WIND SONG & CEDAR COVE

Four Generations of Fun on the North Shore

The History of Wind Song & Cedar Cove

Background: The cabin was built by Isak Hansen around 1930 for Lydia, Emma, Josephine and Clara Koeneman (the Koeneman Girls as they were known in the area) who were all school teachers in the St. Paul school district. For nearly forty years, they had spent summers at the cabin. They parked up by the road and drew water from the lake through pipes they put in in the spring and took out in the fall. The cabin had half-round wood siding (like the shed) and small paned windows.

In July 1972, Al and Marian Anderson, who owned a Sea Villa (D-5), were looking at property and cabins in the area. In July, Isak’s son Irv took them and Lee to see the Koeneman cabin. Marian later wrote that they all fell in love with the place immediately. Lee recalls that Al thought they would never get is as there were eight other buyers looking at it. Lee saw that they wanted to sell but weren’t ready to leave. He suggested that they buy the cabin now and allow the Koeneman’s to continue to use it. Al and Marian agreed to buy the cabin for $26,000 and allow the Koenemans to live at the cabin for the next two summers. Marian named the cabin “Wind Song.”

In 1974, they had the driveway built down to the cabin, and put in a well and septic system. In 1975, they put in new linoleum in the kitchen and bath, carpeted the living room, loft and bedroom, washed (3 times!) and varnished the walls and ceiling and replaced the windows. The kitchen was modernized and new counters were installed. Electric heat was installed. Outside, the cabin was insulated, re-sided and re-roofed in shake, and the foundation and deck were added.

In the 1990’s Lee built the garage and installed the new septic system. In the 2000’s, he installed the metal roof on Wind Song and built Cedar Cove. In 2021, Lee rebuilt Wind Song’s fireplace which had been damaged in chimney fires. The interior hearth and surround was rebuilt and the exterior tuck-pointed. While the stonework has changed, it has the same large firebox and floor-level hearth as it had before. After the chimney construction, Tom and Christa spent several weeks washing construction dust off of everything in the cabin. They also ripped up the carpet that had been put in the year Soren was born in 1996. They tried multiple ways to strip the gunk off of the original wood floors but were not successful.

In the summer of 2022, to accommodate aging knees and neuropathy, a new set of steps was built by Curly (Chad Smith) to make getting from the parking pad down to Wind Song easier.