Posted: 6/23/04

One more time, a gem from Elsie Vogel

They say you can never go back in time and I suppose they are right. Whatís done is done and we can only live for today and the future. But in todayís paper we are going to prove the above wrong. You can go back in time at least in a sense.

On todayís front page you will find a story written by Elsie Vogel on the early history of baseball in Forest Lake. Many of our longstanding readers know Vogelís work well. For our many newcomers, the late Elsie Vogel was the communityís top historian, a historical columnist for this newspaper and the 1993 author of Forest Lakeís centennial book.

This will most certainly be Elsieís last new story. It is appearing this week to coincide with the Friday, July 2 dedication of the covered grandstand at Schumacher Field, the communityís premier adult baseball complex.

No, Elsie is not writing from the hereafter. But these are her words, her research and her story.

It must have been six or seven years ago when Elsie and I put our heads together. After 20 years of writing for this paper, Elsie had more or less stepped from any kind of regular column writing. But with some gentle encouragement, she agreed to take on the baseball story.

She was essentially turned loose to do her interviews and collect period photos that would form the art for this feature. Elsieís work continued but the final draft of this story sat idle as the grandstand project needed more time to come to completion.

We lost Elsie in February of 2003. A few weeks later one of her daughters, Mary McGraw, dropped off a box of materials containing all her research, notes, letters, photos and the finished typewritten copy of the story.

After Maryís visit, the box was set aside and not touched for months. This spring, as it became clear the field dedication would go forward this summer, I began sifting through what turned out to be a precious package.

Over the 20 years that Elsie wrote for the paper, I guess I never fully comprehended or truly appreciated what the woman put in to create one of her columns.

The final typewritten copy was one of many story drafts that she had worked on. There were notebooks with longhand versions of her stories, rough drafts typed diligently and thoughtfully helping her to the point where she was ready for the final piece.

The box contained her interview notes and detailed outlines showing the order to how her copy would flow.

The story that Elsie writes today is special because it is about baseball, a topic that was near and dear to both of us. She was the reporter to cover this early period of history.

But as important as the topic is, the story today is even more special to me because it gave me a snapshot, a flashback in time if you will, of how this gentle woman went about her craft.

For the most part, the story you read today is as written by Elsie. Some minor modifications were made to fit the change in time reference from when it was written to reflect today. But I learned years ago never to mess too much with Elsieís copy and Iím still not prepared to risk going against her will!

It is not very often that readers are given such a treat as theyíll find with this feature column. The likes of an Elsie Vogel also rarely come along.

We hope readers of the Forest Lake Times today, new and old, truly appreciate the special gift of history that is coming their way.

Elsie was probably never one to turn on ESPN and search for the nightly ìweb gemsî from baseball parks across the country. This column certainly qualifies as one of her true gems. A web gem, if you will, in baseball terms.

For me, finding this column was more like finding something by Mark Twain stored away in a box only to be discovered. No, Elsie wasnít a Mark Twain, but she was ours and we hope readers cherish her words today.

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