A little piece of Leelanau County is currently on display in the White House in Washington, D.C. - and the "first gentleman" of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is responsible.

AN ORNAMENT created by Ken Shultz
is now on the 18-foot Christmas tree at the
White House.

This year, President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush selected the National Park Service as the theme for White House holiday decorations. The first couple asked National Park Service director Mary Bomar to provide handmade ornaments representing the country’s 391 National Park Service sites.

In October, the White House provided every national park superintendent in the country with a blank, gold ball ornament on which the most recognizable feature of each park was to be depicted.

Having received her blank ornament, Sleeping Bear Dunes superintendent Dusty Shultz solicited recommendations from her staff at the Lakeshore on who should decorate the ornament and how. No recommendations came forward.

“That’s how I ended up with the job,” explained Ken Shultz, the superintendent’s husband.

A part-time musician and artist whose full-time job is as a machinist in Traverse City, Shultz has supported his wife’s career in similar ways before by producing artwork for various National Park Service efforts.

At his wife’s request, Shultz painted the gold ball with an image of the Sleeping Bear Dune with the Manitou islands in the background and a whimsical “sleeping bear” blended into the trees. Actual sand from the dunes was incorporated into the painting.

The ornament is now among the 390 other ornaments adorning an 18-foot Fraser fir in the Blue Room of the White House.

“The ornaments tell the stories of our parks, just as our parks tell the stories of our nation,” Bomar was quoted as saying in a National Park Service news release.

“I’d say my ornament was pretty average compared to some we saw, which were pretty fancy,” Shultz said.

On Nov. 28, Ken Shultz along with his daughter, April, attended a White House reception along with about 800 other ornament designers and guests.

“Dusty had to go to Denver to work on the General Management Plan so she couldn’t be with us,” said Ken Shultz. who paid for the trip to Washington, D.C. out of his own pocket. “Because it involved the White House, a lot of this whole process was very hush-hush.”

Shultz said he and 22-year-old April drove to D.C. and stayed for only one day. The Sleeping Bear superintendent’s daughter is a graduate of Glen Lake High School and Northwestern Michigan College.

“There was quite a crowd at the White House, so there was no reception line or anything to meet Mrs. Bush,” Shultz said. “But she did make a little speech from a stairway. I couldn’t even see her, but April could,” he said.

Anyone interested in seeing closeup images of all the National Park Service ornaments on the White House tree can view them online at www.whitehouse.gov/holiday/2007. Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore information can be found at www.nps.gov/slbe.