Irene Fisher

Irene was born August 6, 1949, in a L’Anse, Michigan North Main Street apartment to parents George and Sadie (Keranen) Falk. Shortly thereafter, the family moved to Skanee, where George and his brother, Pavo, owned and operated Falk Brothers Fisheries. Irene spent her youth immersed and reveling in Arvon Township’s natural beauty and wildly oscillating weather patterns, blessedly surrounded by a rowdy mix of siblings, cousins, local friends and, seasonally, a multitude of age-proximate nieces and nephews. They swam the icy waters of Huron Bay, sledded Been’s Hill and skated on annual homemade ice rinks. Irene was confirmed at Skanee’s Zion Lutheran Church, attended the historic Skanee School through eighth grade and graduated from L’Anse High School in 1967.

With piercing blue eyes and long brown hair, Irene epitomized natural Finnish beauty and was voted LHS Homecoming Queen in the fall of 1966. A lifelong avid reader, she took advantage of her hour-each-way school bus rides to plow through the classics of Victorian literature – sensing a particular kinship with the Brontës’ rural “make your own fun” upbringing. A forceful writer, Irene tackled opinion pieces with special gusto. In her school newspaper column “Platter Chatter,” she skewered equally both the indulgent and insipid of 1960s rock & rollers. A half-century later, she still had her fastball, telling her son, upon inspection of his own scribbling: “I guess I’m hung up on the idea of a plot.”

Irene was a stalwart L’Anse Purple Hornets basketball fan. Whether home at the “Hornets’ Nest” or away via the rooters’ bus, she and her schoolmates stomped and screamed themselves into a Beatlemania-level frenzy, spurring the team on to 33 straight victories over a two-year span and a Class C State Championship in 1966. Ultimately, in the years ahead, not one, but two of those gritty cagers were to become Irene’s brothers-in-law. A curious case of Keweenaw kismet!

Following graduation, Irene enrolled at Michigan State University and, on September 6, 1969, just prior to her junior year, she married John Robert Fisher at Zion Lutheran. John, a former U.S. Army Intelligence Officer, had spied her from afar just six weeks prior and was immediately smitten. Their rapid-fire Baraga County courtship was emblematic of the era. Son, Rhett was born 11 ½ months later at Lansing’s Sparrow Hospital and shortly thereafter, John entered the law enforcement profession. For the next decade, his assignments took the young family across the State of Michigan and Irene’s studies were largely put on hold. However, with John assigned to Lansing from 1979-83, Irene seized the opportunity, returned to MSU and completed her Bachelor of Arts in English.

Beyond the frequent relocations, the couple’s first decade of marriage was turbulent for Irene in another way: after Rhett’s birth, she carried three more babies to term; alas, all lost due to Rh-factor complications. This vast experience in the “dark night of the soul,” developed Irene into a listener par excellence and she used her twin gifts of empathy and deep insight to help anyone seeking reassurance in their own troubled time.

Throughout her life, Irene pursued a wide variety of civic causes and business endeavors. In the mid-1970s she won a seat on the Munising School Board. In the early 1980s she sold Mary Kay Cosmetics, ascending quickly the pink pyramid until she decided “cooking dinner for [her] family was more important.” Irene also worked for two decades as a rural mail carrier and

most notably, from 1983 until 2003, she and her husband owned and operated Fishery Pointe Beach Cottages (formerly Simpson’s Lakeside Cottages) in Ford River Township on the shores of Green Bay.

Cottage rentals unintentionally produced a legion of vignettes, both dramatic and comedic. Irene often spoke of penning a book on the subject. “The Last Resort” always ran strong as a working title. With an “untamable” husband and chronically dis-interested son, Irene was everywhere, all-at-once, ensuring the cottages were spotless and the guests had clean towels and a raked beach – which she tended alongside her sandpit digging perpetual fetching machine: Honey Girl the Yellow Lab. Irene was an artful conversationalist and offered no quarter in a verbal joust. When a short-of-cash prospective tenant once pleaded, “but I’m really good with my hands,” Irene allegedly quipped: “I don’t care what you do on your own time.”

Never one to shy from of a worthy crusade, Irene undertook numerous letter-to-the-editor campaigns: AGAINST 18-wheeler trucking on the Menominee to Escanaba section of M-35; FOR the delisting of Upper Peninsula wolves from protected species status; AGAINST wind turbines in the Huron Mountains. As a matter of personal style, she wrung out her campaigns on her trusty LBJ-era manual Olympia and hand delivered the hardcopies, elegantly embodying tangible un-hackability before “cybercrime” was a word.

Irene was a loyal friend, dutiful daughter, and loving wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. In her final weeks on Earth, with steadfast sponsorship from her daughter-in-law, Irene made a truly existential choice: she accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior and entered the Roman Catholic Church. Although her family and friends miss her razor wit and indefatigable heart, their own hearts are glad: Irene is bound homeward to the Lord, her husband and her babies…perhaps walking a windswept endless beach, ever vigilant for a chunk of sand-worn colored glass or washed-up Rapala.

Irene is survived by her grateful son, Rhett Falk Fisher and his wife Dr. Kathleen Herne of Boca Raton, Florida; grandchildren Matthew Fisher of Amarillo, Texas; Holden Fisher of Eastpoint, Florida; Jillian Fisher of Boca Raton, Florida; Ethan Fisher, currently of Walterboro, South Carolina; great-grand-daughter Mariana Fisher and her mother, Patricia Vega Fisher, both of Amarillo; and great-grandson Hunter John Fisher and his mother, Mackenzie Young, both of Eastpoint. Additional survivors include sister Darlene Falk (Robert) Fredrikson of Ontonagon, Michigan; brother George E. Falk of Coyote, California; brothers-in-law Harland Fisher (Virginia) of Fort Myers, Florida and Charles Fisher (Colleen) of Negaunee, Michigan.

Irene was preceded in death by her husband of 53 years, John Robert Fisher; three pre-born infant children: Thomas (1972), Melinda (1975), and Faith (1977); parents, George and Sadie Falk; and half-siblings John, William and Donald Koski and Evelyn Koski Corgan.

A Roman Catholic Funeral Mass will be held for Irene Wilhelmina Fisher at a later date.