Home Again Reclaiming Childhood Spaces

Thomas Wolfe wrote a 600+page book lamenting You Can’t Go Home Again, but what if you could return to your childhood?

Michael Atmore did just that. After years of travel and life by the ocean, he came home to Lake Superior, though the actual “home” admittedly required a few modifications.

To understand the significance of this return, it helps to go back to the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Michael was growing up in Duluth, sailing Lake Superior in summer and skiing all winter.

His father, Dr. William Atmore, was an orthopaedic surgeon at the Duluth Clinic, and his mother, Peggy, was active raising six children and becoming involved with several charities and, later, as the Duluth Clinic’s first patient advocate.

The growing family began spending more time on Minnesota’s North Shore, sailing up to Burlington Point and Two Harbors with friends, anchoring, picnicking and roaming the area.

“At the time,” Michael says, “I didn’t realize that the reason we were exploring this piece of land, which was next to our friends’ property, was because my parents were considering buying it. And when they did buy it, we were all very excited.”

The Atmore family eagerly began designing a house for the 120-acre property, though everyone had an opinion about what it needed. Thomas Schefchik, an architect and family friend, tried to incorporate as much as possible.

“I have no idea how he managed to take all of our ideas and get them into that house,” Michael says, “but he did. Each of us had a hand in designing it.”

The main inspiration on the hull of the home, so to speak, was the family’s joy of sailing.

“There are nautical influences throughout,” Michael says. “Obviously it’s on the water, but it’s almost like a land yacht. When you sit in the living room you only see a deck and water. My mother used to say, ‘You don’t need to have a boat when you have a house like this.’”

During construction, the family drove up from Duluth nearly every day. The house was finished in 1974, a tennis court added, and the Atmores brought their sailboat up the shore.

A year later, tragedy struck.

“My father went on a hunting trip the week of Thanksgiving, 1975, and suffered a fatal heart attack,” Michael says. “He left to go hunting, and he never came back. It was completely unexpected

as he was only 52 years old. As you can imagine, our family was devastated.”

The next few years were sad and chaotic, more so because three years later, to the week, Michael’s brother, Mark, died in a car accident. “It was like living through my father’s death all over again. It was a very dark time. My mother had so many decisions to make, so much to deal with.”

Portions of the Two Harbors property were sold, Michael moved on to college and then to work

on the East Coast. In the mid-1980s, the house itself was sold.

For the next few decades, Michael established his career in New York City. “I went there intending to be a writer, which I was, but I also worked as a model and I was an actor for about a minute.”

Ultimately, he went from writing to managing writers and editors. He is currently editorial director of Footwear News, “the industry bible for the shoe business.” He’s also director of brand development for Fairchild Fashion Media, publisher of Women’s Wear Daily.

But even when beside the saltwater shores of the Atlantic, Michael always heard Lake Superior call. He returned frequently to Duluth to visit his mother and spend time on the Lake.

Around 2009, the Atmores’ original property in Two Harbors came on the market, but Michael wasn’t drawn to it. He and his husband, Paul Mesher, were focused on house hunting in the Hamptons.

“We must have looked at 40 houses, but none of them had what we wanted.”

Meanwhile, their trips to Duluth grew more frequent to spend time with Michael’s mother, now Peggy Atmore Mason after marrying Sid Mason, a prominent Duluth community leader. Michael and Paul began thinking about a house on Lake Superior, and during a 2012 Christmas visit, they went to view the old Atmore house, unsold since 2009.

“I’d been back to the property many times because our family trust still holds 65 acres of land,” Michael  says. “But I’d never been back to the house since we sold it. It was like walking into a time warp. It was surreal.”

The owners had changed nearly nothing, despite the decades. “They’d ripped out the carpet in the living room and replaced it with a hardwood floor, and that was about it. The house had the same kitchen appliances, the same room layout, and the same shag carpeting throughout the house. It was bizarre to walk in there,” Michael says.

Yet that essential “hull” remained. “What I cared about was that the house retain certain elements of a boat’s design, and that’s still there.”

Instead of reminiscing over the shag carpet in his former bedroom, Michael envisioned all he and Paul could do with the house. By May 2013, it was theirs.

“When we landed in Duluth to close on the house, there was snow and, truthfully, that wasn’t really what I wanted to see in May,” Michael says, “but that’s the north woods.”

Michael and Paul immediately set about reclaiming the house. They did a quick 48-hour cleanup to host Peggy there for her 87th birthday dinner.

“It was such an amazing moment to step back into a house filled with memories,” Peggy said before she passed away earlier this year. “While that first dinner was very emotional, I’ve been so happy to come back for every holiday and birthday.”

Getting down to remodeling did make Michael hesitate. “I was really conflicted about changing anything because the house was essentially as I left it as a child. Taking out things the previous owner did wasn’t hard; the challenge was to change things my parents had put in. I had a bit of a moral tussle because it still was something of a shrine to my parents and my childhood. I’m a sentimental guy, what can I tell you?”

Some choices were easy.  “You can’t have shag carpeting that’s 40 years old; you could barely walk on it,” Michael says. “It had to go.”

Michael and Paul did rip out the carpeting, replaced much of the dry wall and refinished the floors. They’ve put in a new furnace, new electrical, done new landscaping outside and painted the interior and bought new furniture.

They had local help. “A great couple, Nancy and Allan Preston of Duluth, who have taken care of my mother for 40 years, did most of the interior work initially. They continue to serve as caretakers for the property.”

There was one thing Michael definitely wanted to keep … with a wee bit of an upgrade.

“My mother’s St. Charles kitchen is one of the most elegant kitchens I’ve ever seen. So even though contractors have come through and wanted to rip it out, I’ve said no. I think it’s perfect for the house and has stood the test of time. I’ve changed the appliances and the sink, but I didn’t change the cabinetry and the blue slate floor.”

It has become their favorite part of the home. “Those new appliances combined with the retro cabinetry are beautiful. We put a brand new stove in, and my mother obsessed over it so much I bought her one of her own. My mother really loved all the updates we did to the house. Until recently, she came up every few weeks just to check on the house. She loved doing that.”

Michael hasn’t completely parted with the old. “The baby blue kitchen appliances my mother put in are still sitting in my garage because I didn’t have the heart to give them away.”

While Michael was recalling his childhood through the home, Paul brought a fresh view. A British citizen who spent seven years as Queen Elizabeth II’s personal footman, Paul came to the United States to work as a personal assistant to Christie Brinkley for eight years. He currently works for the couple Sting and Trudie Styler.

He had never seen Lake Superior before meeting Michael, yet he has adapted well, even so far from the bustle of big cities.

The town might be small, but the Lake definitely made a big first impression, Paul recalls.

“I remembered a bit from geography class in school, but it was still a little shocking to actually see it. It’s like an ocean. It’s mesmerizing. When we’re in the house, it’s like being on a boat and you can see the entire Lake. It’s just very relaxing. Very different from our life in New York.”

Paul has come to love Lake Superior and the north woods. “When I worked for the Queen, we spent every summer at Balmoral, in Scotland. I love Scotland, and this area has many similarities. Certainly in its remoteness and weather. When the wind comes up on the Lake, it’s exciting and beautiful. It’s just a gorgeous place.”

Paul is philosophic about the need for continued tweaking of the house. “There’s always something that needs to be done. It’s a work in progress.”

“We’ve done a lot to the house, but we’ve still got a lot to do,” Michael agrees, “We’re going to re-side the exterior, add a new deck, and a terrace at lake level. We also need to do some serious bathroom updating.”

The larger wish list includes putting a guest house into the two-story garage and getting even closer to the Lake. “Because the house sits on a cliff overlooking the Lake,” Michael says, “we’d like to build a small cabin down on the shoreline. We have a path down to the water and hundreds of feet of lakefront.”

In the home, Michael and Paul are adding new memories.

“It’s a fantastic place to entertain in because of the way it’s laid out,” says Michael. “It can handle a lot of people or be totally intimate. For guests you can have your own suite and privacy, and still be part of the group. We entertained the Queen’s personal adviser, Angela Kelly, for a week after Christmas last year, and it worked out beautifully.

“Our lives take us all over the world, so it’s not our primary home – we have an apartment in New York, and a sailboat in the Hamptons – but it is the only house we own, so it has a lot of meaning, and it’s where we have most of what represents our life.”

For Paul, the house brings him closer to an unknown influence on Michael’s life.

“Obviously, I never met Michael’s father, but I can feel that he loved it here. I can feel his presence. I’m very much a family person, so it’s quite amazing that we have this house.”

Michael and his mom felt that presence, too. “It’s a family home again on a piece of property that meant so much to Michael’s father and myself,” Peggy said. “Bill would be so touched and proud.”

“The more I work with this house,” Michael adds, “the more I can see, and sense, my father’s hand in the architecture. It was his dream. It’s amazing how much of him is still here in the house.”

With the passing of Peggy at age 92 on August 2, 2018, the house now echoes also with her touch.

“The two-story stone fireplace in the house is very dramatic, and my mother selected every rock in that fireplace,” Michael says. “It was the biggest thrill of my life to buy this house and bring my mother back to her – and our – family home.

“It was important for me to have a home base that was close to her and be a bigger part of her life. Nothing felt more special than being able to do this in the house she built with my father. Since 2013 we spent every holiday, every major birthday at the house. In a beautiful way, it picked up on a story we left 30 years.”

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Family Legacy

The 41st annual Atmore Memorial FIS Slalom Race will be January 11-13, 2019, at Spirit Mountain in Duluth and honors the memory of Michael Atmore’s father, Dr. William Atmore, and his brother, Mark Atmore. William was a founding member of the Duluth/Superior Alpine Club, medical adviser to the Mont Du Lac Ski Patrol in Duluth and served as physician for the gold-medal-winning U.S. Hockey Team in the 1960 Winter Olympics. Mark, an avid skier, represented the Duluth/Superior Alpine Club in regional and divisional USSA races and received the first letter given for skiing at Cathedral High School (now Marshall). The race draws top skiers, including Olympians, from 12 countries.

“This race is a great legacy for both of them,” Michael says, “and they would be very impressed it’s lasted more than 40 years.”

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A Floating Memory

Just as Michael Atmore reclaimed his childhood house in Two Harbors, he also has rediscovered his first childhood crush.

As a teenager sitting on a bluff above Lake Superior, he watched a sailboat coming closer and closer to their house. “It sailed right up to our shoreline; I was shocked at how close it came. It was a gorgeous Columbia 40 yawl. Really gorgeous.”

As luck would have it, the yawl ended up at the same boat yard in Knife River where the Atmores kept their sailboat, so for the next three years, he could quietly stare at the beautiful yawl all summer. He become “obsessed” with it, as he puts it, but one day it was just gone.

He always remembered its name: Francesca.

Twenty-five years later and Michael is in New York City. He had recently sold a sailboat and was looking for another, remembering that yawl from his youth.

There were only 54 Columbia 40s made and production had stopped around 1969, but Michael found one listed in Yachting, currently berthed in Rhode Island.

It had been painted black, but its name was … Francesca.

“I immediately knew it was the same boat because boat owners rarely change the name of a boat. It’s considered bad luck.”

In the decades since it had left Duluth, Francesca had traveled through the St. Lawrence Seaway, down the East Coast to the Caribbean and back up to Rhode Island. Michael bought Francesca in 2000 and it now ports at Gardiners Bay in East Hampton, serving as a home there when Michael and Paul visit.

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Lesley DuTemple also lives on the Lake Superior shore in Eagle River, Michigan.