AADL Talks To: Dale Leslie, Local Historian

Wed, 11/27/2024 - 12:44pm

When: November 14, 2024

Dale Leslie was born in the nearby hamlet of Dixboro and moved to Ann Arbor as a child. He worked in radio and broadcasting for a while and then took over his family’s business, Leslie Office Supply. All the while, he was also an avid local history enthusiast. Dale talks with us about how Ann Arbor has changed over the years and shares some of his favorite local history interests, including the history of nearby Dixboro and the Kiwanis Club of Ann Arbor. He also shares a few stories from his digital archive of local history interviews.

Transcript

• [00:00:09] AMY CANTU: Hi, this is Amy.
• [00:00:10] ELIZABETH SMITH: This is Elizabeth. In this episode, AADL talks to Dale Leslie. Dale was born in Dixboro and moved to Ann Arbor as a child. He worked in radio and broadcasting and then in the family's business, Leslie Office Supply. Dale talks with us about how Ann Arbor has changed over the years and shares some of his particular interests, including the history of nearby Dixboro, the Kiwanis Club, and his digital archive of interviews with area residents. Hi, Dale. Thank you for joining us today.
• [00:00:39] DALE LESLIE: My pleasure.
• [00:00:41] ELIZABETH SMITH: Where were you born?
• [00:00:42] DALE LESLIE: I was born in the old St. Joe Hospital up on Inglis Street here in Ann Arbor, September 26, 1948. You know what my son says to me, "Dad, you were born in the last century. Now only that, you were born in the first part of the last century." Thanks a lot. You make me feel good and I say back to him, But you were born in the last century, too, Bub. Anyway.
• [00:01:16] AMY CANTU: You were born and raised here.
• [00:01:18] DALE LESLIE: Yes.
• [00:01:19] AMY CANTU: Can you give us a sense of what it was like growing up in Ann Arbor back in the day and can you tell us where you went to school?
• [00:01:26] DALE LESLIE: Sure. Well, actually, I'm an interesting subject because I actually grew up my first few years in hamlet of Dixboro just outside of Ann Arbor. I think it was my mother that I gave the credit to. She decided that one-room schoolhouse wasn't really getting the job done. She pushed us, my dad and I, to move into Ann Arbor. Then I got engaged in the Arbor Public Schools, obviously, when I got here, but it was a tough transition. It really was an awkward year because it just was not what I was used to. Anyway, so I started at Dixboro school. Then I moved into town and I was one of the newer students, I should say, at Dicken Elementary School. Then Slauson Junior high school, back then, Slauson Middle School now and then Ann Arbor Pioneer High School. It was Ann Arbor High School then. Do you want them to keep going?
• [00:02:34] AMY CANTU: Yeah, sure. Tell us some of your memories of those days. What was it like growing up in Ann Arbor?
• [00:02:41] DALE LESLIE: Well, a lot different than it is now. I'm sure you hear that. But especially being newly acclimated to Ann Arbor Public Schools. I was a little bit apprehensive, but I made friends at Dicken. In fact, I discovered one of my classmates who turned out to be one of my best friends. He and I shared the same birthday. Same birth year, same birth date. That was interesting, fun to hang around with each other and there are other young men that I participated in sports and that sort of thing and it was a playground. At lunchtime usually you kicked a soccer ball around and I just came within an eighth of a mile of being able to go home for lunch because there was a criteria that you had to live at least, I think it was a mile and a half, from school in order for them to justify you going home. That was a bummer because I would have enjoyed that, I think. But those are the rules of the day. We had rooms that we were assigned to, and I suppose that's not atypical and my teachers I really enjoyed, and Dicken has certainly changed, and ironically, the former principal, Dicken, is in the Kiwanis Club with me right now. But I preceded him a great deal. Jean Henne was the principal there and I was in the safety patrol. That was one thing they had back then and one of my jobs was to put up the flag every day. Well, one day we had some freezing rain, and Ms. Henn said, "Dale, I don't think we're going to put the flag up today. I think the rope is frozen to the mast, and I don't think we're going to do it today." Well, I knew better than she did, at least I thought so. When I had a break in the day, I went out and put the flag up. Well, Ms. Henne called me to her office, and she said, "Dale, didn't I tell you we were not going to raise the flag today?" Yes. "Then you went ahead and raised the flag as I see it?" Yes. "Dale, when I tell you something, you mind. Don't do that again." Of course, I was shaking in my boots when this interrogation was going on. I never did it again, I can tell you that.
• [00:05:38] AMY CANTU: You're patriotic.
• [00:05:40] DALE LESLIE: Well, I don't know. You know how kids are. Sometimes they think they know better, but they really don't.
• [00:05:48] ELIZABETH SMITH: Was there anywhere in town that you like to hang out after school?
• [00:05:53] DALE LESLIE: I got to think for a second. I was in the Ann Arbor Y, a member there. Although that was mostly activities that I engaged in on the weekends, learning how to swim and that sort of thing. I don't know. I guess I just mainly would come home, and maybe a couple of my friends would join me, but there wasn't any real commitment that I had to much more than my activity at the Y as far as outside of school. They had a really nice program that was held at Ann Arbor High School back then. It was Saturday morning basketball and I just love sports, and I love basketball, and each school was represented each week and Dicken wasn't exactly the strong team of the conference. But I always remember one thing about that that impressed me at the time. The coordinator of the program decided to take roll. He called off each school and those people that were from that school stood up and John Boyer, good old John. He's still around town. He was from Bach School. When he stood up, he said, "Thank you for being here. I enjoy this very much." After that rigor was passed through, the sponsor stood up. He said, "Gentlemen, I want to tell you something. There's one person out of all the names that I called that said, "Thank you for being here and I want you to learn from that young man because that is a courteous thing to do." As you can see, I remember to this day I want to get off the board and say, thank you very much for me being here.
• [00:07:52] AMY CANTU: Now, you owned a business, Leslie Office Supply.
• [00:07:55] DALE LESLIE: Yes.
• [00:07:56] AMY CANTU: I remember that. You were president for 17 years. Can you talk a little bit about that, where it was located and what prompted you to sell it?
• [00:08:03] DALE LESLIE: Well, the origins go back to when my dad was in the United States Army during World War II. He was stationed at the Panama Canal. He's an old farm boy, and the call came through to the barracks that they needed someone with a mechanical ability that could help repair typewriters. He raised his hand, and so from that point forward, he repaired typewriters. Then when he got out of the service, it made sense to him to try to find a job that coordinated with what he'd done in the army, and so he was hired as a typewriter repairman. This is about the time where typewriters are really coming into vogue, every office, everybody, and then of course, they became electric typewriters. Anyway, he was working for Meyer-Schairer Company, downtown Ann Arbor, as the head of their service department. I think he was about 40 years old because I remember my mother remarking later that we got a slow introduction to business. But she and my dad decided that we were going to have our own office products, actually office machine store. I was in junior high at the time, so it was unbeknownst to me, but we found a spot out on Maple, and we took a little cubicle out of a building and that began Leslie Office Equipment. That was in 1961, and 36 years later, we sold the business to another office supply person out of East Lansing. For 36 years, it was strictly a family business, although I didn't enter the business until the midpoint of that cycle because I was in broadcasting. I wanted to be in broadcasting. I heard a comment the other day about someone who's offering a little philosophy, and he said, "Two things in life that will happen and you should be thankful for. One is you are born, two is when you realize why." I want to tell you I was bitten by the broadcasting bug as a young age. My dad built a station, although it was just a bunch of speakers and turntable and microphone where I could pretend that I was on the radio. Consequently, as I went through school, especially after high school, majored in broadcast TV and radio broadcasting, and really enjoyed it, made a lot of friends. It was something that I had always dreamt about doing. But then I got married and we had children, and we bought a house, and I couldn't live on $1.98 an hour anymore. It's like the real estate world. There are people way up high and people way down low, and not too many of us in between. My parents at that time, again, had this business, and my dear mother, I'll always remember. She said, and they never told me in so many words that "You're going to have this business someday, so you better start majoring in other subjects besides broadcasting." They let me go my own way but then when my mother talked to me about coming into the business, she said, "How about if you tried it for five years, and then if you didn't like it at the five-year point, you could go back into broadcasting," because she said, "Your dad and I are going to be retiring at some point." I took her up on her offer and spent the last years of my working life in our family business. The only regret I have is, I think, and some of our employees I think could tell too, it was never really my first love. I tried to have it become my first love, and I learned as much as I could, but I just didn't. It wasn't as much fun as I was having when I was in radio and TV. But it gave me a job and it gave me a lot of flexibility as to what I did with my time and it paid pretty well. It all worked out, but it was always a regret that, I really didn't fall in love with my job which I think is important.
• [00:13:14] ELIZABETH SMITH: When you were working in radio and broadcasting and TV and all that, where were you and what were you doing?
• [00:13:20] DALE LESLIE: Well, I started out. I was a senior in high school, and I was delivering the announcements over the PA system every day. I just got the idea that, I'm doing this. Again, it's not radio, but I just thought maybe I had some talent that I might be able to apply in a real situation. I decided when I was a senior that I would go out and try to find a job in radio. I started in Ypsilanti and I thought I'd work this way. First station I went to, no, they didn't really need any help. But the second station I walked in, it was an Ypsilanti station. They had just started doing remote broadcasts. Back then, it was popular that you could go and do your show from some remote location like popular furniture was one of our big clients. But they needed someone back at the station to run the controls, and I did do the weather and some announcing and while this broadcast was going on. Lo and behold, I worked there and then had a job over the summer and really enjoyed it, seemed to do well. But I knew that in the back of my mind, that when fall arrived, I'd be going up to Northern Michigan University and Marquette 500 miles from here. I was so naive. I'm embarrassed. Of course, I was only 17 when I graduated from high school 'cause I have a late birthday, but I thought Marquette was where Alpena is, and boy, was I wrong!
• [00:15:12] AMY CANTU: Boy, were you wrong.
• [00:15:13] DALE LESLIE: And then my dad, of course, busy in the business, he agreed that he could he and I could fly up there for their orientation. We flew into Marquette County Airport, on the old Blue Goose, as they called North Central Airlines and there was no one around, other than some of the officials. But there was one guy he had a limousine. He said, "You're looking to go somewhere." I said, "Yes, we need to go to Northern Michigan's campus." "Well, I can take you there." I looked at my dad, my dad looked at me and said, "What are the alternatives?" We got in this limousine. This is in the pitch of night. He took, as they say, as the Crow flies. We went up and down and back roads, and this and that, and I was wondering, where the heck is this place anyway. It was cheap. It had to be in the middle of nowhere, and maybe that was even a stretch. But he got us there and so I stayed in a dorm and went through the orientation, and my dad was up there as well so that was nice. Anyway, I got a job working at WDMJ AM and FM in Marquette working part-time. Then, I decided to transfer to Eastern Michigan University. Up in a school like Northern, either you have to have a car, you have to live in an apartment or you have to be able to know how to get around since you didn't have a car. I didn't know how to do any of those things. I didn't have much of a social life, I guess is what I'm trying to say. My best friend, the one that was born the same day I would had transferred to Eastern and was writing me constantly about how great it was. I decided I would transfer and came down to Eastern and then got the job back at the old radio station that I had worked on.
• [00:17:38] AMY CANTU: What was the name of that radio station?
• [00:17:39] DALE LESLIE: WYSI and later became WSDS. It was a country music... So it was a learning curve there. But anyway, so I graduated from Eastern and decided I would pursue a master's in broadcasting, radio and TV. I was admitted to U of M and their program. I earned my master's degree from Michigan still thinking that radio and TV was going to be my career. Anyway, that brings you up to where I was at a point where my life had changed dramatically with my responsibilities. That's when I decided I could handle the commercials that our store would have because I had that experience and I enjoyed that. But as far as broadcasting was concerned, I had my appearance, and decided that I had to go on to something else. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:18:52] AMY CANTU: When did you become interested in local history?
• [00:18:55] DALE LESLIE: That is a good question. I was thinking coming over here. Living in that small little hamlet of Dixboro, there were senior members of our church. I was a member of the Dixboro United Methodist Church, whom I always looked up to. They taught our Sunday school classes. They led a lot of our outside activities. We had a youth organization, and they were involved in that. I just got interested in them, and some of them, of course, would reflect on the history of the church and of Dixboro. I had an aunt who was interested in history, so she encouraged me. I just went on from there. With this broadcasting experience I had, I started to do interviews with some of these people that I admired so. That later developed into a website that I helped develop of local history and digital film and interviews. I now have -- it's at least 25 of these programs online right now, available for people to look at if they wish. But I tried to pick people that I thought were interesting but for some reason they never were given any accolades. Not that they desired them necessarily, but they were just people that I really admired and I wanted to have their story told.
• [00:20:35] AMY CANTU: Tell us who some of them are.
• [00:20:36] DALE LESLIE: Well, one of them was Bill -- I got to I think of his last name. I just drew a blank for a second. A man that used to broadcast U of M football and he was one of only three men to ever air the games on WUOM. That was a natural for me because he later went on to become active in the Alumni Association from a staffing point and even ran the camp that they have Camp Michigania that's up north. I asked Bill one day, I said, "Would you mind if I interviewed you?" He said, "Well, I don't know, why?" I said, "Bill, you have had quite a life and it has involved most of the area here that you live in, and I think people would be interested in it." Bill Stegath, excuse me, I drew a blank. I interviewed Bill, and that was one of the first programs that I did in that format. Bill is no longer with us, as are a few others that I interviewed, and I'm glad I got to them when I did, because they too, as time has gone on, have passed on. I have three interviews I did with Wystan Stevens. I don't know if you had him on here at all. He's now, again, deceased, but he was the historian of Ann Arbor, at least I think he was self-anointed [LAUGHTER]. He did play that role. I have three of his programs that I have. One was about the gargoyles of U of M presidents that are depicted in the overhang, I guess, you'd say, leading into the courtyard of the law school. I never knew they were there. But I did an interview and learned about them, and of course, that's on my site. Also, I had him recall, and he'd done some work studying the subject on how Ann Arbor became named. As an Ann Arbor native, that's always been a question that people would kick around from time to time. Well, I think we were named after, and I think we were named after. Well, the results of it was, and he tells it in this program, is that it was named by John Allen, one of the founders of Dixboro. John Allen was, again, a co-founder, and his wife was named was Ann. He named the town Ann Arbor and has nothing to do with the long-time story that they had an arbor of grapes here. This just goes on and on. I got that. Then Wystan was a collector of slides. He had a whole collection of slides of downtown Ann Arbor. That was the third program I did with him, and he was able to show his slides and describe what was being shown and recall a few instances about downtown that I don't think everybody knew. He was an excellent person. He had a lot of knowledge, but he had never tried to market himself. I'm just so glad that I preserved three of his really good talks that people can you. There were a lot of people that just came to mind that I thought would be good to interview. One of the things I do have is Sheriff Doug Harvey, again, who's deceased, recalling that period of time in our history, when there was a series of murders of co-ed students. I don't think you guys probably go back that long. I had him speak to our Kiwanis Club, and I videotaped his talk, and of course, now he's gone. That's on there, too.
• [00:24:55] AMY CANTU: That's great that you have all that.
• [00:24:56] ELIZABETH SMITH: You mentioned that you didn't know about the gargoyles at U of M. [LAUGHTER] Is there anything else that you discovered in your explorations that stand out as things that you didn't know and that other people might not know?
• [00:25:08] DALE LESLIE: Oh, gosh, I'm sure if I were to give a thought just about anybody I interviewed, for instance, I interviewed Al Renfrew, which probably is a name that doesn't mean much to you. But Al was a graduate from Michigan. He was an ice hockey player. After graduation, he coached for a while, and then finally was hired to coach the UM hockey team. Then I found out in interviewing him that he and his wife were the ones that came up with the idea of having that pennant stretched over where the Michigan football team comes in at the beginning of the game at the stadium. He had the concept of having that. They used to have it spread in a much shorter form in Yost Field House because that's where the teams dressed back then. Then the Varsity Club, I guess, took it to the next level and said, why not stretch that over the entryway into the Michigan Stadium. Now it's part of the fixture of their tradition. But I had no idea that he was originated that or his wife was really the one that had the idea. That's a minute example, but it's something I didn't know before, and I don't know how many other people did.
• [00:26:31] AMY CANTU: You've documented Kiwanis history, too. That's a big interest of yours.
• [00:26:35] DALE LESLIE: Yes. When I joined the club, my dad had been a Kawinian. So I had Kiwanis in my veins. [LAUGHTER] I joined the club, and there were a lot of, again, senior types that helped found the club and helped structure, etc, and one that did architectural drawings for us. There are just a lot of talented men -- now, of course, we have women, too -- talented men that I thought, gosh darn it, I'm going to interview them. Most of them are surprised when they hear that's what I want to do, but I explain my rationale is that just to have this preserved for future generations. I did a number of those, and then some general history of the club. Then we celebrated our 75th anniversary, and I was responsible for that. We did a feature radio interview on Ted Heusel's show as Ypsilanti, also was founded in the year we were, 1921. They actually were founded before we were. Anyway, I got someone from the Ypsilanti Club to sit down with Ted Heusel's and yours truly and reminisce about 75 years of Kiwanis in this area. Jump ahead to 2021, suddenly, we were 100 years old.
• [00:28:17] DALE LESLIE: I volunteered again to be in charge of it. I just had some ideas, and no one else seemed to be interested. But we had a great celebration. Unfortunately, it was during COVID. A lot of our activities were restricted. When I worked through Congresswoman Debbie Dingell and had a recitation given on the floor of Congress that was preserved in the Capitol newspaper and the official record, by the way, and then she also furnished a flag that was flown above the Capitol building close to the date that we were founded. That was impressive, and then just a resolution from Congress saying that they want to recognize our hundredth birthday. Those are the major things that happened, and we did some other things throughout that year and special programs, etc. But 100 years, it is 100 years.
• [00:29:29] ELIZABETH SMITH: You've also been involved with the Washa County Historical Society?
• [00:29:33] DALE LESLIE: Yes, I was. I'm not sure who recruited me for that. Someone did, but I served on it for a number of years, and it's great. We have a Museum on Main Street, is what we call it, where the historical society has offices. That has evolved. In fact, during our Kiwanis celebration, we set up a few displays down in the Museum on Main Street of old Kiwanis materials and some of the scrapbooks that we had, and it was really nice for them to do that, and they do that, by the way, on occasion, if you're a member of a nonprofit organization, and you're celebrating a significant anniversary, let them know, because that's how they attract people to come to their museum there.
• [00:30:29] AMY CANTU: What about this tour of famous authors? Tell us about that.
• [00:30:34] DALE LESLIE: Well, I'm not sure how I came up with this idea, but anyway, maybe just through some general research. I discovered that when there were some famous authors that for various reasons, most of the time, connected with their education at the university, that lived here in Ann Arbor, and their homes are still here, and of course, they're not. I got the idea that I was a member of the Arbor Civic or Arbor City Club, excuse me. I came up with a bus tour of famous homes that people lived in around Ann Arbor, authors primarily. We got a pretty good response to it, but It's surprising, maybe not to you folks, but to a lot of people, how famous people, especially in the arts and music have lived here and even come back here to put on special presentations.
• [00:31:37] AMY CANTU: I wouldn't mind going on that tour. You might have to resurrect that. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:31:40] DALE LESLIE: Well, the only downside is that you see a house and the natural inclination is to want to go inside. See what it looks like.
• [00:31:48] AMY CANTU: That's true.
• [00:31:49] DALE LESLIE: Well these people that I was talking about didn't live there anymore. We couldn't really go inside any of the homes, but at least they saw where they lived.
• [00:31:59] ELIZABETH SMITH: What are a couple names that people might recognize?
• [00:32:04] DALE LESLIE: Who is a famous playwright that was married to Marilyn Monroe?
• [00:32:08] ELIZABETH SMITH: Miller.
• [00:32:10] DALE LESLIE: Yeah.
• [00:32:11] AMY CANTU: Arthur Miller.
• [00:32:12] DALE LESLIE: Arthur Miller.
• [00:32:13] ELIZABETH SMITH: I almost said Glen Miller. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:32:14] ELIZABETH SMITH: No that's another guy.
• [00:32:16] DALE LESLIE: Arthur Miller, his home is up on State, or his former home.
• [00:32:19] ELIZABETH SMITH: Robert Frost.
• [00:32:21] DALE LESLIE: Robert Frost? Yes. When he was here, he lived with someone else. He lived with another arts person. I'm not sure he ever had his home here, but he was here for a couple of years. He's famous, obviously. I'm trying to think of some others, but should have brought my list with me. But there was a half a dozen, if not more places that we could visit. You're asking me about things I was surprised at. I was surprised at how many authors had lived here. Authors of books that are standard in the industry. Wave the flag for Ann Arbor Town. We've had some stars here. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:33:17] ELIZABETH SMITH: You spoke with Frank Uhle about Ollie McLaughlin?
• [00:33:21] DALE LESLIE: Yes.
• [00:33:21] ELIZABETH SMITH: Why do you think that this history is mostly unknown?
• [00:33:25] DALE LESLIE: That is a good question. He certainly was a landmark person in Ann Arbor, one of the few black announcers that had a regular show at that time. He would go out and do these remote broadcasts that I spoke about earlier. When the McDonald's on Stadium Boulevard opened, where Lewis Jewelers used to be. That was the first McDonald's. They did a broadcast from there, and I talked my parents into taking me over. I was pretty young because my dad had to hold me in his arms. [LAUGHTER] But anyway, they went up and told Allie that I used to pretend that I was him on this play radio station that I had. Oh, of course, he was extremely flattered. He really made a fuss over for me and he said, you know what? I'm going to give you a record. You can take home with you. It happened to be "Little Star" by the Elegants, which was I think the Number 1 song on the chart back then. I think I still have that record, believer. Little 45 RPM record. [LAUGHTER] That was quite a thrill for me, and I know my parents got a pretty good kick out of it too. But he would have programs on WAAM that oftentimes would be out on the front lawn of the station during the summer, of course. People would come, he was the world's biggest babysitter. They dumped their kids off there, and they would play, and I suppose, dance and everything. What a personable guy. As you may or may not know, he later sponsored Del Shannon. He was Del Shannon's man during his career when he had a number of hits. He stayed in a music business, and then, I'm not sure what eventually happened, but he's no longer with us right now. What a memory. Oh, I have to tell you he had Ollie's Scooby-Doo Club. This was a pink-colored card that he just gave out arbitrarily to anyone. Of course, I had his name in the radio station, and at one time, I don't know. I was estimated that he had 5,000 of these cards that he'd handed out at various points in time. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:36:11] AMY CANTU: What did a person in the Scooby-Doo club do?
• [00:36:14] DALE LESLIE: They didn't really have any responsibility. Other than sharing the fact that they were in the club. Ollie's Caravan was the one that was sponsoring it. Interestingly enough, Serve-All Printing, which is no longer in business, would print his cards. When we had our store, we were across the driveway from Serve All Printing. There were a couple of printers there that had been there a while, and one of them volunteered. He said we used to print those Scooby-Doo cards. I said, "Do you still have the artwork?" He says, Yeah, I said, "Could you print me up some?" [LAUGHTER] I carried on the tradition of handing them out. I'm not sure to this day people knew what they were, but... [LAUGHTER]
• [00:37:01] AMY CANTU: But they've got them. That's Great.
• [00:37:07] DALE LESLIE: Life goes on.
• [00:37:09] AMY CANTU: So Dale, I understand -- I've got your card here -- you give historic talks and events, you do some teaching. Can you talk a little bit about that phase?
• [00:37:20] DALE LESLIE: Well, I have done some adult Ed and also taught at Eastern, primarily about public speaking, and not necessarily about history, but I enjoyed the experience so much. I thought, I've got all these programs that I could show and give some narration to. Someone said, what are you going to charge? I don't charge anything, I enjoy doing it. Recently, I had a program with one of the local elderly hostels or whatever here in town. I showed them my program on Fielding Yost. Whom you don't know, but he was a football player, athletic director here at the U of M for a number of years. When he retired after a 40-year association with the U of M, they saluted him in a special banquet, which, his notoriety was such, the NBC radio network picked up part of the banquet and broadcast it nationwide. It's just really quite a thrill, I'm sure for him and the U of M at that point. That's one of the programs I often show at a collection of seniors, especially those that are originally from Ann Arbor, have lived here a considerable time. They know that Fielding Yost was at the pinnacle of football and football coaching and athletics in Ann Arbor for the first part of the 20th century.
• [00:39:07] ELIZABETH SMITH: Ann Arbor has changed a lot over the decades. What stands out and where do you think we're headed?
• [00:39:13] DALE LESLIE: What stands out is the growth in population. The other thing that's happened within the last 10 or 15 years is the amount of building that's gone on here, not necessarily just in for houses, but some of the buildings that they've built downtown are just awesome. The I guess we use the term. They're almost sky scrapers compared to what they used to be. It was at one time that the Burton Tower, the carillon was supposed to be the standard bear as to the height of any buildings that would be constructed. Of course, that's gone by the wayside. There's several buildings that exceed the height of the Burton Tower, but it just seems like you don't build an office building unless you build a huge one. I worry a little bit about who's going to occupy all this space because it just has mushroomed all of a sudden. But someone told me the other day that college students today prefer to live by themselves, to have an apartment that they own and don't have to share it with two or three others. If that's the case, then they probably will do fine because most of the units are made for apartment dwellers. I'm worrying about something and I don't have any control over, but it's just exploded. My oldest son is a Trombone Performance professor out at Colorado State, and he and his family will come back for visits. I keep telling him, Drew, I'm going to take you downtown. You just won't recognize your hometown and sure enough, going up and down the streets and he's seeing the height of some of these buildings, it's just astounding to him as to how it's grown. I think it's going to get bigger before it gets smaller [LAUGHTER]
• [00:41:22] AMY CANTU: Dale, what are you most proud of?
• [00:41:26] DALE LESLIE: Let's see. What would that be? I guess I have to say my family. I just can't tell you how important they have been through the years. Now my oldest son is 45, and my youngest son is 43, and one lives out in Colorado, as I mentioned, the other one is with the Food and Drug Administration in downtown, Detroit, so he's somewhat local. But I have a collage that was made for me by someone I was dating at the time of all pictures of my family, going back a couple of generations as a matter of fact, and it hangs in my apartment. Every once in a while, I'll just stand there and look at all those photographs of the people that have just brought joy to me. That's been one thing. Another thing that has happened that I think is significant, at least in my life, is one New Year's day I woke up. We were visiting my in-laws up in Gaylord. I woke up thinking about something that had happened at our business, something that involved personnel at our business. I kept thinking about it. Right into the late afternoon, I was still thinking about it and went to sleep at night and woke up the next day, and I still had it in my mind. Well, I didn't know what was going on. Anyway, to make a long story short, I was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. This was back in its infancy, and you know what I mean by that. When it was first being treated as a disorder, I'm sure there were a lot of people that preceded me that had it and struggled with it just like I did. But so I went on a mini-campaign, if you will. In some of my speaking engagements, I used it to show perseverance and how I was able to combat the disorder through meds and counseling and that thing. But I just wanted to make people aware of it. I think I've done that. I'll never forget I had a doctor that I was going to add because I had changed employment. He said, tell me about your health, so I gave him a rundown, and I said, I have OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder. I almost had to explain to him what it was, the obsessiveness, that thing. He says, we have a doctor upstairs on the third floor, and you walk into his office, and everything is meticulous. There's not anything out of place. It's not even a pencil on top of his desk. It's in the drawer underneath the top. I think to myself, it's not hurting anybody. Why make a big issue of it? I thought to myself, not hurting anybody. It's hurting him. He knows this is not normal behavior, and he's suffering from it. I just couldn't believe that he was that blind to seeing where it does have an effect, and it does create problems for people. But that has changed so dramatically. In fact, I was just reading where the U of M now has a special program for people that suffer from OCD, and I'm so happy to hear that because it's just very disabling, I had a cousin of mine, lived up in Troy. We were talking about her husband's family. She said "Yeah, and Dick gets so mad at his sister, because when we go over there, she's going to serve us a piece of cake, and we're out in the living room eating, as soon as you eat the last bite, she grabs the plate and the fork and takes it out to the kitchen and washes it. Dick has yelled at her so many times about doing it and that she got to stop doing it." I said, "Joyce, hold on right now. Stop right now. Your sister-in-law has obsessive-compulsive disorder. She can't help what she's doing, but she could appreciate some medical help in dealing with it." I just had to tell her that, this behavior's not normal, but there's a reason for it. Anyway, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, but it was a learning experience and continues to be. Unfortunately, when you have it, generally speaking, there's no immediate cure, so you're wrestling with it for most of your life from that point forward. But there are meds and counseling, etc, that have surfaced that. I think I made a contribution in that regard.
• [00:46:48] AMY CANTU: Thank you so much for that and for all your contributions to local history, too. Thanks for talking with us.
• [00:46:53] DALE LESLIE: It's been a joy, and I just want to say, congratulations to you for preserving this archive. I think it's so important. It's funny I have some of my pieces in the Bentley library, and I was telling this friend of mine. I said, "There's some things in that library that I put together that there are people aren't even alive yet will look at someday." At least I hope so. But to think your intentions were preserved is flattering. But thank you for what you do.
• [00:47:27] AMY CANTU: Thank you.
• [00:47:28] ELIZABETH SMITH: Thank you
• [00:47:28] ELIZABETH SMITH: AADL Talks To is a production of the Ann Arbor District Library.