Gaylord High School 1965

GAYLORD — Without Bill Granlund’s dogged determination to document the rich history of Otsego County, area residents would be that much the poorer.

To honor his longtime interest in our local history and involvement and support of the early days of Alpenfest, the former Gaylord High School (GHS) principal has been selected as the 2011 Buergermeister. He will serve as honorary mayor during the 47th Alpenfest, which will take place July 12-16.

“This is a real unexpected surprise,” the soft-spoken Granlund said when informed of the honor. “Oh, I think there are a lot people who are more deserving of this. It’s a real pleasure.”

The basement of Granlund’s modest brick ranch house on East Huron Street is a veritable library of local history. It’s filled with stacked boxes of old newspapers and documents with shelves groaning under the weight of books, magazines and photographs depicting the history of Otsego County and the surrounding area.

“I’ve found that over the years when people have moved here they ask questions. People want to know what happened here,” Granlund, 83, said of his interest in the local lore of the area, explaining people have always asked him questions about the history of Otsego County, and he has done his best to dig up the facts to answer them.

“Everybody looks at the past,” he continued. “We’re a mobile society now and it makes it harder to look back. History tends to repeat itself so it’s important to know the background — the history of an area.”

Granlund has written a complete history of the county, culled from boxes of books, newspaper stories and first-person accounts he has collected over the decades.

The 2011 Buergermeister’s history with Gaylord began in 1952 when he and his wife, Jean, moved here after Granlund took a teaching position with Gaylord Community Schools. A graduate of Northern Michigan University in Marquette, where he grew up and attended high school, he spent two years in the military, stationed in Korea, before returning to his hometown to attend college.

After 15 years in the classroom, Granlund took over as principal at GHS, a position he held until hisretirement in 1989, after a 37-year career in education.

Throughout his years in education, Granlund was honing his knowledge of the local history of the area and in 1963 was one of the original founding members of the Otsego County Historical Society.

“Marquette had a good historical background and when I came to Gaylord, I looked around here and got hooked up with Herb Hutchins,” who Granlund said “had a basement full of history,” most of which Granlund eventually inherited.

Much of Hutchins’ collected history and that which Granlund compiled through the years has since been donated to the Otsego County Historical Society Museum, although his basement library, with its meticulously tended books and documents, might indicate otherwise.

Granlund will be honored at the kickoff of Alpenfest Tuesday, July 12, at the annual Alpenfest Honors Luncheon, along with Dean Johnson, this year’s 2011 Alpenfest Parade Marshal, and Otsego County United Way, the festival’s Honored Industry.

“Bill has been active in the Gaylord community for decades,” said Jeremy Speer, interim editor of the Gaylord Herald Times. “Through his work with the historical society, he is the true gatekeeper of history in Otsego County. He is a very deserving recipient of this honor and will continue with the rich tradition of the Buergermeister award.”

The idea for the Buergermeister to serve as honorary mayor during the annual Alpenfest was hatched by longtime Herald Times publisher Jim Grisso in 1980. Grisso received the honor himself in 2008, the year after he retired from the newspaper.