Every year Hyde-A-Way Bay Resort encourages Birch Lake to come alive and wake from its winter slumber and every year it does. Summer always comes in Minnesota—at Hyde-Away-Bay it becomes both exciting and electric and calm and peaceful all at once.
The resort has only seen three owners since its inception in 1957. Hyde-A-Way was started by Norby and Josephine Thill, who owned it until 1979. Their cleaning lady, Dorothy Forrest, outlasted the Thills: she finally retired in 2004. Dorothy was in her seventies and, reluctant as she was, she finally accepted the fact that she was pushing herself beyond her physical limits. In 1979, the Thills sold to John and Marilyn Fank. John had a farming background and loved resort ownership, but agreed to sell apparently because of the proddings of his wife.
He was a reluctant seller but when the Novotnys came along, he was finally ready to let go.
Mark and Beth met while attending South Dakota State University in Brookings at a Bible study in 1980. In the spring of 1981 they began dating. Mark found Beth’s character to be very attractive and also thought her very beautiful. Beth had to go to Connecticut shortly after they met to be a nanny over the summer. They wrote letters to each other everyday and their love grew—by the time Beth returned to school it didn’t take long for Mark to pop the question. Beth said yes and they married in June of ’82, immediately following graduation.
He was ready once again to make a change. Then his hardware store burned down due to a combination of theft and arson, and the costs of starting over were simply too great. Beth didn’t want him to start over anyway. “I hardly got to see him,” she said. “He worked seventy hours a week and when he was home he was either dead tired or busy on the computer trying to catch up with the bookwork.” Mark was working so hard at the time that, when the family went on vacations, he had to stay home. “I didn’t like it. I knew something had to change too,” he said.
As a child, Beth had always stayed at Jeannie’s Resort, a small place near Menahga named after the owner’s daughter. “My dad would take two weeks off from work and the first week he spent the time parking cars at the fair in Fargo. He used that money to take the family on vacation the next week. Those were special times.” With her positive past experience, Beth thought resort ownership may be a good idea for their next venture.
As the owners of Hyde-A-Way Bay Resort, the Novotnys have been able to provide similar special times to many of their guests, chief among them the Lackner clan. For forty-seven years they have been making their annual pilgrimage to the resort and they don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. In fact, Marvella Lackner’s son, Greg, and daughter, Mary, both got engaged while vacationing at Hyde-A-Way.
When Greg got engaged to Julie he tried the creative approach: he took her out fishing, and soon they were encircled by five boats, each with a sign. Four of the signs had the words: “Will,” “You,” “Marry,” “Me?” The last sign said “Yes.” Greg confesses that he didn’t have a “No” sign made—he was pretty certain. As he had hoped, Julie said yes. She then told the rest of the boats, “Will you leave us alone? We’re fishing!”
Mary’s husband, Brian Skelly, also proposed on the water, but he avoided the other boats. “Ours was a little simpler: he simply took me out on the water and asked if I would marry him,” said Mary.
Along with two other families—the Greens and the Roberts—the Lackner group basically takes the resort over, a trend that has continued to grow over the years as the families have gotten bigger. Marvella’s Mom, Grandma B, started the tradition and, at one time, they had four generations represented at Hyde-A-Way. With her passing there are now three.
Grandma B was quite the character and would join in all the crazy fun that the group would have. One example was when she came out in yellow spandex to play butt quarters until 2:00 am with the group. (Butt quarters involves wearing tight-fitting pants or spandex shorts. Contestants then squeeze a quarter between their cheeks and shuffle across the room in an attempt to drop the quarter in a cup or glass without letting the quarter fall before they get to the cup.) In her later years she wasn’t able to hear that well so she laughed at everything, which in turn caused more laughs from the group.
It’s no wonder that Mark Lackner told me, “If our kids had to choose between Florida and Hyde-A-Way Bay, they would choose here, hands down. The kids count down the days. They long to see their cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandma. We actually enjoy each other, even the in-laws. This is the trip we look forward to all year.” One of the group’s favorite events is horse racing night, which is actually a computer program set up by Mark Lackner, the self-described computer geek. For twenty years they’ve set up around the TVs and watch their computer-generated horse races.
They bet, but this is no high stakes gambling. “It’s $2 for a bet. It’s been two bucks for twenty years. We did not let inflation take over. Hay’s gone up, stabling has gone up, and the price it takes to buy a horse has gone up, but [for us] it’s still two bucks,” Lackner said.
Mark and Beth had looked at a number of resorts before buying Hyde-A-Way Bay, but this one had everything they were looking for: a beautiful view with state-owned woods across the bay, cabins that were in nice shape, and a decent house for them to live in. Sure, they’ve made changes: Mark can’t help himself. The very first year they had the resort, Mark and Beth (with a tremendous amount of help from their son Collin) built a new lodge and turned the existing lodge into a duplex. They have continued to build and remodel to the present day.
Beth had always felt that Mark would enjoy owning a resort, because he was handy, independent, and loved to help people. She thought it would be a retirement project. “I guess that means we’ve retired,” Mark said with a laugh.
Sidebar – Northern Minnesota Luau
The Lackners, Greens, and Roberts groups do a Monday night dance every year in Hyde-A-Way Bay’s lodge. This year they had a luau and wore hula skirts. Only in northern Minnesota can you hula in a log lodge with whitetail deer heads, bearskin rugs, beaver pelts, and mounted walleye.To offset the Minnesota Northwoods feel they brought in a few tropical-style decorations like paper crabs, pink flamingos, and inflatable plastic palm trees. The participants, ranging from three to eighty-one, dressed in dollar store grass skirts, straw hats, and Hawaiian shirts. The families had a blast as they hula’d to ‘80s rock.
Fun Facts
· Hyde-A-Way Bay’s guests are so loyal, one family has been coming for forty-seven years.
· Hyde-A-Way Bay offers sixteen beautiful housekeeping cabins.
· Birch Lake is 1,267 acres, with a max depth of forty-five feet and good water clarity. It is a good fishery for northerns, walleye, crappie, and largemouth bass.
Photography done by Doug Ohman
Story from "Resorts of Minnesota" by Neil Johnson
To find out more visit www.resortsofminnesota.com
