The view of North Bass Island from the sky highlights its simplistic natural beauty. (Photo by Sheri Trusty)

BY SHERI TRUSTY

North Bass Island stole Dale Burris’ heart, and he never left. (Photo by Sheri Trusty)

NORTH BASS ISLAND – North Bass Island in Lake Erie provided many adventures for lifelong resident Dale Burris, including laying telephone cables across the lake and making snow to keep a fragile but profitable grape variety alive.

When Dale, 83, was a young boy, his uncle was a blacksmith caring for the 12 teams of horses that worked in the vineyards at Meier’s Wine Cellars on North Bass. Dale’s uncle told Dale’s father, Leslie Burris, that Meier’s was looking for vineyard workers, so Leslie moved the family from Kentucky to North Bass.

The move set the course for Dale’s life.

“I came here with my dad when I was just a young boy, and he retired here,” Dale said. “It’s kind of funny. I retired from Meier’s Wine Cellars, too.”

The island created a uniquely charming life for Dale.

“Growing up here – I enjoyed it. My brother, Wayne, and my friend, Bud – we lived on the lake. We’d go fishing every day, and we had a 14-foot boat,” Dale said. “We’d take that little boat with a nine-horse motor on it and go all the way across the lake. We’d go to West Sister and to Hen Island. We’d set up camp, doing the things I guess people dream of. We had the freedom to do whatever we wanted.”

Sometimes, they’d forego the boat and travel to nearby Middle Bass Island – “5,210 feet shore to shore” – powered by nothing but their young bodies.

“Bud and I used to swim to Middle Bass,” Dale said. “They ran a little store there. We’d buy us a pop, sit and drink that pop, and then swim back home.”

Dale began working in the vineyards when he was 14 and continued working there until the Vietnam War took him far from his island home. He served as a paratrooper, and while there, he “had both eardrums blown out in a battle.” Dale returned to North Bass with a Bronze Star and a new affection for the island.

“I always said I was not going to stay on the island, and then when I was in Vietnam, I decided if I ever made it out of there alive, that I was coming back to North Bass and spend the rest of my life here,” he said. “And I’ve done that.”

Dale worked as a manager for Meier’s Wine Cellars from 1970 until the vineyard closed in 2003. The job offered more adventures for Dale who “enjoyed doing different things and doing things that people said couldn’t be done.”

Thankfully, his boss, Robert Gottesman of Paramount Distillers, which purchased Meiers in 1976, also liked doing the impossible. Gottesman wanted to grow Vinifera grapes, a variety that is sensitive to cold weather but was selling for $1,500 per ton when Catawba grapes were selling for $350 per ton. They lost their first eight-acre crop to the cold, and Gottesman said he wanted to try again – with 25 acres.

“I had to figure out a way to keep those grapes from freezing,” Dale said.

They found great success covering the vines with a hefty layer of dirt every year, but Dale “decided this was a lot of work.”

“I got the idea we were going to make snow,” he said.

Dale Burris, left, pauses from mowing on North Bass Island to talk with Danbury Township Trustee David Hirt last June. (Photo by Sheri Trusty)

He visited a ski resort to learn how to make snow, came back to the island and manufactured his own snow machine, and covered one grape vineyard with snow as an experiment. It was a memorable attempt, and the grapes survived, but the plan didn’t.

“I made snow on North Bass Island. It was kind of something to make a snow machine,” he said. “But in the spring, when the snow melted, it took all the grapes vines, wire and everything, right off the post. We went back to dirt.”

Making snow was one of the many resourceful solutions Dale tried on the remote island. Dale served as a Put-in-Bay Trustee for 44 years – making him the longest-running trustee in Ottawa County – so he was heavily involved in sustaining the island’s infrastructure. Most of his plans were highly successful, like laying telephone cable across Lake Erie between North Bass and Middle Bass in 1976 so the islanders could have phone service. He learned that hiring the work out would be expensive.

“I said, ‘Heck, we can do this,’” he said.

He and other islanders found a wheel in the scrap pile, welded a spindle to the deck of a boat, and set the wheel on the spindle.

“It spun so easy, so we laid the cable on that thing,” Dale said. “We had a bunch of cement blocks that we tied to the cable about every 200 feet. We knew it wouldn’t float and would go to the bottom. About 25 minutes from the time we started, we were done.”

And that was the start of the North Bass Telephone Association.

In 2003, the state purchased much of the island, so Meier’s closed and Dale retired. Then the state hired him to “look after the island,” and today, he still spends much of the summer keeping the island mowed. He lives on the island with his wife, Kerry Burris, and he hopes to enjoy many more years on the peaceful paradise.

“I hope I have another ten or 15 years here,” Dale said. “And when I die, I hope Heaven is like North Bass.”