JULY 29, 2026 – After dispensing with legal work—in which I experienced the satisfaction that accompanies “break-throughs”—I turned to my oft-mentioned project of late, construction of my model sailboat fleet. Most of today’s effort was devoted to intricate rigging, necessitating reliance on “cheaters,” pincer-nosed pliers and small-motor coordination. After hoisting main and jib on the “orange” vessel (photos to follow soon), I took respite from my make-shift shipyard on the back porch of the old cabin of Björnholm.
Following a half-hour hike to enjoy the gorgeous weather, I settled into a lawn chair in front of the cabin overlooking the steep bank that plunges almost straight down to the lake. Framed by the big pines, the view of sky and water and distant shore was amply restorative. I felt younger by at least a couple of years.
After five or ten minutes of deep breathing (smoke-free) pine-scented air, I flipped open my laptop to check my email. Good: Everything under control. Before snapping the device shut, I checked the headlines. It’s Wednesday, after all, the day of the week I read an article about the on-again, off-again “skirmish” with Iran at a daily burn rate of a billion—with a “B”—bucks, enough, I’m guessing, to obliterate whatever savings might have been achieved but was never disclosed (doubtless because of its paltry sum) from the damage wreaked by DOGE.
Before I could land on a qualifying article, however, my eyes caught a NYT headline from yesterday’s edition: “Investigation of School Epstein Helped Finds Abuses Went Beyond Him.” The school name in the one-sentence thumbnail sketch below the headline snagged my attention: “Interlochen,” the renowned arts high school that two of my sisters and I attended in the late 60s, early 70s. The full sentence read, “A law firm hired by Interlochen, the arts school and camp, to look into alumni complaints of sexual abuse fielded dozens of disturbing accounts, primarily from decades ago.”
Around the time Epstein’s legal troubles hit the news, rumors began circulating among Interlochen alumni that the school had been a beneficiary of his financial largess. But so had lots of other institutions benefited from his “generosity.” More recently, however, victims of sexual abuse by Interlochen staff and faculty, unrelated to the Epstein scandal, began to go public with deeply disturbing allegations. The abuse reportedly was ongoing for many years, including the years when my sisters and I were students. Initially, I was as shocked as anyone by these revelations—except . . . I need to qualify that: for the victims and others with well-grounded knowledge of the abuse, the “revelations” weren’t new. The sordid reports where now finding their way into the light of day. As the Detroit Free Press reported yesterday, 70 former Interlochen students have accused 50 former staff and faculty of sexual abuse.
My dumbfounded surprise to this awful information was a function of my naivete as a 15- to nearly 18-year-old. If rumors were afoot among my friends and acquaintances back then[1]—and in retrospect I have to believe they were very much afoot—I wasn’t privy to them; or if I was, they were expressed quietly and cryptically enough to escape my long-term memory bank.
As more allegations came to light, alumni reacted with disdain, despair and disappointment. Many of us had fond memories of Interlochen and owed much to our dedicated teachers and mentors there. How now do we reconcile all the good that we extracted from the place with all the bad that some among us suffered?
But then came the big shocker: after his death a couple of years ago, one of the alleged principal predators, it turns out, was none other than “Mr. Interlochen,” master of all things associated with the school, who’d dedicated his entire career to the place, who’d served as the glue that held Interlochen together[2]; the ubiquitous genius, whose musical talents, coaching and teaching prowess, and all-around miracles won him universal reverence among students, his fellow faculty members, the administration, trustees, and benefactors of the institution.
When I first learned of the allegations against him, I was stunned beyond my imagination. I knew this person as well as anyone else did—well, strike that: apparently I did NOT know him. But for the better part of a year, he was the regular conductor of the academy orchestra, of which I was a member; when Mr. Draper, our physics teacher called in sick, who should serve as substitute? Mr. Oil Can Man, of course, and he took charge of the class as if he were a PhD in the subject with 10 years of advanced classroom teaching experience; he accompanied me on a recital my junior year, and at our first rehearsal, he sight-read everything, which, to my amazement was nearly all it took for him to memorize the music—and offered insightful musical ideas for my part; in my senior year, he coached three of us through the Mendelssohn Piano Trio in D minor to performance, again, providing superb conservatory-level ideas and instruction.
In addition to his extraordinary musical gifts, this individual’s intellectual curiosity knew no bounds. He could talk with great interest and erudition—without sounding full of himself—about any academic subject you wanted to discuss.
In short, he was a one-man university/music conservatory, and as busy as he was, he always had time for students.
Sadly, in the case of who knows how many girls, that time extended into a very dark world. As I read the NYT article, which refers to a recently issued 90-page report on a comprehensive investigation commissioned by the current administration, I was relieved not to see his name—not because he’s been exonerated post mortem (he hasn’t) but because I’m simply so upset to have been fooled. Jeffrey Epstein was the only perpetrator identified in the article, and that by itself was enough to reflect the degree of stain that has bled through the paint of all Interlochen signage.
I cannot mention “Mr. Oil Can Man’s” name here either. I simply cannot reconcile the man that most of us thought we knew with the man who, on credible and collaborated evidence, was engaged in sexual abuse of minors. Far distant from the reported offenses—in time, geography, and personal effect—I’d managed somehow to exile the revelations from my thoughts. But then the NYT article blew the lid off things. From the perspective of the victims, I thought, shame on me for having tried to block out the whole sordid mess. Who is to fix the brokenness that they’ve had to live with all these years?[3]
And on a grander scale, what about the victims of Jeffrey Epstein—and of all the people who, one way or another, took advantage of his “favors”? When will their victims be afforded their due—justice, reparations, empathy, apology? I fear the answer. In prior eras, a tenth of the scandal—as scandal, without regard for victims—would’ve finished the career of most politicians. In the current era, however, who—Democrat or Republican—has thus far lost a single vote or a single campaign contribution dollar, not simply to a scandal of globe-circling proportions but one that has devastated the lives of girls and women caught in an unspeakable web of exploitation? The outrages committed by the White House, the DOJ, and Trump’s enablers in Congress reaches beyond their frontal attack on democracy and evisceration of government. Their record also includes a cynical and contemptuous assault on decency—a record shared, it turns out, by some of the most beloved among our teachers and mentors at Interlochen.
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
[1] Interlochen was a relatively small boarding school—approximately 450 students (grades 9 through 12) housed within four dormitories. Most faculty and staff members lived near the campus, which was in a very scenic area about 30 miles south of Traverse City. A large state park is across the road from the main entrance to Interlochen (now called, “Interlochen Center for the Arts”). The Interlochen National Music Camp occupies extensive acreage beyond Interlochen Arts Academy, the high school we attended, which occupies the center of the sprawling complex.
[2] At the awards ceremony the night before commencement exercises my senior year, he was presented with the “Oil Can Award” for all that he did to keep Interlochen functioning smoothly.
[3] As reported by the Detroit Free Press, the current president of Interlochen announced that the school will fund therapy for victims.
