Steve Iordachescu

Steve Iordachescu and his sister Marietta are from Madison, Wisconsin. Their parents were displaced by World War II, and they arrived in the United States in 1951; their mom was from Estonia, and their dad was from Romania. Steve followed in his father’s footsteps as a carpenter. Marietta is twelve years older than Steve, and in 1982, Marietta moved to Gordon with her boyfriend, Nathaniel Simonson. Shortly after arriving, they became the caretakers of the famous Velie Lodge, otherwise known as the Mishe Mokwa Lodge (Mishe Mokwa is Ojibwe for Great Bear, popularized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha). The Velie family had sold the lodge several years earlier to the Lambert family. Marietta and Nathaniel worked for the Lamberts and lived in the caretaker’s wing at Mishe Mokwa for six years, where Steve visited frequently as a young man. The Gordon-Wascott area was their playground where they enjoyed exploring everywhere and had many adventures in and around the lodge and all its acreage, including hunting, fishing, foraging for forest goodies, collecting boughs for Christmas wreaths, cutting wood, canoeing, and general mischief!

Steve lives in Madison in the house his father built, and Marietta lives in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The GWHS was able to connect with Steve because one of Steve’s old friends read the article about the Gibson Cabin in the January 2025 issue of St. Croix 360 and informed the GWHS that he knew a brother and sister who used to stay at Mishe Mokwa. Marietta was too far away to meet for an oral history interview, but Steve agreed to share his memories. Marietta sent Steve many photos of the Lodge from their time there, as well as a stack of photos from the 1940s that the Velie family had left. The GWHS is very thankful to Steve and Marietta for sharing their memories and providing so many one-of-a-kind photos, especially since the lodge is gone, due to its demolition ten years ago.