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Bernard F. "Bernie" Fettig
Born: 1/3/1940
Died: 2/15/2025
Age: 85
Community: Otisville, MI
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Bernard F. “Bernie” Fettig, 85, of Otisville, Michigan, died peacefully Feb. 15, 2025, due to complications of congestive heart failure. In his final hours, his family from across Michigan traveled through a snowstorm to gather at his bedside and to surround him with love.
Born Jan. 3, 1940, Bernie grew up on a farm in Petoskey, Michigan, along with his four sisters. After graduating from Petoskey’s St. Francis Xavier High School in 1959, he attended North Central Michigan College and then Northern Michigan University, where he earned a teaching degree in 1968 and met the love of his life, Janet D. Bonn.
The couple, who took great delight in their three children, seven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren, celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in December 2024.
Bernie taught briefly in Manistee, Michigan, before finding his home at LakeVille Community Schools, which hired him in November 1967 while he was finishing the last of his undergraduate coursework from NMU. In 1973, he earned a master’s degree from Eastern Michigan University.
In his 28 years as a middle school teacher at LakeVille, Bernie taught social studies, Michigan history, and woodshop. He estimated that he taught about 5,000 students before retiring in 1995.
Bernie’s farming roots instilled in him an appreciation for the bounties of the earth and a duty to provide for others.
Along with other teachers, Bernie founded LakeVille’s Sugarbush in 1976 as a project to celebrate the nation’s bicentennial. To this day, the school’s sugarbush program provides middle school students with hands-on learning opportunities in the science, history, and business of making real maple syrup.
As a side job while teaching, Bernie worked as an on-call emergency medical technician for the former Hudson Ambulance of Otisville. After retiring from teaching, he worked with the UAW-GM LifeSteps Health Promotion Program, providing health screenings for GM employees.
For years, Bernie tended an organic garden so abundant in vegetables that his family could not possibly eat them all. So he gave much of his harvest to neighbors throughout Otisville. Each autumn, he would collect from many of those same neighbors their fallen tree leaves, which he returned to the land in the form of rich compost.
With his jacknife always on hand, he could make a whistle in mere minutes from a stick of basswood found alongside a trail. In his woodshop behind the house, he made and repaired tables, chairs, bookshelves, and other furniture. He cooked beef stew over open campfires, never following a recipe, using whatever home-grown vegetables he had in stock. His signature duck call, which he blasted through his bare hands, commanded attention from his students, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
Bernie is survived by his wife, Janet; daughter Deborah Benjamin and her husband, David; daughter Denise Brow and her husband, Chris; son Todd Fettig and his wife, Erin; and sisters Patricia Kuebler, Robetta Kohnen, and Gerry Kae Boris. Grandchildren are Rachel (Andrew) Overheul, Kaitlynn Brow, Carter Fettig, Tatum Fettig, Logan Brow, Nicholas Benjamin, and Daniel Benjamin. Great-grandchildren are Dallas and Carson Overheul. Bernie was preceded in death by his parents, Joseph and Nellie Fettig, and his sister, Michelle Swadling.
Visitation will take place 1-3 p.m. and 4-6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 21, 2025, at Mumford-Hudson Funeral Home, 116 Grove St., Otisville. Funeral Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 22, 2025, at St. Francis Xavier Church, 212 Center St., Otisville, with a luncheon immediately following in the church’s Quaderer Hall.
In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to the Forest Township Senior Center, where Bernie enjoyed the company of friends, neighbors, and former colleagues.
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| Visitation |
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2/21/2025 |
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1:00 PM |
| Visitation will take place 1-3 p.m. and 4-6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 21, 2025, at Mumford-Hudson Funeral Home, 116 Grove St., Otisville. |
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| Funeral Service |
| Date: |
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2/22/2025 |
| Time: |
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10:00 AM |
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| Location: |
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St. Francis Xavier Church
212 Center Street
Otisville, MI 48463Get a Map to this location...
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