Build, then paddle your own canoe [Archive] - The Michigan Sportsman Forums

Hamilton Reef

10-06-2006, 10:54 AM

Comeback canoe

http://www.mlive.com/outdoors/fljournal/index.ssf?/base/sports-1/116005806984640.xml&coll=5

THE FLINT JOURNAL FIRST EDITION Thursday, October 05, 2006
By Elizabeth Shaw eshaw@flintjournal.com • 810.766.6311

LAPEER COUNTY - A young boy still lives in every old man's heart.

And in Emory Clark's heart, that boy is still paddling his canoe.

It's been 54 years since the retired Lapeer attorney's parents gifted their son with a 1952 Old Town canoe for his 14th birthday.

Last week, he and wife Christina were again paddling it down the south branch of the Flint River, thanks to a year-long restoration effort by Dave and Roxanne Wermuth, a Lapeer Township couple with a passion for building and restoring wood canoes.

After years of hard use and a lifetime of memories, the ancient, leaky craft had ended up in the rafters of an old barn on Clark's Metamora Township farm.

Clark doubted the boat was worth restoring - but he also knew he couldn't bear to throw it out.

"It leaked, but it was OK. I just have to have a canoe, it's part of my psyche," said Clark. "I used it less and less on the river, but I need to be able to know I can (use it) anytime."

It might have hung there forever if Clark hadn't met Dave Wermuth, a social worker who often crossed the attorney's path at the Lapeer County Courthouse. The pair struck up a friendship at a local gym and Wermuth offered to take a crack at fixing the battered relic.

"Emory brought it over in a pickup truck, and what a sight that was," said Roxanne Wermuth, laughing. "We'd never seen anything in such bad shape before. It was ready for the burn barrel."

But the little boat's story was one the sentimental couple couldn't resist.

It wasn't Clark's first boat - his grandmother had already given him a wooden rowboat that he loved. But the rowboat was exactly the wrong boat for the river that ran near the family farm - too big and unwieldy for the narrow, twisting water filled with deadfall and rocks.

"When this thing came along, it freed me," said Clark.

The little 13-footer became Clark's constant companion on frequent floats from Metamora to Lapeer.

"All summer long I spent my days down there on the river, catching frogs and looking for turtles and snakes, seeing wonderful stuff," he said. "It was a marvelous way to grow up."

That early love for the water served Clark well. He went on to become a champion rower on the Vesper Boat Club team in Philadelphia. Later, he was a young Marine stationed on board a ship in the Philippines.

At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Clark's eight-man rowing team won the gold medal - a feat that's since been accomplished by only one other USA team, in 2004 in Athens, Greece.

Clark later returned to the Lapeer area to open a legal practice and raise a family.

The old canoe was still there, waiting for him.

"Oh, we did terrible things to that canoe over the years, just beat the (heck) out of it - my wife, my daughter, the grandkids too," Clark said, chuckling. "Lots of bad things can happen on a river. We dumped it a lot of times."

Once, he nearly decapitated Christina when high spring waters made the bridges nearly impassable. Moving too fast to stop, they lay down flat and made it under the Sutton Road bridge with barely an inch to spare - then tipped over a quarter-mile farther downstream.

"She was already mad at me and when we went over, the first thing I said was 'grab the paddle,' not 'honey, are you all right?' So I was still in trouble," he said, laughing.

In later years, his daughter paddled while Clark fished for pike. Then his grandchildren took over the craft for river adventures of their own.

"This was always a Flint River canoe," he said.

For years Roxanne had helped Dave in the barn behind their house, using tools passed down by their grandparents and hardwood for paddles harvested from trees on the family farm. But Clark's canoe was her first solo project.

"The wood was so rotten I could literally just touch it and pull it apart. So many times I said to Dave, 'I don't know if we can make it come back, it's so far gone.' But I couldn't give up. It was Emory's baby, but it became my baby."

Less than a dozen of the original ribs were intact, and nearly all the planking was beyond salvage. Painstakingly, they replaced each broken rib and plank, one slow piece at a time, to avoid losing the boat's shape. Thousands of brass tacks were set and removed and set again.

"So little of the original was left. But the soul of the canoe is still there. Without the old one, we couldn't have made the new one," she said.

Then followed months of sanding and resanding, with three coats of varnish before the new canvas was stretched onto the frame.

Everything was restored to the original - from the special dark green marine paint to the Old Town decks, seats and stems. The company even restamped the new stem bands with the original serial numbers.

There were times it was uncertain whether they'd finish the task. Twice during the process, Roxanne, who has multiple sclerosis, was hospitalized, putting her in a coma in May. It's only in the last month that she's been able to return fully to the barn.

But finally, after five coats of paint, they placed the new decals - the same designs that had graced the hull 54 years before.

"Emory wanted us to take the maiden voyage in it. But the night before we delivered it, I didn't feel good. I told Dave I didn't think I could do that, put my dirty feet in it," she said. "It was so emotional handing it over. I had tears running down my face."

Even the Clarks thought the restored boat too valuable to use. But Dave insisted.

"It's a tool, that's its purpose. If it can't complete that purpose, why restore it to begin with? It's not there just to look at," said Dave. "This is a tool that works well and does its job well, maybe better than most."

First the Wermuths paddled downstream, then the Clarks paddled back.

"It paddles so beautifully, turns on a dime, so quiet and stable. It's everything we hoped it would turn out to be," said Roxanne. "Now I understand why Dave said it's meant to be used. And if it gets a scratch or hole, we can fix it. It's meant to be fixed."

It will never leave the family, said Clark. And many years from now, when some future restorer once again strips away the aging canvas, they'll find Dave and Roxanne's names signed and dated in the wood.

"For 11 months I'd touched it, bent the wood, sanded, molded it, shaped it," said Roxanne. "It's a part of me and I'm a part of it. I know it was never ours. But it became a part of us."