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roof," said Wendy, "the
neighbors come help fix it. If your boat breaks down, they help. It's very
communal. There is a connection to your neighbors, a lot of sharing of
everything."
    The island is a place of precious memories to the Munger children because their work-absorbed, ambitious father made a ritual of spending
time with them there each summer.
    "That's where we saw the most of him," said Wendy.
    The island is aptly named. Its shape resembles that of a star that has
fallen from the sky and splattered to earth. The dense evergreen forest
starts directly in back of the houses and the clear water of Cass Lake laps
up just 40 feet from the front door of Munger's eastern shore cottages.
Lake Windigo, a body of water completely contained within the island, is
less than a 15-minute hike from any of the cottages.
    There are no roads on the island, and to get around, residents use a
system of hiking trails dividing uncut woods. The only way to reach Star
Island from the mainland is by private boat. Most of the island is now controlled by the U.S. Forest Service, but the longtime residents who own the
several dozen cottages perched along the edges, feel it is theirs.
    Munger's grandparents discovered Star Island in 1932. Cass Lake was
a two-day drive from their home in Lincoln, Nebraska, but to the Mungers,
the trip into the Northern Minnesota wilderness was worth the effort.
They came upon the snug resort community in their desperation to escape the stifling 90-degree heat, 90 percent humidity that settles over Nebraska in the summers. Home air conditioning was almost unknown, and
any Midwesterner who could afford to do so fled to the cooler north.
    After the solitary hotel on the island burned, the only accommodations left were an American-plan lodge (which later was acquired by the
U.S. Park Service and demolished) and a sprinkling of primitive cabins
around the shoreline. At first, the Munger family rented one of
the cabins. Charlie's grandparents were a stalwart couple. Federal Judge
Thomas C. Munger and his wife believed that roughing it with no electricity, no toilets, no telephones, no nearby stores, was good for their family. It built character. Electricity didn't come to the island until 1951 and
telephones weren't available until the 1980s.

    "I think I was 13 when the bathroom went in," recalled Wendy
Munger. "Before that, we had outdoor toilets and a couple of sinks."
    The original Munger cabin was built around 1908. Charlie's father
bought it in the 1940s from Dr. Tommy Thompson, a Lincoln orthopedist.
Dr. Thompson's droll comments on life still hang on some walls.
    "My dad paid $5,600 for this house in 1946," explained Charlie. "My
grandmother had just died and he inherited some money. Before that he
didn't have anything extra."
    An avid outdoorsman, Al Munger was delighted to own his own lake
house. But Charlie's mother Florence, always called Toody, had to muster
up her courage to make the annual trip to Minnesota.
    "It was Dad's love. Father was a passionate fisherman, a duck hunter,
loved dogs," recalled Charlie's sister, Carol Estabrook. As for Toody, "She
was allergic. She was not an outdoor lady at all."
    Although the short boat ride from the mainland marina to the
family dock was an ordeal for her, Toody Munger set the standard for all
grandmothers.
    "Here was this woman who couldn't swim, and yet she came every
summer to an island out of love for her children and grandchildren," recalled Wendy. Once she was safely on the island, Toody Munger's sense of
humor returned.
    "At Cass Lake," said Charlie's childhood friend Willa Davis Seemann,
"just before dinner we had to straighten things. `I want this cottage artistic by sunset,' Toody would say. She was clever and fun."
    Allergies and insecurity on water weren't Toody's only problems
with the island. She was terrified of mice, and there were plenty of rodents to be found in a cabin in the woods that was unoccupied much of