Seeking out creative inspiration in the wake of tragedy. This episode features Megan Kelto, Site Director of Traverse City’s Crooked Tree Arts Center.
Seeking out creative inspiration in the wake of tragedy. This episode features Megan Kelto, Site Director of Traverse City’s Crooked Tree Arts Center.
Sunday, June 4th 2017 is a day that Megan Kelto will remember forever.
[00:34:03] to say it was unexpected. I can't I can't even emphasize that enough.
She was cleaning up after her daughter Ginger’s fourth birthday party...
Thrown the day before.
[00:33:07] We always made a big deal of the kid’s birthdays. There was a bounce house and there were tons of people. And, I made a big elaborate cake. And, you know, lots of presents were had. It was a real good day.
The bounce house people came to take the bounce house away.
The clean-up was done…
And life felt like it was returning to normal.
“And I was outside with the girls playing with a new water toy they had gotten…”
But the word normal as she knew it was about to go away for Megan…
Its meaning redefined in an instant.
….and while I'm out there just hanging in the backyard, two police officers came and banged on the back gate to get in. It was terrifying.
I’m Tommy Andres, and this is Creative Coast.
This podcast focuses on creative entrepreneurs who have made Northern Michigan their home.
But if you’ve been listening from the beginning…
By now it’s probably clear that it’s about a whole lot more than that.
We’ve talked a lot about taking leaps…
And luck…
And ife…
And love…
And today…
We journey into new territory for us...
Loss.
[00:01:34] My name is Meagan Kelto. I am thirty nine and I am the site director for Crooked Tree Arts Center Traverse City.
In the Fall of 1999…
Megan Dwyer attended trivia night at Dill’s Old Town Saloon in Traverse City
The trivia night was kind of small but raucous and tight knit. The same teams playing week after week typically.
Megan knew nearly everyone at the bar…
But there was a guy who was a few years older who had caught her eye.
A guy she hadn’t met named Lars Kelto.
I kind of knew who he was already. His parents and siblings are pretty well known in Traverse City. I hadn't met him. But, you know, I was like, oh, yeah, I know who this guy is.
Megan was 19 and Lars was 23 at the time.
[00:18:58] I think our initial interactions were probably like trivia trash talking but you know, we started hanging out. We started seeing each other after trivia. We we you know, of course, Traverse City is a small town. So as soon as we start talking, we realized that we knew all these people in common. And and, you know, it just kind of went from there.
The couple was young…
But things got serious.
[00:19:54] This is a bad story. I'm not sure I should tell it on the podcast, but I will. So this is late nineteen ninety nine. And we're coming up to New Year's Eve. And you remember, this is like Y2K. The world is going to end. And, you know, my friends and I are all like twenty. But we wanted to have a New Year's Eve party and we wanted to have adult beverages at this New Year's Eve party. So I enlisted my my older kind of sort of boyfriend to do that shopping for us. And we made our little grocery trip. And afterwards, I bought him lunch. I figured it was the least I could do. And I said that to him. I said, I know this this isn't adequate repayment for the shopping trip. We just went on and he said he said, that's OK. You can buy me lunch for the rest of our lives. And that was like two months after we met. So it was kind of a done deal from then.
Megan loved so many things about Lars.
[00:21:12] one of the smartest people I've ever known, someone who was so talented in so many ways, you know, he was a, you know, very talented, self-taught computer programmer, but he was also a musician. He played saxophone and piano and could sing. Yeah. He was one of those annoying people with, like, really good pitch who could just hear a song and, like, play it with both hands. You know, he could do and learn anything he wanted to. And he kind of had both sides of the brain going in that.
Megan was drawn to Lars’s artistic side.
She had fancied herself an artist too when she was younger.
(1:50ish) As a kid, I think my first love that I remember was actually art. I was big into drawing.
But like so many of the people we have profiled on this series…
Megan thought for her… art was just a hobby, not a career path.
So when it came time to choose a major at Central Michigan University…
She picked two practical ones… poly sci and psychology.
(4:05ish) I ended up with a dual major. and kind of was on the pre law track intending to go to law school.
But law school would have to wait
Megan had put herself through college…
And after graduating in 2003 she needed to make some money.
She got a job at an online marketing firm in Traverse City called Oneupweb.
Lars was also working in tech…
At just 20 years old he had founded his own dial up internet service provider company.
The couple thought their career paths might take them elsewhere…
A place where tech was a centerpiece of the local economy.
[00:25:35] you know, we'd always have the conversation of should we move to a big city for a few years? We would both have different career options in a big city. He particularly thought about the Raleigh Durham area in North Carolina because there is a lot of tech in I.T. going on there. We took trips to New York City fairly frequently. So that was also on on the short list. But we didn't. And part of the reason we didn't was because the Traverse City Film Festival had started.
The Traverse City Film Festival was founded in 2005 by the area’s most famous resident - Oscar-winning director Michael Moore.
Megan and Lars were both avid film fans…
And were excited that every year filmmakers and film lovers would flock to Northern Michigan to celebrate the movies.
we both got really involved with that organization.
[00:26:42] So it was definitely about like bringing, you know, what we saw as this like really cool, transformative thing into the community and supporting it. But also, you know building some skills and doing some things professionally or on a volunteer basis that we hadn't done before.
So Megan and Lars stayed in Traverse City and they saw the town transform.
The film festival helped to revitalise the downtown area.
The old state theatre... which had been closed... was renovated and reopened.
The arts and culture scene was thriving.
And so was the couple’s relationship.
In 2005 Lars and Megan boarded the Madeline…
A tall replica of an 1840s schooner that sails Grand Traverse Bay.
We woke up that morning and had these tickets and had this scheduled. But the weather was kind of bad. It was kind of cold and rainy. And I was like, oh, you know, maybe we shouldn't go. And he was kind of, you know, looking back on it, like, weirdly insistent. Right. He was like, oh, it'll probably clear up. It'll probably be OK. If not, you know, it'll still be. It'll still be fun. So we go out on the boat and. And it was indeed cold and rainy, it sprinkled on and off.
There were other people on the boat for this ride who we didn't know. So we're kind of like surrounded by these strangers and he kind of like quietly, quietly did this. He said, do you do you like your boat ride? And I said, yes, I'm having a great time on the boat ride. And he said, Do you want to get married? And pops out this ring box.
[00:23:31] And of course, I said yes.
The following year, on October 7th, 2006, the couple tied the knot at the Ciccone Vineyards on Leelanau.
[00:23:52] It was this like picture perfect fall day. The trees were in like full color. It was 70 degrees, not a cloud in the sky. I mean, you know, it's October in Michigan. So we were like prepared. Like it might snow on our wedding day. Right. But it didn't. And we had our reception right there on site, too. And like this really cool refurbished barn that they had with, you know, Christmas lights wrapped around the rafters. And. And it was it was gorgeous. I mean, people people still talk about, like, what a beautiful wedding that was.
That same year, Megan got a new job … at the Interlochen Center for the Arts as the online marketing manager.
The couple was finding a way to meld their skills in tech with the local arts scene.
Lars’s company -- Lars Kelto Technology Services – had become the go-to IT company for the arts in Traverse City.
He was also a talented actor and became a regular fixture in performances at the Old Town Playhouse.
(Clip of Lars performing)
Like this one where he played the donkey in the stage version of Shrek.
Lars and Megan’s life was full.
And it was about to become fuller with the birth of their daughters Mette and Ginger.
[00:30:03] it was something that we always figured we would do. But we also took our time doing it. So, you know, it was 2010 when our first daughter was born. And then we had our second almost three years later in June 2013.
Tommy: having kids is a huge thing … how did that change you as a couple?
[00:30:33] Yeah, I mean, having kids is a huge change, especially because, you know, we were both doing a lot of different things and volunteering for a lot of different organizations. And, you know, both had, you know, pretty thriving careers. So, you know, there were definitely some struggles in terms of balance and, you know, caretaking of children and balancing other activities and priorities. So, you know, I don't think that's a a unique thing, but certainly something that was tough in those early years.
But their growing family didn’t slow their careers down.
Lars and Megan became a Traverse City arts power couple … both appearing over the years on the region’s 40 under 40 lists.
Then in 2015, after 9 years at Interlochen, Megan was ready for something new.
A job posting caught her eye…
At Crooked Tree Arts Center, a community-based arts non-profit.
9’12” this seemed like a really exciting opportunity to to kind of run something and be a little bit more entrepreneurial and get some more management and oversight experience.
Megan was thrilled when she landed the job.
[00:09:40] it was exciting because at Crooked Tree, we could be a lot more nimble. So, you know, if someone had an idea for an art class we wanted to do, we just kind of like did it. It didn't have to go through five layers of approval. And there wasn't kind of that that hierarchical bureaucracy that that you get in a larger organization.
Megan helped launch Paint Grand Traverse, an annual plein air painting competition that draws in artists from all over the world to create landscapes of the beautiful Northern Michigan scenery.
And so life was good for Megan and Lars.
They were doing well in their careers, they had two beautiful daughters and they were part of a thriving creative community.
But life was about to change dramatically.
Saturday June 3rd 2017 was their daughter Ginger’s 4th birthday.
[00:33:07] We always made a big deal of the kid’s birthdays. there was a bounce house and there were tons of people. And I made a big elaborate cake. And, you know, of all the things we normally did, you know, lots of presents were had it was a was a real good day.
The following day was Sunday June 4th.
we had woken up that morning and spent some nice time as a family.
[00:34:20] The bounce house people came and took away the bounce house and and my older daughter. Her birthday's in July. So our deal was that, you know, because kids start planning their birthday parties like months ahead. Right.
[00:34:34] Our deal was, OK, Metta, we're not going to talk about your birthday party until Ginger's birthday party is done. So then the very next morning, Metta’s is like, OK, it's time to start designing invitations.
[00:34:45] So she wanted this Greek mythology themed birthday party. So, you know, we started on it. Metta and I spent the morning on Photoshop making the making the invitations. And Lar’s hung out with Ginger and did some puzzles on the floor. we had lunch. Lars Had to run down to the film festival to I don't even know what he was doing, rebooting a server or something. And I was outside then with the girls playing with a new water toy. They had gotten and while I'm out there just hanging in the backyard, two police officers came and banged on the back gate to get in.
it was terrifying. I mean, I had no idea why they were there. And they came and they said that Lars had collapsed. He was in the hospital and we needed to get there as soon as we could. So it was this crazy mad scramble to, like, get the girls dried off and dressed in, you know,
I remember Metta was so upset, she kept saying, you know what, if daddy broke his leg? And I'm thinking like, if this is a broken leg, we're gonna be like, super happy because. Police don't come to your house for a broken leg.
Megan and the girls rushed to the hospital.
It was a blur, but Megan remembers being taken to a room with a nameplate on the door that said ‘social worker’.
[00:36:36] So that was kind of like my clue that, like something really terrible had happened. Like, my worst case scenario in my head was somehow I went to, you know, him having a stroke and was unresponsive. And, you know, I'd even yeah, I didn't I didn't consider that that he was gone already.
Lars had suffered a major cardiac event.
He had no previous health issues.
There were no red flags.
[00:37:22] his aorta ruptured like randomly, which I guess is a thing that can happen, but it was not something I had ever heard of and certainly not something that you'd think, you know, he was 40, he was healthy. You know, he had just wrapped up a show.
[00:37:46] He was in a musical at the playhouse that had ended a couple weeks ago. So, you know, he was onstage singing and dancing, and that's a real like cardiovascular workout. There was not any indication to me that something might be wrong.
Tommy: I mean there’s no playbook for this … it’s just devastating … what do you do? As a person when this happens. How do you react. I just can’t even put myself in your shoes for this experience. Do you remember what it felt like to go through this?
Megan: my first instinct was to like go into survival mode, like I mean almost like how do I keep these kids fed and housed in everything? that was the first thing.
[00:39:15] And then the second thing was all the phone calls I had to make. Like I, I had to tell folks, I had to call, you know, his best friends from high school and my friends and and start letting people know, you know. You know, it being a small town, I knew it was only a matter of time before it was out on Facebook and everything. So I was trying to trying to get personal contacts with as many people as I could.
Megan relied heavily on her parents and Lars’s parents and brother who all lived in town … as well as the many friends the couple had made over the years.
we had a lot of family around us, which was good. You know, the kids were the kids were fed. my cat. I don't know. Someone scooped my cat's litter box for like a month. I have no idea who did it.
[00:40:09] But I had like a few months later, I was like, oh, yeah. Someone must have been doing that because I wasn't. So it was a it was a really crazy time.
[00:40:19] But, you know, when these things happen, you immediately get thrown into, you know, funeral planning and all the decisions you have to make about cremation and coffins.
[00:40:33] And, you know, they're asking me, like, what kind of guestbook do you want for the memorial? Like, I. I don't I don't know. I don't care. But I did care because you want it to be right.
Tommy: How did you talk to the girls about what had happened to Lars?
[00:43:31] I don't know how much it really was integrated into their brains about like what had happened, like they knew what death was. I think they both had a good understanding that it was final, but they don't think about it like or they didn't like an adult does. When, you know, you think about, like, all the ramifications of this loss of this person. Right. You know, a four and a six year old, they don't they don't leap to that necessarily. So I think that experience is going to unfold for them as they get older and wiser and more worldly.
Lars had been a 21st century renaissance man…
A one-size-fits all solution for just about any need or want in the community.
His obituary was proof that he meant so much to so many people…. It said people in town would call him when they needed a wedding officiated, or a trivia night hosted, a wifi network setup, a comedy sketch written, a short film made, a bonfire built, a brunch organized, a piano tuned, a show directed, or an introduction made … because he knew everybody.
Lars’ memorial service took place at the City Opera House.
It was a celebration of his life.
[00:40:57] I mean, it was a musical event. And we had a live band and a lot of singers performing numbers. And, you know, I don't know, six or seven people spoke. Kind of from different aspects of of Lars’s life. There was a, you know, slideshow of photos from throughout his whole life set to music. You know, it was it was a real, like, highly produced event. And several hundred people were there at the Opera House. And then it was also simulcast down the road to the state theater where folks were to and then also live on Facebook. So it was a real, real multi-media event. It's what he would have wanted.
Megan says she was fortunate enough to find a great therapist early on….
A woman who had also been widowed at the same age as Megan and has helped her through the grieving process.
Tommy: So it’s been 3 years since Lars died … I mean have you found any sense in what happened?
[00:45:16] Sense, I don't know if there's any sense.
[00:45:21] You know, I'm definitely like it is something I think about every day. It is. You know, but the pain, you know, it doesn't. It's less acute. Less often, I guess, at this point.
[00:46:51] the first three years here have been really about getting my feet back under myself and making sure I can support and provide for the girls and in all ways, financially and otherwise.
And all things considered the girls are doing well.
Megan sees Lars living on in them every day.
[00:31:15] They're both they're both very bright. They both are outgoing people, people, people. Lars was definitely like a huge extrovert so that the girls also have no problem talking to people and making friends. And, you know, that's been something that's that's been really fun to see my younger one. Ginger, I think she's she's inherited some of his musical abilities. So she's a little young to to take lessons yet. But but soon we'll be doing that very soon.
So life continues... but without her husband and best friend by her side.
Megan is still figuring this new life out.
And she says is OK.
I'm about to turn 40 this fall and definitely having, you know, not not. Yeah, I don't say midlife crisis because as a widow, I feel like I'm psychologically like 80 years old.
[00:47:29] But, you know, there is kind of an element of, OK, things are things are the new normal things are all right. What? Why do I want to be when I grow up?
Megan makes it clear that suddenly and unexpectedly losing your spouse is a disorienting experience.
She says… She’s nearly 40…
Sometimes feels 80…
But because of her newfound perspective…
And the view of the world she gets through the eyes of her two young daughters...
Sometimes she’s reminded of her youth.
She’s been re-evaluating what’s important…
And turning back toward that artistic side she hasn’t fully embraced in a long time.
[00:47:48] I'm happy in my job, so I'm not I'm not looking to to make a big change there. But I think it means for right now pursuing some of my own art projects, again, going back to that that first thing that I remember loving. Yeah, that's what that means for now.
We’d like to thank Megan Kelto for sharing her story.
Creative Coast is a podcast series brought to you by Traverse Connect…
the Grand Traverse Region’s Economic Development Organization…
and is produced by Maria Byrne and myself through our own little startup podcast company Airloom Media. That’s spelled A-I-R.
Our composer is Traverse City local Josh Hoisington.
This podcast series is made possible thanks to generous support and funding from the Michigan Film and Digital Media Office at Michigan’s Economic Development Corporation.
You can visit Traverse Connect’s website at traverseconnect.com.