Sesquicentennial Interview: Ashley Clague and Frances Danforth

Thu, 11/21/2024 - 12:57pm

When: 1974

This interview was conducted in 1974 as part of the I Remember When television series produced by the Ann Arbor Public Library.

Transcript

• [00:00:10] TEACHER: Mr. Clague used to have a store. Was it over on Packard Street?
• [00:00:14] ASHLEY CLAGUE: Right on Packard and Wells.
• [00:00:17] TEACHER: After that he was on the school board, he was chairman of the school board. We want him to tell us many things about old Ann Arbor. That's what he's going to tell you today. Okay, Mr. Clague.
• [00:00:34] ASHLEY CLAGUE: Maybe you children want to ask some questions too. If you do, I'll be glad to answer them for you. Maybe we ought to talk about Burns Park here? Well, I happened to be on the school board when the transfer of this school and the building of Tappan took place.
• [00:00:53] STUDENT: When?
• [00:00:55] ASHLEY CLAGUE: That was probably, let's see. When was it? 1940. See I was president. About 1949, '48, '49. We transferred. You people came from Eberbach. We closed Eberbach and put you in here. The elementary school here and put the Junior High over on.
• [00:01:19] STUDENT: Stadium?
• [00:01:20] ASHLEY CLAGUE: Stadium Boulevard over there. We built a new school and put that one over there. They soon grew out of that one. But I guess your enrollment here is not as heavy anymore as it was.
• [00:01:32] TEACHER: No, it's going down now. Yes.
• [00:01:34] STUDENT: My dad could tell you about [INAUDIBLE]
• [00:01:39] TEACHER: Then we named this Burns Park School after Tappan went. We named this Burns Park, and then the school board took over Eberbach and made a business office out of it. That was that. This was the fairgrounds at that time. There was at that time in the first beginning. There's another park in this city that has a site for a school, but it was never used. It is Allmendinger Park over by Eberwhite. Now that park over there, there's two acres of land in that park for a school site, if and when the school board wants to make it or use it. I don't know what they're going to do, whether they'll put a Junior High over on the other end of Pioneer High School over on Seventh Street and Scio Church. If they do, they'll probably maybe build an elementary in the neighborhood of Allmendinger Park. But it makes a nice situation where the children has a park and playgrounds.
• [00:02:37] TEACHER: Yes.
• [00:02:38] ASHLEY CLAGUE: The difference between the two there Allmendinger Park and, this acreage of the fairground when the fairgrounds bought. Originally, there was a 19 and 5/10 of an acre in the whole site. In 1920, they sold the acreage that was in here, the four and 5/10 of an acre, leaving 15 acres in the fairgrounds in the park over here, and the school had this property here. You children want something?
• [00:03:13] STUDENT: I have a question. The Burns Park, this used to be I know a race track.
• [00:03:22] TEACHER: Yes, it was a fairgrounds, the race track and all, they had a half mile. Then in the center of the fairgrounds was a fence. They had a fence in there. Then the school used to have all their athletic programs in there at that time, and they had a contract with the Fair Association that they wouldn't have hold anything as long as the school was in session.
• [00:03:45] STUDENT: I got something.
• [00:03:46] TEACHER: Christopher.
• [00:03:50] STUDENT: When was Junior High built?
• [00:03:54] ASHLEY CLAGUE: The Junior high over here?
• [00:03:55] STUDENT: Yeah.
• [00:03:55] ASHLEY CLAGUE: The other one? This one here first was the Junior High. I think it was opened in 1923. I think that was the time that it was built about two years I started, about two years before that. This other one was built over here was at '49 where Tappan is now at the present site.
• [00:04:14] STUDENT: What did this school used to look like?
• [00:04:20] ASHLEY CLAGUE: Like it does now. They ain't change. Maybe they made some changes. I don't believe they have the swimming pool. They never use that anyway.
• [00:04:28] TEACHER: You tell these boys and girls where the swimming pool is. Some of them don't know.
• [00:04:32] STUDENT: I know.[OVERLAPPING]
• [00:04:32] ASHLEY CLAGUE: You know where it is? I think the hole is down the road. I don't think we're down a little bit in the [INAUDIBLE].
• [00:04:39] TEACHER: It's under the floor way down in the room in the center. You know where that is?
• [00:04:46] ASHLEY CLAGUE: Down where you come in the center to the left there and right down there's, it's a little deeper there. Two or three steps I think.
• [00:04:53] TEACHER: Oh yes.
• [00:04:53] ASHLEY CLAGUE: Down in I think. That's it.
• [00:04:57] STUDENT: There's no water?
• [00:04:58] ASHLEY CLAGUE: They never used it. [OVERLAPPING] Mr. Haisley was against the swimming pools for some reason, or other his. That's why we never had one.
• [00:05:11] STUDENT: I have one.
• [00:05:13] TEACHER: Is it Chris Park or is it Larken?
• [00:05:17] STUDENT: Larken.
• [00:05:18] TEACHER: Larken.
• [00:05:19] STUDENT: When was the school built?
• [00:05:21] ASHLEY CLAGUE: I think they started the building of this school in the fall of '21. They built it in '22. They opened it in 1923.
• [00:05:30] TEACHER: Mr. Clague, could you tell them what school was like? When you went to school, did you go to school here in Burns Park?
• [00:05:35] ASHLEY CLAGUE: Well, when I brought Mr. Zwerdling with me today, he probably is one of the outstanding citizens in Ann Arbor. Mr. Zwerdling never went to school. He obtained the rank of one of the outstanding citizens of this community. His education that he picked up, he earned himself and he made a successful operation of his business and to help to build this city. Myself, the schools was different when I went to school. You children got it a lot different than what we had. We took our lunch. We didn't have any buses. I think we went three or four miles to school, and it was in the northern part. The snow got deep in the wintertime, but we went just the same. Our teachers were all nice to us. Myself, my education stopped at sixth grade. After I left the sixth grade, the teacher that taught me most in school was my sixth grade teacher. She didn't teach me out of a book. She sat down and counseled with me. She was a wonderful girl. At that time, I never realized what it meant, you children don't know now what it really meant to your mother and father to put you in school. These teachers here to instruct you and help you. They're the best people you're going to have in your entire life. You want to honor and respect them because they'll not do you any harm. They'll just do you good. If you just listen to their wisdom, you will multiply and prosper. The day is different. Schools have changed. When we went to school, if we came home and said we got in trouble with the teacher, we got in trouble home. We got a lickin. Then my father and mother, and my sisters, they'd say to my other older sister, you tell the teacher if he needs some more, you give it to him. They don't do that now. But I think maybe more discipline in schools probably would be better off all the way around. No. What did you want?
• [00:08:10] TEACHER: Scott.
• [00:08:18] STUDENT: There's a picture of the race track up there.
• [00:08:21] ASHLEY CLAGUE: Yes. That used to be the race track. They had horses out here. Mullison used to have the stables. Then this hill out here. Know this hill out here they're talking about? Well, that was put. There was some of that dirt was taken out of this school and put out there. When I was on the park commission, we fixed that all up so you could sleigh ride out there and toboggan. Is that what you do with it now in the wintertime?
• [00:08:47] STUDENT: No. I only skate out there.
• [00:08:48] ASHLEY CLAGUE: I was the one that was on the park board, got the ice rink in here. Put the connection. Had the connection put in here. We put one here and one in the West Side Park.
• [00:09:01] STUDENT: Somebody said they call that Magic Mountain.
• [00:09:07] ASHLEY CLAGUE: Magic Mountain? Maybe that's a name of it. I don't know. Maybe it's a magic mountain and then the Kiwanis put the wading pool in. I was a member of the Kiwanis Club when that was done.
• [00:09:21] TEACHER: Lauren, you had a question. Did you Lauren?
• [00:09:24] ASHLEY CLAGUE: What is it, son?
• [00:09:28] STUDENT: [INAUDIBLE]
• [00:09:29] ASHLEY CLAGUE: You didn't have it. What's for you?
• [00:09:32] STUDENT: When were you born?
• [00:09:33] ASHLEY CLAGUE: When was I born? 1902, 72 years ago.
• [00:09:53] STUDENT: Now the wading pool has the hole. It got all broke up.
• [00:09:58] ASHLEY CLAGUE: Yeah, it's all broke up. They won't use that for a wading pool anymore. The one over here. Oh, they probably will fix that. Kiwanis will fix that. City, they'll do something, they'll fix it over there.
• [00:10:10] STUDENT: There she pronounced 56. I wish I didn't have some sneakers and the pool was filled with water, and people were running across. They were using it.
• [00:10:27] ASHLEY CLAGUE: It's there for you children to use. I hope that they do.
• [00:10:35] STUDENT: They'll use it. The pool down here.
• [00:10:36] ASHLEY CLAGUE: Oh, the one down here? Oh, yeah. No, you.
• [00:10:41] STUDENT: You look like the midget.
• [00:10:43] ASHLEY CLAGUE: The midget.
• [00:10:52] STUDENT: When I was at Florida, my brother was going over towards the pool with the shoes on. I went right after him with my clothes on. He went right into the pool in the deep spot, and I just got all soaking wet my clothes too.
• [00:11:14] ASHLEY CLAGUE: Is that so?
• [00:11:15] STUDENT: Yes.
• [00:11:17] TEACHER: Boys and girls, some of you've been in the math lab. Have you ever played those games, marbles, and all that? Did you know that Mr. Clague was instrumental in making many of those games? We're very thankful to you, Mr. Clague.
• [00:11:37] ASHLEY CLAGUE: Thank you. We have games all over the world, all over the world. We've got pictures of them using them up in the Bering Sea. The Alaskans up in Alaska, the Eskimos using the game, showing the teacher sent us a picture to the game. We had a request the other yesterday for Memphis, Tennessee and they go all over. [OVERLAPPING] I don't think anything I've done in my retirement years have paid me more and more bigger dividends than to help you children out.
• [00:12:10] TEACHER: Well, you certainly have done a great deal.
• [00:12:12] ASHLEY CLAGUE: I think I got my biggest reward just last week when the Michigan State University sent five teachers to my place, and one girl was totally blind. I said to the girl, how do you get along, and how do you negotiate around? Is it hard? She said, Mr. Clague, no, it's not. She said I've been blind all my life. She says I don't know what it is to see anyone. I don't know what it is to see daylight. I don't know what it is to see anything. She says I do not know what I've missed because I never was able to see it. I made some games for the blind that they use their hands to feel them. Checkerboard and some different ones. I don't believe there was any girl that I ever known that was more thankful for that than that girl. She could have something of herself that she could we had a tower of hanoi. I think you got one it here.
• [00:13:09] TEACHER: I think we had.
• [00:13:10] ASHLEY CLAGUE: With a disc on it that girl felt those discs and in five minutes, she had the whole thing in hand. You can see the reward you get.
• [00:13:26] STUDENT: Did you make a cootie game?
• [00:13:29] ASHLEY CLAGUE: Yes, we made some of them. Yeah. Oh, this girl here.
• [00:13:36] TEACHER: Charlie. That's Laura.
• [00:13:40] STUDENT: Did you make checkers?
• [00:13:43] ASHLEY CLAGUE: Yeah, we make checkers.
• [00:13:44] STUDENT: Chess?
• [00:13:45] ASHLEY CLAGUE: Four or five well chess, you can play that so many ways. There's two different. We have one game for you.
• [00:13:51] STUDENT: Did you invent chess?
• [00:13:52] ASHLEY CLAGUE: No, I didn't invent it. We got one game they called Japanese kamoko. You can make 22 games out of the whole thing. There's 22 games that can be made out of the board. There's 169 holes on the board, and there's that many games that you can make.
• [00:14:10] STUDENT: Did you make cards?
• [00:14:11] ASHLEY CLAGUE: No cards.
• [00:14:12] TEACHER: Charlie Sasha.
• [00:14:16] STUDENT: When did you stop school?
• [00:14:19] ASHLEY CLAGUE: When did I stop school? I stopped school in the sixth grade.
• [00:14:24] TEACHER: Well, it was hard to go to school.
• [00:14:27] ASHLEY CLAGUE: Well, at that time things were not like this. My father worked in a mine and he had fell that he had fallen down this mine shaft and was hurt injury. I was the sole supporter of the family at that time.
• [00:14:43] STUDENT: So you quit?
• [00:14:44] ASHLEY CLAGUE: I quit school and went to work. I've been working since. [OVERLAPPING] That's right. That's for you.
• [00:14:58] TEACHER: We want to thank you very much for coming to see us today, Mr. Clague. We hope we'll see you again. Thank you very much.
• [00:15:07] ASHLEY CLAGUE: Thanks a lot.
• [00:15:10] STUDENT: Sixth grade to talk about sesquicentennial week. And Ann Arbor's 150th birthday all around Burns Park School.
• [00:15:16] TEACHER: Do you have a question?
• [00:15:24] STUDENT: Yes. Did you two already bring in Mr. Zwerdling?
• [00:15:30] FRANCES DANFORTH: Yes, I know Osias Zwerdling. He came into the building when I did. He's very active in PTA, as both of us were too. We enjoyed the PTA at that time. I think we haven't been to one for a long time, we ought to catch up with what they're doing nowadays. [LAUGHTER] But we only remember 30 years back.
• [00:15:51] TEACHER: Alley, do you have a question?
• [00:15:57] STUDENT: My neighbor told me that there used to be a trolley behind our house. I live on Olivia Street.
• [00:16:03] FRANCES DANFORTH: Behind your house. Well, I think it ran trolley, the way my husband tells it, it ran down Lincoln from Hill Street and ran right into the car barn at the end of Lincoln, which was in front of the school building in the open area. Right at in the school grounds really rather than the park. But he was not living in the area at that time. He was just here in town at that time. But he seemed to think it was that way. I'll have to refresh his memory.
• [00:16:41] STUDENT: Why did they take the ice rink out there was in the middle of the park?
• [00:16:47] FRANCES DANFORTH: I don't know why they gave it up. But it was only used for a couple of years. They would put it up. You see for the winter when they started to flood the park so they could skate on it. It was very very well used. But why they stopped having a place to change your shoes, I don't know. It was pretty cold, of course, in there. Sometimes they had little electric heaters inside, but even that was better than trying to change your shoes, sitting down on the ice at least.
• [00:17:17] STUDENT: What year was that? Do you remember?
• [00:17:21] FRANCES DANFORTH: Let's see, our boys were from here from kindergarten, you see through third grade before they went to Eberbach when the two buildings' grades are divided up between them. Let's see. No, I don't mean fifth grade. I mean, when you were 5 years old. That's right. That would be around 1945. Approximately 1945. Give or take a little.
• [00:17:59] STUDENT: Where was the log cabin?
• [00:18:02] FRANCES DANFORTH: The log cabin is pretty much where that building is now, perhaps a little bit nearer the street. It wasn't much but just a room. Inside, it was scarcely as large as this room, as I recall it. It was filled with a clutter of things. For a long time, we didn't use it for anything at all. Except for dumping things and forgetting them and leaving them there, and so forth.
• [00:18:35] STUDENT: Did you ever go to the racetrack when it was still being used?
• [00:18:40] FRANCES DANFORTH: I wasn't here when there was a racetrack. My husband was. He just told me that the racetrack was within the border of trees. That's why they're planted in an oval. He was here then. See, he was here from 1918.
• [00:18:55] TEACHER: Jack.
• [00:18:58] STUDENT: What year was part of the school built in?
• [00:19:01] FRANCES DANFORTH: The school was built in 1923. I didn't come here until the 43s. When my husband lived here, they were building this yard or anything. I was just an open space. There was a lot of space between the houses. He, but they weren't built as solidly there.
• [00:19:29] TEACHER: Devi.
• [00:19:30] STUDENT: What year did they first start the ice skating rink?
• [00:19:34] FRANCES DANFORTH: I couldn't say exactly what year, but I think, again, it was about in the neighborhood of 1945. They didn't have it the first year we were here. We moved in this area when our son came to kindergarten when he was 5 years old.