AADL Talks To: Eve Silberman, Former Profiles Editor & Writer for the Ann Arbor Observer

Wed, 10/09/2024 - 4:45pm

When: May 13, 2024

In this episode, AADL talks to Eve Silberman. Eve has written for the Ann Arbor Observer for over four decades. As profile writer and editor Eve oversaw the Ann Arborites section, which highlights community members. In addition, she has covered and written features on local politics, social services, the city's history, and more.

Transcript

• [00:00:09] Katrina Anbender: Hi, this is Katrina.
• [00:00:10] Elizabeth Smith: And this is Elizabeth. In this episode, AADL talks to Eve Silberman. Eve has written for the Ann Arbor Observer for over four decades. As a profile writer and editor, Eve covered and engaged with many facets of Ann Arbor, including local politics, social services and the city's history. Eve talks about her time with the Observer and how the magazine and community have changed over the years. Thank you so much for joining us today Eve. First, we're going to just start out asking what brought you to Ann Arbor and where you grew up.
• [00:00:47] Eve Silberman: I grew up in Oak Park, Michigan. I was born in Detroit and Oak Park is of course, one of the suburbs that grew up in the '50s. I came to Ann Arbor several times growing up because we had cousins here who worked for the university. I had cousins going to the university, and I always liked Ann Arbor, even as a kid. There just seems something special about it. I went out of state to college in North Carolina, and after I graduated, I looked for work in New York and Washington for a while, got temporary jobs, but nothing secure. And finally, I decided, I was almost 24, to go to Ann Arbor, where in addition to my cousins, a good friend lived there with her husband, and I came, and like a lot of people never left.
• [00:01:50] Katrina Anbender: At what point did you become involved with The Observer?
• [00:01:54] Eve Silberman: Well, I was always looking for writing jobs. I have an English major. I'd been active on my school paper. I had done a bit of fiction writing and won a couple of prizes. But I was looking for jobs and hopefully journalism, and when I came to Ann Arbor and read The Observer, I just felt right away, I would love to work for this publication that was well written. There were longer pieces than in a daily newspaper and I just liked the tone of it, which was friendly but not afraid to be critical. I one day, just, I think, called them up and asked if I could write an article about former Mayor Jerome Cavanagh, who had moved here and I just found his name in the telephone book, and they said I could, so that was the first piece. Then a year later, I did a second piece, the one on author Harriette Arnow, who wrote the Dollmaker, which was a very powerful book about the Appalachians who came to Detroit in the war years. Then every now and then, I would do a piece, but I never had the nerve to really ask for a full time job, and also I could see it was a very tiny staff. Finally, I think it was after a few years of doing freelance pieces, they agreed to hire me half time and I did that for a year and then they finally came through with a full time offer, and Don Hunt, who was along with his wife, Mary, the founders of the paper, said he wrote down all these things he expected from me every month, this many articles, different subjects and there were so many. I didn't see how I could do them, but I was fortunate because after he hired me, he seemed to forget all about it and just let me go ahead with stories that seemed to be interesting or that played on what he thought were my strengths.
• [00:04:05] Elizabeth Smith: How long was it before you became full time?
• [00:04:08] Eve Silberman: It was just really half time for a year while I did another other freelance writing, then full time and so it really was and I'm a little embarrassed because I meant to check on this. I believe it was '83 or '84 when I became full time.
• [00:04:27] Elizabeth Smith: What was that experience like shifting to full time?
• [00:04:30] Eve Silberman: Yes. No, I was thrilled. It was a low salary. It was, as I said, maybe something like $14,000, which even then was not a great salary, but I was desperate to work there, and I was good at living cheaply. I was sharing an apartment. As I recall, at that time, and I found an inexpensive apartment of my own, which at that time was barely possible, but I did for $450 a month. I was thrilled. I was thrilled because I had one job, a steady paycheck, and I got health coverage and I was thrilled because it was an exciting place to work. The people there, there were just a couple of other people in editorial, but super smart people, one of whom I later married and I had a lot of freedom. It was very exciting.
• [00:05:28] Katrina Anbender: How did you actually discover or decide what you wanted to write about?
• [00:05:32] Eve Silberman: Well, I had a strength in writing profiles, I think just because I'm very curious, and for whatever reason, I'm not shy about asking maybe personal questions or pushing people to talk a little. He liked my profiles, and I ended up doing quite a few of them, a lot of them -- we still have the Ann Abborite section. I did a lot for that and then sometimes I would come up with ideas for feature stories, sometimes he would. I did an early one and it was certainly a sad story about a man named Art Carpenter, an attorney who had taken on an important case many years ago, which was called the free textbook in Michigan case, and won. Then he became one of the founders of the Kerrytown complex. His mother was from County Kerry, Ireland and I never met him. He had killed himself, but which he had had illness and other problems, and he was, I think it was 60s and it was just obviously very shocking and his widow, they had been separated, but she agreed to talk to me and as did other people. Law students in Michigan helped me, they had been so impressed. I did that one, which got a lot of readers interested and I think I did one not too long after on the Congressman Carl Pursell, which just meant several interviews and calling other people. He wasn't a dynamic speaker, but I was able to get enough to do that story.
• [00:07:21] Eve Silberman: I did one, it was called the Indian Summer reunion, which was a former Hippie-ish restaurant, Indian Summer, and they were having a reunion, and it wasn't the best piece I did, but that was one. But no, they gave me a lot of freedom, and he had good ideas, Don Hunt. He and Mary very good editors, very original thinkers.
• [00:07:48] Elizabeth Smith: Did you change your approach or interest in what you wanted to cover over the 40 years you were there or did you just feel it out and go from there?
• [00:07:57] Eve Silberman: I mostly learned what I wasn't particularly good at. I had no background in business, and I was not particularly good at business stories. I was somewhat interested in politics, and at the time, we were able to have two full time writers for a while. For a time, I did the City Hall beat and the schools beat or one after another. I did enjoy, especially the City Hall beat because I just found the issues interesting. School board was difficult because the meetings were so long and there would be maybe one interesting thing to come out of it. I may have started before they started covering them on TV, the council. I'm actually not sure about the school board. But I more or less learned what I wasn't really strong at, which was any story involving a lot of numbers, very complex situations. I was good at more direct stories of conflict in people. I did one on a group of people who worked for a certain real estate firm who all agreed to leave and join another and were sued by the owner. I just found that very interesting as a human interest story, even though I wasn't that interested in real estate. I think I tried, the longer I was there, to be more careful in the way of stories I pick knowing which ones would be a struggle.
• [00:09:30] Katrina Anbender: You must have just met so many people in the community. Were they often coming to you with things like, "Hey, you should cover this?"
• [00:09:38] Eve Silberman: Actually, it was interesting. We've always gotten some calls for story ideas. They're often not the most interesting ones. People who essentially want a public relations piece about their company or their boss and volunteer activities, and they're all admirable, but they were not the stuff that feature stories really were made of occasionally a shorter story could come in one of our shorter sections. The story ideas were less helpful from just people at random than you might think. It often was things that the staff picked up, my editors, me, from maybe sometimes reading Ann Arbor News article that sounded like it could be longer and more interesting just some conversations, and it's still a surprising number just are flukes. I was in Mast shoe store a while back and started to talk to one of the clerks who was helping me and he mentioned his wife worked there and that he was into music. I thought that was interesting, and I didn't write it, but I helped edit it. Sometimes things just come out of the blue, but there was no formula.
• [00:10:54] Elizabeth Smith: I was curious with changing technologies and the result of that being that people's attention spans shrunk. Did that change your approach to writing at all?
• [00:11:04] Eve Silberman: Yes, but it was more than that. As the years passed and social media grew and other sources, our advertisers dropped off. We couldn't afford to have two full time writers. It was just me for a long time, as well as editing the Ann Arborite's section. The issue shrink. They weren't as big as they had been in previous years. We had years ago done a two part story on the former University Cellar, a collectively run bookstore. We would never have the room now to do a two port story probably on anything. Yes, people's attention spans are shorter. They're having so much material flung at them. That changed. The other was when things went online, people started to become more paranoid. We started to get requests, not very often, but sometimes from people who begged us to keep it offline or to take it off if it was on because -- this young guy said, I don't want to hurt my job possibilities. We had an argument with some woman, and all I remember is she was calling for her son who didn't want it in there that he was afraid of flying. I cannot honestly tell you the story. I just remember the argument. We backed down, eventually, we took it offline. I'm never sure if we should have, but she made herself unpleasant enough. The Observer, without fawning because we aren't public relations, but we respect our community. If feuds can be avoided, we try to avoid them. The extreme people became more cautious about what they were saying and because it would be online and could be read across the country.
• [00:12:55] Katrina Anbender: Could you talk a little bit about how you consider the Ann Arbor News and The Observer to be different?
• [00:13:02] Eve Silberman: It's interesting because I'm fumbling for examples. I think a lot of it was the politics that if we weren't covering City Hall, we might read something there, just talked about in the meeting, and go into it. The News, of course, when we started was a much bigger, better, and robust publication. They had at one time, an environmental reporter. They had one or two people signed to City Hall, signed to the courts. That has all gone away, and we have the skeletal paper and we respect the handful of people covering Ann Arbor. They're good people, but it's just not what it was. Our role was never to really compete with a Daily Paper. We couldn't, but to present stories that were maybe more in depth, more involved, that you had time to write because the news people sometimes after a long meeting, would have two hours, an hour to write a story, and I'd worked on a weekly. It's hard. But we did have that time. We never looked at them really as competition all though, sometimes they seemed to look at us that way. We had brushes with a former editor that I mentioned writing about who was very unhappy about being written about. But no, it's a luxury for a community to have a monthly magazine, and most don't. The people that really made it happen were Don and Mary Hunt, the founders who had a vision of what they wanted the magazine to speak to different people. Mary Hunt identified these people as a way, as an old woman, German woman on the west side, a car mechanic, or a graduate student. She would think of people who lived here and try to find something for them all. That was really an act of genius. John Hilton, who's been editor for more than 30 years, and I'm somewhat biased because I married him 11 years ago. He loves the city. He's fascinated by what happens. He's extremely accessible. If someone doesn't get their issues, he drives right over and do it. I feel very fortunate I've worked with good people and married one.
• [00:15:23] Elizabeth Smith: In addition to your work for The Observer, I understand wrote a book about the history of the Del Rio.
• [00:15:29] Eve Silberman: I was one of three people involved, and actually a fourth person was involved and then just left town and no one could ever hear from her. I had only gone there occasionally, but I knew one of the owners of the bar, Ernie Harburg, a very interesting man with -- a Professor of Public Health and also the son of Yip Harburg, this famous lyricist for things like The Wizard of Oz songs. He wrote Brother, Can You Have a Dime. This was a long time ago, very politically active, too, very left wing. Yip was also besides teaching and owning the Del Rio bar was always working with the Yip Harburg Foundation. They would give money and so on. I guess that might be more of a side. I had just gone there, but he knew me because he had at one point owned another small restaurant called The Bistro, which closed rather dramatically. I interviewed with him with that, and I would run into him. He decided he wanted a history written, this was more than 20 years ago and sent me an email. Let's talk about it. That's how that happened. I didn't have any previous knowledge, but people were very good about talking to me, and it was enjoyable doing that story.
• [00:16:54] Katrina Anbender: Are there other places in Ann Arbor that have enough history that you think, wow, I could really write a book about this place?
• [00:17:01] Eve Silberman: Well, actually one of the things I covered for a long time was the rise and fall of Borders. In a way, it started when I was 26, maybe 27 and worked there for seven months. Then I got to know the legendary manager, Joe Gable, I even got to know Tom Borders, one of the Borders brothers a bit because he would show up at the store and come to meetings, work on Christmas. I had that and I left, I wasn't their best employee, and they were very glad, I think, to see me go. But I had met people, and then several years later, I wrote a story, it was going to be Ann Arborite, but it ended up being a feature on Joe Gable, the manager who did a tremendous amount to make the store what it was, as the Borders brothers acknowledged. I wrote a story about him. Then a good friend of mine started working there, I went there so I was always talking to some Borders people. Then when it started to expand dramatically, I covered that. Tom Borders no longer wanted to talk to reporters and me. They were sensitive, they had sold it first to Kmart. It was sold again. There was a lot of anger about it, it became this chain was spreading everywhere until for reasons that can be argued about, it started to shrink. Probably a reason I would accept is that too many were opened too fast, and the management made some bad mistakes, but I'm not a business analyst. But I covered it when they rose. We had a big story showing all these Borders. I covered it when they were in decline, and that's when some connections, the people I knew over the years, and Joe Gable even talked to me about what they saw were the problems. I covered the last couple of days it was open, and they were just selling things off the floor. Somebody was able to tell me the goodbye party they had where they were drinking. I really felt I had in some ways this good perspective of the rise and fall of Borders and so, somebody could or maybe the time has passed to do a book on it, but it would have to be a business reporter. But I do think where we live now was part of the traditionally old Black neighborhood, which has a very rich history, which is being acknowledged more and more. It was a neighborhood, in a way, not by choice because there were housing prohibitions. But my husband bought his house more than 40 years ago. He was one of the few white people living there and became very close to the neighbors, especially the family next door, whose family had been there a hundred years. We've gotten to learn so much about the date, what it was like growing up there, and the comfort people felt. That would be an interesting story. I did an article in the Jews of Ann Arbor, Jewish, and there were interesting things there. I think it probably could be a book. Again, I'm not really strong at writing longer books, and I'm sure there are many more.
• [00:20:17] Katrina Anbender: Obviously, you have written many articles in your time with the Observer and otherwise. Are there any articles that stand out to you as having been the most impactful?
• [00:20:27] Eve Silberman: Well, I would love to say some articles just changed some things that I saw need to be changed. I don't know that I can really say that, I think I'd have heard. There was one article that was written about 25 years ago, which I really hoped would make a difference. It was about parents of emotionally disturbed kids, some of whom were becoming violent, even at their parents, and a lawsuit that some of the parents had filed against Washtenaw County Mental Health to force them to do more and these were very sad, powerful stories. The parents talked to me and gave me personal comments and so on. I was actually proud of that story, but it didn't change things. Unforgettably, they eventually gave up in the lawsuit because it got to be too expensive. It didn't really reflect well on county mental health, which has not always, in my opinion, been strong or as out there as it could have been. I would have liked that to have changed things. I did do story on the former newspaper editor Ed Petykiewicz who was very controversial when he came on, causing a lot of good people to leave and I think that story alerted people, though a lot of them could figure it out that, wow, there's some real changes there, let's keep our eyes open. I've done some school stories about redistricting and others and I think they may have helped influence people, but I don't know, not dramatically. I really would like to say that I did something, and I think in some ways, I said, that's where I think Ann Arbor is generally not a very impulsive place. There's always committee set up, things take time to change. Except, in the period of the '60s where they suddenly had this pot law and places were set up like Ozone House for drug refugees and so on. But I think for the most part, change does not happen rapidly here.
• [00:22:38] Katrina Anbender: Were there any articles that were impactful to you as a writer that changed how you did your work or saw your profession?
• [00:22:49] Eve Silberman: I think you grow. If you're doing this seriously, I think you become more aware of complications of life that things that seem black and white usually aren't right or wrong. Usually, things are going on, and I think I've become just with age too, more careful about making assumptions, and that's pretty general. It's always a learning experience and no matter how many interviews I've done, I'm always nervous. I've had to learn things about myself, I think sometimes my role has been maybe pointing out what might have been obvious but not so terribly acknowledged. The last longer piece I did was on Community High two years ago, which had started in the '60s. Maybe one of you went there. Very alternative school for kids that were threatening not to go with often very left wing parents and rage against the war or the government. But when I did the story a couple of years ago, what clarified and I had known people had gone there and taught there was no longer particularly radical in its teaching and its independent studies. It had dropped a lot of that and had more or less become a good independent college prep school, which people weren't necessarily thrilled to hear it, but it didn't seem that mysterious either. I think sometimes things I've done have maybe just clarified there are changes here, and I did one actually long ago, had librarian, Mary Anne Hodel, I'm sure it was before your time. I think that was 20 years, who was really brought on to get the library in the electronic age. She knew computers right and left but she antagonized some people. She did not have what you'd say warm fuzzy personality maybe the changes weren't done that well. I did do a story pointing some of that out, which annoyed the librarians, but I think it also had the town, look, some of this had to happen, everyone has got to go online. I think maybe some of the stories just spelled it out, though people in Ann Arbor are often smart enough to figure most things out.
• [00:25:16] Elizabeth Smith: Over the course of your career, what are you most proud of?
• [00:25:20] Eve Silberman: Well, there are one of two things I think of right away, but I don't think it was like there was one story that that was my lifetime story, it just wasn't that dramatic. I was proud of that very early story on Harriette Arnow, which maybe because I liked her work so much myself, got a very good reception. It's been used by people who've written about her, it somehow got heard and I've been cited, which is exciting. I did a story in 1991 on the radicals of Hill Street in the '60s which you may know something about, and John Sinclair, who was one of them, died recently, I'd interviewed him for that at length. I'd interviewed him before and I was in a moderate way caught up in that era. I was in high school mostly, but I demonstrated against the war, and there was a sense of excitement about change, and it was certainly a dramatic story because -- I've always thought it would be a good film because you had these idealistic and in the clouds people in love with their music and their marijuana, who were seen as a serious threat by the federal government who were spying on them, listening to their phones, and these were not dangerous people. They were a little silly sometimes, but the fear of the government and the FBI and they took this. I always thought that would be an interesting story. I was actually proud of that because I really talked to everyone involved, and that too has been cited sometimes by people in research. Those come to mind, the emotionally disturbed kids came to mind because I really wanted something to happen. My older brother is autistic and I understood what these parents had gone through. We did a historic story, but had never been told in one piece about the threat of urban renewal in the '50s which would have torn down a lot of that old Black neighborhood and without giving any assurances to the people living there, where they would go, when things would be rebuilt. That was a very interesting story. It did show something about the people who would not think of themselves as racist were very condescending and dismissive and thought they knew best. The people fought back in the neighborhoods, led by a very strong willed minister, and it didn't go anywhere. As I recall, it was pulled before it be voted on and I thought that was a good story. Those are some that stand out.
• [00:28:12] Katrina Anbender: Thank you so much.
• [00:28:19] Elizabeth Smith: AADL Talks To is a production of the Ann Arbor District Library.