Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 137

DECEMBER 28, 1975 I' it 1 si GEhg i xmmi i mi'ww. VJTit ftr ft i I 4 by JIM NEUBACHER photography by AL KAMUDA Quickly, let's acknowledge there are plenty of interesting things about Frank Shelden. He's a rich, 47-year-old bachelor who flys his own plane, invests in the market, dabbles in oil and studies geology. His family's history is entwined with the Duffields, the Algers and the Buhls, with Rosedale Park and Grosse Pointe, with presidents and governors and merchant princes. We'll get back to all that later.

But right now, look down below at the absolutely most fascinating thing about Frank Shelden. It's there on the horizon, over the wing of his Piper Seneca II as we come in at 900 feet toward a green splotch, outlined neatly in white and surrounded by the blue waters of Lake Michigan. North Fox Island. Frank Shelden owns the whole thing. Here, 26 miles northwest of Charlevoix, on an island in the Great Lakes, is one of the most private and exclusive hideaways imaginable, an 839-acre, thickly forested preserve which Shelden shares only with his deer herd, the birds and a few close friends.

$MILDIM i i on--' Spread in the midst of Lake Michigan like a giant manta ray sunning Itself, Frank Shelden's little piece of untrammeled greenery (except for a burgeoning deer population,) and uninhabited beach Is far from the shores of a hectic world. Shelden paid $20,000 for the two mile-long Island In 1960. Today It's assessed at $312,000..