All are drawn by its magnetic charm. Lake Avenue: White Bear Lake’s favorite walking path

It’s said that the best writers write about topics they know well. If that is so, and I believe it is, I was born to write about Lake Avenue.

In 1956, my parents were newlyweds when they found out they were expecting me; they lived in a duplex less than a block off Lake Ave. – only two houses down from where I live right now. Since children were not allowed in the duplex, the landlord asked what my parents were going to do about the baby? My Dad responded: “We plan to keep it.”

They moved before I was born to 51 Lake Avenue, which is now 4621 Lake Ave. on the corner of Clark and Lake, which was the home of my grandparents Ruth and Harvey Chapman. Since I was the first grandchild, they were excited to help my parents out with a place to live.

I believe I lived there until I was about 12 months old, and then my parents found a house on 10th St and Johnson Ave. But, of course, I visited my grandparents at 51 Lake often. Sunday dinners were part of my grandparents’ tradition, and they included my grandmother’s uncle Fred Bloom, who was mayor of White Bear Lake in the 1940s.

“Uncle Fred”, as he was called by my grandmother, mom and I, renovated houses with my grandmother. In a time when women rarely worked, they had a business that provided them with work they loved, companionship, as well as some needed income. They were flippers before flipping became fashionable and renovated at least a dozen homes in the area, including the shotgun house where the high-end restaurant Acqua currently operates.

When my mom and her sister Mary Lynn left home, my grandparents decided to downsize at my current residence 2257 Second St., which is on the corner of Lake Ave and Second St. They lived there until they died (from circa 1965-1998). During that time, my grandfather built Manitou Manufacturing and ran it with my grandmother (the book keeper) at the location of the Banning Apartments, which they built in the 1970s.

And it was Grandpa (Harvey) Chappie’s fondest dream to build a manufacturing plant in the WBL industrial park, which is now where Manitou Manufacturing is located and run by some of his descendants – my siblings and nieces. https://manitoumfg.com

My grandparents were members of the work hard/play hard set. Many of my neighbors on Lake Ave. remember the Chapmans and their friends – one of whom was the well-known WBL artist Edna Imm and her husband Wendell. There is a chapter in this book devoted to Edna, one of the first creative people I ever knew.

As I was doing research for this publication at the White Bear Lake Area Historical Society (WBLAHS), I was struck by the names of Lake Avenue homeowners my grandparents had counted among their friends, including Ginny and Gordon Brierly, who owned what is now 4593 Lake Ave.

Ginny lived until she was 100+, and I saw her at the exhibit of Edna Imm’s work that the White Bear Center for the Arts did in the summer of 2015. Come to think of it, Eddie Imm was also over 100 years young when she died in 2009 in Sun City, AZ. And my Grandpa Chappie worked until he died at age 93. Unfortunately, my Grandma Ruth died at the relatively young age 82 in 1988, the year my son Nicholas Blanco was born.

Their generation may have lived so long and well, because work did not trump other life priorities. They made lots of time for fun with their children, family and friends. Grandpa Chappie used to regale us with stories about how his friend Wendell devised the first pontoon on White Bear Lake by attaching a motor to a swimming raft.

I grew up in Forest Lake, but spent most Sunday evenings at the Chapman home on Second St. Although Grandma Ruth took me shopping at Dayton’s in Minneapolis from time to time, I didn’t appreciate the amenities and diversity of the Twin Cities until I went to the University of Minnesota in the mid-1970s.

Although I regularly visited my grandparents, I was lured away from Lake Avenue for the most part for about 30 years of my young adult years. I loved the vitality of the City of Minneapolis and felt fortunate to raise my son in an area that was both diverse and safe. However, it was always part of the family plan that I would return to the Chapman home when the time came.

So when my step grandmother Shirley Brimmer Chapman who married Grandpa Chappie after Grandma Ruth, died in 2012, my husband Michael Keeler and I left the city and quickly acclimated to smaller town life. Although there have been triumphs and tribulations, this truly feels like home.

Writing this book has been a labor of love, I hope it will provide readers with insight into what makes Lake Avenue so special, and why its inherent charm deserves to be preserved.