Photo courtesy of Candy Peterson
Candy Peterson poses with moose bones.

Photos courtesy of Candy Peterson
Shown are Candy and Rolf Peterson aboard a canoe.

Photos courtesy of Candy Peterson
Carolyn “Candy” Peterson poses in front of the Bangsund Cabin on Isle Royale with a book she authored “A View From the Wolf’s Eye.”

Carolyn “Candy” Peterson is a connector. She connects people with similar beliefs, people with opposite beliefs. She connects people with their own mortality, city officials with community gardeners, kids with thoughtfulness, visitors to Isle Royale with their responsibility to nature, herself with her deep spiritual core.

Peterson believes that our heart, not our brain, is the best part of us.

“Our hearts want to be kind; our hearts want to be good,” she says. “We’ve got to listen to our hearts.”

Her heart has guided the 75-year-old resident of Houghton for decades. It led her and her husband, Rolf, to raise their two sons in a remote cabin on Isle Royale, without plumbing or electricity, every summer until they were grown. It inspired her to teach a class called Embracing Mortality from 2009 until the COVID pandemic intervened. It birthed an annual waffle party to celebrate her and her dear friend Alice Soldan’s birthdays, to which she invited disparate people to get to know each other and hopefully make a new friend.

Peterson grew up in Duluth, Minnesota, in what she describes as a “Father Knows Best” family. She studied economics at Wellesley College, in the class after Hilary Clinton’s. In 1969, the first year that a student gave a commencement address, Clinton was the speaker. Peterson recalls her saying, “We have been raised to think we can do anything. If you aren’t ready for us, get out of the way.”

“It scared me,” Peterson says. “I was a Goldwater Republican at the time, like my family.”

A Goldwater Republican no longer, she signs petitions, writes letters to the editor, communicates with politicians, does everything she can to bring kindness and caring to a world sadly lacking in it. “We won’t be happy until we work together to fix things,” she says.

Peterson met her husband, Rolf, a professor emeritus at Michigan Technological University, when they were counselors at a YMCA summer camp in Minnesota. At the time, she was planning to serve in the Peace Corps after college. But Rolf captured her heart, and when he went to Purdue to do a graduate program in wildlife ecology, she tagged along — as his wife.

They had two sons, Jeremy and Trevor. Jeremy, 46, is now a U.S. magistrate for the eastern district of California, and Trevor, 42, is a wildlife ecologist in Maine.

By the time Trevor was born, Rolf Peterson was studying the wolves and moose of Isle Royale. Candy brought the boys along to live in Bangsund Cabin in a remote part of the national park, a rough shelter with no running water or electricity.

Trevor was 10 days old the first summer they spent there. “I was using cloth diapers,” she recalls. “We built a fire and set a huge metal pot of water on it, boiled the diapers and hung them out to dry,” she says. “1980 was the longest summer of my life.”

Although she had earned a degree in economics and a teaching certificate, Peterson chose to stay home to raise her kids. “It was so satisfying,” she says. And challenging — making sheep costumes for 5-year-olds, serving as den mother for a Cub Scout pack. She recalls organizing a relay race through the halls of Houghton Elementary. After a couple of laps, the little boys stopped, saying, “This isn’t fair. One team is much faster than the other. If we move this boy to that team and that boy to this team, it will be more fun.” Peterson pauses. “The wisdom of kids,” she remarks.

Peterson remembers another time when she was driving teenage Jeremy home from church.

“What did you learn in Sunday school?” she asked.

“That we use our big brains to justify actions we know in our hearts to be wrong,” he replied. Once again, the wisdom of children, Peterson says.

Gloria Melton, whose family has been neighbors of the Petersons for more than 40 years, calls Candy “an enthusiast for community.” She has led or volunteered in music organizations and hospice teams, tutored in local schools and international programs, and engaged in and encouraged civic involvement, Melton says. “Her attention to individuals often means someone receiving a handwritten note or letter of encouragement.  She would give the Energizer Bunny some real competition.”

A longtime member of First United Methodist Church in Hancock, Peterson is deeply religious. “I have felt the power of ritual and the example of Jesus,” she explains.  “Also, it is in community that we practice the love of neighbors. People in the pews have widely different beliefs, but we share faith in a loving God and a will to serve.”

She continues: “I believe people are good — like wolves, moose, mosquitoes, trees — but we will not reach our potential as humans until we choose to get along better with each other.”  

Peterson’s greatest concern is that people are being prevented from achieving their full potential.

“We need to free up everyone to follow their dreams.”

And her abiding faith tells her that can be so.

“We have to use all the tools available to us to figure out how to live in peace, with justice,” she says. “Loving your enemy is the only thing that is going to save the world.”