6/15/2009 Mon 9:47 PM 1 of 3

Hi Beata,
Let me introduce myself...my name is David Sholtey.
I would like to start off by giving you a short history of the family. We visited Bear Lake for the first time in the summer of 1955, where my father had purchased 2 cottages on the west shore. It was a beautiful summer an we fell in love with Bear Lake. I was only 13 years old at that time and never understood why my parents sold the cottages and moved back to Florida.
We later returned to Bear Lake permanently in 1958.
This was where it all started.
My father purchased a building on the main street of Bear Lake that was to become our residence and the start of a new business. I am not sure today what is in that building, if anything... but it would be the first building on the west side of the fire station.
He converted the one side of it to a store and that is where he started selling Johnson Motors in the spring of 1959. At the very same time the piece of property that is presently the marina was offered to my father for 18,000.00 by a man named Bob Warner. The only thing that was on that piece of property was a small two unit motel, the house on the east side of the motel and at that time it looked like a small cape cod cottage. Down at the lake where your service building sits, was a small corrugated metal building where Bob Warner employed high school boys to sell fish bait and rent boats and motors... $5.00 a day for a boat rental.

That is where the name Boat Livery came from...after the purchase of that property, somewhere around 1960 my father moved his whole operation down to the lake, expanded the metal building and started selling small motors, aluminum boats, tackle , repair work and Texaco gas.

Continued...