Harold Kennedy has lived in this area for most of his life. He was born at the hospital in Princeton on February 5, 1920 to James Kennedy and Belle Wheeler. The family lived on a 100 acre farm on the north shore of Sandy Lake in City of Baldwin.
He attended school at the District #31 schoolhouse but since he had a lot of work to do on the farm he had to leave before he finished 8th grade.
After leaving the farm, he worked as a pile driver on many dams including the Garrison Dam in North Dakota, the Mississippi locks and the Red Wing Dam. In 1936 he went to work at CCC camp in the State of Washington where the men lived in military style barracks. Near Bellingham, on Oreas Island, he helped to build a road up a mountain to a lake. From 1942 to 1945, during WWII, he served on a tank crew in the Army and traveled from Africa through Sicily and Marcel, France; all the way up to Berlin. The driver of the tank was very reckless and it was a very rough ride. Today, he still suffers knee pain from that experience.
He then moved back to Baldwin and married Lorraine Rhode, whom he met at a restaurant in Foley. The wedding was held at the Pavilion on Elk Lake. They had three children. She passed away 10 years ago and is buried in the Baldwin Cemetery.
For several years he worked at Brown’s Feed Mill in Zimmerman.
An interesting story that he tells is about a tractor that fell into a drainage pit at Bly’s Rendering Plant, where it sank, burying the driver into the entrails.
For the past 25 years he has worked at various jobs while doing a lot of hunting (he once shot 8 ‘coon out of one tree) and trapping. City of Baldwin has had to call on him many times to trap beaver out of the town’s ditches and culverts. He estimates that he has trapped over 100 beaver along with numerous raccoon, mink and muskrat.
Elk Lake plays a big part in his memories. The pavilion, which was located on the west side of the lake, was used for roller skating and dancing on weekends and they also rented boats on the shore below. He said that when the DNR built a carp trap at the south end of Elk Lake, he used to help load the carp on a truck with a water tank so that they could be taken to Chicago. In the spring he would catch carp and smoke them. The DNR later removed the trap because it was not being maintained as it was supposed to be.
He also noted that there were 2 – 20’ high Indian burial mounds south of the lake, but when they were dug up, they found some clay pipes but no bones.
Oral Interview with Herb Murphy – 2004-2008