These stories can also be heard on Sunday mornings around 10 am on WILD 102’s “Look Back in Time” program. Each week’s radio story will be posted here on our website.
Weekly radio stories are researched, compiled, and read by Sheila Winstead, RCHS Board Member.
June 30, 2024
Today I’ll continue the story of Fay Young, Pioneer and Boat Skipper as it was contributed to Hazel
Wahlberg’s compilation of stories called “Remembrances”. Details were provided by Julius Anderson’s
family.
Last week we heard about Fay’s decision to purchase the Nina after a miraculous recovery from a
lingering illness.
After two years of piloting on the lake, Fay met and fell in love with Esther Degarman, a student nurse
from Stephen, Minnesota. He proposed, and she accepted, they were married on November 22, 1922, and
left by train for a honeymoon in New Orleans. Unlike most honeymooners, the bride returned alone
while the groom continued southward and spent a year on a rubber plantation in Bogota, Columbia.
But once again Lake of the Woods beckoned, so Fay and Esther settled on the wild shores of the lake
and began a lifetime of service to the area.
Fay was not just a pilot, he was a personality. He wore a tan shirt and pants, and was never without his
captain’s hat and the walrus tooth that hung from a leather fob on his belt. He wore leather moccasins
with wool socks in the winter for warmth. He wore leather moccasins with wool socks in the summer to
keep the mosquitoes off his ankles.
He and Esther, who was now a registered nurse and a practicing midwife, began their family of girls. Fay
was born in February of 1924, Kaye in April of 1928, and May in May of 1930.
May died at the age of two while they were living on Flag Island. She probably died of tularemia, no one
will ever know for sure as she went into convulsions and was dead within hours. Her little corpse was
only one of many Fay carried on his boat during his career.
Fay’s ability to argue logic was unparalleled He had, in his middle years, learned to pilot an airplane and
earned a private pilot’s license, which required renewal at regular intervals. In his middle fifties, he
journeyed to Fargo, North Dakota to take his annual exam. The C. A. A. office was on an upper floor of
the Black Building. One of the requirements was to pass a depth perception test. The testing device
resembled a pinball machine and was lit with fluorescent lights. Fay made two attempts at
accomplishing the test and failed. He countered by telling the examiners that flying an airplane was not
done under fluorescent lights and that if the testing equipment were out in God’s own natural light he
was sure he would pass the test. The long and awkward device was stood on end and trundled to the
elevator. It was carted out the doors on the ground floor to the lawn and the test was again attempted
in God’s own light. To the surprise of all concerned except Fay, he passed the test.
Life had assumed a regular pattern for Fay at this time. The seasons were announced not by dates on
the calendar, but by the freeze-up and break-up of Lake of the Woods. During the season when he was
on the lake, Fay worked a seven-day week. He took his boat to the island section each Monday, back to
Warroad on Tuesday, to the islands on Wednesdays, and back again on Thursdays. On Fridays, he made a round trip
to the islands and back to Warroad. On Saturdays, he went to Kenora and returned on Sundays.
If it was calm, the trip from Warroad to Oak Island took four hours. If it was windy, it took an hour or
two longer. In certain strong winds, Fay would take the boat east across the south shore of the lake, and
then tack back north and west for a better advantage cutting into the waves. If Fay didn’t go out
because of the wind, nothing else moved either, because there weren’t many winds that stopped Fay H.
Young.
As Fay approached what to other men would be retirement age, his pace remained constant. At the age
of seventy-one he began to have physical problems, so with some urging from his family he went to
Rochester for repair and reconditioning. Warroadites despaired. The word went out that he would never
run the Resolute again.
He came home from the hospital thin, weak, and exhausted. But once again the lake worked its magic,
and within six weeks he was again running the boat. And so it went until he was eighty. Then his eyes
developed cataracts, for which he had surgery, but as happens so often, his vision was left permanently
impaired. But he still knew his boat, his lake, the winds, the swells, and the needs and fears of his
passengers. He had always run with a “first mate”, and in the final years his first mate assumed more
responsibility, but Fay was still the captain.
A combination of age, failing health and boat trouble put Fay ashore at last in 1968. His boat continued
on for several more years under the piloting of his last “first mate”. His career was at an end. And soon
so was his life. He died in Warroad in November of 1973. He made a deep and lasting impression on
everyone who knew him.
To those of us who knew him well and respected him much, his oft-repeated “No matter how many
years I spend on this earth, I will always be Young” was nothing but the truth.
Thank you to 
for letting us share our county’s history with your listeners by donating air time, studio time, and production staff every week.