Washington Island is a small jewel of nature that lies seven miles out from the tip of the Door Peninsula, in the upper reaches of Lake Michigan. When I was growing up, we simply called it “the Island.” Almost one hundred years ago, when I was born, lush forests covered most of the Island. Five hundred families lived there, but there was no village. Our community was Lutheran, mostly Scandinavian transplants from Norway, Denmark, and Iceland.
I was baptized at my grandfather’s home in the early summer of 1924 and given the name Raymond Douglas Hagen. My mother, Agnes Christine Foss Hagen, had hoped for a girl, but she welcomed me, a healthy third boy, into the family. I joined a large clan that included three brothers, uncles and aunts, and more than thirty cousins. My mother’s sister was married to my father’s brother, which meant our cousins sometimes felt like siblings.
My mother’s father, Matthew Foss, was a considerable influence on the Island. A fisherman from Denmark, he built impressive facilities to serve the local fishermen, including four fishing rigs and a cold house that supplied ice for packing fish to be shipped to the markets. His main dock accepted passenger ships and freighters plying the Great Lakes.
My father, Swara (Sverre) Oswald Hagen, was an austere man with the reserved mannerisms of a Scandinavian. Like my grandfather and other men in
