Bob Sukenik saw an ad in the Detroit News advertising the lodge for sale in 1979 by the Bay City YWCA. He submitted a sealed bid, forgot about it and after a business trip, arrived home to a congratulatory message from the YWCA. The following weekend he and his family drove north to see what they had bought.

“What we got was an abandoned camp that had been closed for quite a few years.—maybe five. Everything was quite dilapidated and nothing worked”, said Bob. “The toilets were called “Biffys” and I think the only one that worked was the one adjacent to the lodge. You could not see the lake from the lodge because of the dense forest of trees 8”-12” in diameter. There was some rudimentary wiring on half fallen poles. The lodge itself was a huge open room filled with tables and benches. It had no bathroom, running water or heat.”

“It had not been vandalized, but small animals had chewed through the back screen doors. On that weekend, we were sitting inside and a chipmunk ran across the floor, stopped and looked at us with a face of no fear and proceeded to run into the kitchen, eat some of our dog food in the bowl on the floor, then scampered back out. Groundhogs were also a problem, eating all the tomatoes that had been planted by the west side outdoor wall.”

“Now that we had it, we had to figure out what to do with it. It was a gorgeous piece of property on a beautiful lake”, said Bob. “Our first thought was that we might be able to fix it up and lease it to someone who might want to operate it as a camp again. That didn’t work. We fixed it up so that it was relatively safe, but never even found the slightest bit of interest. We had an opening party for our friends that out to be a work weekend just to survive. It is a miracle they took to it so happily and that they remained friends.”

“Lacking any better ideas, we decided to convert the lodge into a duplex and subdivide the rest of the property for sale. This required surveying, making decisions on subdivision, writing restrictions and setting up the Maqua Association,” continued Bob.

“We continued to work many a weekend doing one thing or another to upgrade the property. One spring weekend, with no heat and freezing temperatures at night, my son Jim and I plus a few of his friends, slept in front of a roaring fire on the west side in front of the fireplace. (This was where you broiled on one side while freezing on another!) The heat also woke up a few mosquitoes, so it was not too comfortable. The boys had built a huge fire. Suddenly, there was a roaring sound, and I discovered what it meant by a chimney fire. We went outside and watched flames shooting out of the chimney for about one minute.”

Each year they held a Maqua party and would invite 2-40 friends up to spend the weekend. Their friend Amy Straith and daughter Paula were their enthusiastic recreation directors. Guests would be divided into various tribes, such as Ojibway, Cherokee, etc. and would compete in swimming contests, boat races, tennis matches, golf tournaments, and trivial pursuit games. Guests would have to go through an initiation ceremony in order to join the tribe. This was always pretty corny”, joked Bob,” but we had many laughs.”

“I think there were a few parties in which we invited local townspeople for hot dogs and champagne on the beach. The wine supply in Hale was pretty limited, so I think the hot dogs cost more than the wine, but a good time was had by all.”

Even their sons had their own parties up there…”Spring Flings”, as they were called. The lodge was still just one big room and the parents worried about what they would do to the place so they drove up and ended up with kitchen duty. The lodge had crepe paper streaming from the ceiling, and we ended up sleeping in the Infirmary across the road”.

After several summers camping rustically, they hired local builders Al Dunsmore and Bill McCracken to do the renovations on the lodge. Although the building was not insulated, the 1×8 or 1×12 boards of the walls were sturdy and little to no work had to be done on the underside of the lodge. The Sukenik’s designed the duplex design that exists today and preserved the camping artifacts by incorporating them into the interior building. Bob’s wife, Luanne, hung the canoe paddles, bearing the names of counselors on them, from chains from the ceiling.  Camp tables, living room and bedroom furniture (some from the Habitant furniture company) were used.

Two loggers (paid $500,) were hired to cut down the trees that blocked the view of the lake from the lodge. The Sukenik boys had already felled the poles with dead wires from the property.

Although some furniture was removed, the largest to be sold was an antique double walled wooden phone booth that sat in an alcove on the west side of the lodge. He hauled it to Detroit, advertising the sale in the Wall Street Journal and sold it for $1,000. The buyer drove 400 miles to purchase the double walled, double door piece of history

Bob also recalled a break-in of the boathouse, where the doors were ripped off the first year of purchase.“World’s worst sailing boats were stolen,” laughed Bob. “ Several months after reporting the theft to the police, they received a call with information that a vehicle with a trailer loaded with two boats with Camp Maqua written on it, had been recovered.  The two boys had towed the boats across the lake, hidden them in the woods and returned for them. One boy was the son of a gangster from Detroit and had a “Teamster” lawyer, and they ended up settling with basically a slap on the wrist and a small fine.