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Rebecca Chown was sworn in as the new Peninsula Township Clerk this morning at the township offices with a crowd of family, township board members and Old Mission Peninsula residents looking on.
Grand Traverse County Clerk Bonnie Scheele was on hand to perform the swearing in. She also swore in Deputy Clerk Robin Noval, who’s been on the job since the end of last year.
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“This township is very fortunate to have both of you be a part of this,” said Township Treasurer Brad Bickle. “It’s not an easy duty, which you both know, and for you to be on board with the team, I can’t thank you enough for committing yourself to this. And I suspect other board members and residents feel the same way, so thank you both.”
Chown said she looks forward to taking on the role of township clerk and working with Noval and the rest of the township team.
She also thanked her family for being there this morning – her parents, Porter and Sherrie Martin, who retired to the Old Mission Peninsula in 2013, as well as her husband, Glen Chown, and their three boys, William, Martin and Leonard. All three were raised on the Old Mission Peninsula.
The Chowns live in a home on the Peninsula originally owned by John and Della Marshall, and later, their son Jules and his wife Grace (her subsequent husbands were Carl Pratt and Ed Bacon; as a side note, Grace knitted beautiful mittens for me when I was a youngster).
The Chown’s barn and horses are featured in our “Barns of Old Mission Peninsula” and “Horses of Old Mission Peninsula” 2019 Calendar (check them out here).
Chown is the sixteenth person to hold the job of Peninsula Township Clerk, following in the footsteps of previous clerks:
- C.D. Phelps, 1891-1892
- A.E. Porter, 1893-1899
- F.L. Johnson, 1900-1902
- Peter F. Lardie, 1903
- John Lardie, 1904-1909
- W.E. DeGraw, 1910-1915
- Alex Carroll, 1916-1929
- Marshall Gleason, 1929-1935
- Otto Chase, 1936-1939
- Fay Dohm, 1940-1949
- Harry Heller, 1949-1976
- Mary Kay Belding, 1976-1992
- Lorrie DeVol, 1992-2000
- Monica A. Hoffman, 2000-2016
- Joanne M. Westphal, 2016-2018
Here are a few more photos of the swearing-in ceremony this morning.
SUPPORT YOUR INDEPENDENT LOCAL NEWSPAPER: I started Old Mission Gazette in 2015 because I felt a calling to provide the Old Mission Peninsula community with local news. After decades of writing for newspapers and magazines like the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Family Circle and Ladies' Home Journal, I really just wanted to write about my own community where I grew up on a cherry farm and raised my own family. So I started my own newspaper.
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[…] Rebecca Chown and Robin Noval sworn in as new clerk and deputy clerk. And the OMP community couldn’t be luckier to have these smart, kind souls in the clerk’s office. Read the story here. […]