Posted to Beaver Island Michigan Archives (public Facebook group) by Suzanne Jule on 2026-03-25 10:31:44. Caption as posted: "Circa 1980-82, the late Bill Welke (1922-2002) delivering milk cartons from Welke Airport to the Beaver Island Community School, with school mascot "Stubby" following behind. Bill was the owner and chief pilot of Island Airways, and also served as the island's Deputy Sheriff, among other roles. Stubby was the third dog of that name raised by the Cole family, growing up at their home a few doors south of the school. He gradually became a fixture at BICS, lounging in the hallway and circulating through the building. Stubby became such a familiar presence there that his photo appeared in the ann"
Visual descriptionwritten by a machine · unchecked
A black-and-white photograph shows a man in a cap and work clothes walking with a large dog while carrying a plastic crate filled with cartons. A vintage panel van is parked behind them, and a school building with glass entrance doors stands in the background. Bare trees and paved walkways surround the building.
A model wrote this. It was shown the image and the catalogue record together, and asked to keep them apart — what it saw is here, what the record told it is under "taken from the record" below. It is still wrong often enough to matter, about who is pictured, where, when, and what is happening. Read it as a way to find the image, never as evidence about it. If you can correct it, please do: write to michael.bommarito@gmail.com, or see how corrections work. Someone who recognises a face or a shoreline knows more than the model did.
Individual posters, credited per image
1,724 × 1,101 px · JPEG · 200 KB
Subjects and keywords
Text in the image
Transcribed from the object itself.
BEAVER ISLAND SCHOOL THE
Taken from the record
Not observed in the image — supplied by the archive's own catalogue, and repeated here so the two stay distinguishable.
The catalogue caption identifies the man as Bill Welke (1922–2002), the dog as the third dog named Stubby raised by the Cole family, and the scene as circa 1980–1982. It states that Welke was delivering milk cartons from Welke Airport to the Beaver Island Community School and identifies him as the owner and chief pilot of Island Airways and a deputy sheriff.
Could not make out
Stated rather than guessed at.
The lettering on the van is only partially visible; only “THE” can be made out.
Rights and credit
Community source, no stated terms; published non-commercially with attribution to the poster and a link to the original post.
Credit this to Individual posters, credited per image when you use it.
Why this archive publishes it. Public Facebook groups and pages run by island organisations and residents. Each item credits the poster by name and links to the original post. Removal on request.
Material goes off the web without anyone deciding that it should: a host lapses, a gallery is retired, a link stops resolving. Holding a copy — with its provenance, its checksum and its holder's terms recorded beside it — is much of why this archive exists. If you are looking for something whose original has since gone, write to michael.bommarito@gmail.com and a full-size copy of what is held here will be sent to you.
Recorded verbatim from the provenance sidecar taken at retrieval — this archive does not restate a holder's terms in its own words, does not add a restriction the holder did not state, and does not abridge one.
Provenance
- Held by
- Individual posters, credited per image
- Collection
- Community photographs — public Facebook groups and pages
- Original
- https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10170377528511337&set=g.1178704363851871
- Copy taken
- 2026-03-25
- Title from
- the note recorded at retrieval
The file
| Rendition | Format | Extent | Size | SHA-256 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Master | JPEG | 1,724 × 1,101 px | 200 KB | c0d07dbb5d7c… |
Checksums are the values recorded when each copy was taken.
Download
- Web-sized image1200 × 766 · 74 KB · WebP
- The full-resolution original, from Individual posters, credited per image1,724 × 1,101 · 200 KB · JPEG
The archive holds its own copy of that file and will supply it on request; it is not re-served here, because the holder serves it better and a second copy is a second thing to go stale.
Cite this
“Posted to Beaver Island Michigan Archives (public Facebook group) by Suzanne Jule on 2026-03-25 10:31:44”. Individual posters, credited per image. Beaver Island Archive, https://beaverislandarchive.org/media/photograph/2026-03-25-10170377528511337/. copy retrieved 2026-03-25.
Built only from what the archive recorded: the names on the record, the title as recorded, the date if one was recorded, this page, and the date the copy was taken. Nothing is filled in to satisfy a citation style.