We had closed on our home in Beverly Shores a few months before we learned of its special provenance. 

My husband and I were at the Beverly Shores Museum & Gallery (The Depot) for an art opening, when someone introduced my husband to Carol Ruzic, then 89. She told him the story: 

She and her husband, Neil, built the house after moving here in 1950. But it was in a different location: on the lake side of Lake Front Drive. When the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore ordered that all houses be torn down or removed from that side of the road, Carol and her husband devised a plan to move it, via flatbed truck, to its current home in the fall of 1994. 

It was purely sentimental; they had already built a much larger home with an indoor pool and a lake view around the corner. 

The house move took three days and was the talk of the town. Neighbors came out to watch the progress. Some were not happy that power lines were temporarily moved to make way for the house. The house survived completely intact—not a crack to the chimney—and was supported on piers to await spring, when a raised basement was built up under it meet the house, and a bedroom/bath and garage were added.

Carol Ruzic, who some in town knew as the women with the perfect white bob who zipped around Beverly Shores too fast in her red pickup truck, died in January at 96. She was the heart and soul of Beverly Shores. 

She had an incredible life over 70 years here, teaching at the elementary school that once stood in Beverly Shores, serving as town president, and, perhaps most notably, spearheading a drive to save our historic train depot from certain destruction. 

A piece of drywall my husband found in the ceiling when we were renovating. It has Neil’s initials and the date they built the house: 8/5/51

While Carol, born in Chicago to immigrant parents, taught school, her husband, Neil, published scientific journals (he had the midcentury glass office building on Route 12, across from the gas station in Beverly Shores, constructed for his editors). He bought an island in the Bahamas, hoping to turn it into a research station. That never happened, but he and Carol built a home there and hosted groups from cruise ships. Neil died in 2004.

In the 1990s she led a fundraising drive to repair and restore the Depot, the last remaining Mediterranean Revival-style train building of its kind, and later helped establish a museum and gallery in it, where the station master once lived. Today it’s a thriving institution run by a volunteer board (including me.) Carol was an active member until just weeks before her death, overseeing the Depot’s history exhibits.

After we did some renovations on the house a few years ago, we invited Carol over to see. She was gracious and appreciative of everything we’d done, especially the preservation of walnut paneling and built-ins, the aqua blue Kohler “Cinderella” tub in the bathroom and the bunkbeds in her son’s room. (Thankfully, on first meeting my husband, she told him the boards on the bench surrounding the house were redwood, which had been obscured by brown, yellow and green paint applied by an interim owner. My husband had them planed and restored to their original beauty.

But she especially loved our tabby, who, sensing a true animal lover (she owned many cats over her life and had an entire screen porch set up for them) leapt into her lap and promptly fell asleep. Carol refused refreshments, reasoning that she might then have to use the restroom and thus disturb him.

I was fighting a bad flu when Carol was put into hospice at home after a fall, but my husband visited her in her home around the corner from us. He described a peaceful scene; she on a bed in her living room, sun streaming in, overlooking her beloved lake. R.I.P., Carol. 

Carol’s many friends, neighbors, acquaintances and family will gather this weekend to remember her at a celebration of life at her home with her son, David, his wife, Marilyn; their five children and all seven of her of great-grandchildren. Her memory will live on at her beloved Depot, and at our home, too. 

Carol’s house in its new location, now our house.