It was a big week for history and small world stories in Omena. Rink Smith and his family enjoyed a visit with Debbie Adkins from Lexington, Kentucky. She had come to see Omena Heights where her father had visited as a small child when his relatives owned the property. Her father is Bill Ashbrook, and his great-great uncle, Lewis Voight, had been one of the Cincinnati businessmen who purchased the former Presbyterian Mission School in 1883 and renovated it to become the Hotel Leelanau, one of the early resorts in the area.
In the late 1890s, the resort expanded its sleeping space by building an eight bedroom annex several hundred feet away from the hotel. When Rink’s grandparents bought the hotel property in the 1940s, the annex, which was not winterized, became the summer home for his parents, Martha (Rule) and Tom Smith, and was nicknamed “Martom Hou.”
The Voight family had also bought their own property near the hotel and built a fieldstone home in 1895. In 1900, Lewis Voight’s son-in-law, Herman Goebel, bought the hotel property and the Voight house. His daughter Gertrude continued to summer in Omena, and was the aunt that Debbie’s father visited when he was young. That house became the home of Rink’s grandparents, George and Helen Smith, and is now owned by Rink’s sister, Debby, and her husband Les Disch.
