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Ann Arbor 200

AADL Talks To: Bev Willis, Local Historian

When: June 22, 2023

Bev Willis
Bev Willis

Bev Willis is an Ann Arbor historian who has worked with several historical organizations, including the African American Cultural and Historical Museum, the city’s Historic District Commission, and the Washtenaw County Historical Society’s Museum on Main Street. Bev talks with us about her passion for local history and the mentors, family members, and cultural influences that helped chart the course of her career.

Washtenaw County Historical Society's Museum on Main Street

African American Cultural and Historical Museum

Transcript

  • [00:00:08] AMY CANTU: [MUSIC] Hi, this is Amy.
  • [00:00:10] EMILY MURPHY: I'm Emily. Today, AADL Talks To Bev Willis. Bev is a local Ann Arbor historian who has been involved with several commissions and organizations, including the African American Cultural and Historical Museum, Ann Arbor's Historic District Commission, and currently The Washtenaw County Historical Society's Museum on Main Street. Hi, Bev. Thanks so much for joining us. Could you start by telling us where you grew up?
  • [00:00:39] BEV WILLIS: Sure. I was born in Chicago, Illinois. Grew up in Gary, Indiana, Washington, DC, Detroit, Michigan, Rochester, New York, and Raleigh, North Carolina.
  • [00:00:53] EMILY MURPHY: Tell us about how you made the path between all of those different places.
  • [00:00:57] BEV WILLIS: It was my parents. My dad's work. He was a journalist, and he started out in Chicago, working with Ebony Magazine. Then he got hired at the Gary Post Tribune. He was the first African American newspaper reporter to be hired. He went to work every day, and his boss did not talk to him because he was not ready to have a Black man in the office. We did not even know this story until just a few short years ago. What my dad told us was what encouraged him is every day he came home to three daughters who thought the sun rose and set on him, and that is what sustained him through those difficult days. He left the Tribune to go work with the Evening Star newspaper in DC, which was the afternoon daily for the Washington Post. But he also had a cousin who lived in New York City, and she knew A. Philip Randolph, who was one of the organizers of the March on Washington. She told Mr. Randolph, "Look, I got a nephew who works for a newspaper. You should talk to him." We all can clearly remember the day we piled in the car. Seemed like such a long trip, but DC to New York is nothing. We got in the city, and he went off for his meeting, and we played with our cousins. Coming back on a return trip, my dad shared with my mom what was being planned, and he went in and he told his boss and his boss said, "Sounds interesting, but I don't think that's really for our newspaper." But two days later, the Washington Post had the story, and my dad got called in, and they're like, look, Hunter, you're on it. He's the byline reporter. There's photos from the march of him at the beginning of the march with Bayard Rustin in his ear. I asked my dad, "What is Bayard Rustin saying to you that these other reporters are so interested in?" Dad looked at me. He says, "I honestly don't remember." I said, "That is not the answer that I was looking for." He said, "But that's the answer that is true. You can't make up history. You can't rewrite it." As a journalist, he always believed in the integrity of telling the story truthfully and accurately. Then from there, he was working with General Motors as a speechwriter, Washington DC at Howard University as director of Public Relations. Always just a writer and a journalist first. Retired in the city or the state that he grew up in, which is North Carolina. My parents retired to Carboro, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, until the last of their days, which was just recently, 2017 and 2020.
  • [00:03:46] AMY CANTU: Wow, that's a fantastic childhood. You really saw and experienced a lot through him. How did you end up in Ann Arbor? What brought you here?
  • [00:03:55] BEV WILLIS: When it was time for me to figure out where to go to college, my parents had this wonderful plan to take us on a cross-country trip when we were young, so we could see places we might want to go to school. My older sister fell in love with Wisconsin. I did not fall in love with the idea of being too far from home. When it was time for me to pick where to go to school, I was going to go to Howard University. It was familiar. I had taken some classes there as a senior in high school. I was ready to stay at home. I had aunties and family there. I had the great fortune to take an art class with the famous Haitian painter Lois Mailou Jones. As an artist, we were learning all about color. I made the mistake of telling my parents what I was actually doing. In addition to watching the marching band practice and going to the music department and listening to David Bird and Gil Scott Heron and other musicians from the time performing. I mentioned we were doing color wheels. My parents who know me better than anybody knew that was not exactly what I needed to be learning to be financially productive in my life. [LAUGHTER] They suggested I might transfer to the U of M. By then, my family had moved to Detroit. I came to the university. I fell in love with the campus. I saw it in June, and it was just a perfect, beautiful place to be. But it's a very lonely place to be. Growing up in a city, you're still part of a community. But when you come to a big university, you have to find your community. My family was hoping I would finally get that moment where I had to step out of my comfort zone. I ran into four or five people I went to high school with. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:05:45] AMY CANTU: Oh, wow.
  • [00:05:46] BEV WILLIS: I spent my three years here after my first year at Howard University and very much like a neighborhood back home in DC.
  • [00:05:54] AMY CANTU: What did you study or what did you graduate in?
  • [00:05:57] BEV WILLIS: I studied art. I had every intention of doing a combination of graphic design and fine art, but Martha Stewart had not come into our world yet. That whole genre of making things for people just to enjoy for their beauty really wasn't as much in existence. But I discovered the power of graphic design. You take ideas and information and turn it into something that people respond to in a proactive and positive way. You can earn a little money doing that. That's what really got me interested in the art field and continuing in that work.
  • [00:06:33] AMY CANTU: Was that what you moved on to after you graduated from U of M?
  • [00:06:38] BEV WILLIS: No. Again, I was not ready to step out of my comfort zone, so my response to that is to do something totally opposite. I decided that I wanted to work in an office. No typing skills, no administrative skills, but I thought this would be interesting. I went on a job interview at U of M Hospital, working in a neuropsychiatric institute. It was a research study for manic depression. It was probably one of the most profound life-changing moments in my life. Like many people, we can often have days where we don't feel good. But until you see the contrast of a day like that versus a serious emotional sadness, you become more careful about how you use your words and how you help people and you treat people. I really enjoyed that job for a couple of years. Then they moved the outpatient surgery unit to the fifth floor of the old hospital. I have an unusual aversion to pain. You have to walk in that front door and you hear the people coming out of recovery or the angst of going in, and I thought it was just time to change direction. I went from there to working at the AATA and doing the maps and the bus routes and the graphic design there. Then went from that to starting a business of just doing independent graphic design.
  • [00:08:03] EMILY MURPHY: Wow.
  • [00:08:06] EMILY MURPHY: At this point, had you pretty much decided that Ann Arbor was going to be your home, or was that just where the opportunities happened to be given to you?
  • [00:08:13] BEV WILLIS: That question has a totally different meaning for me now. Back then, it was just an easy way to go through life. Ann Arbor was the easy place to live. When you're young, and you are a student, your financial acumen is not fully developed. Ramen, dinner, popcorn, lunch, all that is still okay. I loved Ann Arbor, the easiness of it. I was fortunate because my husband's family is rooted in Ann Arbor. They'd been here since 1909. I had a family house that we could go to, and just again, a nice easy comfort zone. I discovered I've mostly been nomadic. I've helped my family a lot because of the type of work that I do and the beautiful part about coming of age and network with the Internet and being able to work remotely. I don't have to be physically present to do the work that I produce. When people need me or whether it's just for work or because of a family situation, I've been able to go. Now that my parents are no longer here and everybody's grown up, I've settled into this is where I'm at. But we just recently moved to Ypsilanti.
  • [00:09:40] AMY CANTU: How did your interest in local history and museums come about? Was your husband's family's history influential in that way for you?
  • [00:09:50] BEV WILLIS: I think it was because my own family history, I knew a great deal about. My mom made sure that we did. When you grow up in a place like Washington DC, where the history is the history of the country, You have a different sense about where you really fit into the grander scheme of things. Coming to Michigan and looking around for all the different museums, I'd been to every Smithsonian in Washington DC. Finally, went to the portrait gallery because I just had run out of every other one to go to. I came to Michigan and I couldn't find the museums. But I settled down and I found the museums. They're here. What I discovered about local history, the townies, the original families who came from here, who got pushed out or got displaced because of the growing up of the university. It was the same way I felt being in Washington DC. We got pushed out by the federal growth of the government, and so your community is in your neighborhood. Michigan became a neighborhood even though it was a state. Ann Arbor became like a little corner, even though it was a city. I discovered there were so many people who had so many amazing stories, and they didn't really have a place to tell them. Local history provides that opportunity. I had come to the Ann Arbor District library very early. Growing up in Washington, you have branches on every corner, it seems like. When I met Betty Thompson at the library, and she showed me how to actually use the library, I think she got a little tired of me always coming in and just asking her everything. But when she showed me how to use the library, and I discovered the file of the local history, especially the file of the local Black history. I was working with a lot of these organizations and businesses. I was able to enrich what they were doing by bringing to their projects and their work some historical elements. I just noticed they made people happier and made them shine a little more to hear your family name called out in an instrumental way. It helped that my own family, my husband's family was involved. His aunt Lena Wyner, was one of the people who worked with the Ann Arbor Community Center. It was the Dunbar Center at the time, and she was one of the people who was part of the mortgage-burning era. I can look back in her notes, and in her diary, and see how important that was to her and what it meant to her, and recognize why it's important for us to maintain those stories and that information so that subsequent generations, not just age-wise, experiential wise, know what happened where they currently are at.
  • [00:12:50] AMY CANTU: What is that story? Can you tell us a little bit about the mortgage burning?
  • [00:12:54] BEV WILLIS: Yes, the community center the Dunbar Center at the time was really determined to be self-owned, and they worked really hard to raise the money to pay off that mortgage. When it came time to write the final check and secure ownership of the building, there was a sense of pride in the people who did that work. Pride is not a word that I think is a great word. They had a sense of accomplishment, a sense of achievement. That, as my aunt as my husband's aunt would describe it, was foundational in terms of how they felt for the community. The community had a place. Now we know we no longer have that place in our community. The subsequent question is, what will be the next place, and how will we ensure that it has the longevity that those earlier generations intended for it to be.
  • [00:13:54] EMILY MURPHY: Are you working on that?
  • [00:13:55] BEV WILLIS: No, I'm not working on that now, but I'm always available to connect the people who are working on projects like that. Often we can work in a silo. We get our ideas. We get our little committee together, and we get very busy. Then we lift our heads up from our work, and we discover there's a whole universe of people who have been working on this for a while. It reminds me of people who want to know about Ann Arbor. I had to do an event on Tuesday for Juneteenth. One of the things talking about local history, I said, Go to where the places are. There's the Museum on Main Street. There's your libraries, and we're right up the street. And the people acknowledged afterwards, how, I really don't think about going to the library for local history. I said, cause so much of it is online. They said, Yeah, but I should go back. I said, you should.
  • [00:14:54] AMY CANTU: You do have a connection to so many different organizations. I'd like to ask you a little bit about first, the Museum on Main Street and the Washtenaw County Historical Society. Can you talk about how you got involved and what you do with them?
  • [00:15:08] BEV WILLIS: Sure. I was looking for a car on Craigslist one day, and I came across the ad for the position of administrator at the Washtenaw County Historical Society, and they really wanted somebody to do the newsletters. Graphic design, exhibit design. I said, this is perfect. I felt like I would be able to learn from people who were at the top of the game so that I would be able to help the African American cultural and historical Museum of Washtenaw County build that organization.
  • [00:15:42] BEV WILLIS: When I got hired, I was so excited because I recognized by the people who serve on that board that I was working with giants in the field of local history. The wonderful part about working with people who are truly at the top of their game, they don't act like that. They continue to do their best work all the time, and you really support and feed off of each other. After I got over the excitement of working with the Susan Weinbergs and Grace Shackmans and Karen Janias and Ann's and all these different people, Judy Chrisman, who's our curator, and got about the business of learning how it operates. The joy of the community's reaction is really what is the fuel for doing this work. When people walk in with an object or an artifact or a story, and they just need someplace to share it and to be able to provide that, so rewarding. Then to do graphic design, so with our newsletter, every issue, I will get a little note or a little email from somebody in addition to those that comment on how they enjoy it, who will let me know what they found wrong. I cherish that. It means you read it. It's an opportunity for me to correct or continue to make that mistake, so we continue to have that same interaction. But I love the interaction and the feedback from the community.
  • [00:17:14] EMILY MURPHY: Do you have a particular exhibit or artifact that you'll always remember?
  • [00:17:20] BEV WILLIS: I do. I think the favorite exhibit that we did at the Museum on Main Street so far. Well, there's two of them, but I think the favorite is Rest in Peace.
  • [00:17:28] EMILY MURPHY: Tell me about it.
  • [00:17:28] BEV WILLIS: Washtenaw County. It's all about cemeteries and the rites and rituals around death and life and the history that is in that study. We had the great fortune to work with a company out of Chelsea who loaned us some artifacts from I think it was Stafford Funeral Home. They loaned us some great artifacts, and we had the opportunity to get a casket from the genealogical society. The stories that people had just about what their wishes were and their favorite cemetery and Wiston's cemetery tour. We had that video on our website, and people just loved watching that. Many questions and they love the different funeral homes and the old ads and just the rituals around it, and the different customs and the wreaths and the clothing. Then we did an exhibit about photographers in the 18th and 19th century in Washtenaw County, even setting up a mini studio where people could come and take a selfie in the old time surrounding. The stories about the different photographers because they were our early Internet. They were our early selfies. They captured the things that we do so easily now with the cell phone. Those were a lot of fun.
  • [00:19:04] AMY CANTU: That's interesting that the exhibit about death and cemetery I mean, you think most people don't want to talk about it, but you discovered that maybe they do. Presenting it in a positive way in an interactive way can be maybe less upsetting.
  • [00:19:20] BEV WILLIS: Exactly. That's what we found because we had an educational program where one of the speakers came and talked about different burials and different traditions and rituals. It was one of our most well attended programs that we've ever had. Most of my life, I've interacted with people at that time of their life. It's a very sacred and beautiful time. The passage of life and death, birth and death is such a sacred, beautiful time and to be present at any part of it. People have so many questions and conversations about it. Just being in that place where you got a light-hearted approach to it but deep space to have a conversation. We had one exhibit. We had a guest exhibit with the International Museum of Dinnerware Design, doctor Margaret Carney. It was about breakfast. One of the drawings that we had was the patent for making fruit loops. One day, a person walked by the museum and we just happened to be there having a meeting. When we're there often like that, people will knock on the door, come in, and we always open up and let them come see the exhibit. It turns out that it was a woman, Her husband was the son of the man who got the patent for the fruit loops I told her what my favorite flavor was, and she broke the mythology for me. She said, well, they're all the same. They just have different colors.
  • [00:20:58] AMY CANTU: That's great.
  • [00:21:00] BEV WILLIS: You just get that wonderful interaction. She recently had some sadness. To be able to walk in and have an exchange and talk about all things in addition to the exhibit, you just know when you are a cultural institution, like a museum or a library or religious space that you often provide that location for people to come in and do some emotional, mental, physical healing.
  • [00:21:29] AMY CANTU: Oh, that's great. What about the African American Cultural and Historical Museum? You've been involved in that for probably the whole time that you've been here?
  • [00:21:39] BEV WILLIS: Pretty much. I was invited to participate in that project early in my graphic design career. I was excited about that because I love local history. But I knew that the story of the local African American history was really big. Often we'll say in communities, these are the stories that are untold. These are the stories that are put undercover. But when you walk into the community, the stories are repeated and they're vibrant and they're constant. It's just that we don't often get a chance to record them. Sometimes people think their story isn't important, but then, the more you talk to them, and the more they tell, every word that they share is important because everybody's story really does matter. Working with the African American Museum, I discovered there's a group of original Ann Arbor inhabitants. Then we have different layers and levels of when people came. People came to work on the railroad, people came to work at the university, people came to work in the school system. Ann Arbor School District actively recruited teachers from the south during the '60s. As each group comes and finds their own community, they're not necessarily connected to those that are already here. This African American Museum has become a platform for some of these communities to find a common ground to connect at.
  • [00:23:14] AMY CANTU: That's really interesting. What are some of the specific stories that really stand out for you? I mean, that's history that I think a lot of people don't know.
  • [00:23:23] BEV WILLIS: I think my favorite story has come about since the West Side rebrand.
  • [00:23:34] BEV WILLIS: When you say even Old West Side, original West-siders will say, Uh-uh, it's just West Side. I started doing a little bit of research about the West Side and then the old hospital when working with somebody about the George Jewett story and researching Coleman Jewett and the George Jewett family. A lot of times people would ask the question, Well, if George went to medical school, I wonder why he didn't practice. I said, Well, maybe we don't know whether he did or not. First, let's find out if he did practice in Chicago or not. Or maybe he wanted to practice in Ann Arbor, but at that time, running a valet company that catered to the university by a man who speaks three languages fluently might just be a little bit more financially lucrative than being a doctor. We don't know any of these things yet. But I was always curious as to where the valet shop was. For all the beautiful descriptions, I think maybe we'd have more photos that have not yet come to the surface. When I discovered, it's pretty much in the place where the new Trotter house is. I thought about the beautiful confluence of location, the geography of history. If we don't tell it when we know it, nobody else will be able to envision it. As I learned about 13th Street, and Zina Pitcher Drive, I'm past the history of Zisa Pitcher. I understand there's complicated history with University of Michigan, city named places and history and places and history that people have based on beliefs and practices, and you can't rename everything. But when I discovered 13th Street in that area and knew how much time I spent on that part of campus, working at the old hospital, living at Alice Lloyd, waiting on the bus to go to the art school, I never thought how far Black people might have lived in this town. But then when I discovered that my husband's family lived on Fuller Street, and I don't know Fuller to have any houses. But I looked at the old maps, and I saw how streets had been renamed and reworked. I thought, well, we lived from the hospital to the hilltop on the west side. There is no one place that people can be contained to if the neighborhoods have changed and we haven't identified that. Even now, as I watch what happens down there at the DTE substation by the river, I say, we're opening up the landscape. Let's identify where things were so that when we stand at the new beautiful place, we can overlay that in our mind of these were the houses. There's a house called the Bee House, that is part of the African-American community history. It's up the street from where Angelo's is located, but soon will not be located. There's many questions or ideas wondering about where exactly is that house. When I went to look for it, of course, it's torn down because there's buildings there. It hasn't been there for a while. But I said to myself, we need to have a digital footprint. What really made me think about that even more is I'm working with the project called Champions for Change with Yo Di and Nu, and part of that program is people took a historical tour. They did a Ypsi tour or Ann Arbor tour. One of the students, a U of M student described the feeling of coming to Ann Arbor and not feeling at home in the Black community. It surprised me. I think a lot of us bring that community with us when we come here. I took that for granted that you come here with a sense of who you are. You build that while you're here. To hear somebody say that they wish they had learned what they knew at that session when they first came to town opened my eyes a lot more because the information is available. It just should be available to them. They know where that resource is.
  • [00:28:34] EMILY MURPHY: How are you working to make it more available to folks?
  • [00:28:39] BEV WILLIS: I'm working with some of the people who do this work at a grassroots level. Yes, so when somebody says to me, a student came to me who worked at Huron, who told me she wanted to do a tour of the downtown area of African-American sites, my first response was, that's a great idea. I can't wait to share with you all the work that so many people have done, and then look at how you're going to synthesize that into something that is different, that will engage those that we haven't been able to catch. I showed her the purple and white brochure that was developed with the walking tour with the living Oral History interviews. I showed her every map that I personally was aware of that somebody had created. I told her there were some mistakes on some of them that had not been corrected. I asked her what her point of view was going to be. She asked me what point of view was missing.
  • [00:29:39] AMY CANTU: Great question.
  • [00:29:41] BEV WILLIS: I said, Well, I'm going to need to know that from you. I can tell you what we've got and then you tell me what you think is missing. I had the good fortune when I came here to work with people who were willing to hear my ideas. As I have worked in this industry for a few years now, I know that there are people who are not that open. I think part of our responsibility in this work, I think you just do it naturally as a library. When somebody walks in here and they're looking for something, your job is to show them what all the resources are and not have all the answers for them. That's how I try to work with people like that now.
  • [00:30:27] AMY CANTU: Is your work of the Historic District Commission, are you able to work with them on any of these projects? Is the city able to work with you? Maybe that's a better question.
  • [00:30:39] BEV WILLIS: I loved my work with the Historic District. When I moved to Ypsilanti could no longer do that because it's Ann Arbor. That was one of the hardest things for me to give up. When you work or serve your city, your community like that, you get such a sense of value about the people who do the hard work every day without looking for a pat on the back. When people purchase and live in a historic district, they make a conscious decision to contribute to keeping the history of the community. There's two things I loved about working with the district and especially Jill Thatcher. She knows her stuff. She learned so much from Louisa Pieper. One of the things that Louisa taught all of us was know what you need to know and be fair and do the right thing. Jill is masterful at helping us understand what is before us in the different projects. The site visits are so much fun because you get a chance to walk around the town and see things and talk to people and understand why they're doing what they're doing. Then to contribute and knowing that you can look back on projects that you approved or had issues with that got resolved and see how it fits into our landscape, I found that to be extremely rewarding.
  • [00:32:17] EMILY MURPHY: As someone who has spent so much time studying the ways that the city has changed in the past, how do you approach looking at the ways that it's currently changing or changes coming in the future?
  • [00:32:30] BEV WILLIS: That is really easy for me to do. Part of it is I'm a Pisces. [LAUGHTER] I'm a middle child. Life is very fluid. We have no control. [LAUGHTER] One day, I was not able to see when I was turning at a corner, because the grass had not been mowed in the medium. The first thought that came to my mind was my father-in-law and what he would have said, and I thought I'm here. [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:33:05] BEV WILLIS: I had to say, it's not so bad that tall grass, I can see. Part of it for me is the landscape of life has always changed. When I came to Michigan, I registered at Waterman Gym with a paper form. Well, crisp, we were using computers. Warum and Jim disappeared. I did not lose any sleep over that. Other buildings have come and gone. Growing up where I did in Washington, DC, we would go to the cathedral, the National Cathedral every year, it's a school trip. One of the things we would start to repeat when the tour guide would start this building is completely unfinished. It will never be finished. I said, okay, if that's true for the cathedral, that might just be true in life. I have noticed that everything changes. We have to be able to fit that in to how we live our life. When the Treasure Mart closed, complete strangers wandered around the corner looking to volunteer at the museum on main street, just wanting to be around old things. We would laugh. Do people count [LAUGHTER] Because we just found that the anguish over how things change has a lot to do with how happy you are in your own life. Happiness in life doesn't have to do with the material status or perfection of things. It's really how you feel about what you're doing that moment in that day. I have discovered that if those criteria are bound by what's going on that you have no control over, you're going to be pretty miserable. I welcome change. I wish when I go by buildings that are demolished that I did not take a picture of, I'm grateful for the many reproductions of the book of the historic buildings that Susan and Patrick did and other people have done over the years and the library's digital maintenance and careful curation of all of those assets. I know we can put the story together. I feel like that's what we have to do is we're in this river of the time that we're living in, the pictures that we take, the stories that we tell, the memories that we share, just moments like this. It makes it very easy for me not to worry about the change.
  • [00:35:40] AMY CANTU: It sounds like even though you've been part of the history of the town and preservation, specifically, you're not stuck in the preservation of physical things, and you're able to change, and you're mostly interested in preserving the story. Is that a fair assessment?
  • [00:36:00] BEV WILLIS: It is a little fair. That is the one thing we can certainly do. The reality of preserving the artifacts and the objects is very close to my heart. When you can look at a law book that belonged to John Allen as we're getting ready to celebrate 200 years of Ann Arbor's history and see his signature in his own writing. Or you can look at the fan that Ann Allen used when she was in Ann Arbor it gives you such a deep and profound understanding and appreciation for those early days. The objects and the artifacts are important. The ones that we can't keep, we certainly cannot keep every chair, every dresser, every large piece of furniture, even in our own family. But the photograph that we take of it, the note that we write about it is something we can do. The buildings are a little harder. Washington, DC, we don't have to worry about somebody tearing down the monument or the White House or the Capitol. Philadelphia also where I spend a lot of time on that side of the coast. The Liberty Bell, nobody's going to fix that because it's got a crack, it will always be there [LAUGHTER]. What will Ann Arbor have to show 200 years of history? What I hope is going to come out of the Bicentennial is that we really will have identified the oldest house. We really will have identified the oldest tree, the oldest, whatever it is, and know from this moment on, if we save anything, we need to save that. Michigan is coming up on 250. Washtenaw County is coming up on a major milestone. We certainly don't want to be showing up 50 years later, empty-handed. I believe for the buildings, it's a little bit more difficult. I would hope that there might be some groundswell movement of as these buildings coming down, anything that is found in the foundation or in the Earth is somehow excavated and kept aside, much like they do some of the tracks from the inner urban days so that they become objects or artifacts of history at some point.
  • [00:38:30] AMY CANTU: Housing, of course. It fits into that story of what to do with buildings as well, and that's an ongoing issue. It's been around forever, and it seems to be continuing in this town.
  • [00:38:43] BEV WILLIS: It really does. When I come through Ann Arbor, it sometimes reminds me of a movie. It reminds me of a movie or a busy board that little kids used to have. A lot of people struggled with the different bike lanes and the different vehicles and methods of transportation. Ann Arbor has really proven us it can work. You can be in your car, and you can see both of the bicycle lanes being used with bicycles going in opposite directions as they're supposed to. You can see the scooters and the pedestrians and the cars. We've slowed down. We've stopped turning right on red. We've started paying more attention to what's going on around us. The buildings are going up, the high-density housing is going in. Our responsibility as citizens and living in this time, figuring out how to do it. I don't know if I expected that as a challenge when I came here, but surely, the people who were here before us as they saw Woodbury Gardens rising up or any of these other apartments that we consider to be too old to even look at back in the 80s. Somebody else must have felt that same frustration for how that disrupted the landscape. I feel like if we don't keep up, you get left behind. The older we get, the harder it is because the people that we know just become part of a different community. They move on, they move away. I think it's really important to keep a balance, and while we're present in this life to just participate as fully as we can.
  • [00:40:33] EMILY MURPHY: All the work you've done here, what is one of the things you're most proud of?
  • [00:40:45] BEV WILLIS: Pride is a hard word for me. What I'm most happy with is the synergy that I get to create and participate in with working with different projects and people. Being a graphic designer for several years, I did the Ann Arbor Public Schools Rec and Ed catalog. Part of doing that catalog means you're working not only with the instructors but with different department heads and then the community. The song Janet Jackson had years ago, what have you done for me lately is pretty much a mantra for the type of work that I do. If the results are not delivered, I don't get to do the work the next time. The challenge has always been, whatever I visually produce, does the room fill? Do people respond? Do the numbers meet the expectation? The joy of having people come together and work in a real collaboration where the only shining star is the project, the outcome, and the people that you hope to put the spotlight on, that is my greatest joy. It is so exciting to see somebody stand up in their moment and feel that lift of, I have been seen, I have been heard, I have been understood, and to know that you've been part of that. I learned that from all my community mentors.
  • [00:42:15] AMY CANTU: That's fantastic. Thank you, Bev, [MUSIC] AADL Talks To is a production of the Ann Arbor District Library.