Creative couple call it a wrap after 25 years

HUSON, Mont. — The really sentimental ones have been here awhile already. They are lined up at the heavy iron gate in the cold and fog, waiting for Hanneke Ippisch and her quiet husband, Les, to emerge from the yellow schoolhouse and let them in.

It is part of the tradition.

Promptly at 10 a.m., Hanneke (pronounced like Hanukkah) and Les make their way down the short driveway. They swing open the gate and the crowd floods in.

It has been this way at the Ippisches' Schoolhouse and Teacherage every Christmas season for the past quarter-century. For three weeks before Christmas, the place swarms with people who come to buy their handmade wooden toys and Christmas ornaments, to see their unique home and visit with the quirky couple behind it all.

But this year, the Ippisches say, is their last. The Schoolhouse and Teacherage, which is their home and a bed and breakfast the other 49 weeks of the year, is for sale. The Ippisches are retiring.

"We just don't have any time of our own anymore," says Hanneke, 77, who is also an author and well-known public speaker. "I want to write. I have so many things I still want to write."

Had it been anyone else, or had it been any other simple holiday craft sale being retired, it might have gone mostly unnoticed.

But what the Ippisches did was different, their friends and customers say. Their market has always been less about America's idea of Christmas as it has been the idea of Christmas spirit throughout cultures.

Along with the Santas and baby Christs, the hand-painted ornaments depict Christmas characters from other countries and heritages, or even celebrate another religion entirely. And each comes with a small card the character's significance.

The Ippisches' popular nativity scenes have a different theme each year. This year, all the figures are characters from Hans Christian Anderson stories. Last year, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Hanneke created an "Afghanistan" figurines and ornaments, honoring religious traditions of that country.

It is that originality that has resonated with customers from across the country, many of whom have been coming out here since the very first market.

"I think people are attracted to this because it is so different," Hanneke says. "These aren't just a mass-produced plastic toys that don't mean anything."

Setting up house

How it all started for the Ippisches is as interesting as what they have created.

Hanneke grew up in Holland and, as a teenager during World War II, joined the Dutch resistance, helping aid Jewish families hiding from the Nazis. She was eventually captured and spent the final months of the war in a Nazi prison camp. After her release, she married into Swedish royalty and eventually moved to America in the 1950s. She and her first husband eventually divorced.

She met Les at the Forest Service's Nine Mile Ranger Station, where he was a timber specialist and she had a part-time job as a housecleaner. He was a 48-year-old bachelor. She was a middle-age woman with grown children.

They married 29 years ago and, while looking for a place to live, came across the abandoned Nine Mile schoolhouse just down the road from the ranger station.

It had sat empty for more than four decades. The roof had holes, the windows were broken and wasps had taken over the attic.

"When my kids first saw it, they refused to go inside. They thought it was so horrible," says Hanneke.

But the Ippisches bought the dilapidated property, had the school put on a new foundation and gutted the entire building. They turned it into a home that is a showcase to Les' craftsmanship, Hanneke's Dutch heritage and their combined unique style.

The small house in back where the teachers once lived — the teacherage — was also gutted and turned into a four-room bed and breakfast. Guests sleep on fat feather beds, then cross the courtyard each morning for a traditional Dutch breakfast in the schoolhouse.

During the holiday season, the teacherage and a half-dozen other outbuildings around the courtyard, are taken over by the couple's wooden creations. Hanneke makes the designs, Les does the carving and an army of mostly local residents hand-paints each one.

In the schoolhouse, another small team of hired helpers serve lunch for guests while Hanneke makes the rounds of tables, signing copies of her 1996 book, "Sky," an autobiography of her days with the Dutch resistance.

A little writing, fishing

On this day, she is stopped at nearly every table by people saddened to hear she and Les are retiring.

"Our Christmas won't be right without you," one local woman says. "It's just not going to be the same."

Sharon McCrea of Missoula came out for the first time this year, a bit mad at herself for not having done it sooner.

"There is a beautiful tradition here that I wanted to see before it ends," she says.

Deb Frandsen of Missoula has been coming to the Christmas market for 16 years. A few years ago, she gave friends in Iowa one of the Ippisches' Irish-themed nativity scenes.

"Then everybody wanted one," she says. "Now there's a whole contingent in the Quad Cities with Irish nativities."

Les and Hanneke say they will finish this last market and then retire to a spot of lakefront property they've been looking at in the Flathead Valley. Hanneke has more stories she wants to write. Les plans to fish as often as possible.

But both say they don't intend to completely give up making ornaments and toys.

"I think we'll always keep playing. We might even open a little store up there," Hanneke says. "But this will give us a chance to do some other things too."