Born on Plum Island
From the August 7, 2014 Washington Island Observer, Written by Janet Berggren
The U.S. Coast Guard moved its station from Plum Island to Washington Island in 1991, but the name Coast Guard Station Plum Island became history in 1993, when the new station at Detroit Harbor was named Coast Guard Station Washington Island.
Twenty years ago, in June 1994, Washington Island's Jackson Harbor Maritime Museum hosted a two-day reunion party for all former Plum Island Coast Guard personnel and their families. I cam across this charming photo in our Plum Island file while assisting visiting archeologists who have been researching and digging at Plum Island this summer. Coast Guardsman Wallace Landin and his wife, Sylvia (Koyen), were the parents of the four children in the photo and lived on Plum Island where Wallace was stationed from 1929 to 1935.
Bill Olson quotes Sylvia Landin extensively in his June 7, 1994 Advocate article. Many of you knew Sylvia, who passed away in 2009, just a few weeks short of her 101st birthday. From Bill's article:
"From early in this century until sometime in the 1930s the Coast guards serving as 'Guardians of Death's Door' often moved their families to this 266-acre island. Guardsmen built small houses near the station that were usually sold to their replacements when they were transferred. The houses were later towed across the ice to their new location.
"Sylvia Landin, who lives on Washington Island, is one of those hardy women who raised a family on Plum. She married Wallace Landin in November 1928 and they bought their home on Plum in January 1929 for $325.
"Sylvia described her moving day: 'It was a cold, cold windy day. I walked all the way from Washington Harbor (on the north side of Washington Island) to Plum Island that day. The ice was cracking up as we walked across we heard boom, boom, boom. We got to shore and went over to our new house. Fifteen minutes later we looked out and the ice was all gone.
"At the time Sylvia and Wallace moved to Plum there were seven families at the Coast Guard Station and three at the lighthouse. Sylvia acknowledges that the winters were pretty tough. Although the station had electricity, none of the homes had it. They heated with wood or coal and used kerosene lanterns for light. In the seven years they lived on Plum, Sylvia had four children, including one set of twins."
If you would like to hear more from Sylvia Landin's life, the Archives has a copy of Sylvia's autobography, "This is Me: The Story of My Life," which she published at age 79. It's quite a tale!
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