Harsen's Island
Reported by Erik Smith
Web produced by Christiana Ciolac

Harsen's Island at dusk [Video]

Here the silencing shroud of another winter greets first the eye and than the ear. The greens have gone brown. The sounds of a summer just past linger only in the mind or perhaps somewhere out there in the frozen reeds of the marsh land.

This is the island in winter, Harsen's Island, a summer playground at the edge of Anchor Bay where in winter only the determined choose to stay. Short days and long nights link to the mainland only by a ferry that adheres to a schedule largely determined simply by the caprices of mother nature.

A house on the island

Time doesn't stand still, but it does hang heavy on the hands of the young. There are no shopping malls, no movie houses or burger joints. Just school and life on a quiet island street until the Readers Cove was born.

"'George was bored to tears. He didn't have a brother or sister. He was especially tired of having to live in the same house as that grisly old grunion of a grandma,'" a woman read.

The island in winter

It's late on a Tuesday. Some of the island children listen to the words from a book, pages coming alive, perhaps from a donated volume or maybe just an old favorite selected by one of the kids.

"'It's not what you like or you don't like,' grandma snipped. 'It's what's good for you that counts,'" the story went on.

Scarcely a year ago, none of this existed here. There were no books, no shelves, no carpeting, no tables, no furniture, just a vacant storefront building and an idea without a name.

"The first time Sue and I came in, the boards were still on the windows, because it had been boarded up for almost 10 years. We came in here and we looked around and we thought, 'How are we going to clean this place?' It sort of shook us.

"Then we noticed that one of the windows was broken. Just luckily there's a fellow that lives on the island, Randy, who owns a glass company," Barbara Persyn said.

A quiet street of Harsen's Island

"Two weeks later, Randy called and said, 'Can I get into the store.' He brought the glass, and he put us a brand new window in. I said, 'How much is this going to cost us?' He looked at me and said, 'Just keep my kids reading,' and walked away," Barbara said.

Perhaps it's the kind of thing that could only happen on an island where 1,500 people live, but I really don't think so. They wanted a library, a place to meet, a place to read, a place to teach, a place for a community to feel a sense of community so together they made it happen.

"Everything here is volunteer. All our help is volunteer. Every organization on the island has contributed. Everyone, including the churches," Sue Masters said.

"How do you explain that?"

"It's the island. I get kind of ethereal about it. I think it was meant to be. I think it was the right time, the right place, and the good will of the people on the island. We have a wonderful island, and when you're in need of something, they are here," Sue said.

There is no bronze plaque on the wall to honor the citizens who brought the cove to life. They know who they are: the furnace man, the window man, the husband, the wife, the retiree who lives over on the south channel. They all pulled their talents, made the most of their limited resources and built a special place from their hearts.

"At what better place to keep the record than in the library. There are people like this in the world. If just people could look around and share with one another, just think of all the things they could do, could accomplish a lot," Sue said.

"'I can't help it if I'm growing fast, grandma,' George said," the reader continued to say.

Their dream of an island library will probably never really be finished, but the improvements will come as will another summer when the sun-seekers return to Harsen's Island and to the Readers Cove where the children will read another 30 books while school is in recess, and the leaves will quickly turn to yellow, and the silent shroud of winter will cloak the marshes once again.

You can contact the Readers Cove on Harsen's Island at 810-748-3134.

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