June 11, 2003
Award honors visionary work of Peg Jonkhoff
Resident earns Historian of the Year title for GT Heritage Center project
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Peg Jonkhoff has vision, the capacity to see finished projects before they are even an idea in anyone else's head.
In 1997, looking at the former Traverse City Library, as plans were being formulated to build a new, larger facility, Jonkhoff saw the building as a thriving community center. As meetings began to decide the building's fate, Jonkhoff flashed on a sweeping idea that merged history, possibility and education under one roof. The concept of the Grand Traverse Heritage Center was born.
Although the elegant Carnegie library building, which was built in 1904, had outlived its usefulness as a library for the growing community, Jonkhoff believed it had a future. Centrally located on prime real estate on Sixth Street, she knew it could serve young and old, residents and tourists, schools and families for years to come.
Jonkhoff and volunteers began raising funds, organizing workers and diving into the restoration project. More than a million dollars and 33,000 volunteer hours later, the center opened a year ago as home to six area historical organizations: the Maritime Heritage Alliance, Friends of the Con Foster Museum, Grand Traverse Pioneer & Historical Society, Traverse Area Rock and Mineral Club, Railroad Historical Society of Northwest Michigan and the Women's History Project.
"I had that ability to visualize it completed and restored," recalled Jonkhoff. "I could see galleries, the frieze recreated, the gardens planted and the medallions restored."
"This is the perfect place to showcase our heritage and bring all these groups together," she noted. "We are continuing the legacy of Hannah and Carnegie."
The Jonkhoffs also own the Perry Hannah vacation home across the street. This has been her family's business - the Reynolds-Jonkhoff Funeral Home - since 1976. Because of this connection to the founders of Traverse City, Jonkhoff is passionate about preserving the city's history for the future.
"That [the Heritage Center site] was one of his last gifts of land so I feel a kind of responsibility," said Jonkhoff, who takes her role as a steward of the former Hannah home seriously. "I just love historical architecture, I am passionate about it. We just can't create this type of building today, they are just jewels."
Honoring her commitment to preserving the past for future generations, the Grand Traverse Pioneer & Historical Society named Peg Jonkhoff Historian of the Year. Society president Steve Harold noted that until Jonkhoff threw herself into the project, the idea of an expanded Con Foster Museum and some kind of heritage center had been on the back burner for 25 years.
"It all came together in the Grand Traverse Heritage Center," said Steve Harold, president of the Grand Traverse Pioneer & Historical Society. "So it is exciting to have such an outstanding building and to have it in such good condition and of course, Peg is largely responsible for it."
"Because of that, we and the community owe a debt of appreciation to her," he noted.
Jonkhoff is honored to receive the award but also points to the huge community effort that helped create the Heritage Center.
"Frank Senger and I started this 'doable' project," said Jonkhoff, a native of the area who grew up in the Glen Lake area. "It is done, this is one of those projects that is done and we are enjoying now. That's my biggest reward, to see the building saved and being enjoyed by so many."
"I'm predicting another century of use," she noted.