Northwoods Youth Symphony

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A Grandmother's Legacy

Kris Morgan Cunningham has loved the violin for a long time. Her grandmother, Eleanor Serrell Ketcham, played in the forerunner of the Chicago Symphony from about 1910 to 1930. Because of Eleanor's love of music and the legacy she left her family, Kris has dedicated the Northwoods Youth Symphony to her grandmother.

As Eleanor was growing up in Kenilworth, Illinois, she played violin while her sister Frances accompanied her on piano. She married Frank Winans Ketcham in 1917. Eleanor broke her shoulder while cross-country jumping her horse and could no longer play the violin. (She took up painting and in 1951 moved to Santa Barbara, California where she became a well known portrait and landscape painter.)

In 1918 Eleanor and Frank bought a small island on Mamie Lake in the Cisco Chain near Land O'Lakes, Wisconsin. They became a legend on the Chain of Lakes because of the funny pranks done during their house parties in the 1930's. Although they sold the island in the 1950s, they returned in the late 1960's with their grandchildren and rebuilt a cabin where Kris spent many enjoyable summers as a teenager. Never in her fondest dreams did Kris imagine that she and her husband Scott would raise their family in the in Three Lakes, Wisconsin.