a 1941 Buick Silver Streak.
But what did the Island people do before household appliances before the R.E.A. plant came? Well, there were some appliances that could be operated on the 32 volt DC plants. My 1924 Montgomery Ward catalog lists a few. There was a Damascus sewing machine for $48.50, a Wardway vacuum cleaner for $31.85, a water supply system (jet pump) for $81.75. All radios, even consoles, operated on batteries at that time; it wasn't until the next year that some AC operated power supplies were developed. But they couldn't be adapted to the 32 volt plants because their transformers would only burn up if hooked to direct current. Thus, for many years, the Islanders were limited to battery radios, unless they owned one of the expensive continuous duty 110 volt AC plants.
There are no electric ranges at all listed in the 1924 Ward's catalog, and no electric washing machines, although other companies, notably Maytag, produced them. The page listing refrigerators is missing but I don't suppose a 32 volt refrigerator would have made much sense if the plant ran only part-time. If one had the batteries, then they would have been practical. (A 32 volt electric range would have drained more wattage than the plant could produce.) Thus, the Islanders were limited to a very few electrical appliances before R.E.A. came along.
In my 1938-1939 Sears catalog, for $4 extra, you could buy a washing machine that ran on 32 volts instead of 110 volts. (Bob Schmidt of Sears might be surprised to hear that they were called "Water Witch" then, not "Kenmore," as they are today. I believe we have one of the first Kenmore's, a 1940 model, stored away in the barn somewhere.) Also, Sears had 32 volt refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and radios — but no ranges, toasters, heaters, or anything that took a lot of current — 32 volt plants simply couldn't supply enough of it.
One exception to what I have just said was brought to my attention by Paul Goodman. "I remember I had returned from the service and bought my mother a brand- new 32 volt iron. But of course the darn thing wouldn't work after the R.E.A. current was hooked up!"
There were many electrical Christmas presents in the stockings that year, and Ray Krause and the organizers of me Cooperative were responsible. There is more to the story behind its founding, and more to tell about the changes it brought that I hope to tell you in a later story. But for this time it is enough to say that Christmases were never better on the Island then in 1945.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
Articles by John Enigl
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/john-enigl
Christmas-related articles
Very nice story from the days when people were self reliant.