Virginia Willsey spent summers for years running the Silver Lake Inn on West Silver Lake Road.
Aided by her husband, Will, and sisters, Helen and Rose, she fed, entertained and cleaned for families who visited the waterfront resort generation after generation. The eight cottages her in-laws built in 1949 and the 10-room inn was a beacon for fun all summer, with fishing, boating, games and even a pool room tucked at the ground level of the rambling main structure.
After Labor Day, when summer faded, she and her sisters returned to their jobs in Battle Creek, where Virginia was a speech therapist and her sisters worked in teaching and social work.
"I enjoyed the people the most," said Virginia. "I think Silver Lake was probably known as a great fishing lake and fishermen went out at midnight and we'd pack a thermos of coffee for them."
"We'd fix fresh fish for meals," she added.
Virginia's husband, Will, was an architect who studied with Frank Lloyd Wright for three years during the 1940s. As a young married couple, the Willseys lived at Wright's residences in Wisconsin and Arizona -- Taliesin and Taliesin West - where Virginia cooked meals for Wright and his acolytes. Will absorbed Wright's distinctive genius and flair, the characteristics of which he embedded in inn's remodeling to apartments after it closed in the late 1980s.
Will's parents, Claude and Edith had purchased the property in 1926 for $5,000 and it stayed in the family for the next 80 years. The younger couple took over the inn's management every summer in 1953 after Edith died. They lived in a small apartment in the lower levels every summer with separate quarters for Virginia's sisters.
Virginia and her Helen also ran the Hoot Owl Gift Shop, which was later renamed the Brass Owl Gift Shop, from the late 1960s until the 1990s. Situated underneath the main building, this shop grew to include an art gallery and the inn had artists in residence during many summers.
After retiring, closing the inn and remodeling it, the Willseys traveled extensively. Will died two years ago after 64 years of marriage and Virginia now lives in a nearby assisted living facility. The extensive and eclectic contents of the inn will be available at an estate sale this weekend, including historic, gift, exotic and household items large and small.
"The last time people were here was 1990," said Bob Schmidt, the Willsey's neighbor of four years who with his wife, Amy, became close friends with the elderly couple. "They sold the four lots where the cottages were in 1992 and there are now houses there."
The Silver Lake Inn began life as the Campbell Stagecoach Inn in 1873 when Henry Campbell built the stopover along an old stagecoach line. New owners around the turn of the 20th Century renamed it the Silver Lake Inn and the second story was converted to a large dance floor that drew crowds every Saturday night. The original wooden flooring is still in the apartment today.
Author and local historian Larry Wakefield captures some of the Inn's stories in his book "Garfield Township: An Illustrated History." These stories predating the Willsey era include rumors that the inn was a local bordello, also that it was busted three times during the Prohibition era and that gangster Al Capone stayed there for a week.
A more respectable memory is that Edith Willsey had a tennis court built on the property in 1930, the first cement tennis court in the county. Summer visitors had another choice for recreation and members of the Traverse City Senior High tennis team practiced there as well.
The Estate Sale will be held at the former Silver Lake Inn at10 North West Silver Lake Road this Friday, Saturday and Sunday.