The Making of Drake Memorial House

Margaret Drake Elliott and I became friends in her 92nd year of life. During the two and one-half years we spent together on a weekly basis, we became close friends. She trusted me with the information she provided for her oral history on what it was like to grow up in a rural setting, in a small midwestern town in a country-doctor's home. While she spent her adult life in Muskegon where she lived with husband Paul, she remembered her roots when she decided to leave the family estate, that of her father and mother, Dr. Wilke and Rhoda Waggoner Drake to the community-at-large. The home of her childhood she named Drake Memorial House. This is the story of the family that lived in that setting and a small glimpse into the life at the turn-of-the century.