Three generations on the Mitiwanga shore

The Mitiwanga houses were bought by my parents, Janet and Dezso, in the 1980s.

Mom was a Vermilion graduate, the daughter of a millwright and an accountant. She earned a computer science degree in the mid-'60s and a real estate license in the '80s. Dad was a union carpenter who ran his own business before taking a job at Ford, and he never stopped being a member of the Carpenters' union.

Together they bought a few investment properties before landing in Mitiwanga. At Mom's suggestion, they started renting the houses to vacationers. Then Mom was diagnosed with cancer, and she passed five years later. Without his first mate, Dad couldn't keep up with the vacation guests, so he switched to full-time tenants.

Decades later, Dad was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). I had worked alongside him before, but now I became his caretaker, and the caretaker of some tired houses with full-time tenants in them.

Dad's great fear was that he'd lose everything he had built to the medical system. I didn't know if I could prevent that, but I was going to give it everything I had. I used my IT and networking background to set up the technology that kept him safely at home, and I learned home maintenance fast.

Plenty of people offered support, but the work was on my shoulders. Kristy worked beside me as a teammate, the way Mom and Dad had, handling logistics so I could focus on what needed focus. When one house turned into a maintenance nightmare, we remodeled it into what became the Hibiscus House, and we took over Dad's old VRBO listing. By then he had slipped too far to be much of a host, so we had ground to make up. To our surprise, we loved doing it.

In December 2022, Dad's journey ended. We had done it. Everything he built was saved. And there was still so much work to do.

Kristy and I opened the Hibiscus House to guests in 2020 and found we had a natural talent for hosting. The other spaces weren't so easily fixed.

Next came the Shipwreck House. The building inspector gave it the name when he told us many houses in the area were built from old hardwood salvaged from ships that wrecked on the shallows of Lake Erie's Western Basin. Once we pulled back the walls and floors, it was in desperate shape. With a lot of perseverance (and some barking at contractors) we got it where we wanted it. Today it holds the Crew Quarters and the Captain's Quarters.

Every renovation taught us something new and strengthened our resolve to create spaces where families can relax, reconnect and make memories.

I love sailing, and someday I want to cross the pond on my own boat. When I took over for Dad, I had a 30-foot Pearson, a good old boat named the Pequod. Kristy and I hosted Monday Night Madness every week: friends met us at the marina for a potluck dinner, then we sailed out to watch the sun go down.

I wanted a bigger boat anyway, so I sold the Pequod with a promise: if we got Dad through this, I'd have saved enough for that dream boat. Spoiler alert: I still don't have it, and I have a hard time getting out on any of my little boats.

In the end, I decided to keep the houses, carry on what Dad started, and turn it into a business. And with a business, I can justify a bigger boat to take guests out for a sunset sail. So far it's a dream, but it's a possible dream.

No cleaning fee, no gimmicks, homes stocked so you can fly in with just a suitcase, and a crew mindset instead of a customer-service counter. We wrote it all down in one place.