1992:
June and I always loved being on or near the lake. We often fanaticized that we would have our own place on the lake. We were casually looking but were quickly pretty discouraged. In July of 1992 we rented a house on Elm Point with the Lattrell family; Ted, Joanne, Rebecca and Erik.
It was a cold week for July, we even had a fire in the inside fireplace, but such a great week.
The kids loved fishing and just being on the water.
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| Ted was the master fisherman teaching the young ones his art. |
We enjoyed the week so much our search for lake front property intensified. About this time, I had been flying as a private pilot for about 10 years. Renting planes was getting more and more expensive and I was engaged with a few other pilots in pursuit of buying our own plane. The deal fell apart when one of the partners backed out, and I (We) decided to redirect our efforts to finding a place on the lake. I gave up flying real planes but continued to fly RCs.
1993:
We were living in Hinesburg but regularly drove to NY across the Crown Point bridge to our home town of Moriah, NY. We always drove the lake shore route from Vergennes to the bridge checking out every potential property along the way. On Potash Bay, just north of where we rented in 1992, there was a shack for sale on a property that had 75ft of frontage and was only 240ft deep. The seller felt he had a house on the lake (it was a 20 x20 shack), the price was out of line. However, in our discussions, I found that his family owned the undeveloped lot next to it, it wasn't much bigger, was completely wooded, steeply sloped but had 108' of frontage. His comment was something along the lines of it is not a buildable lot. In short, we worked a deal and we were set to close on the property on November 2, 1993.
Sadly, on October 28th, June's Dad suffered a fatal heat attack while hunting with my Dad. We had not told our parents that we were buying property on the lake since we wanted it to be a done deal when we told them. We were so disappointed that Warren passed before we could tell him since he was such a lover of Lake Champlain. We pushed out the closing to November 5th and the property was ours. It was a happy/sad day, we wished we had shared it with Warren before he passed.
November 5th, 1993:
We closed at the lawyers office in Vergennes. We then drove the 10 miles from Vergennes to Potash Bay and stood on 'our' shore in the cold North winds of November looking out on Potash Bay. It was in the 40's, we said "we own it" and headed back for the warm car.
Construction would have to wait until the coming summer.