Cliff Buchan
News Editor

As a kid growing up on the East Side of St. Paul in the 1950s and 1960s, Mary Peters couldn’t wait for the last day of school.

It was an event that signaled a major lifestyle change for Peters, her brothers and parents. The day school let out meant a family move to a log cabin on the shore of Third Lake in Forest Lake.

“School ended on a Friday and we’d pack up the car and head to Forest Lake,” Peters said.

“I wouldn’t be home again until the day before school started. It was the best of all lives — to be a country girl in the summers and a city girl for the rest of the year.”

But it was also an imprinting that never left the St. Paulite. After growing to adulthood, earning college degrees, marrying and starting a family in St. Paul and teaching in the St. Paul Public School system for 36 years, Peters has come home to Forest Lake for good.

In mid-June, Peters and her husband, Jim, completed construction on a new lake home in Forest Lake on Jason Avenue that was built where that old family cabin had stood.

After retiring from her elementary teaching post, Peters and her husband, an engineer manager with Medtronics in Shoreview, made the move to Forest Lake permanent.

“It has always been my dream to live here,” Peters said recently from the back patio of the new residence. “I’m a city girl but I’ve always lived here.”

Family ties strong

For more than a half century, Peters has been coming to Forest Lake.

Her parents, John and Eleanore Nielsen purchased the cabin in the Rogers’ Shadyland Point area 55 years ago. A few years earlier, Mary’s grandparents, Thorvald and Mary Nielsen had a home in the bay area of Forest Lake.

The family time was even more special, Mary Peters said, with the addition of an aunt and uncle who came to Forest Lake for the summer months.

It was part of a time in Forest Lake’s history when countless families came to the area to spend summers, enjoy vacations, or simply fish and swim. Just 25 miles or so to the north, Forest Lake was a popular destination for summer visitors and summer cabins were common.

It was just that lifestyle that Mary’s family enjoyed. Her father was with Westin-Nielsen Corporation in St. Paul and would make the drive from the lake home during the summers.

For Mary and older brothers Jim and Bill, it was summer living at its best.

The days were long and filled with lake activities. There were friends to be found among the locals and many of the summer visitors became friends, too, Mary recalled.

The cabin is a short five-mile drive to town, but in those days of summer, the trips to town were not frequent, just for groceries or for entertainment.

Mary Peters looks back fondly on her memories of Forest Lake in those days. There were trips to Wagner’s Hamburger Shop, the soda fountain at Hart Drug and perhaps a movie at the Hub Drive-in in Wyoming.

All are now part of the area’s past, but they vividly live on in Mary’s mind, she says.

When the Fourth of July would roll around, family and friends would converge at the family cabin for picnics. The group would invade the downtown area for the parade and the fireworks.

The two-bedroom log cabin with a small kitchen and living room and a stylish fireplace was crowded, but space was always found for the family and friends who dropped in.

In her mind today, the memories of the sunsets over Third Lake remain strong. They are still the best show in town today, she says.

Always a factor

Even as a young adult, Peters never lost touch with the cabin.

She graduated from St. Paul Johnson High School in 1967 and went on to receive her elementary education teaching degree at the University of Minnesota. There were summer jobs to help pay for college, but still the cabin called and she would head to Forest Lake as often as possible.

After college, she landed a teaching job in St. Paul and married Jim Peters who also hailed from the East Side and was a Johnson graduate. Peters was a career teacher in St. Paul, logging 36 years at two elementary schools before retiring on June 13 of this year.

The cabin has remained a key part of Mary and Jim Peters’ life. They continued to spend summers and weekends here and it became a popular spot, as well, for their daughter, Sally.

In 2001, the Nielsen family agreed to sell the cabin to Mary and Jim. Her father has passed on, but her mother, now 85 and a St. Paul resident, makes regular visits to stay with her daughter.

Time to build

Mary’s retirement this summer merges well with the couple’s decision to take down the old cabin and build new on Third Lake.

“It was hard for all of us to have the cabin taken down,” she said. “There was never a right time. The lake view is still the same.”

In building new, the family made special efforts to utilize materials and design patterns from the old log cabin. While the exterior logs could not be used, the couple was able to adapt lighting fixtures, wood paneling and shelving into the new home.

The fireplace is new, but it was built in a design almost identical to the old fireplace. The stones from the old fireplace are being used for a beach design.

Some of the old landscaping plants have been saved and will be incorporated into the final landscaping steps that will complete the two-story project this summer.

Most of those chores will hopefully be done this month in time for the July marriage of their daughter Sally to Chad Bjorklund of Forest Lake. They plan to live in Wyoming.

The effort to produce their dream retirement home wouldn’t have happened without the assistance of some skilled builders and vendors, the couple said.

Mark E. Hansen, Inc., Forest Lake, was the builder on the home and delivered quality workmanship with an eye to quality, the owners said. Thomco Carpet of Forest Lake and Exact Door Service of Forest Lake were two of the many local vendors and subcontractors who took part in the project.

“It was important that the home fit well on the property and looked like it has been here,” she said.

New challenges

After spending a good part of her life as a summer visitor in Forest Lake, Peters says she is now looking forward to new challenges.

She plans to keep her teaching license active and says she may seek part-time substitute teaching jobs in Forest Lake. Peters, who also holds a master’s degree in education from the University of Minnesota, was the St. Paul Rotary Club Teacher of the Year in 2006.

She has also spent the past 12 years working summers with People to People, an international cultural exchange program that involves student ambassadors who visit other countries.

When all the chores involved with moving into a new home are counted, Peter should have plenty to do this summer. “I’m not one to drag my feet,” she says with a smile.

After years of living the summer life and enjoying it immensely, Peters says she and her husband could not be happier with realizing their long goal of living here permanently.

“We feel really blessed,” she said.

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