The Andrea Fulton Concert Collection includes over 500 photos from local concerts featuring rock, soul, R&B, and blues bands performing, recording, and sometimes just posing for promotional shots. Several local and regional bands from the late 1960s and 1970s are here in Andrea's collection -- from Guardian Angel, Carnal Kitchen, and the Mojo Boogie Band to Sixto Rodriguez, Mitch Ryder, and Bob Seger. 

Andrea Lee Fulton grew up with music from all cultures and genres. The first music she heard -- on the day she was born -- was Bach. She recalls an enlightened and exciting childhood: "My dad was hip, my mom was groovy. We all kinda became hippies together.” 

So it was no surprise that when rock-n-roll came to Ann Arbor, Andrea was all ears. And as she grooved to the music, she picked up a camera. Her father, Doug Fulton, an editor at the Ann Arbor News, was an accomplished photographer, so photography was in her blood. Most of the photographs in the collection are Andrea's; a few are Doug's. (Additional concert photos are available in AADL's Doug Fulton Online Exhibit.) 

While Doug is best known for his photographs of outdoor environmental activity and the blues greats who came to the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festivals, Andrea was on the scene in the 1970s to snap photos from the backstages and front rows of over 100 concerts. Andrea (then known as Andye) also worked for concert organizers as a Psychedelic Ranger to assist with crowd control, parking, security, and first aid. At 17, legendary Ann Arbor concert promoter Peter Andrews hired her as the box office manager for Daystar Productions where her job included picking up tickets at the airport, selling seats in the Michigan Union, and manning the box office at Hill Auditorium or Crisler Arena. Andrea recalls some highlights from this period:

"I remember getting cheeseburgers for Yoko Ono, burning one with John Prine behind the P. Bell, and the night Bonnie Raitt stayed in my bedroom after one of dad's famous all-night BBQs following the Sunday Blues Festival. I’ve seen Bob Seger a dozen times. Mitch Ryder. The Rationals. The Lost Planet Airmen with Commander Cody. SRC. Savage Grace. The Up. MC5. I hung out at 1510 Hill Street [home of the Trans-Love Commune, John Sinclair, and the MC5], and was friends with the Mojo Boogie Band, brothers Jim & Terry Tate, and sax genius, Steve Mackay. Venues included the 5th Dimension, Flood’s, Flicks, and the West Park Love In’s at age 15. That was my Ann Arbor life! I was so in the moment and had no idea how incredible my life was. So I’m grateful to have these images now. Revisiting my young self 55 years later, I can tell you -- I’m still that rock and roll hippie at heart.”  

Browse the Andrea Fulton Concert Collection

Some of the subjects of these photos aren't recognized by us and are beyond our ability to identify. If you recognize a performer or venue, please add a comment to the photo to help enrich this collection!

 

 

In celebration of the first day of the year for the Ann Arbor Public Schools, AADL has made available online digitized versions of every yearbook in our collection from 1885-2000.  This collection includes yearbooks from Ann Arbor High School, its successor Pioneer High School, Huron High School, and Community High.  Each yearbook is available to view and search within our pdf viewer in your browser and is also downloadable to your own computer.  Take a look back at your own school days with our digitized yearbook collection--or see what your parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents got up to when they were students!

In the mid-1960s a teenage Ann Arbor rock band inspired such passion that girls leapt onstage to tackle them and security personnel had to cut short a performance before 10,000 screaming fans at the Michigan State Fair. Their fall 1966 pre-Aretha Franklin cover of Otis Redding’s “Respect” topped radio charts around Michigan and was heard as far away as Florida and Texas, and they had a half-dozen singles and an album before they were through. Formed by students at Forsythe and Slauson Junior High schools, the group hit its stride when they were attending Ann Arbor (now Pioneer) High. With Scott Morgan on vocals, Steve Correll on guitar, Terry Trabandt on bass, and Bill Figg on drums, the band took its name from a term Correll’s brother Richard had found in a math book. Svengali-like manager Hugh “Jeep” Holland formed A-Square Records to put out their first discs and kept them gigging steadily around the Midwest, where they shared stages with Jimi Hendrix, the Who, Cream, the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, and many other top acts. The Rationals also made frequent appearances on television shows like Robin Seymour’s Swingin’ Time in Windsor and Cleveland-based Upbeat.

In recent years their music has been compiled in a series of lavish CD and LP packages by Grammy-nominated producer Alec Palao for Ace/Big Beat in the UK, which include much previously-unreleased material. They are available at the Ann Arbor District Library.

I interviewed Scott Morgan and Bill Figg at WCBN before a much-anticipated 1991 reunion concert. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. – Frank Uhle

Frank Uhle: You guys started playing together before the Beatles came over, around 1962 or so? 

Scott Morgan: I had been taking guitar lessons and then one day Steve Correll called me and asked me to play something for him over the telephone. So I played “Walk, Don't Run” or something like that, and we got together at that point. We were in the same junior high school, Forsythe, with Bill, who was a year ahead of us, and we eventually hooked up and then we got Terry who was going to the other school in town, Slauson. Steve was gone for a year, and he came back and we all got together at that point. And that was the beginning of the Rationals, as history knows it. [laughs]  

Frank Uhle: You were doing instrumentals only, before you added vocals, correct?

Bill Figg: We did a lot of the cover tunes that we liked at the time, like “Walk, Don't Run.”

Scott Morgan: Lonnie Mack, the Ventures, that kind of thing. 

Bill Figg: And then as time progressed we decided that a lot of people were starting to sing and we had to pick a singer. I think Scott raised his hand first or something. I don't know how it came about. It's like, “Oh geez, a lot of people are singing. Who's gonna sing? You gonna sing?” “Oh, yeah. I guess so.”

Scott Morgan: It just kind of evolved. I think we were playing at parties and local dances and that sort of thing, and we were probably doing the kind of blues tunes most beginning bands play like “Hi-Heel Sneakers” and “Money” and “Johnny B. Goode” or something like that. That's what we cut our teeth on, vocally. And then the British Invasion came and all of a sudden we were off in another direction for a while. We started writing, trying to write, and it was all very derivative at first. It took us a couple years, I think, to actually get a handle on our writing.

Frank Uhle: Your first single came out in the summer of 1965 on your manager Jeep Holland’s A-Square Records label. A ballad you wrote called “Gave My Love” was the A-side. It obviously has a very British flavor.

Scott Morgan: A lot happened in that first year of the British Invasion, and we were highly affected by it. And I think that song shows it. Our second single was another British derived song called “Feelin’ Lost” and the flipside was a song by Deon Jackson, who was another Ann Arbor High alumnus. And then our third single was “Respect.” And at that point we had tapped into Jeep Holland's record collection, his fantastic R&B collection. And that was the beginning of an R&B string there that went on for a couple of years. We had like four singles in a row that were heavily R&B influenced.

Frank Uhle: The last one of those, “I Need You,” was a Goffin-King composition. Was that also recorded by somebody else first?

Scott Morgan: Chuck Jackson. We didn't have songwriter demos or anything like that. We were just covering the originals. We covered “Respect” and at that point it had been an R&B hit for Otis Redding a year earlier. But it had never been a pop hit. We tried our hand at it, and it was a big pop hit around here and in some other markets. But then Aretha took it like a year later and made it a REAL big hit. [laughs]

Frank Uhle: Well, your version is certainly a memorable one.

Scott Morgan: I think it’s an important version, but I think we were still learning to play R&B at that point. I think by the time we got to “Hold On Baby” and “Leavin’ Here” and “I Need You” we were getting better at it actually. None of them were really as big a hit as “Respect,” but I think we were actually playing R&B better later on. 

Bill Figg: Well, we were only 17 and 18. How much talent can you have at 17 or 18? 

Frank Uhle: There's a youthful enthusiasm that comes through in those early records, though.

Scott Morgan: That's true. I call it the punk version of “Respect.” [laughs]

Bill Figg: Yeah. Well, it's close. 

Frank Uhle: “Respect” was a pretty big regional hit. Did you see financial rewards from that? Or was it the same old story?

Bill Figg: Same old story, we didn't make any money off it. Actually “Leavin’ Here” was supposed to be the top side of the record. We were in the studio doing “Leavin’ Here” for what we thought would be an A-side and we recorded it 27 times as I remember, we just couldn't get a hot track on it. And Jeep came down and says, “Oh, let's do ‘Respect.’” So we did “Respect” in what, two cuts or something like that?

Scott Morgan: I just remember I screwed up one of the vocal lines at the end. I'm going like, “Reeschpect is what I want,” or something like that. I'm going, “Hey, I muffed that line” and they're going, “Well, nobody will ever know, it doesn't matter.” 

Bill Figg: “B-side. No problem.” [laughs]

Frank Uhle: Wow. So was it the first time you'd done “Respect” or had you been playing it live? 

Bill Figg: We’d arranged it as I remember.

Scott Morgan: We spent some time arranging it at Mothers in East Tawas. 

Bill Figg: Yeah. It was a job we were playing and we were doing a sound check and Jeep said, “Well, let's work on ‘Respect.’ We’ve got a couple hours before lunch here.” So we arranged it there, I believe.

Scott Morgan: Yeah. 

Frank Uhle: It does have a distinctive arrangement with the way the bass starts out and then the rhythm guitar and drums and harmonica each come in before the vocal. If you came up with that in the studio in two takes, that’s pretty amazing. 

Scott Morgan: We added the second harmonica in the studio, we overdubbed. So we had double tracked harmonicas on it. But most of it was prearranged. 

Frank Uhle: I heard that James Osterberg – Iggy Pop – played the bass drum on an early single of yours. Did you perform everything on the records yourselves or did any other guests sit in?

Bill Figg: On “Hold On Baby” Bob Seger is singing the high part for us on that tune, because back when we did these tunes everybody kind of helped everybody. We would go in the studio with Mitch Ryder and help him a little bit, and Seger would come with us. And it was more of a community effort when you went to the studios on a lot of different tunes. Me and Jeep, I think were the first two people to hear the “Heavy Music” track for Bob Seger. He brought it back and said, “Well, what do you think? I just did this thing, I'm going to call it ‘Heavy Music.’” And Jeep says, “Wow, that's the hottest thing I've ever heard.” Nobody was really afraid to play things because somebody was going to rip them off, because we were all friends. 

Scott Morgan: My mother always reminded me of the time Bob Seger came over to our house with his little reel to reel tape recorder and wanted to play me some songs. And I'm going, “Ah, Bob, we don't need any material.” [laughs]. And she's going, “If you would've recorded one of those songs…”

Bill Figg: It was a community effort, I thought, in a lot of the early stuff. People helping each other, which was really good. A lot of the local talents. Deon Jackson even helped us. What tune was that he played organ on?

Scott Morgan: He played on “Leavin’ Here,” on the first version of it. And a couple keyboard players from local bands, Glenn Quackenbush from the SRC played on the second version of “Leavin’ Here.” And another guy named Robert Sheff, who played with the Prime Movers, a great blues band from the ‘60s in Ann Arbor, played organ on “Hold On Baby.” 

Frank Uhle: I was wondering about those keyboards. Did you have keyboard players live too? 

Scott Morgan: No, we didn't. Just in the studio. We could do a lot of things in the studio with multi-tracking. 

Frank Uhle: Let’s talk about your live shows. I recently spoke to somebody who saw you backing up Sonny and Cher. They asked you to be their backup band?

Bill Figg: Yeah, they approached us somehow. Harold Battiste was their arranger, and Harold came up with his little bitty organ, and we met with him briefly before we were to do their backup music. And we're learning “I Got You Babe,” or whatever. And of course, we did our own show prior to that and we kind of knocked the kids out. I remember Sonny and Cher standing off in the wings going like, “Who are these guys?” We did pretty good in that concert. That was like our first big concert.

Scott Morgan: Yeah, I was totally at a loss. Their keyboard player just came to soundcheck to go over the songs with us, and I said, “You’ve gotta play because I don't know what I'm doing up here.”

Bill Figg: Yeah, because their music was fairly complex compared to what we were used to doing. And we didn't know their tunes that well.

Frank Uhle: They were big stars at the time. It must have been challenging for a bunch of high school kids. 

Bill Figg: Yeah. Because we didn't cover Sonny and Cher tunes, we were doing R&B stuff. It was neat though, it was fun to do. I think they were pretty pleased with what we did. But they weren't real pleased, I don't think, with the reaction that we got before we went on.

Scott Morgan: Harold actually was an old New Orleans guy. He worked with Dr. John on a lot of his stuff, and I think they'd been working together way back before Dr. John, when he was just Mac Rebennack.

Frank Uhle: That show was before “Respect” came out, but after it hit you became top headliners yourselves.

Scott Morgan: Our first big show was at Cobo Hall when we played a big benefit with Question Mark and the Mysterians and Richard and the Young Lions, who did “Open Up Your Door,” and the Shadows of Knight from Chicago that covered “Gloria.” Mitch Ryder just showed up and said hello and Bob Seger was there and played. It was a pretty big show. 

Bill Figg: It was called the ALSAC Show, for “Aiding Leukemia Stricken American Children.” Did you say Del Shannon? He was there, remember? He was the big guy when he came in and he was sitting there. There was a lot of people in that first show. “Walk Away, Renee,” the Left Banke? They were there. 

Scott Morgan: Tim Tam and the Turn-ons who had a local hit, “Wait A Minute.” Yeah, it was a good show. That was ‘66 when “Respect” was just peaking on the radio, so it was a good time for us to play in front of a big audience.

Frank Uhle: Someone else told me he saw the Rationals in 1967 at the State Fair, and you got an overwhelming response compared to the other acts.

Scott Morgan: Actually I recall that as being like a real big thing, that supposedly we drew more people to the State Fair bandshell than the Supremes, is what we were told. 

Bill Figg: They said, “Well, we know the Rationals are here” - the people that work there. “Well, why is that?” “Well, because there's nobody on any of the rides!” “How do you know?” “Well, there's only two people that draw like that, the Rationals and the Supremes” or some other big act like that. That was the year the girls drug Scott off the stage by his scarf. We weren't used to that and some girl came up and grabbed Scott by the scarf and she had him real good. Of course, we didn't have any security or anything. Somebody got her un-attached from Scott and we finished the tune somehow.

Frank Uhle: On that kind of show would you just do a short set like the Beatles did in those days, maybe half an hour?

Scott Morgan: We probably had less than that. And we didn't even get very far.

Bill Figg: Three, four songs really. We got about halfway through “Respect,” and they had to stop the show. The kids were jumping off the balconies and there was a big stage rush and the security people got kind of mashed at the front of the stage.

Scott Morgan: They just turned the lights off and told us to get out of there. 

Bill Figg: “Quit playing. Get outta here.” But we didn't know where to go.

Scott Morgan: It was all like that in Detroit actually, at the time. It was like Beatlemania kind of stuff. 

Frank Uhle: Rational-mania?

Bill Figg: Yeah, right.

Scott Morgan: Yeah. 

Frank Uhle: What was that like? Was that kind of a trip? Or did you get upset about it after a while?

Bill Figg:  Well, it was really weird to have 10,000 people trying to tear your van apart to get to you. We felt good about it, and it was really kind of a shock. Because we didn't really realize that we, not that we were that good or anything, that we were that popular. It was a shock for me. I remember standing downstairs with some security guard and we're all standing there going, “What happened?” It's like, “Ah, I guess we did it. We stopped the show!” I believe the Beatles were the only other people to ever stop a show in the Detroit area like that.

Frank Uhle: How long did that kind of fanatical adulation continue? Was that still going on when “I Need You” was on the charts in 1968, or was it mostly earlier when Beatlemania was big? Did it kind of wane a little bit as the decade wore on? 

Scott Morgan: It probably went through ’67. ’66 and ’67.  

Bill Figg: As soon as the psychedelic thing started and people started doing a lot of big improvisation and stuff. Then it was kind of uncool to not be listening, and people quit dancing and everybody became a music critic. All of the people sitting in the place you're playing were all of a sudden trying to listen to you rather than react to you.

Scott Morgan: And I think we took off in another direction after “I Need You.” We left our manager Jeep Holland and hooked up with another guy named Larry Feldman, who was heavily involved in the Grande Ballroom, and that meant that we played the Grande more than we had in the past. And at the Grande it wasn't like a mania thing, it was more like music. People would come and listen to the music, you know? And we started getting into that in ‘68 and ‘69.

Frank Uhle: I’ve heard a recording of the Rationals playing the Grande in 1968, which came out on CD. Is that pretty representative of your sound then? Because I don't even think “Respect” was on there.

Scott Morgan: Actually, we got sick of playing “Respect.” 

Bill Figg: We called it “Repeat,” because we played it so many times. 

Scott Morgan: I'm sure we made some moves that for us at the time seemed logical, but weren't really logical business moves. Probably playing “Respect” and “I Need You” over and over again would've been the thing to do to keep people coming in then adding more material. But we were so headstrong about it that we wanted to just drop all that and move off in this new direction. And that's what we did. So that's why we weren't playing “Respect” or “I Need You” in ’68. This would've been like maybe six months after “I Need You” had been released.

Bill Figg: Yep.

Frank Uhle: Getting back to your records, you moved from A-Square, which was run by Jeep Holland, to Cameo-Parkway, where you followed “Respect” with covers of Sam Hawkins’ “Hold On Baby” and Eddie Holland’s “Leavin’ Here.” But then you were suddenly back on A-Square again for the soulful ballad “I Need You.” Was that done because Cameo went under and you were still managed by Jeep, so he just put the next one out on his own label?

Bill Figg: Yeah. The way I perceive it is, in order to get a record deal we had to pretty much do everything ourselves first. If you've ever seen The Buddy Holly Story movie, it’s the same thing. You do it yourself, and then you go around and promote it, and somewhere somebody would start playing it, and then you'd get some interest up, and then all of a sudden you start getting calls from all these people at record companies wanting to meet with you. And that's pretty much what we did with it. Do it ourselves, get some airplay, and start selling some records. And all of a sudden Capitol or somebody comes by and says “Look, how about let's make a deal?”

Scott Morgan: We discovered that with my current band, that that actually works. We did the same thing. We went through like two demo periods where we just sent tapes to these record companies. And finally we just decided to put out a single, and then we got interest. But that's the same thing, if you generate some success on your own, immediately they want to buy into it. So that's what happened. Jeep had a pretty established little operation with A-Square Records, and “Respect” was our third single on A-Square. At that point we had established a relationship with local radio stations where actually I think we were getting airplay on the Detroit stations before Cameo-Parkway stepped in. And in Cleveland too, and other major markets in the Midwest. And it was starting to spread. I think at that point they were going, “Well, we have to have a piece of this.” So they stepped in and they took over the next three singles.

Frank Uhle: Until notorious Rolling Stones/Beatles business manager Allen Klein showed up.

Scott Morgan: Allen got this incredible reputation for being some sort of crazy businessman. Supposedly he was manipulating the stock or something like that for Cameo. And the thing just fell apart like a house of cards. Everybody was scrambling for a new label, including Bob Seger and ourselves, Question Mark and the Mysterians, and we went back to A-Square and did “I Need You.” And then Capitol walked in because we were doing the same thing again, getting local airplay again and selling records here. So Capitol stepped in and took it over, but that's the only thing that they put out, was that one single. 

Frank Uhle: I see. So they just leased the tune, they didn't sign you guys for a multi-record contract or anything? 

Scott Morgan: No. Right after “I Need You” is when we left Jeep Holland, who had engineered the deal. So our next manager went to Capitol and couldn't seem to establish a rapport with them, so we just started over again. Then we went back to another local label called Genesis and did “Guitar Army,” which was a big departure for us. This was maybe a year after “I Need You” and it's a totally different sound. And the radio stations are going, “Well, we can't play this. It doesn't sound anything like ‘I Need You.’” It was political and it was hard rock. So we had a problem there, and actually the owner of Genesis died in the middle of the whole thing. So nothing much happened with the single. But we went back in and recorded the album, and then instead of releasing that ourselves we shopped it and we found a label for it, Crewe. It was run by Bob Crewe, who had DynoVoice Records with Mitch Ryder.

 

Frank Uhle: The album was the last record you released other than a single from it, your version of the Chris Farlowe/Rod Stewart track “Handbags and Gladrags.” And then in 1970 you called it quits. Was it because the album didn't do as well as you had expected, or were there other factors?

Scott Morgan: There was a lot of things going on there. We had hooked up a production deal with Robin Seymour around the time that the album came out. And Robin's company was involved with our manager in getting the album placed and released. And shortly after the album came out our manager decided he didn't want to work with us anymore. So he just disappeared, basically. He didn't say, “Well, I think you guys should do something else.” He just sort of was gone, you know. One day it was like, “Where is he?”

Bill Figg: And then we started working directly with Robin.

Scott Morgan: We tried to work directly with Robin, and the record label actually sent us out a guy from New York who wanted to manage us. And we're going, “Look, we don't know you, and it's not that we don't want to work with you, it's just...” I mean, you can't just send a guy out, “This guy's gonna take over now.” So that didn't work out. And then Robin went on vacation and we couldn't get ahold of him, and we were kind of freaking out.

Bill Figg: Robin went on vacation and Bob Crewe went to Hollywood to start some other things for Crewe Records. And while he was in Hollywood doing some positive things his kids that he left in charge of the record company in New York had a hard time coordinating the national distribution of the album. So consequently people would hear the album and it hit in one market, and then another market, and then another market. And it was just uncoordinated.

Frank Uhle: That's really unfortunate. Because it was your only album and after so many years of hard work it seems like you should have been on tap for another hit. 

Scott Morgan: We probably should have done a second album, but I think at that point we were so disoriented that I don't know how it would've turned out. I mean, it might have been really good, but I don't know. I have no idea. I don't think we really had a handle on our career at that point. Everybody who was working with us was sort of disappearing rapidly.

With the album making little impact and their management in disarray, the Rationals were reduced to playing venues like the Colonial Lanes bowling alley and a hotel lounge in Windsor, Ontario. Feeling there was no way forward, in August 1970 the group disbanded. Of the four members, Scott Morgan and Terry Trabandt would have the most significant future careers in music. Initially playing together in the band Guardian Angel, Trabandt would later work with Joe Walsh, co-writing his hit “Turn to Stone,” before his passing in 2011. Morgan would carry on with local groups like Sonic’s Rendezvous Band, Scots Pirates, and Dodge Main, releasing multiple albums and winning a Detroit Music Award in 2015.

Special thanks to Scott Morgan and Bill Figg. Thanks also to Alec Palao, Frank Holland, Freddy Fortune, Greg Dahlberg, Jim Heddle, Amanda Uhle, and the Bentley Historical Library.

Check out the Rationals CDs at the Ann Arbor District Library.

More Rationals news clippings at the Ann Arbor District Library.

Video of the Rationals performing “Leavin’ Here” and “Respect” on Robin Seymour’s Swingin’ Time program in September 1966: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFjd9IQfjZg

 

“My life has been full of adventures but this sounded like the ace of them all.”

With a name like Elzada Urseba Clover, you’re either born to botanize or you're born for adventure -- and it turns out she was born to do both. Clover marked several firsts in her lifetime: She was the first recorded woman (with University of Michigan graduate student Lois Jotter) to run the Colorado River through the full length of the Grand Canyon. She was the first botanist to catalog the flora along the river in the Canyon. And she was the first woman to become a full professor in the University of Michigan Botany Department.

I happened upon Melissa Sevigny’s wonderful 2023 book, Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon, and to my surprise, I learned that both Clover and Jotter were from the University of Michigan. I’ve lived in Ann Arbor for four decades yet this was the first I’d ever heard of them. As with many stories of women in science, their pioneering work was largely overlooked in their time and was unrecognized for decades.

Clover was 42 at the time of her Grand Canyon expedition, the oldest member of a six-person crew. She was born in Auburn, Nebraska on September 12, 1897, and later moved with her family to the southwest where she became fascinated by the plants of the region, especially cacti. Before coming to Ann Arbor, she taught public school in rural Nebraska and was the principal of a school in Texas. Sevigny described her as “...a tall woman, active, robust, dramatic, daring, perhaps just a little bit wicked. She drank whiskey. She could swim, fish, hunt, and ride a horse. She preferred to describe her own code of behavior as ‘gentlemanly’ rather than ‘ladylike.’”

 

“Elzada isn’t wanted because she is a woman.”

Clover graduated from the Nebraska State Teachers College in 1930 and earned her Master of Science degree at the University of Michigan in 1932, followed by her PhD in 1935. Not long before the Grand Canyon trip, she’d been denied a faculty position at U-M. Her departmental appointment was no more permanent than instructor and her department chair Harley H. Bartlett confided in his diary that “Elzada isn’t wanted because she is a woman.” Yet Clover wasn’t the kind of person to give up easily. So when she set her sights on cataloging the plant life of the Grand Canyon -- one of the few frontiers left to botanize -- she was determined to do it. “It has never been explored botanically and for that reason everything collected will be of interest,” she wrote. Clover’s goal was to gather specimens and document changes in plant life through the various elevations along the route into the river’s side canyons. 

Since hiking and riding horseback weren’t viable options, she knew she would need to raft the river. However, the prevailing viewpoint in 1938 was that the Colorado River was far too dangerous for anyone, let alone a woman. It had killed plenty of men who’d tried to run it, and the last woman to attempt it, Bessie Hyde in 1928, had disappeared with her husband on their honeymoon. Their bodies were never found. Perhaps because of these serious risks, the University of Michigan refused to sponsor the expedition. Still, Clover applied for a $400 grant from the Rackham Graduate School (they gave her $300) and chose a partner in Norman Nevills, an entrepreneur river runner she’d met by chance the previous summer. Nevills was living along the San Juan River near the remote outpost of Mexican Hat, Utah, and was looking to boost his profile as a river guide for tourists. Clover would therefore get to do her botanizing, yet it would be a commercial, rather than a university-sponsored, expedition. And she -- along with each crew member -- would need to come up with $400 to fund it.

Clover and Neville struck a deal: He would build and guide the boats, help drum up publicity, and bring a couple of men to help -- LaPhene “Don” Harris, a 26-year-old river runner for the US Geological Survey, and 24-year-old Bill Gibson, an amateur photographer who would film the trip. In turn, Clover would bring two students she was mentoring - a woman, Lois Jotter, age 24, in part for propriety since it would simply not do to be the only woman on an otherwise all-male trip; and 25-year-old Eugene Atkinson, a taxidermist working on his PhD in paleobotany at U-M. (At Lee’s Ferry, roughly halfway through the trip, tensions between the crew threatened to upend the expedition and led to the replacement of Harris and Atkinson with 44-year-old Del Reed and 24-year-old Lorin Bell.)

“The best man of the bunch”

The Colorado River was wilder and more unpredictable in 1938 than today. At the time of their trip, it was a raging torrent flowing at 70,000 cubic feet per second, full of scouring silt that clung to the body and clothes. The crew would drink unfiltered water and eat mostly canned food, though Atkinson would also shoot geese and deer along the way. They would face scorching 100-degree heat, risk rattlesnake bites and other potential life-threatening accidents with no feasible means of rescue -- as well as face the looming specter of the great unknown. As Sevigny points out, this was a period when people suspected there might still be undiscovered species of flora and fauna - potential primordial monsters - hidden down corridors of the Canyon. Clover and Jotter decided to don overalls (they considered jeans too masculine) and would take face cream and apply makeup through much of the journey before finally giving it up. 

The story of the two adventurous women spread quickly across the country, with breathless predictions and sensationalized front-page coverage -- some of it misleading or cynical. Several accounts failed to mention the science, focusing instead on the danger of the river and suggesting Clover and Jotter were attention-seeking “school ma’ams” willing to risk the entire crew for their notoriety. A male river runner interviewed by the press even worried that a successful run by women might diminish his reputation. Over 100 newspapermen and gawkers saw the expedition cast off at Green River, and when they were late for a midpoint rendezvous at Lee’s Ferry, there was a media frenzy and a search by a Coast Guard plane. Even a commercial TWA flight out of Los Angeles rerouted its course to look for the river runners. 

Yet on the river, Clover would leave the outside world behind. In the smooth-water section during the early part of the voyage, she floated along playing her harmonica, and her journal of the expedition delights in the beauty of the moon rising over the canyon wall or the wonder of a rainbow after a terrific electrical storm. She would prove to be the most reliable crew member -- Nevills referred to her as “the best man of the bunch” -- keeping her cool even as personalities clashed and tension built as they made their way deeper into the gorge and the more treacherous rapids known as the graveyard of the Colorado River. But despite Clover’s role as the scientific leader of the expedition, traditional sexism persisted: A typical 24-hour cycle saw her and Jotter setting up camp at night, waking up early the next day to gather and press their plant specimens -- all before the men were up and the journey continued. And it was just understood the women would do all the cooking. “The men depend on Lois and me for so many little things. Mirrors, combs, finding shirts, first aid, etc. Just as men always have since Adam,” Clover wrote.

The 43-day trip, lasting from June 20 through July 29 and covering over 600 miles, was a scientific success: Clover and Jotter mapped five different plant zones and were responsible for four first-discovered species (the Grand Canyon claret cup, the fishhook cactus, the strawberry hedgehog cactus, and beavertail prickly pear). Their survey is the only comprehensive one of the Colorado River’s riparian species before the building of Glen Canyon Dam. Nevertheless, Clover fretted over the quality of the specimens, as well as a plant press that went missing temporarily with over a third of the specimens gathered (it was found later that year and mailed to Ann Arbor). In a phone interview with Sevigny, she notes, “[Clover and Jotter] had some scientific complaints about the quality of the work they did. And I think that may have unintentionally contributed to this perception that their work wasn’t important. That [impression] lingered for decades. But this was absolutely untrue. They cataloged 400 species of plants. That’s half of all the plants we know along the river corridor today.”

“I’m so lonely for it now I can hardly stand it.” 

When the trip ended, Clover fell into a melancholy funk. She missed her companions, retreating to her motel room to watch the films, dreaming of further adventures. And she missed the river adventure fiercely, noting in her diary, “I’m so lonely for it now I can hardly stand it.” Almost immediately, she joined Nevills for another excursion, this time down the San Juan River, and she would continue her travels in the following years, surveying the region’s flora on foot and horseback while also making excursions to Texas and Guatemala. Regarding Clover’s wanderlust, Sevigny notes, “I think she belonged out in wild places and that’s where she was happiest.”

Despite the trip’s success -- and perhaps because of its notoriety -- Clover’s work prospects didn’t immediately improve upon returning to Ann Arbor. Sevigny continues: “I think the sensational nature of the publicity did quite a lot of damage to Elzada’s career. She wanted any publicity to be very dignified and very focused on the scientific work.” Clover gave lectures and showed her films to several groups -- women’s clubs, schools, and church groups -- and in 1944, she and Jotter finally completed their species list and published it in the American Midland Naturalist, an influential paper on Southwest plants. Some of their specimens were also given to the Smithsonian’s National Herbarium. 

But there was a notable lack of recognition for Clover’s pioneering work at the University of Michigan, and both she and Jotter were somewhat disinclined to discuss their trip with either family or friends. “I think they were proud of what they did,” said Sevigny. “But I think it wasn’t in Elzada’s personality to go around and crow about it. There were little things like, for example, she didn’t insist on being called Dr. Clover in the press. I think their honesty about the scientific challenges they faced and their reluctance to speak publicly about what they had accomplished might have contributed to people not knowing what an extraordinary thing they had done.” As to their being the first known women to successfully take a boat down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, Sevigny points out that Clover was always careful to say she and Jotter were the first non-indigenous women to boat the Canyon. She was respectful of and interested in the indigenous cultures that preceded her in the places she visited, including the Havasupai and Navajo peoples. 

To Clover’s great frustration - one that followed her all her life - national wire stories would depreciate her and Jotter's scientific achievements and continue to focus on their gender and age. A former river runner described Clover as a “middle-aged woman who has lost her way in life” and a 1946 Saturday Evening Post article described Clover as a spinster looking for a last adventure. “The story depressed and infuriated Clover,” Sevigny writes. “Her work as a respected university professor had been reduced to bedtime stories for children, and instead of an accomplished scientist and explorer, she was depicted as an aging spinster with a life empty of meaning.” 

“Everything is so big and timeless there it makes so many worries and things here seem so petty.”

Yet Clover would funnel her passion into further botany, travel -- and teaching, eventually rising through the ranks at the University of Michigan. She became a curator at the University’s botanical gardens in 1957 (as well as the first U-M instructor to teach a class there) and she became the first woman in the U-M Botany department to earn a full professorship, serving from 1960-1967. By all accounts, she was excellent at her job. One of Clover’s former students, Jane Myers, penned an eloquent tribute to her in the Ann Arbor News when Clover died, and she recalled Clover’s infectious passion for plants and her memorable teaching style: “She was somebody with such intense interest in all things botanical that you did not want to disappoint her. She was not tough on her students—just always intense. Very quietly.” Clover also held small gatherings of students at her upstairs apartment at 1522 Hill Street.

Myers further notes: “In my class out at the greenhouses of the Botanical Gardens in their old 1950s setting, Dr. Clover had us make wire balls with soil in the middle into which we stuck many African violet plants. My mother loved it! There was nothing academic about it; it was just an imaginative use of plants. I think she was ahead of any educational trend by years. She wanted us to enjoy plants as much as she did.” During a book talk at the U-M Biological Station in Pellston, Michigan, where Clover frequently taught, Sevigny met two other former students of Clover’s, and their recollections echo Myers: “Her whole life was about plants. They both said that it changed their lives to absorb some of that passion for the natural world.”

After retiring from the University of Michigan in 1967, Clover moved to San Juan, Texas. On November 2, 1980, she died in McAllen, Texas, close to the Mexico border. Despite all the obstacles she faced, Elzada Clover dared to undertake both an epic adventure and a career path that up to that point had been exclusively the domain of men. “Before them, men had gone down the Colorado to sketch dams, plot railroads, dig gold, and daydream little Swiss chalets stuck up on the cliffs,” writes Sevigny. “They saw the river for what it could be, harnessed for human use. Clover and Jotter saw it as it was, a living system made up of flower, leaf, and thorn, lovely in its fierceness, worthy of study for its own sake.”

The same can be said of Elzada Clover herself. Her legacy is the cacti and succulent room at the University’s Matthaei Botanical Gardens, which was seeded by her southwest collections, and her over 300 specimens in the University of Michigan Herbarium.

A Brief History of Parker Mill

Ann Arbor's Fleming Creek is the namesake of Robert Fleming, who built a sawmill on the water in 1824. His business provided some of the boards used to build the first homes in the city. In the early 1860s, newly-married William & Mary Parker left Buckinghamshire, England, and made their way to Fleming's former sawmill property, which had been abandoned and was in ruins. According to the Washtenaw County Parks Department, the Parkers used money Mary had saved while working as a maid to purchase 61 acres of land and establish a farm. In 1873, they constructed a grist mill to produce flour and corn feed. The grist mill was built directly on the fieldstone foundation of Fleming's long abandoned sawmill, and consisted of building materials found on the property like timber, riverbed gravel, and more field stones. The Parkers made their mill available to other nearby farm families, and played a vital role in the area then known as "Geddesburg".

William Parker ran the grist mill until his death in October 1906. His son George then took over leadership, expanding the business into a commercial flour mill which sold pancake mix, graham flour, buckwheat flour, cornmeal, and cracked wheat breakfast cereal to Ann Arbor area stores until the late 1950s. The Parker brand of "Flemings Creek Mills" products lasted until George's death in 1956.

Today, Parker Mill County Park is a historic operating grist mill and public park operated by the Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation Commission. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. Together with the City of Ann Arbor's Forest Park, it covers 45 acres of mostly wooded land that encompasses the tail end of Fleming Creek, including its mouth where it joins the Huron River. After the mill pond dam was destroyed in a flood, Washtenaw County refitted the mill to run on electricity. Visitors may tour the operational mill, or stroll the many nature trails along the water. This collection of photographs from photographer Erin Helmrich, dating from 2014 to 2019, documents an area which once played an important role in pioneer industry.

"During my 21 years living in Ann Arbor, exploring the abundance of parks and taking pictures of what I see is one of my favorite hobbies. Parker Mill is near my home and became a favorite spot since it's a really perfect walk in the woods. The Hoyt G. Post trail is my go-to trail because it's a loop walk, and with the boardwalk, it's accessible all four seasons.  The trail curves along Fleming Creek and includes a platform along the Huron River which is one of the most peaceful spots in town. Some of my best nature encounters have occurred at Parker Mill too. Over the years I have spotted a water snake, a fox hunting prey, a young hawk trying to get a dead duck from the creek in the dead of winter, a mottled sculpin under the train bridge, and so many mushrooms and birds!" - Erin Helmrich

Visit this link to view the complete collection of photos of the Parker Mill County Park.

 

As part of Ann Arbor 200, the Ann Arbor District Library and 7 Cylinders Studio (7CS) produced a documentary film about the closing of Ann Arbor's Jones School, There Went The Neighborhood: The Closing of Jones School. In the making of the film, 7CS filmmakers and AADL archivists interviewed over thirty former Jones students and Black community leaders. They shared memories of Jones School and "The Old Neighborhood"—the areas now known as Kerrytown and Water Hill. This online archive contains 35 interviews that went into the research and making of the film.
 

Studio Interviews

The following individuals participated in filmed interviews produced by 7 Cylinders Studio. Excerpts from each interview appear in There Went The Neighborhood: The Closing of Jones School.

Shirley Beckley attended Jones School from 1948 to 1950, and she became involved with the Ann Arbor Public Schools in the 1960s as a parent and ombudsman. She witnessed racism against her children and other students, including a race riot at Pioneer High School.

Roger Brown grew up in “The Old Neighborhood” and has vivid memories of playing in Summit Park next to a junkyard and slaughterhouse. He attended Jones School from 1963 to 1965, and he remembers his friends being bused to several different schools after its closure.

Russell Calvert attended Jones School from kindergarten through sixth grade in the post-WWII era. He recalls the strong influence of Black business owners like his father, Burgess Calvert, and Charlie Baker. He tells the story of “The Old Neighborhood” before it became known as Kerrytown.

Theresa (Dixon) Campbell attended Jones School from 1957 to 1965, and she recalls being involved in Black student activism at Huron High School. She shares memories of her parents, William and Minnie Dixon, who did custodial work and owned a home in “The Old Neighborhood.”

Debby Mitchell Covington grew up in Ann Arbor near Summit Park (now Wheeler Park), and she attended Jones School in kindergarten and first grade. In 1965 when Jones School closed, she was bused to Dicken Elementary and she recalls feeling isolated in the majority-white school.

Curtis Davis attended Jones School in kindergarten and first grade. When the school closed in 1965, he was bused to Allen Elementary. He remembers being raised by his mother Dorothy Slay and participating in sports including hockey and tennis.

Jennifer (Mitchell) Hampton attended Jones School in kindergarten, fifth, and sixth grades, and she remembers being one of very few white students in the school. She shares memories of her classmates and teachers and her perspective on racial attitudes in Ann Arbor in the 1950s and 60s.

Audrey Lucas was a student at Jones School during the 1940s, from third to ninth grade. She recalls having white teachers and classmates of many ethnicities, primarily Black Americans and Greek Americans. At this time many Ann Arbor businesses were not welcoming to Black people.

Joetta Mial moved to Ann Arbor in the 1950s with her husband Harry Mial, who was the first Black teacher at Jones school from 1954 to 1957. Dr. Mial also pursued a career in teaching and became principal of Huron High School. She recalls conversations that were happening in the community about school desegregation.

Cheryl (Jewett) O’Neal grew up in “The Old Neighborhood” before moving to the North side of Ann Arbor in 1960. Although she only attended Jones School in kindergarten, she had strong ties to friends and family in the neighborhood. She remembers the Dunbar Center and the Student Parent Center in the Jones building.

Dorothy Slay moved from Kentucky to Ann Arbor in 1962. She recalls how students who attended Jones School faced structural inequalities and racism–including her son, Curtis Davis. Mrs. Slay was a longtime homeowner in “The Old Neighborhood.”

Alma Wheeler Smith grew up in post-WWII Ann Arbor with two activist parents, Albert and Emma Wheeler. She recalls participating in picketing and demonstrations against segregation and redlining in Ann Arbor. She shares her perspective on her parents’ involvement in the decision to close Jones School.

Omer Jean (Dixon) Winborn attended Jones School from kindergarten to sixth grade, from 1955 to 1962. She recalls having many strong Black role models, including her parents William and Minnie Dixon, the Jones School custodian Mr. Perry, her pastor Rev. Carpenter, and U-M professor Albert H. Wheeler.
 

Audio-Only Interviews

The following individuals shared their memories of Jones School with the AADL Archives to assist in the research leading up to the making of the documentary film.

Fred Adams attended Jones School from kindergarten through ninth grade, from 1937 to 1947. During junior high he played in the Intramural Football League against teams from Tappan and Slauson. He also recalls several Black-owned businesses on Ann Street, where his father worked.

Robert Allen attended Jones School from kindergarten through sixth grade in the 1950s. He remembers walking to school along Beakes Street and playing softball on the playground, with custodian Waltstine Perry as pitcher. He never had a Black teacher in the Ann Arbor Public Schools.

James Bryant attended Jones School from kindergarten to fifth grade. When Jones School closed in 1965, he was bused to Pattengill Elementary, and he remembers a tumultuous period of racial conflict. He helped form the Black Student Union at Tappan Junior High and Huron High School.

Martha Monk Hill attended Jones School from kindergarten through sixth grade, and she grew up on North Fifth Avenue with her foster parents Arnell and Bill Ridley. She recalls how her neighbors supported one another, especially parental figures like Carroll and Annette McFadden and Waltstine Perry.

Mary Hinton-Branner attended Jones School in the 1950s, from kindergarten through sixth grade. She remembers going to the Dunbar Community Center and playing in the neighborhood with her eleven siblings. She recalls how the rise in public housing led to the gentrification of “The Old Neighborhood.”

Christine Steeb Koning attended Jones School as a preschooler in the late 1950s. Her mother, Jane Steeb, was a teacher at Jones School. Koning recalls visiting her mother’s classroom and hearing her speak on the radio about the planned closure of Jones School in the mid-’60s.

Patricia Manley attended Jones School in the 1950s, and she recalls her teacher Harry Mial as an important role model. In high school, she was discouraged from applying to college or joining the cheerleading squad, but she persevered and became a teacher and coach at Huron High School.

Diana McKnight-Morton attended Jones School as an elementary student in the 1950s. She remembers growing up in a multi-racial, industrial neighborhood that resisted urban renewal. Her father, Robert Thompson, ran DeLong’s Bar-B-Q Pit on Detroit Street for 38 years.

Paula Miller, the youngest of the Dixon siblings, attended Jones School in first and second grade. When Jones School closed in 1965, she was bused to Pittsfield Elementary School, where she felt alienated from her fellow classmates. She went on to attend Spelman College and became a teacher.

Richard Payne attended Jones School until fifth or sixth grade, when he was bused to Pattengill Elementary School due to the closure of Jones. He remembers white parents and their children protesting with racist signs on the first day of classes, and being disciplined unfairly.

Gina Perry shares memories of her grandfather, Waltstine Perry, who was a custodian at Jones School. He lived in Ypsilanti and commuted to Jones School every day. Many former students remember Mr. Perry as an important role model.

Nadia Shalaby attended Jones School from third grade through sixth grade, and then in 1964 her family moved to Birmingham, Alabama. As an Egyptian American student who lived in the North and the South during the era of school desegregation, she shares a unique perspective.

Donald Simons grew up on Fuller Street and attended Jones School as an elementary student in the 1950s. He recalls being encouraged by his sixth grade teacher Harry Mial and coach Andy Anderson. Mr. Simons went on to teach physical education.

Harold Simons attended Jones School in the 1950s, and he remembers his sixth grade teacher Harry Mial as an important role model. He went on to teach physical education and coach varsity basketball and golf at Huron High School from 1980 to 2007.

Grant Sleet grew up on Beakes Street and attended Jones School from kindergarten to fifth grade. When Jones School closed in 1965, he was bused to Pattengill Elementary School. He also describes what it was like to travel and compete as a member of the French Dukes precision drill team.
 

State Theater Interviews

The following individuals shared their memories after a preliminary screening of the documentary film at the State Theater on April 16, 2023.

Yael Gannett remembers attending Jones School and Wines Elementary.

Mary Hinton Jones shares memories of Jones School and the surrounding neighborhood, including why many Black homeowners moved away.

David Malcolm speaks about his grandfather, Gilbert Pitts, who was a custodian at Jones School.

Scott Forrest McFadden recalls being bused to Allen Elementary School after attending preschool at Jones School.

Diana McKnight-Morton describes her father’s business, DeLong’s Bar-B-Q, which operated across from the farmers’ market.

Don Simons recounts his experiences as a Black athlete in Ann Arbor.

Larry Young speaks about participating in the French Dukes and founding the Salt of the Earth drill team.
 

Old Neighborhood Walking Tour

Led by three former Jones School students, this filmed walking tour describes changes that have taken place in the neighborhood surrounding Jones School over the past several decades. Excerpts appear in There Went The Neighborhood: The Closing of Jones School.
 

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Read about Jones School

Watch the documentary film, There Went The Neighborhood: The Closing of Jones School