Mary Cartledgehayes: Middle Bass Monday: Amy May Cartledge

Amy Cartledge, 1962

Amy, my older sister, with our first cat, George. Our father was running a taxi boat between Middle Bass and Put-in-Bay. One evening, that cat, scrawny and with a dreadful wound on his neck, strolled up to the boat at Put-in-Bay. Discussion certainly followed, but when we children got up the next morning, the cat was sitting up tall in a chair in the living room Amy and I used to dress him in our doll clothes and feed him with our doll's bottles. He'd put up with it until the milk ran out.

Amy was in the 1964 Ottawa County Fruit Queen pageant. She was a junior at Put-in-Bay High School at the time and was Miss Ice Fishing Guide, 1963.

She was third runner up. The dress she's wearing is satin in two shades of blue. Evening gowns being in short supply on the island and with no time for a trip to the mainland for shopping, Amy wore a dress loaned to her by Thelma Schneider.

Amy was more than just a pretty face, though. From an article by Juel Reed Cover in the Daily News (Port Clinton / Oak Harbor):
"Because of four wonderful teenagers, the sale of the MS gift tags in the Lake Erie Islands area is already higher than it has ever been before for the whole season . . . Mrs. Fred Wilhelm makes the tags . . . This year the sale is being conducted by four young volunteers - Mary Eickler worked on North Bass, Amy Cartledge on Middle Bass, and Janis and Lee Wilhelm on Put-in-Bay.
" 'The thing I'd like to stress,' writes Mrs. Wilhelm,'is that these kids asked to do it. Certainly they deserve a lot of credit.'" . . .
"She said the sale as of Nov. 10 was $44, which is already bigger than ever before."

In high school, Amy decided "Amy" was boring and changed the spelling of her name to Aimee. (If you think that's an achievement, 15 years later she convinced her younger son that I was older than she. Eventually, she reached the same age as my brother Charlie, who's ten years younger than I.

After high school, she attended Patricia Stevens Casting Agency in Toledo. The gown she's wearing in the photo on the right was the pink lace prom dress Mother made for me in 1966. I don't recall just exactly how Amy got her hands on it.