| History by Dale R. Winke |
|---|
In the mid-1930's, a young man, with his wife and
two daughters, moved from Defiance, Ohio, to Catawba Island, on
the south shore of Lake Erie. With the country in the depths
of the depression, one went to where there was work. While employment
was found in some of the local factories, interest turned to the
land and agriculture. A sizable piece of land was found, with
a farmhouse, barn, and orchard in place. His intentions were rather
simple; to set up a farm, grow peaches, and raise his family it
the quiet of the country. The man was Richard H. Hees, and his
younger daughter, Norma Jean, was my mother.
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Richard L. Winke, my father, graduated Port Clinton
High School with the "Class of '49". He spent the first
year out of school working as a gas station attendant, a general
laborer at Matthews Boat Company, and as a plumber-steam fitter
at the Erie Army Depot (EAD). October 1949, Mom and Dad met for
the first time, on the corner of Perry and Madison Streets in
Port Clinton. While maybe not love at first sight, she still
let him take her to the Port Clinton vs. Oak Harbor football game
that night. 
At that point in time, the boat storage, much less
anything else relating to boats, was far from everyone's thoughts.
War was raging in Korea, and in 1951, dad was called to the service
of the U.S. Army. Basic training, a trip across the U.S. and
then the Pacific, a tour of duty on the front lines in Korea,
a stay in an Army hospital in Japan, a desk job behind the lines
back in Korea, a Silver Star and a Purple Heart, and it was back
home again. While dad resumed his position at EAD, mother completed
high school, graduating in the early summer of 1954.
In June of 1954, they were married at Immaculate
Conception Church in Port Clinton. Grandpa Hees talked dad into
growing peaches out on Catawba, so some neighboring land was purchased
from a local Judge, on which a small one bedroom cottage was built.
Later, a second bedroom was made out of the garage, and three
of us four children would live there for a time with Mom and Dad.
That building still stands in between the "front house",
which we moved into in 1968, and Building #2, which was built
in 1963, and is more famous as the home of the "Elks Stag-er-oo",
than as our second storage building. It appeared that "Winke's
Orchard" was the direction things were headed. My older
brother Michael was born in May of 1958. Older sister Teresa
followed in March of 1960. Finally, the spring and summer of
1961 provided the necessity for invention that lead the way to
the beginnings of the storage.