Above is a self-portrait by Wystan Stevens, taken in a mirror in the shop window of Ragtop in 1977.

In 2017, two years after the death of local historian Wystan Stevens, an auction of his many collections was held.  The Ann Arbor District Library Archives at that time acquired what it considered the prize of the entire proceeding: a set of dozens of slide cases containing tens of thousands of photographs taken by Wystan, mostly in the 1970s.

At one time, everyone in Ann Arbor knew Wystan Stevens.  He was the pontificator sharing endless facts with the morning crew at Washtenaw Dairy.  He was the bookseller at the folding table hawking paperbacks all over town for ridiculously low prices.  He was the commenter on numerous Facebook and Flickr pages, adding voluminous detail to each post he encountered.  He was the guide with the booming baritone that carried across Forest Hill Cemetery as he gave his regular tours, familiarizing generations with the history written in stone.  And he was the historian who seemed to have the entire history of the city in his head but who rarely wrote anything longer than an article to get it all down for people.  

Wystan was also, for most of the 1970s, the man with the camera hanging around his neck who took photographs of seemingly any and everything in town in an attempt to create a photographic portrait of the city.  He photographed the grand and the ordinary.  People he knew and complete strangers.  Big events and typical days.  People at work and people at play and people who might be doing either (or both).  There seemed to be no topic in which he was not interested, no subject beneath consideration in his document of the community.

As it has now been nearly a decade since Wystan's death and there are many who never had the chance to know him in any of his incarnations, here is the briefest of summaries.  He was born and raised in Ann Arbor, graduating from Ann Arbor High School in 1961, and he added gown to town by majoring in history at the University of Michigan.  He then spent his adult life sharing facts about Ann Arbor history, sometimes paid and sometimes free of charge, sometimes as the official city historian and sometimes as just the person many considered the city historian when no person actually held that title.  He gave tours and wrote articles and sold books.  More importantly, he was a larger-than-life figure, a man with a deep Orson Wellesian voice who seemed somehow to take up more space in a room than his already sizeable frame demanded by the force of his personality.

But that doesn't really describe him.  The trouble with writing a piece about Wystan in order to introduce his collection is how exactly to capture him.  Various articles and obituaries have attempted to do so since his death, and none seem quite complete, none really describe the entirety of Wystan Stevens; that is one of the problems with being larger-than-life.  

The truth is that we don't need to describe him; he is already described in the collection itself.  The storefronts, festivals, shoppers, workmen, baseball games, restaurants, gravestones, art galleries, concerts, and architectural details stack up over time as you look at more and more of them, eventually forming not just the portrait of the community Wystan was attempting to compile but an unintentional self-portrait of the photographer.  We see Wystan reflected in the things he took images of; we see who he was in what he saw in Ann Arbor.  

An introductory collection of hundreds of Wystan's photos can be found on our website at aadl.org/wystanphotos.  Fittingly, it is not a complete collection, but one to which we will continue to add over the next several years as we continue to catalog and digitize images.

One of the most interesting characters in all of Ann Arbor history was Dr. Alvin Wood Chase.  Originally from New York State, Chase came to Ann Arbor in 1856 to study at the medical school, but his lack of knowledge of Latin or science kept him out of the University of Michigan.  Instead, he got a degree in "eclectic medicine", a 19th-century form of healthcare that dealt with botanical remedies and alternative medical practices.  

He became a great collector of these remedies from around the country, printing them in his book Dr. Chase's Recipes, a book so ubiquitous that it was second in sales only to the Bible in the U.S.  He extended his success by establishing his own printing house in Ann Arbor (Dr. Chase's Steam Printing Plant), first to print his own book, and then a local newspaper, and then most of the handbills, posters, and pamphlets in town.  

Yet somehow this success wasn't enough for him and, fearing his health was failing, he sold everything--even the rights to his own name and the copyright to his book--to another wealthy Ann Arborite, Rice Beal, and moved away.  As Rice Beal became even richer reprinting Chase's recipe book, Chase's health did not decline but his fortunes did.  He attempted to re-establish himself in Ann Arbor by publishing a new edition and was promptly sued out of business.  He spent the end of his life selling remedies by mail, struggling for success despite being the author of one of the country's most popular reference works.

So what do you do with an unusual character and a story like that?  Well, if you are us, you make some fun video games out of it!  We approached three local video game developers to try their hand at turning Dr. Chase into the video game hero he was clearly always meant to be (if natural remedies and printing plants don't scream video game adventure, we don't know what does).  

You can learn more about Dr. Chase's life, read either (or both!) his Enlarged Second Edition of Dr. Chase's Recipes or his Third, Last, and Complete Receipt Book, or just jump right in and play our collection of games based on him below!

Dr. Chase's Adventure

Dr. Chase's Mean Steam Machine

Dr. Chase's Mean Steam Machine is a throwback arcade puzzle game inspired by the style of the Game Boy Color. Sort and bind chapters of esoteric knowledge to educate the public (and turn a profit)!

Steven Zavala is an indie game dev and app developer currently residing in Ferndale Michigan with his wife Sarah and their dog and cat, Bella and Chelsea.

flyover-games.itch.io

Chasing Glory

Chasing Glory is a narrative puzzle Game Boy game. Play through Doctor Chase's final days, selling recipes by mail as he desperately tries to rebuild his business

Lily Valeen is an independent game developer and creator of BOSSGAME: The Final Boss is My Heart. She lives in Ann Arbor with her wife Emma.

itsmelilyv.com /
@itsmelilyv

The city of Ann Arbor (known to the Potawatomi as Ga-Bgoshkanek and to the Ojibwe as Gaa-bigooshkaaning, meaning 'place of pummeling') occupies Indigenous land ceded through coercive treaties that seized large swaths of land to be sold to colonizers. These are the traditional and contemporary homelands (the Anishinabewaki) of the Anishinaabeg: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi who together make up the Three Fires Council, established at Michilimackinac in 796 AD. 

Due to land dispossession and tribal warfare in preceding centuries, many tribes were living on the traditional homelands of the Anishinaabe at the time of colonial contact, including the Wyandot, in what was to become Detroit and the Washtenaw County region. The Anishinaabe and other Indigenous peoples are here today, and maintain their relationships with the living lands.

Today, we refer to the state of Michigan, (Mzhigénak, “place that has been clear cut” in Bodéwadmimwen, Potawatomi language) but political borders and names of territories rapidly changed with encroaching colonial contact. In 1668, the region was part of French Canada, then the province of Quebec under the British in 1774. It soon became part of the “Old Northwest” in the newly-formed United States in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, the Northwest Territory in 1787, and finally the Indiana Territory in 1800 before it became known as the “Michigan Territory” in 1805.

French Explorers first landed in Newfoundland in 1534 before making their way to Michigan from the St. Lawrence Valley in the 1600s. The French became the first Europeans to enter the Great Lakes region in the first two decades of the 17th century. By then, many tribes including the Peoria, Miami, Lenape, Shawnee, Sac and Fox, Kickapoo, Wyandot, and members of the Haudenosaunee from the East and South had been driven into new territories in the Great Lakes by treaties that ceded their lands in neighboring regions, and wars. Centuries of conflicts with European colonizers as well as intertribal warfare contributed to migrations and forced displacements. Relocation and forced movement were consistent and happened over centuries, but a general overview of what drove these changes, and where each nation called their homeland is below: 

Historically, the Peoria were located along the western shores of the Great Lakes in what is now Illinois and Indiana. In 1854, they entered into a single tribe with the Kaskaskia (from the Illinois Confederacy ranging from southern Wisconsin to northern Illinois and as far south as Des Moines River, Iowa), Piankashaw (from lands bordering south/southeast Michigan and into Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois), and Wea Tribes (a subtribe of the Miami, whose homelands were in Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio). 

The Miami nation's homelands are in the Wabash River Valley. The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma traces their origin story to the region where the St. Joseph's River meets Lake Michigan, and they have been located on lands bordering south and southeast of Michigan into lower Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.

The Lenape were located in the Delaware and Hudson River Valleys, a large region including northeastern Delaware, New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley, Northeastern Pennsylvania, New York Bay, western Long Island, and Manhattan. 

The Shawnee were located to the Southeast in the Ohio River Valley including parts of Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, the Virginias, and other neighboring states. 

The Sauk [Sac] were located in the St. Lawrence River Valley around 1600 and later lived in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa. 

The Fox [Meskwaki] were historically located in the St. Lawrence River Valley along the Canadian border, Michigan, and later Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa. 

Members of the Haudenosaunee, also referred to as the Iroquois, were comprised of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca. Their homelands surrounded Lake Ontario in Canada and upper New York. They initiated the French and Iroquois or Beaver Wars in the 17th century, which were responsible for mass displacements of surrounding nations. 

The Kickapoo lived in the Wabash River Valley and Great Lakes region. In the early 1600s, their presence was recorded in Indiana, and in the 1660s near Green Bay, but their territories spread from Michigan into Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, and into the Southwest and Mexico. 

The Wyandot, sometimes erroneously referred to as Huron, were comprised of Wendat, Petun, Neutral, and Erie tribes who fled west in the mid-1600s and became known as Wyandot in the 1730s-1750s.

Rapid changes in the “Treaty Period” (1778 - 1871), in which an estimated 370 such documents were ratified in the United States, provided the impetus for the Americans to colonize southeast Michigan. In 1787, the “Northwest Territory" was declared off-limits to colonizers, and was home to the Anishinaabe and other Indigenous peoples who had been there for centuries, in addition to those who had been displaced from their own homelands. Because of the ongoing displacement of Indigenous peoples, treaties often included tribes that were refugees in Anishinabewaki, like the Wyandot who had been pushed west in the 1640s. In the 1807 Treaty of Detroit, a land cession that included what is now Washtenaw County, representatives of the Wyandot signed alongside the Anishinaabeg. The Wyandot were included because they were, according to William Hull’s November 18, 1807 letter, “an old and respectable Nation,” though the Wyandot did not have a prior history of political control or ancestral ties to the region.

Before the first colonists arrived, the lands that would become Ann Arbor were home to Anishinaabe villages with complex political systems and routine council meetings. Potawatomi villages were located in present-day Ann Arbor, Saline, and Ypsilanti for centuries. Here, the Anishinaabeg stewarded and maintained relationships with the lands in innumerable ways, such as maple sugaring, the cultivation of crops, and through routine controlled fires (Ishkode, or “fire” in Anishinaabemowin). Several botanical species in Michigan, including blueberries, oaks, red pines, black spruce, and jack pines are dependent on fire to continue their life cycle. 

Early Washtenaw County colonist accounts frequently noted encounters with Indigenous peoples, including the Potawatomi. In an 1852 feature on Mary Ann Rumsey, the author writes that in 1824 “‘Ann Arbor’ had been the favorite dancing-ground of the Potawattomies, many families of whom lived in the neighborhood. Their place of council was in the light ‘opening’ selected by Allen for his garden.” The article also notes that the Potawatomi often traded deer and turkeys for “other articles” from the colonists. 

In an 1895 Ann Arbor Register article, Mrs. Julia Dexter Stannard recalls her childhood, circa 1828, when “the Indians had a camp near the junction of Mill Creek and the Huron river, and were very friendly bringing cranberries and venison to exchange for potatoes, pork and bread, and for the children they brought little box made of birch bark worked with porcupine quills, brightly colored, and the boxes were filled with new maple sugar.” The Potawatomi ensured that the new “pioneers” of Washtenaw County would survive their first years by trading them food. Yet the Potawatomi and other Indigenous groups were mischaracterized as “primitive” or “backwards,” despite overwhelming evidence that the lands had been purposefully inhabited for thousands of years, including the Indigenous trails that colonizers used to travel.

Those trails converged at the Huron River in Ann Arbor. Surveyor C.S. Woodard recalls in an 1893 letter that “It has always been understood that our most important highways–the Chicago Road and others followed the general lines of these main Indian Trails thus admitting the Indian’s skill in their part of civil engineering, selecting the best ground on which to locate our highways.” Colonists’ language choices were strategic, in order to promote the idea that Indigenous tribes were “uncivilized,” and represented “a vanishing race.” 

In an 1873 history of the state of Michigan, the author states that in their early years, Ann Arbor and surrounding colonial settlements were “not yet free from the annoyance of the Indians,” and that “the Foxes and Sacs annually made their appearance to receive thousands of dollars of presents from the British agents at Malden”, passing through Ann Arbor on their way to Fort Malden to receive annuities for contracts made in past treaties. Efforts to relocate Indigenous people away from Washtenaw County had already begun, but in 1830 the Indian Removal Act formalized military force and targeted remaining Indigenous peoples in Michigan for removal. In 1895, J. Warner Wing recalls the first time he saw the Huron River in what is now Scio Township in 1832. The “water was clear as crystal, well stocked with fine fish, and good resort for deer ... At the point where I reached the river there was a large Indian planting ground ... rows of corn in the cornfield were regular, but not at right angle ... At the upper end of this planting ground ... was an Indian cemetery where many braves and least one chief had been buried," and notes that the "Potowatamie [sic] Indians were quite plenty here in 1832-3" but that "there were not very many Indians here after '32." After six more years of forced removal, in 1838 the Potawatomi Trail of Death forced displaced Potawatomi from Michigan on a 660-mile march to present-day Kansas.

Today, treaties remain important as Indigenous people fight for rights that have not been honored. The Enbridge Line 5 Pipeline is a contemporary example impacting the Great Lakes, as Indigenous people continue to fight against the destruction of a recently-discovered cultural heritage site, and Great Lakes fishing rights. The U.S. Constitution states that “treaties are the supreme law of the land,” while the Commerce Clause established Tribal sovereignty, allowing the United States to “regulate commerce with foreign nations, among several states, and with the Indian tribes.” Despite these provisions, and language in the Northwest Ordinance that “the utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians,” these legal documents were originally created and executed in favor of colonial settlers. 

A Background on Treaties

Treaties were not new to Indigenous peoples, and had been used as kinship documents before colonial contact. For Indigenous peoples, these contracts were seen as signs of “mutual respect, equality, and diplomacy,” as two families coming together. For colonizers, the goal was to make the land profitable and extract maximum value, changing the landscape and eradicating wetlands, including the historical Anishinaabe manoomin (wild rice) beds in Detroit. Colonizers were intentionally ignorant of Indigenous politics, history, and ways of viewing land management, and often used treaties as a mechanism to exploit cultural misunderstandings in their favor, buying lands for much less than they were worth. Settlers also conceptualized land ownership within a colonial framework whereby land would be divided with strict borders. This was vastly different from Indigenous stewardship of the lands, in which hunting territories were often shared through long-held political understandings. 

Indigenous groups in the Great Lakes region did not conform to rapidly-shifting European borders. Then, the United States and Canada did not exist as separate nations, and Indigenous peoples traveled freely between them before their borders were created in the 1700s-1800s. The Jay Treaty of 1794 addressed this, allowing travel between the two countries for Indigenous people, though not without issue. This treaty is still applicable today, though many do not attempt to use it for fear of harassment at the border.

In an 1811 letter to the President of the United States, members of the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Wyandot, and Miami tribes explained the coercive nature of treaties through prior experience: “[We] cannot make known our mind and complaint by writing, not having acquired that art nor have we the Information necessary to understand what white people put upon paper, we are therefore easily duped and imposed upon by the white people.” Six years later, another Treaty signed in Fort Meigs would “grant” land for a University, which ultimately became the University of Michigan, with the provision that Indigenous children would be educated at that university. It would take over 100 years before the first Indigenous students enrolled at the University of Michigan in 1908. 

Alongside treaties, several laws worked in favor of colonizers, prevented Native Americans from buying land, and targeted Indigenous people for removal with the Indian Removal Act. An 1823 Supreme Court ruling declared that tribal nations did not own or hold title to their lands. In 1829, Michigan’s first boarding school, New L’Arbe Croche opened in Harbor Springs, ten years after the Indian Civilization Act made “provision for the civilization of the Indian tribes” through education. By 1887 the Dawes Act or General Allotment Act was passed, allowing the allotment of Tribal lands in exchange for U.S. citizenship, breaking up reservations and ultimately selling Tribal lands reserved through treaties to colonizers.

Today, treaties might be referenced in a multitude of cases, from Great Lakes hunting and fishing rights, education, sovereignty, and more. A guide on Michigan treaties, created by Central Michigan University, compiles a list of 14 treaties signed between 1795-1864 that ceded the lands that are now known as Michigan. Rematriation, land back, and sovereignty are at the forefront of current discussions.

Treaties and Ann Arbor

Over 40 present-day nations throughout the country are descendants of those who signed the treaties below, with 16 groups located in Michigan: Bay Mills Indian Community, Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, Hannahville Indian Community, Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, Match-e-be-nash-she-wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians, Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi, Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, Burt Lake Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, Grand River Band of Ottawa Indians, Mackinac Bands of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians, Swan Creek Black River Confederated Ojibwa Tribes of Michigan

Three main treaties are associated with the cession of lands that became Ann Arbor, and the eventual founding of the University of Michigan here:

1795 Treaty of Greenville, Fort Greenville, Ohio

This treaty was signed by the “Wyandots, Delawares [Lenape], Shawanoes [Shawnee], Ottawas, Chipewas [Ojibwe], Putawatimes [Potawatomi], Miamis, Eel River, Weea's [Wea], Kickapoos, Piankashaws and Kaskaskias,” and ceded parts of Ohio, Illinois, and Michigan, lands that would become Chicago, Sandusky, and Detroit. This treaty set the foundation for future land cessions in Southeast Michigan. With the aim of keeping peace between settlers and Indigenous groups, the treaty set provisions for hunting and fishing rights. In Article 7 of the Greenville treaty, language on hunting and fishing rights appears as follows: “The said tribes of Indians, parties to this treaty, shall be at liberty to hunt within the territory and lands which they have now ceded to the United States, without hindrance or molestation.” Tribal fishing and hunting rights were established for previously ceded lands, and would be included in future treaties. Article 10 notes that all prior treaties “since the treaty of 1783, between the United States and Great Britain, that come within the purview of this treaty, shall henceforth cease and become void.”

The Treaty of Greenville was cited in the 1976 court case People vs LeBlanc, in which tribal Great Lakes fishing rights came under attack with the arrest of Bay Mills Indian Community member Albert LeBlanc. “Big Abe” was arrested for using a gillnet, a traditional Anishinaabe fishing tool that is legal under tribal law, but was illegal under Michigan state law. This case helped re-affirm Great Lakes fishing rights that were provided for in articles under several former treaties. 

1807 Treaty of Detroit 

This treaty was signed by the Ojibwe, Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Wyandot. The Treaty of 1807 ceded a total 5,611,532 acres in a tract known as Royce Area 66. Of the ceded 5,611,532 acres, 469,116 were Ottawa, 3,298,637 Ojibwe, and 1,843,779 were Potawatomi. When ceded in 1807, these tracts of lands were purchased for as little as 1.2 cents per acre, for a total of $57,717.32, unconscionably low for their estimated value of $6,400,000. In 2024, this amounts to about .27 cents per acre. 

In 1978, a Petition by Plaintiff (Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan v. The United States of America) resulted in the commission awarding the claimant $3,479,308.00 for 3,298,637 acres of land. Ottawa and Potawatomi plaintiffs received sums of $579,308.00 and $2,292,000.00. In 1978 the court held that at the time of purchase the Ottawa tract was worth $1.28 per acre, the Ojibwe tract at $1.06 per acre, and the Potawatomi tract at $1.23 per acre. Inflation would not be taken into account. Like the Treaty of Greenville, Article 5 of the 1807 treaty provides for hunting and fishing rights: “Indian nations shall enjoy the privilege of hunting and fishing on the lands ceded as aforesaid, as long as they remain the property of the United States.”

Foot of the Rapids (Fort Meigs) in 1817 

The Treaty of the Foot of the Rapids, orchestrated by Lewis Cass and signed by “The Wyandot, Seneca, Delaware [Lenape], Shawnees, Potawotomee [Potawatomi], Ottawa [Odawa], and Chippewa [Ojibwe], “provided stipulations for the future education of Indigenous children at a University,” or the future University of Michigan, which was to be established with funds from 2,000 acres of ceded lands in Ohio. Part of a broader trend in which public universities were funded and founded through land grabs, these institutions were built on and with indigenous lands, with materials from Michigan being shipped elsewhere to build universities like Harvard and Cornell. 

The Treaty of Fort Meigs stipulated that half of the funds from the land sale in Ohio would be used for the future University of Michigan, while the remainder would go to St. Anne’s Church in Detroit. Article 16 of the 1817 treaty created provisions for education: “Some of the Ottawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomy tribes … wish some of their children hereafter educated, do grant to the rector of the Catholic church of St. Anne of Detroit, for the use of the said church, and to the corporation of the college at Detroit, for the use of the said college, to be retained or sold … one half of three sections of land, to contain six hundred and forty acres, on the river Raisin, at a place called Macon and three sections of land not yet located, which tracts were reserved, for the use of the said Indians.” The 1,920 acres allocated by the Anishinaabeg for a college in the 1807 Treaty was explicitly said to be selected by the Superintendent of Indian Affairs “on the part of the said Indians.” Though the college was founded in 1817 in Detroit, the campus would move to Ann Arbor in 1837. 

In August 1971, a complaint was filed in which a provision for education at the University of Michigan in the Treaty of 1817 was cited against the Regents of the University of Michigan by the “Children of the Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomy Tribes”. Graduate student Paul J. Johnson argued that the treaty “created a trust whereby certain land belonging to the Indians was conveyed to the defendant for purposes of ensuring that the Indians and their descendants would receive an education.”

The trial continued for three more years, with local Indigenous-run news sources reporting on the trial and hosting events to show support, such as a benefit at Huron High in May 1979, advertised in the Detroit-based Native Sun. Both the Native Sun and Ann Arbor-based Nishnawbe Muzinigun regularly reported on the case, supporting the fight through its eight years in court. Three years after the tuition waiver was created, Judge Edward Deake of the Washtenaw Circuit Court decided that the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs does not include a land trust, though he claimed that he “attempted to construe the 1817 treaty in favor of the Indians.” 

Over the course of the Children of the Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomy Tribes v. The Regents of The University of Michigan, a new act was established in 1976. Michigan’s Public Act 174 provided state funds for free tuition under the Michigan Indian Tuition Waiver (MITW) for federally recognized Native Americans residing in Michigan with one half blood quantum, reduced to one quarter two years later.  No court has recognized the 1817 treaty provisions for education, but the Michigan Indian Tuition Waiver provided another route. The act was created on the grounds that it was specifically not out of “moral obligation based on a treaty" but instead to mitigate the high dropout rates that were found in a 1971 survey by the Michigan Commission on Indian Affairs. The program was fully funded by the state until 1998, when legislators froze the budget of the program. Future tuition increases would not be considered moving forward, reflecting tuition rates of the 1998 year in perpetuity, forcing students or institutions to make up the difference. In the following years, tuition rates skyrocketed. In 2019, Governor Gretchen Whitmer once again fully funded the program in the state budget. In 2024, the MITW moved from the Michigan Department of Civil Rights (MDCR) to the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential (MiLEAP).

Conclusion

In May 2024, the University of Michigan’s library system announced free borrowing (of their physical collection only) to “Native and Indigenous people not already affiliated with the university.” The library system names this as “one small step in the library's efforts to honor the intent and spirit of the treaty upon which the university was founded,” tracing the effort back to the Treaty at the Foot of the Rapids that specifically set aside Indigenous lands for the University of Michigan to be built. The University of Michigan Museum of Art’s Future Cache exhibit, which opened in June 2022 and will be on display through June 2025, explores the history of the Burt Lake Band in response to the Burt Lake Burnout of 1900 and the University of Michigan’s acquisition of the lands for their Biological Research Station. 

Though no examples or rematriation currently exist in Ann Arbor, Gidinawemaaganinaanig: Endazhigiyang (All My Relations: The Place Where We All Grow) offers an example of local land rematriation beginning on the campus of Oakland University in what is currently Rochester, Michigan.

Selected Timeline

This selected timeline is not inclusive of every era, event, treaty, ordinance, court case, or law, but offers some examples that had a direct impact on the Indigenous peoples who once inhabited the lands that are now Ann Arbor.

~12,000-13,000 B.C.E.	Current estimates place the retreat of glacial ice sheets in the Great Lakes region to around 20,000-13,000 years ago. The earliest recorded human presence in Washtenaw County and the lower peninsula is currently around 15,000-13,000 years ago, discovered through evidence of interaction with mammoths, and recent Clovis period archeological findings.
100 B.C.E - 500 C.E.	Pre-contact Indigenous cultures in what we now call the Midwest, known collectively as the Hopewell tradition flourished in the Great Lakes region, creating large earthwork mounds throughout what is now Michigan.
500-1000 C.E.	The Anishinaabe migrated from the Atlantic Seaboard in the St. Lawrence Valley to what is now Michigan and established the Three Fires Council in 796 C.E. Several burial mounds from the Late Woodland period (500-900 C.E.) have been found in Ann Arbor.  Many artifacts and human remains taken from these sites are in the process of repatriation.
~1441	Many Potawatomi migrated to Southern Lower Michigan when the Three Fires Council split into three groups.
1632	The first recorded Michigan Anishinaabe encounter with Europeans through trade with the French is dated circa 1632-1634.
1640 - 1701	The French and Iroquois Wars displaced Indigenous groups from surrounding regions into the Great Lakes area.
1701	The Grand Settlement Treaty in Canada was an agreement to shared hunting grounds in the Great Lakes region, described in “A Dish With One Spoon.”
1765	Potawatomi living in Detroit established a village on the Huron River.
1768	The Treaty of Fort Stanwix created a “Permanent” Ohio River boundary that excluded future settlers from the Great Lakes region.
May 18, 1785	The 1785 Land Ordinance allowed colonizers to purchase “undeveloped” land by surveying and dividing land into square plats, which created townships “six miles square, by lines running due north and south,” and created many of Michigan’s modern counties.
1790	The Nonintercourse Act was the first of six such statutes to limit the ability of Native Americans to sell their land and trade with settlers.
August 3, 1795	The Treaty of Greenville was a “treaty of peace” between the United States and tribes in the Great Lakes region. It ceded the majority of lands in what would become Ohio for settlement, further shrinking Indigenous territories in the Great Lakes.
June 30, 1805	Michigan officially became a territory.
November 17, 1807	The 1807 Treaty of Detroit ceded millions of acres of land in southeast Michigan and Northern Ohio, including the lands that would become Ann Arbor. Known as Royce Area 66, the tract included three divisions of land ceded from the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi.
September 29, 1817	The treaty of the Foot of the Rapids (Fort Meigs) ceded 4.6 million acres in Ohio, parts of Indiana, and Southeastern Michigan, and an additional 1,920 acres from the Anishinaabeg for a “college of Detroit” which would become the University of Michigan.
March 3, 1819	The passing of the Indian Civilization Act made “provision for the civilization of the Indian tribes” through education: “teaching their children in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and performing such other duties as may be enjoined, according to such instructions and rules as the President may give and prescribe for the regulation of their conduct…”, and providing annual funding for the establishment of boarding schools.
1822	Lewis Cass delineated the borders of Washtenaw County.
1823	The Supreme Court Case Johnson v. McIntosh held that Native Americans could not sell title to their lands to anyone other than the federal government.
1824	John Allen and Elisha Rumsey purchased 640 acres for $1.25 per acre, for a total of $800, establishing Ann Arbor on lands ceded in the 1807 Treaty of Detroit. Potawatomi had several villages in the Washtenaw County region.
1829	The first of Michigan’s boarding schools was built in Northern Michigan, in what is now Harbor Springs. The school was known as “New L’Arbre Croche” or “Little Traverse”, which reopened as "Holy Childhood of Jesus Catholic Church and Indian School" in 1884.
1830	Lewis Cass, Governor of Michigan (1813-1831) and Secretary of War under Andrew Jackson was the driving force for the Indian Removal Act policy, which had been underway in Michigan informally for decades.
March 28, 1836	The Treaty of Washington was signed, which provided further stipulations for education based on the Treaty of 1817. This Treaty would often be cited in legal cases in the following years, including those involving the Burt Lake Band and the University of Michigan. The 13,837,207 acres ceded in this treaty led to Michigan becoming an official state in 1837.
September 4, 1938-November 4, 1838	The Potawatomi Trail of Death began in Indiana, where many displaced Potawatomi from Michigan were forced from Indiana on a 660-mile march to a reserve in present-day Kansas.
February 4, 1855	The Court of Claims was established; many Native American claims were listed, but none were investigated.
August 2, 1855	The 1855 Treaty of Detroit: treaties 297 and 298 were signed, creating reservations for the Odawa and Ojibwe. This treaty became important in several 20th- and 21st-century legal cases.
March 3, 1863	Congress amended the Court of Claims enabling act to specifically exclude Native Americans from bringing claims.
January 1881	The court ruled that “all Indians should have the opportunity of appealing in the courts for the protection of their rights of person and property.”
February 8, 1887	The Dawes Act or General Allotment Act was passed, allowing the allotment of Tribal lands in exchange for U.S. citizenship, breaking up reservations and ultimately selling Tribal lands to colonizers.
October 15, 1900	The Burt Lake Band’s village was illegally “sold” to John McGinn. In a violent event known as the Burt Lake Burnout, a local militia burned the village to the ground. Part of the land is now owned by the University of Michigan and used as their Biological Research Station.
June 2, 1924	Indigenous people born in the United States were guaranteed U.S. Citizenship with the Indian Citizenship Act. When the 14th Amendment, granting citizenship to anyone “born or naturalized in the United States” passed on July 9, 1868, Native Americans were intentionally excluded and defined as foreigners on American land. Four years earlier, white women had earned the right to vote, but voting rights were still not guaranteed for Native Americans under the Indian Citizenship Act. It would be decades before full voting rights were realized in all 50 states.
June 18, 1934	As a result of the 1928 ‘Meriam Report’, the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) was passed. The IRA recognized Tribal governance systems and aimed to ”restore to tribal ownership the remaining surplus lands of any Indian reservation,” ending allotment that began with the Dawes Act. It was introduced as “An Act to conserve and develop Indian lands and resources; to extend to Indians the right to form businesses and other organizations … to provide for vocational education for Indians; and for other purposes.” Though generally lauded for its push for Tribal self-governance, this act was also criticized for ignoring different forms of Tribal governance, attempting to homogenize them, and never fully delivering on its promises.
1937	The Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe became federally recognized after adopting a constitution and electing a tribal council, as directed by the Indian Reorganization Act.
August 13, 1946	The Indian Claims Act of 1946 creates the Indian Claims Commission to handle Indian claims related to treaty rights.
1956	The Indian Relocation Act was passed as a part of a series of laws passed during 1940-1960 known as the Indian Termination Policy that removed federal Tribal recognition. This law encouraged Indigenous people to move from reservations to urban areas for employment. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was instrumental in the effort to remove Native peoples from reservation lands by purchasing one-way tickets to cities through the “voluntary relocation program” in order to dissolve Tribal sovereignty through claims of extinction.
August 5, 1971	Paul Johnson, a Native American graduate student at the University brings action, citing the Treaty of Fort Meigs in “Children of the Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomy Tribe v. the Regents of the University of Michigan.” The case was ultimately lost in 1979.
1976	Michigan Indian Tuition Waiver (MITW) was passed with Act 174. The waiver provides free tuition for federally recognized Native Americans with one quarter or more blood quantum through the State of Michigan.
June 22, 1978	A Petition by Plaintiff (Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan v. The United States of America) resulted in the commission awarding the claimant $3,479,308.00 for 3,298,637 acres of land in Royce Area 66, the cost of the land when it was ceded in 1807.
1979	In the Supreme Court case United States v State of Michigan, the court ruled that Indigenous Great Lakes fishing rights were guaranteed under the 1836 Treaty of Washington. The court ruled that "treaty with Indians must be construed as the Indians would have understood it…(it) must be construed liberally in favor of Indians so that Indians are not wholly disadvantaged by the strength and resources of the United States."
May 27, 1980	The Grand Traverse Bay Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians regained federal recognition.
1984	The Holy Childhood of Jesus School (New L'Arbre Croche Mission School) in Harbor Springs “officially” closed in 1984, but students reported attending up until 1986. The building remained in use as a daycare and thrift store until 1993.
September 21, 1994	The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, and the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians gained federal recognition.
December 19, 1995	The Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi’s federal recognition was restored.
1998	Michigan froze the budget for the MITW program, and would not keep in line with increasing tuition costs going forward by increasing the amount offered.
August 23, 1999	The Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish’s Band of Potawatomi Indians (Gun Lake) gained federal recognition.
2019	Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer once again fully funded the MITW program in the state budget.
2024	The MITW moved from the Michigan Department of Civil Rights (MDCR) to the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential (MiLEAP).

The Library wishes to thanks the Indigenous scholars, writers, and consultants who engaged with this process and helped to produce and refine this document.

"I  first read Robert Hayden in ninth grade, when my English teacher showed us “Those Winter Sundays.” Reading it, I was struck by emotions that I didn’t yet understand. I felt then what I would later feel about many of his poems: enchanted by how much it could both express and withhold. Many years later, I moved to Ann Arbor, where I learned Robert Hayden had spent much of his life, first as a student at the University of Michigan, and then later as the English Department’s first Black faculty member. He lived through times of tremendous beauty, suffering, and change, all of which were reflected in his poetry — he grew up in Detroit’s Paradise Valley, where African American art and culture flourished during the Great Migration; befriended Langston Hughes and studied under W. H. Auden, who were both tremendous influences on his work; taught at Fisk University under Jim Crow segregation; and taught at the University of Michigan during the Vietnam War as the young people he met were sent off to commit and suffer from senseless violence. His poems wrestle with themes of beauty, atrocity, nature, faith, and the human spirit, especially within the context of the tumultuous years in which he lived. He confronted difficult, multifaceted truths through his poetry — voicing his own lived experiences and the stories of Black history while also firmly believing in the universal aspects of humanity that transcend difference, informed partly by his Baháʼí faith. He expressed this sentiment in poems that were equally concerned with craft and philosophy, which are what make them still so compelling today.

Though he would go on to effectively become the first Black Poet Laureate of the United States and have a lasting influence on American poetry, I continue to be surprised by how many people I encounter who have never read his work or have never even heard of him. Many literature classes teach a couple of his most famous poems, but most don’t explore the breadth of his oeuvre, which is truly expansive and awesome. I recommend checking out books of his collected poetry from the library or purchasing them from your local independent bookstore. The goal of this project is partly to highlight Hayden’s work for the community he called home all those years ago and partly to honor his legacy through ekphrasis by creating original poems and prints inspired by his work. I’ve selected ten poems from across his career that I believe deserve more attention, and I’ve written ten poems and made ten cyanotypes of my own inspired by the ones I’ve curated. Some of the cyanotypes incorporate photographs I’ve taken of places in Ann Arbor.

Hayden and I have led different lives in different eras; our experiences are not one and the same. But he has inspired me to look for the universal aspects of the human experience, and in that search I have found so much goodness and beauty. I hope that my contributions honor what Hayden’s poetry has not only given me but everyone who is lucky enough to encounter his words. Here are the poems I wrote." - Shannon Daniels

"While not a native, I have known and loved Ann Arbor since I was three years old. I strongly associate the town with classical music (especially UMS) and the University of Michigan. As a fiction writer, I prefer to draw on real life, classical literature, and/or my imagination, and had been resistant to writing anything personal. As a classical musician, I am a huge fan of Leonard Bernstein, having studied Candide for a project in college, and writing a paper on Bernstein for a graduate class on creativity. However, after the death of my father, I began to reflect on his life as a chemistry graduate student in the early 1960s in the South, and his love of music. So an idea came to me about an immigrant discovering the joys of Western classical music while a student at the U of M, culminating in Bernstein’s first performance at Hill Auditorium. 

Sampath bears a number of elements of my father as well as his cousin (a doctor who married a doctor of Lithuanian origin, and a serious Western classical music aficionado). Many characters bear names of people who were important to my father, but this story is ultimately fiction. I really wanted to do justice to Ann Arbor, my father, UMS, and the University of Michigan. Readers can decide whether or not I was successful!" - Author Sonja Srinivasan

What About Mime

What is mime? It turns out it depends on who you ask. Broadly speaking, the tradition has its roots in ancient theater in cultures across the globe. Many people envision street pantomimes with white face paint, while practitioners of the theater tradition emphasize the use of the entire body to convey expression and emotion. What does the art of mime have to do with the history of Ann Arbor? In the heyday of mime performance in the 1980s, dozens of event listings featuring mime could be found throughout the calendar year. From Marcel Marceau’s annual visits to the Ann Arbor Summer Festival and his brief stint in Ann Arbor at the Marcel Marceau World Center for Mime to the countless groups and performers--the University of Michigan’s Mimetroupe, Artworlds Center for the Creative Arts, Mimetroupe of America, OPUS Mime, EMU Master Mimes, and more--mime dotted Ann Arbor’s cultural landscape. Mime was sure to be found at Summer Festival, Winter Festival and the Ann Arbor Art Fairs, the Graceful Arch becoming known as a site where one would certainly encounter a mime or pantomime. Even the 1973 Blues & Jazz Fest featured pantomime by the British troupe "Friends Roadshow," who would in the following years build a base in Ann Arbor and participate in the city’s Sesquicentennial celebration. The group often performed at local venues such as Chances Are/Second Chance and The Blind Pig with their outrageously-named Michael Spaghetti’s ½ Ring Circus. 

When the word “mime” is mentioned, do you imagine white face paint? If so, it is because of Marcel Marceau’s widely known character “Bip the clown”, based on Jean-Gaspard Deburau’s 19th-century silent, white-faced character Pierrot in the tradition of commedia dell'arte. Because Marceau was so popular, and the art of mime so tied to his success in the American mind, the white face paint that Marceau adopted for his character became synonymous with mime. However, it was not a tradition associated with the art historically. In a 1984 interview for the Ann Arbor News, Marceau emphasized that the makeup was “not traditional or even typical,” but that in his workshops here in town he sees “mostly white faces. But to create ‘little Bips,’ or ‘little Marceaus’ – that is not what I want.” Despite this plea, much of the mime seen around town in the 1970s-1990s was a direct homage to Marceau's iconic character. 

Beginnings: Local Interest Arises

Before the 1950s in Ann Arbor, the word “Mime” would likely bring to mind the all-male performing group at the University of Michigan known as the Mimes Union Opera, active from 1908-1930 with a few revivals in the following decades. That would all change by the mid-1950s when world-famous mime Marcel Marceau toured the United States for the first time and soon became a household name. Marceau made his first appearance in Ann Arbor at Hill Auditorium on December 5, 1960 as part of the final season of the University of Michigan’s Oratorical Association Platform Attractions series, which traced its origins back to 1854. 

When Marceau performed for the University Musical Society (UMS) in 1971, he became the first performer to ever grace the stage of the newly completed Power Center. The 1960s would see a slow rise in programming related to mime, with the Ann Arbor Civic Ballet offering courses in mime, bringing in international mime troupes, and inviting the San Francisco Mime Troupe to town.

In 1972, ArtWorlds, a nonprofit school of art, was founded at 213 ½ S Main Street by engineer Cecil Taylor and his wife Barbara Taylor. Though the couple left for California in 1980, the arts organization continued for another three years, routinely offering courses in mime taught by Michael Filisky, Perry Perrault, Mark Novotny, and Mark Strong, to name just a few.  At its height, the organization offered over 75 classes, employed 40 instructors, and enrolled over 800 students in courses that ranged from “fire eating” to magic, masks, and the classic but now nearly forgotten “Rhythm-meter-hand jive”. 

In May 1975, the second annual Invitational Festival of Experimental Theater, described by the Ann Arbor Sun as a “temporary aggregation of approximately 20 theatre, mime, and dance troupes.” Among them was the local "Friends Road Show" (a troupe living on a communal farm in Milan) and the Living Theatre at a number of venues: Michigan Union, Waterman Gym, and Trueblood Auditorium. That same year, the sixth annual Medieval Festival featured Michael Filisky’s recently-formed Mimetroupe’s interpretation of Boccaccio’s work, which was performed exclusively in mime, alongside “authentic” medieval performances and dances. Filisky became the well-known local figure in mime of the 1970s, and would remain a vibrant part of the community until he moved to New York in in the early 1980s.

The 1980’s Mime Boom in Ann Arbor

By the 1980s, Ann Arbor’s love of the art of mime was in full swing. Experimental mime, (or "new mime") featured abstraction, with troupes like Mummenschanz and Paul Gaulin’s Mime Company performing in extreme contrast to Marceau, and bringing a range of approaches to town. Mime became so popular that University of Michigan Mimetroupe’s event posters disappeared an alarming rate; the group attempted to cut them in half to dissuade theft, because, as one member said: “they are real collectors items.” Even with new styles and approaches on the horizon, Marceau became the face of the inaugural Ann Arbor Summer Festival in July 1984. He would return semi-annually to teach intensive workshops and make appearances at the festival in the following years. 

In anticipation of the first Ann Arbor Summer Festival, the Ann Arbor News proclaimed “Marcel Marceau’s love affair with Ann Arbor” and documented responses from local mimes; O.J. Anderson, sometimes referred to as the “good time mime”, noted “His [Marceau’s] is the art, mine is the act. My art is the entertainment,” which often consisted of bringing audience participants on stage and even speaking a line or two, earning him another title: “the World’s Only Talking Mime.” Perry Perrault, founder of the University of Michigan Mime Troupe in 1981 and Ann Arbor Mimeworks in 1988, noted that his approach contrasted to both Anderson and Marceau’s styles as he preferred to focus his energy on collaborative, group performances. 

With the help of Eugene Power, Lou Belcher, and Thomas Monaghan (of Domino’s Pizza), Marceau became the central figure for the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, and dreamed of opening an official school here. Though it never materialized, the space was originally conceptualized as a “350-seat theater, mime museum, and office space with rehearsal rooms.” The Marcel Marceau World Center for Mime taught seminars associated with the school for two years in town before the center faced bankruptcy. In a 2013 interview, Susan Pollay, former director of the Summer Festival, remembered that the center “was here in Ann Arbor in an instant and then it disappeared.” The following summer, Marceau was notably absent from both the Summer Festival itself and the annual Summer Mime Seminar.

Changing Attitudes Toward Mime: New Approaches Arrive

A Michigan Daily calendar listing on July 15, 1988, advertised the upcoming  series “Influences in Mime” at the Marcel Marceau World Center for Mime with the note: "'Everyone loves a clown. Everyone hates a mime,' said Sam Malone on an episode of Cheers. Decide for yourself…” As in the previous decades, Ann Arborites would have many opportunities to make that decision. In the late 1980s, Stefan Niedziałkowski, a renowned Polish mime artist, taught at Marcel Marceau’s Paris School and frequented Ann Arbor; he later became a resident at Marceau’s short-lived school and taught courses around town. From 1988-1993, Niedziałkowski had a base here for his mime company, Theatre Milchenye, and brought with him new forms of mime that would inspire future generations of artists. 

One such artist inspired by Niedziałkowski is Michael Lee, a local dramatist who specializes in mime. Lee first trained under Perry Perrault after he moved to Ann Arbor in 1984. Three years later he studied at the ephemeral Marcel Marceau School of Mime in Ann Arbor, then under Niedziałkowski, and quickly joined the local scene as a professional mime. Lee established his own OPUS Mime Troupe in 1994 at the former Washtenaw Council for the Arts loft at 122 S Main St. In their debut calendar event listing in the Michigan Daily, changing attitudes toward mime are employed as a marketing tactic, with OPUS mime cheekily stating: “This mime troupe blends the body of a gymnast, the mind of an actor and the heart of a poet into their shows. Who cares, nobody likes mimes anyway.” 

Performances in mime continued around town without the fervor of the past decades, but with a presence nonetheless. In 2001 the 78-year-old Marceau became the recipient of the University of Michigan Musical Society’s Distinguished Artist Award. As part of the residency, Marceau taught students of dance and drama for two weeks, followed by a performance that would add to his resume of over 30 Ann Arbor stage appearances. 

Continuing into the new millennium, Michael Lee set up a new office on East Washington. There, he ran a business that offered courses in mime to local schools, including Milan Schools and Rudolf Steiner. Lee stressed the difference between mime and pantomime in the Ann Arbor Observer's August 2000 edition, noting that true mime is an “art of the body as dramatic tool … that includes 264 hand positions and body positions that go back to Greco-Roman sculpture.” Leaving behind the Marceau-inspired white face paint, Lee created his own interpretation of the classic art of mime. By 2002, Lee had secured a grant to perform a work in mime, but was ultimately turned down by a local festival and could not locate a theater to perform in. The physical office in Ann Arbor closed, but a year and a half later he returned to mime part-time. Over the next years, he would continue his involvement with the Performance Network and participate in workshops, theater productions, and festivals in Washtenaw County.   In 2011, Lee and Perrault performed for Chelsea High School theater students after Opus Mime completed a two-week residency. Since then, Lee has moved away from Ann Arbor, but continues to teach and perform in Michigan and beyond. 

While mime no longer has the hold on Ann Arbor it once had, the lively tradition had a strong influence on the performing arts community here that still lingers today. 

In the wake of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States government reacted with an immediate and unfounded distrust of Japanese Americans. Just two months following the tragedy, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which gave legal clearance for the forced evacuation and incarceration of over 100,000 people of Japanese descent by declaring large swaths of the West Coast a “military area” that civilians could be excluded from. 

The great irony of war is that it is imperative to intimately know the opposing side. At the same time that Japanese Americans were being unjustly imprisoned based solely on their ancestry, the knowledge of Japanese language and culture that many of them possessed was crucial to the American military.

Wartime in Ann Arbor

Ann Arbor was critical to the war efforts and located enough to the east  to be exempt from the arbitrary military status that resulted in forced relocation. The University of Michigan contributed to the training of JAG lawyers, Navy seamen, Army Air Corps, and housed the Army Intensive Japanese Language Course (Military Intelligence), eventually known more simply as the Army Japanese Language School.

With the war efforts in mind, the University’s accelerated courses of Japanese language instruction began in February 1942 for civilians. The next year, in January of 1943, the Army language school began under a contract between the War Department and the University. Instruction lasted until December of 1945, with various offshoots including The East Asia Area and Language Army Specialized Training Program, The Civil Affairs Training School Far Eastern Program (Japan), and a translation program. The goal was “to give basic training in the Japanese spoken and written languages to officers and enlisted men of the United States Army” and “incidental to the above, to teach many facts pertaining to Japan and the Japanese.”

Initially, the school was composed of approximately 45 instructors, 15 of whom were women. The majority were Nisei, American-born children of Japanese immigrants. Ann Arbor had very few Japanese American residents at the time the war broke out, which was unsurprising given the exclusion of Japanese immigrants under the Immigration Act of 1924. Of the city’s 29,815 residents in 1940, only 101 were not classified as Black or White according to the census, and far fewer of them were Japanese American specifically. In 1941, there were 15 Japanese American students at the University of Michigan. 

Choosing instructors for the school was first undertaken by Colonel Kai E. Rasmussen of the US Army before the responsibility was given to Joseph Yamagiwa, a professor of Japanese at the University of Michigan. In the summer of 1943 he became the school’s director and remained in that position until the program ended. 

Forced Relocation & Recruitment

The first instructors for the school were largely recruited from concentration camps. Most had no prior teaching experience. They had been receptionists, college library assistants, insurance salesmen, accountants, secretaries, florists, caterers, journalists, preachers, bank tellers, farmers, lawyers, and more. 

In a 1945 report, Director Yamagiwa described what this experience must have been like for these new recruits, “the instructors had come to Ann Arbor to teach an enemy language, talked, written, and read by an enemy people with whom the instructors were racially connected. At first some did not dare even to go to a church, let alone a movie theatre.” Understandably “with stories of their experiences in various assembly centers and in the W.R.A. camps, some assumed for a time a certain cautiousness in their dealings with people in and around campus. No doubt many chimeras were created which had no real reason for being; actually, the community was either receptive or unnoticing.”

In an interview from 1974, former city council member and longtime Ann Arborite John Hathaway recalled the city’s reaction, “These Nisei were people who had been displaced from California on the West Coast, and had been sent to concentration camps. The university and the Ann Arbor community was quite outraged by the way these people were being treated.”  

Despite Hathaway’s memory of local indignation, structural prejudice was explicit policy for the University at the time. In 1942, as students of Japanese descent were forced to leave their places of study on the West Coast, a Seattle paper implied that the University of Michigan would welcome these pupils. UM President Alexander Ruthven quickly and plainly disputed this, “The newspaper report that the University of Michigan has agreed with West Coast institutions to accept students of Japanese blood from the evacuated areas is incorrect. It is the policy of the University to discourage such students from seeking admission here.”

As the war continued, the University faced a staff shortage for their dormitories, cafeterias, and hospitals. So, simultaneous to their exclusion of Japanese American students, the school began to recruit Japanese Americans from concentration camps to fill these positions. 

By the fall of 1943 the University had 400 Japanese American workers. A year later, Ruthven reiterated the enrollment ban in response to this growth, “There are already in the University somewhat more students in this category than we had before the war. When to this number are added the several hundred Japanese Americans employed in Ann Arbor, it is the opinion of the Board (of Regents) and of others concerned with this matter that we now have in this vicinity as many of these people as can be properly cared for and protected in the community.”

Housing

As recruitment for Language School instructors increased alongside all the other wartime operations, a new problem emerged: where would these new arrivals to Ann Arbor live? People had flocked to the area for training at the University, or for plant jobs like those available at Argus and Willow Run, creating a major housing shortage. When the first instructors arrived they lived in a single fraternity house. As the school grew to include 75 instructors at its peak, some with families, tight living quarters were required. 

A townsman who remained unnamed in Yamagiwa’s report purchased a home that was used to house four families, lending credence to Hathaway’s memory of Ann Arbor hospitality. More fraternity houses were also commandeered, with one home to an additional six families and another for male instructors. Alice Sano Teachout, whose father was an instructor, remembered the tight living quarters with fondness, “There were five families in this one fraternity house on Baldwin Street…That was really fun.” The most diligent instructors were able to find their own apartments, but at a high cost. 

In September 1943 instructor Eiko Fujii, whose parents were imprisoned at Jerome Relocation Center, wrote to Fred S. Farr about the situation, 

“My original plan was to call my parents out after I settled down - but the joke is on me, for houses and apartments simply aren’t available. Washington’s housing condition gets publicity because of the “glamour” attached to the city, but Ann Arbor “suffers” silently - in fact, one groans with our population. If one stops to listen one can literally hear houses creak with inflation. Besides, Ann Arbor has the distinction of being the second highest in living cost - next to New York or Washington, I forget which - and so I find myself unable to support my parents with the salary I get” 

Reverberations & Resoluteness

When the school began, the Nisei instructors were young, with an average age of 25. Most spent their next three critical years in Ann Arbor. Director Yamagiwa reflected, “In a rather real sense they reached maturity during their stay at Michigan, in some cases getting married, having children, and finally growing up.” Newlyweds included instructors Karl Ichiro Akiya and Satoko Murakami, and instructor Arthur Y. Fujiwara to stenographer Miko Inouye. 

Despite their government’s efforts to define them as separate from their fellow Americans, many of the instructors found honor and a sense of patriotism in their work. At age 90 Fumiko Morita Imai remembered her parents' pride in her teaching, which allowed her to escape the fate of the rest of her family who spent the duration of the war in a concentration camp. 

In the same letter in which Eiko Fujii described the difficulties of finding housing in Ann Arbor she wrote:

“Except for the fact that I am remorseful about leaving my folks in camp, I feel grand. I don’t think you can realize, Fred, how appreciative we are of our freedom and our citizenship after ten months of camp life. Now that the bitterness is gone, one’s sense of loyalty becomes stronger. It’s the funniest thing - I never was much of a patriot until now, until I actually had the fact of my physical ancestral trait flung at my face. At first there was resentment, but now that that part of my life is ended, I’ve become more conscious of being an American.”

Instructor Frank Y. Nishio was born in the United States, received his education in Japan, and returned to America in 1940. The day after Pearl Harbor he volunteered for military service only to be rejected by the recruitment officer. In an oral history he recalls:

“[The recruitment officer] called me aside and said, “Look, you are of Japanese ancestry and you’re Japanese, aren’t you?” And I said, “I am an American of Japanese ancestry.” … He said well, we don’t know what to do with you guys. I said, “What do you mean, you don’t know what to do with us guys? I am a citizen of the United States volunteering my services to my country and you say you don’t know what to do with us guys.” He said, “Well, it isn’t my determination, it came from Washington.” So I felt I had a pretty good idea of what was happening so I hung my head and left and was greatly affected by that decision because it was a statement saying that I am not an American when they do things like that. And I went back to school with no intent of studying and when the semester ended, I quit and went out to do day labor because I saw no future in my country that would not even accept my services to defend the country.”

Soon thereafter he was imprisoned at Jerome until the spring of 1943 when he came to Ann Arbor to teach. Still, he longed to be a member of the military. He volunteered again in Detroit only to be told that his current work was a higher priority. Finally he met Colonel Rasmus, the military leader of the language schools, who heard his plea and arranged for his acceptance into the Army.

After the War 

When the language school concluded in December of 1945, many of the instructors continued to serve their country by offering their skills to the occupation of Japan. Six former instructors contributed to the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey: Eddie T. Inouye, Joseph K. Sano, Arthur Y. Fujiwara, Tomoo Ogita, Nisuke Mitsumori, and Takeshi Tabata. An additional nine were later appointed to the War Department at their own request: Saikichi Shirasawa, Shigeru S. Nagata, Albert S. Kosakura, Takeo Tada, Frank E. Kagiwada, Kinji Kanno, Robert T. Ono, Yuji F. Nakamura, and Robert T. Endo.

Others left Michigan to reunite with their families or try to reestablish themselves out West. Some decided to stay and make Ann Arbor their permanent home. Joseph K. Sano was a WWI veteran who had earned his law degree from the University of Southern California and at one time served as a FBI special investigator in California. He left for Japan in October of 1945 and spent at least three years working for the military government, including as a translator and interpreter for the Tokyo war crimes trials. His wife Sakae and son Roy remained in Ann Arbor. Upon his return he worked for the University of Michigan’s Library translating Japanese volumes and compiling a dictionary of Japanese characters. The Sano family grew to include two more members: Alice and George. Joseph Sano died of pneumonia in 1964. 

Joseph Sasaki quickly transitioned from instruction back to his work in optometry. He had graduated from the University of California and practiced for 5 years before the war. In November of 1945, he opened his private practice at 304 ½ S State Street. He was an active member of the Ann Arbor community with roles in the Ann Arbor-Washtenaw County Council of Churches, Optimist Club, YMCA, Freemasons, and the Izaak Walton League. In 1955, his commitment to the city was recognized with an appointment to First Ward Supervisor for Washtenaw County. Apart from his more formalized service work for decades, he hosted Japanese-style Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day feasts at his home, inviting scholars and students from Asia so they wouldn’t be alone during the holidays. In 1989 his kindness was repaid by the recipients, who furnished a trip to Japan for him. 

The Japanese Language School would not have been located in Ann Arbor without Joseph Yamagiwa’s expertise. He had received his Masters and Doctorate from the University of Michigan, where he remained as a member of the faculty for 31 years. Like many of the instructors he had recruited, he spent time in Japan after the war in service to the military. In a 2017 interview, his daughter Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro recalled making friends with the children of other instructors as “the first time I had Japanese American friends. Otherwise, there were two of us my age in Ann Arbor at the time.” Overall, she recalled a lack of prejudice “because there were so few of us,” acknowledging that her “experience was completely different from the 95 percent who were put in the camps.” Still, what she lived through left enough of a mark to inspire her play Behind Enemy Lines about Japanese American detention during WWII. 

Second in command to Joseph Yamagiwa was the school’s Head Instructor Hide Shohara. Instructor Shohara had earned her bachelors from the University of Michigan in 1926 and joined the faculty in 1927 as an assistant in general linguistics. She was eventually promoted to a professor of Japanese alongside Director Yamagiwa. She retired from Michigan in 1965 to join the faculty of the University of Minnesota. The Department of Asian Languages and Cultures maintains a fellowship in her honor. 

Only A Fraction

With a total of 100 instructors over the school’s three years this is only a glimpse into the consequential lives each one of them lived. 

Instructor Roy Toshiro Nakagawa developed a partnership with former student Max Hugel to export Japanese products that resulted in the formation of Brother International Corporation. 

Ruth Hashimoto was a staunch advocate for peace. She was in attendance for President Regan’s signing of the bill that provided $20,000 in restitution for Japanese Americans who were detained. She donated half of her payment to the Japanese American Citizens League and the rest to charities devoted to fostering peace and understanding. 

Karl Ichiro Akiya was a labor and community activist who was awarded for his work against racial discrimination. 

Reverend Andrew Y. Kuroda went on to a 35 year career with the Library of Congress.

Leonard Ida was an instructor in the spring of 1945 when he wrote to Estelle Ishigo, who was then imprisoned at Heart Mountain:

“It has been a long time and perhaps long forgotten me. I can always remember the evening teas and listening to the Tokyo broadcast in your home… Those were the good old days. Quite by accident that I heard that you and your husband were in Ht. Mt. yes, you were taking judo lessons at the time of the evacuation… I’ve been outside these past two years teaching Japanese language… I’m here with the University of Mich. This work is interesting and [I] hope to play a great part in the future peace of the world through the medium of language.”

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Center for Japanese Studies: The US Army's Intensive Japanese Language School

From Unwelcome to Essential Japanese Americans At Michigan During World War 2

University of Michigan Heritage Project: These Young Americans

Scholars In Uniform - Ann Arbor Observer, August 1990

"Borders is not only a part of Ann Arbor's history, it's part of its culture. For Ann Arbor 200, I wanted not just to recount the rise and fall of a bookstore, but capture the experience of shopping at—or working for—a local institution. This story is based on research and interviews with former Borders employees, as well as my own experiences with the flagship store and other locations. The unnamed characters move through the years and Borders' evolutions, but they age at whatever speed you like, or not at all. This is a story of Borders, for you. I hope you see yourself somewhere within, I hope it brings up good memories." - Author Shaun Manning

Origins

Late 1974

She says, "Wow, this is a lot bigger than the old one.”

He says, "Nicer, too. What was it you were looking for?"

They browse at a casual pace, perusing the shelves marked Art, History, Literature—with subsections devoted to Latin American literature, Russian literature, and more. It is a wonder to see. 

They find stairs to the second floor, and he smiles back at her as he begins the ascent. She heard there would be a third floor within the year. Just remarkable what this bookstore has become in such a short time. Already an Ann Arbor gem.

Borders Book Shop opened less than four years ago in 1971, just 800 square feet on the second floor of 211 South State Street. Brothers Tom and Louis Borders focused on used books at the time, and—unlike well-established bookshops such as Slater's, Wahr's, or the newer University Cellar—the brothers decided not to compete forUniversity of Michigan's textbook sales. After only five months, Borders moved to 518 East William Street for the span of a year, and then the brothers bought out Wahr's and moved into their 2000 square-foot space at 316 South State Street. The new location at 303 South State is triple that again and will encompass more than 10,000 square feet once all three floors are open.

Louis Borders, who worked briefly at a bookstore in college, dreamed of Ann Arbor becoming a book-town destination on the level of Chicago, New York, and Boston, drawing in readers from Detroit, Lansing, Toledo, and further afield. So far, things were looking good.

"Found it," she says, holding a copy of Watership Down.

"Is this for kids?" he says, a book tucked under his arm.

"It's supposed to be really good. What are you getting?"

He holds up Gore Vidal's latest, Burr.

"How fascinating," she says, not fascinated.

"It's supposed to be really good!"

They pay for their books, the cashier removing a small punch card from each, and together they walk up State to the old Borders at 316, still open during the relocation. They consider going in, having one last walk through the stacks. But no, that Borders is already part of the past.

Local Bookstore

Holiday Season 1989

He has some gifts to buy and had watched nervously from their table near the window at Dooley's as nearby shops turned down their lights and locked up for the evening.

"Wow, I'm surprised they're still open."

She checks her watch. "Yeah, Borders is open ‘til nine p.m. now. We've still got a couple hours yet."

He wishes he hadn't rushed through dinner. 

She has already picked up two hardcovers—The Joy Luck Club and The Remains of the Day—and is discussing them with a handsome, though somewhat balding, bookseller. Meanwhile, he is still pensively focused on his too-full belly. 

Leisurely, almost absently, he picks up a copy of Stephen King's latest, The Dark Half, and flips open the cover to read the jacket copy. Like other bestsellers, it's 30% off the cover price. Still, he's not sure this one's for him. But maybe a Christmas gift for his brother?

"We're trying to set a precedent for downtown businesses to be open later," he overhears the bookseller telling her. He's seen this Borders employee before; in fact, it seems he's been here almost every time they've come into the store. Maybe he is the manager. Or one of the Borders Brothers? The bookseller or manager or Borders founder speaks with passion and authority. "The mall stays open until nine, why shouldn't we?"

In addition to the two volumes she's already selected, she now holds a third book—one the bookseller recommended during their conversation. Together, she and the bookseller retrieved it from the History section (or rather, one of the several sections of history)—with text against an all-green cover, it’s an obscure title called The Empire Writes Back. 

She has taken a seat on a cushioned chair to flip through her selections, and he sits beside her, mimicking the kkk-fsssh noise of Darth Vader's mechanical breathing as he reads the title.

"It's not about Star Wars," she says, rolling her eyes.

They sit for a while, he with his Stephen King, she with her book on something called post-colonialism, and the two others in a stack. This is nice, he thinks, and also, I'm going to get two copies of Stephen King, one for me and one for my brother.

What if they do this more often? Could bookstores be a place to relax, a place to meet friends and socialize? It's quieter than the bar, he thinks. They have been to the other Borders—one of them, the one in Novi—it had a similarly cozy environment, though it didn't hold that special at-home feeling of the Ann Arbor store. 

He's heard about Borders expanding outside of its three Michigan shops, into Atlanta, Indianapolis, and near Chicago. It seems like the folks who run this place have big ideas about what a bookstore is and can be. And it all started here, in Ann Arbor. Could this local business change the entire culture of reading?

Almost at the same time, they turn the page.

National, Then Global (but Still Ann Arbor's Own)

Summer 1993

It's her second day on the job, and she's setting up the "Ban It" window display featuring books that have been banned, or which groups have attempted to ban, throughout the years. She wants to do things right; she wonders whether to group the books by age range or theme or perhaps cascade them all together. Should Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn stand side by side or be set further apart to create a more dynamic variety?

"Charlotte's Web?" a middle-aged woman nearby says incredulously. "Where is this banned?" She hadn't noticed the woman's approach, but it's a conversation she's prepared for. She tells this customer about the organized efforts by national groups to pressure local PTAs into removing certain books from schools and stopping libraries from making these books available to their communities.

"I don't believe it," the woman says dismissively, tossing Charlotte's Web back on the cart. The woman also makes a comment about going over to check out the "Blue Light Specials," a reference to Kmart’s recent acquisition of Borders, which the newly minted bookseller already finds crusty and stale.

Charlotte's Web gets central placement in the window display.

Despite the occasional snarky comment—this is, after all, retail—she loves her new job. She sees why so many Borders employers are "lifers." There's a high bar to entry, with a challenging interview quiz—only the most famous component. And once you're in, what's not to love about working with books? Chatting with readers every day, finding common interests, making recommendations, and learning about the books that excite other people?

And so what if Borders is no longer, properly speaking, a "local bookstore"? It still feels like an independent bookstore; really nothing seems to have changed since Kmart came in. And it's still inherently a part of the community—the previously closed State Theater down the street is clear evidence of that since bookstore founder Tom Borders bought and reopened the iconic venue last year. 

Besides, even before the acquisition by America's second largest retail chain, the company grew beyond its Ann Arbor roots—beyond even its roots in the Midwest—becoming a national chain. Borders grew while retaining what made it special. Other chains focused on bestsellers and magazines, while Borders gave readers the opportunity to browse a more eclectic selection, the ability to special order any of more than one million titles. Its staff are "book people"—working full time, many of them leaving professional careers to do what they love. Herself included. She's finished her master's degree in comparative literature, and there's nowhere she'd rather be.

Borders' addition of music and movies also predated its integration into Kmart and Waldenbooks. But why not? At the end of her first shift, she picked up Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville alongside the latest Octavia Butler; why wouldn't customers enjoy the same convenience?

A familiar face approaches, interrupting her reverie.

"Do you have any—"

"Don't say it—"

"Blue Light Specials?" he says.

Despite their joking, she knows what he's here for. And knows he won't know where to find it. Ever since the expansion last year into Crown House of Gifts' second-floor space, he's been hopeless. Most customers adjust, but her friend still goes up the escalator for books on music, which are now on the first floor, only to find shelves of Borders' more literary titles, which are now housed upstairs. 

She walks him over to find a copy of Miles: The Autobiography and tells him for at least the fifth time since she's landed the job that she can't give him her employee discount.

December 1996

He's supposed to pick her up after her shift, but he's running late. Good. She'll have a bit of time to herself. To think.

This job has meant so much to her. Has provided so many wonderful experiences, so many great opportunities.

She's witnessed, and been a part of, the secret inner workings that make a bookstore happen. She's stacked boxes of books as they’ve come off the delivery truck, down a chute into the basement offices, and she’s taken her place in the human chain that’s sent cartons of publisher returns back up the same way. She's filled special orders by flipping through materials from Ingram, and Baker & Taylor. 

She was there for the move into the Jacobson's building on Liberty—it was a huge and brilliant endeavor culminating in a new yet familiar flagship Borders.

She's seen, and had the chance to meet, so many of her favorite authors. Many of her bookselling colleagues are authors themselves! 

She met First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in the most absolutely chaotic day she's ever experienced, handing out signed books to some 2000 readers. 

She's chatted with radicals and dreamers, and a standoffish sportswriter with an inflated sense of self-importance.

She's experienced the addition of new product lines like CD-ROMs and the espresso bar, and weird new innovations like Borders' "browse by phone" automated service. 

She's set up expert panel discussions on the virtues and dangers of the Internet, though she suspects the whole enterprise is overblown.

She hasn't been privy to all the shifting corporate stratagems of the Borders-Walden Group, but she did see her employer and favorite local institution work its way out of the Kmart Corporation and stand once again on its own. 

She has observed as local competitors have tried to carve out their niche or keep up: Little Professor insisting they are Ann Arbor's "neighborhood bookstore," while drastically increasing its magazine selection; music shops fighting for survival as Borders dominates.

But now?

The focus has turned to Borders staff. To her, and her colleagues. To labor. To unionizing.

And what does she think of it all?

There's been so much back and forth. So many hearings with the National Labor Relations Board, planned and then cancelled. So much controversy surrounding Borders locations in other states, involving staff and managers she's never met.

She loves her job. It pays okay, relatively speaking, and even provides benefits. She wants to trust her employer and the familial atmosphere Borders has fostered. Her boss insists he's not anti-union but says unions and Borders culture "would not be a good fit." She certainly respects him more than the media personality who's been banging the drum for unionization, leading protests in Ann Arbor and other big-city locations—during the holiday season, no less!.

And yet.

"Borders culture" has professionalized bookselling and created new expectations for what a bookstore can and should be. If Borders staff are paid better than other stores in town, isn't that just reflective of the specialized knowledge they bring to the table? Could collective bargaining make a dream job a sustainable one for its well-screened, rigorously trained, highly educated staff?

His car pulls up to the curb on the other side of Liberty, so she starts crossing the street.

"You're late," she says.

"You hungry?" He hands her a Blimpy's bag.

"I have something for you, too." She hands him The Regulators by Richard Bachman.

"Wow, I thought he was dead?"

"I guess Stephen King brought him back for one last scare."

Decline and Fall

Spring 2002

"Do you miss it?"

"You ask that every time."

Yes, of course she misses it. She misses going into Borders every day, spending eight hours handling books, talking about books, making recommendations, and learning about authors she hadn't previously read. It was easily the most fun job she’s ever had. Her career has taken her in another direction, but Borders Books & Music is still one of her favorite places. She still recognizes so many of the faces.

"I don't miss cleaning the toilets," she says.

"You say that every time."

She did need a change. Everything changes. Everything has changed since the Twin Towers fell; she expects they're only seeing the start of it.

Borders has been a driver of change but has not always adapted well to change imposed from the outside. They were well behind the curve when they set up their first website in 1998, ceding the advantage to Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com, a new company gaining steam. 

Last year, Borders and Amazon teamed up for book sales over the internet, which might help them both shore up their weaknesses. She’s heard from friends who worked with her on the floor, before they moved over to Corporate, that Borders.com has been losing money. Meanwhile, Amazon still doesn't have any stores at all that you can actually visit. Though some tech writer was quoted in the Ann Arbor News as saying that Borders was "turning over the keys to what may be its biggest competitor over time." 

At any rate, she still buys all her books in person.

He finds what he came for right away—The Salmon of Doubt by the late Douglas Adams—but of course they both know they'll be looking around for a while. They drift apart, away through the aisles, joining up in their perambulations—both carrying a few extra books on their stacks—before breaking off again. 

She's already picked up Atonement by Ian McEwan, a debut called Everything is Illuminated, and a memoir called Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, which she heard about on NPR—she couldn't remember the name, but she found it prominently displayed and added it to her pile.

"Did we pick up the same book?" he says, startling her at his approach. She sees the book he's holding up.

"No, that's Everything's Eventual," she says. "You're the Stephen King guy. This author is new, but it looks good." He is also carrying two books by Oliver Sacks, an author who does, in fact, bridge their interests.

They get in line to check out, a queue that snakes back on itself. But there are a few registers open, so they expect things should go quickly. 

She always donates to the local causes Borders promotes at the register, this time the Ann Arbor District Libraries' "Open Books for Children" project; he will sometimes drop his change in, sometimes not.

He turns over his stack of books in both hands, as if shuffling them from one to the other but without actually releasing the tomes into the air. "I've been wanting to read this book called The Commitments, Roddy Doyle, but I didn't see it." They both set their books on the counter to pay.

"Should we go check the other store?"

Ann Arbor's other Borders, in the Arborland Center, will have them fighting traffic. They could call. They could probably look it up online at one of the kiosks placed throughout the store or simply ask an old friend on staff. 

She grabs their bags. "Yeah, let's go."

Because why not spend a bit more time in a bookstore?

Fall 2008

It's a quiet Saturday, and they've spent most of it on Borders' comfy seating. She's read three entire volumes of Fruits Basket, but the fourth book is not on the shelf, so she's shifting gears entirely and starting in on Stephen Hall's The Raw Shark Texts. It's strange and brilliant and just the sort of thing she likes. On the side table, along with the completed manga and her Starbucks venti latte from the cafe, there is also a copy of On Chesil Beach, which maybe she'll get to today.

Looking up from her book, gazing across the store at other customers, it strikes her how young so many of them are. When she worked here (When was that? It can't have been so long . . .), she didn’t remember seeing quite so many teens and young adults; it was mostly younger kids coming with their families, or the literati that one expects to congregate in a university town.

Harry Potter has done wonders.

It's not just Harry Potter, of course; the final volume in that series came out last year. And the flood of incoming manga filling the shelves have drawn teens into rich, colorful worlds of never-ending stories. Together, they have created a new industry, a new culture. They have helped transform reading from a primarily solitary activity to a social one; more and more kids have come to associate reading not with schoolwork but with magic.

Good for them. She wasn't going to attend a midnight release party or anything, but good for them.

"Find anything good?" she says. He's been alternating between thin volumes of playscripts and a giant edition of The Canterbury Tales, which he now sets on his lap.

"But wel I woot, expres, withoute lye . . . I'm really struggling with this."

"Your accent isn't bad," she jokes. "But it's not good, either." She took a course on Chaucer at U-M; she loved it, though she suspected she was the only one in class who did.

"Feeling dramatic today?" she adds.

"Oh, you know. Just sometimes I miss acting." From time to time, he’s toyed around with the idea of auditioning at the Purple Rose over in Chelsea, but whether because of a lack of time, as he’s told himself, or because he couldn't work up the nerve, he hasn’t been on stage since finishing his B.A. in history.

They both go back to reading. His mouth moves silently over the archaic English. He could spend all day here. You can't get this from Amazon, he thinks. Of course, there are some things he gets from Amazon—it's so convenient, how could you not? He feels bad, on some level, that since the digital split he hasn't much used Borders.com, it's just . . . there's no reason to. If he wants to go to Borders, he'll go to Borders—he even signed up for the Borders Rewards program. But if he wants to save a few dollars, he'll click through Amazon.

He hears a book snap closed, and she stands up.

"I'm going over to the Paperchase section, I need some cards," she says. "Are you getting anything?"

Chaucer is still open on his lap. He thinks for a moment.

"I don't think so," he says. "Not today."

He hasn't followed the news closely, but apparently, Borders is for sale. Again. Isn't it always for sale? Isn't it always in some sort of financial trouble? But there are Borders Books & Music stores everywhere—across the United States. Across the world! They'll be fine.

The End

September 2011

How long have they been going to Borders? How many years? As long as they can remember.

And now, it's the last time.

The shelves are nearly bare; the bookcases themselves are for sale. They don't really expect to find anything. That's okay; they each pick up a haul of books they're unlikely to finish in a lifetime through the gradually escalating sales leading up to this date.

They just want to be here. One last time.

"This was a mistake," he says. Now that he's here, he wishes he wasn't. He wishes he hadn't seen the stripped skeleton of a space that had meant so much to them. The last few times were hard as well, with books, CDs, and everything else that once made Borders feel so alive having dwindled away at 20%, 30%, 40% off.

"Maybe," she says. But she's still glad she's here. She has friends, both at the store and on the corporate side, who have lost their jobs in the last few months, or who are about to finally lose their jobs after winding down the last operations for Ann Arbor's former gem. She's heard the stories and speculation about what brought them to this moment.

Amazon.

Ebooks.

Overexpansion.

The recession.

All of the above.

From friends and family outside the book world, she frequently hears "people don't read anymore." But this never seemed right. Because Amazon. Ebooks. And the like. If anything, people might be reading more than ever.

They're just not buying books. Or not buying books from Borders. Or.

Mistakes were made. The multiple website relaunches. The push into toys and games.

Betting on the wrong horse in the ebook race. Bold initiatives that failed to pay off. Who knows. All she knows is that this place that meant so much to her will soon be gone. Is already gone.

There's no more Music section to speak of, but she finds a Jonas Brothers tour book cast haphazardly on a low shelf. Maybe her niece will like it. For two dollars, why not?

They take their finds to the checkout. He's got a badly shelf-worn copy of a Charlie Chan biography. There are stanchions laid out in a snaking pattern and arrows taped on the tile floor directing customers through a line that has failed to materialize. They follow the maze in a death row silence. 

He pays for his purchase, in cash, and then she does the same. He has already started walking away when he hears her slide something off the counter. He turns, and she holds it up to him.

"Don't forget your bookmark!"

"I recently put on a show in downtown Ann Arbor on Main Street called Being Black in America: Ann Arbor Edition. It entailed the black experience in its entirety. Lost Ann Arbor puts more focus on the history. It  includes pieces of artwork that focus on the Black history of Ann Arbor, the accomplishments, the stories of our ancestors, and how they have come to Ann Arbor and their experience." - Painter Asha Jordan

The paintings Asha created for Lost Ann Arbor below are also currently available to view in a virtual gallery from Saganverse.  A walkthrough video of this gallery was also created to enable a permanent record of the exhibit.

	Being Black in Ann Arbor
	502 N. 5th AVE "Thomas and Janie Ross resided in a home on 5th ave. Their name was on the deed but the landowner told them to either pick the house up and take it off his land or move out. From the fear inflicted they just left."
	North Side AA "Asian Americans were weaponized to oppress Black People, they were given loans to open businesses in Black communities. Even though Black People were not able to receive loans in their own community." - An Asian American
	The Lost
	Cousin Charlene "What did it look like to live in Ann Arbor as a black woman? BLACK WOMEN IN THE 80s SOMEWHERE IN ANN ARBOR."
	AAA on Main Street "Posing across the street from the big house. Being unapologetically Black was a lifestyle never forget. Roy Campbell, Carlene Campbell, and Bobby Ross."

WCBN, the University of Michigan’s student-run freeform radio station, has been broadcasting the Local Music Show since 1993 when it was started by Dan Banda. 

For 31 years and counting the show has featured live performances from Southeast Michigan artists of all genres selected by a rotating cast of hosts.  The Local Music Show has always presented live performances by these artists, and listening to them gives a sense of what the clubs, bars, and basements of Ann Arbor have sounded like over the past two decades. This collection includes over 600 performances from 2002 to 2022 with favorites like Protomartyr, Saturday Looks Good To Me, Tyvek, Bonny Doon, Stef Chura, Frontier Ruckus, Chris Bathgate, and many more. 

Take a deep dive into the Local Music Show archive to discover the local talent that surrounds you!

By the 1950s Ann Arbor had outgrown its old, ornate courthouse. The 1877 structure was falling into disrepair, but stipulations limited its relocation. So our county’s leaders embarked upon a novel solution: constructing a new building right around the old!

LEGO builder extraordinaire David Lorch recreated our courthouse’s unique construction with hands-on help. Attendees at our December 7, 2024 event assembled sections of the large-scale LEGO model of the newer courthouse surrounding the older courthouse's LEGO replica. 

Below you will find the history of Washtenaw County's three courthouses, a time lapse of the event, photos of the completed model, and a 360° video of the two courthouses. The LEGO models will be on exhibit through January 10, 2025 on the third floor of the Downtown Library.

360° view of the completed courthouses

Tracks Made History Download [4.4MB|MP3 Audio] Written by: Buff1 Vaughan Tego 3Steez Produced by: Mayer Hawthorne and DJ Dahi

In 1994, seven friends never anticipated they’d make hip-hop history in Ann Arbor and beyond. A mutual love of creating music and playing sports prompted the Huron High School students to form a group that would eventually become Athletic Mic League.

“We weren’t Athletic Mic League then. We were the Anonymous Clique, but we all started going to Trés [Styles’] crib writing and messing around on little beat machines and little recording setups in 1994,” said Jamall “Buff1” Bufford, one of Athletic Mic League’s MCs.

“We didn’t become Athletic Mic League until probably [1997]. Wes [Taylor] came up with the name … so we said, ‘Yeah, let’s go with it.’ We all play sports. We took an approach to writing and practicing like it was training.”

Thirty years later, that disciplined mindset has stayed with the members of Athletic Mic League: Trés Styles, Wes “Vital” Taylor, Vaughan “Vaughan Tego” Taylor, Michael “Grand Cee” Fletcher, Mayer Hawthorne, Kendall “14KT” Tucker, and Bufford.

Now, the group is celebrating its contributions and legacy in a new track aptly titled “Made History.”

Commissioned to write and record the track for the Ann Arbor District Library's Ann Arbor 200 bicentennial project, Athletic Mic League also pays homage to Washtenaw County hip-hop history and Black history in Ann Arbor.

“We wanted to make sure there was no … erasure of Black history in Ann Arbor,” Bufford said. “We wanted to make sure there was no erasure of AML history in Ann Arbor. [We’re] letting people know our significance [and] Black history significance in Ann Arbor. And let me be real, let me be clear: I’m not saying that people are denying AML’s history. We get love … but it’s hip-hop, you gotta let people know sometimes.”

Back in the Days When I Was a Teenager

Athletic Mic League in the early 2000s. Photo by Doug Coombe.

On “Made History,” Bufford, Vaughan Taylor, Styles, and Hawthorne explore those milestones through nostalgic lyrics and local references over a chill beat.

In the first verse, Bufford raps: “Basketball and rap they was my two things / Me and Trés on the same AAU team / We lost touch and reconnected in 1993 / I met Grand Cee and KT in the time between / Scarlett Middle School, we was from the east / Trés and the Taylor brothers from the north side of things / Mayer went to Tappan kinda the middle between / At Huron we formed like Voltron and assembled the League.”

“I had a class with Trés my freshman year. I was writing in class and he looked over my shoulder and said, ‘Are you writing a rap?’ Back then, it wasn’t as cool to be a rapper—believe it or not—we kept it a secret,” Bufford said.

“I said, ‘Yeah, I’m writing a rap,’ and he said, ‘I write too.’ … And we discovered that Wes and Vaughan wrote raps and then we discovered that KT wrote raps.”

With the group intact, the members rapped on DJ Chill Will’s hip-hop radio show, The Prop Shop, on WCBN-FM (88.3) in Ann Arbor, when they were teens.

Tucker, Hawthorne, Styles, and Vaughan Taylor also formed a locally renowned production crew called The Lab Techs.

“They were one of if not the most innovative production teams from Michigan, but I would say in all of hip-hop at the time,” Bufford said.

“They were using computers and nobody else was using computers at that time. … Those four were using a program called Cool Edit, which was used for video editing. They used it to chop samples.”

Athletic Mic League finally released its debut album, The Thrill of Victory ... The Agony of Defeat, in 1998, but the group struggled to book live shows at local clubs like The Blind Pig.

Vaughan Taylor raps about that struggle in the chorus of “Made History”: “Let me take y’all back / Before The Blind Pig let us in / Let me take y’all back, yea, yea, yea, yea.”

“The scene was fledgling. … We couldn’t really perform at The Blind Pig,” Bufford said. “It wasn’t open to a lot of local rap back then. You could be a touring rap artist to come through there, but if you were local and rapping, they weren’t really trying to get you in.”

Athletic Mic League eventually teamed up with Ann Arbor funk/hip-hop band Funktelligence and that opened the door to rock-oriented clubs.

“They were a live band, and The Pig was a little bit more receptive to them—even though they were rapping—so they would get in there all the time. We started getting on bills with them,” Bufford said. “Once they saw what we were about, Funktelligence was our foot in the door. We eventually built a relationship with The Blind Pig and started doing our own shows.”

Some of those shows included shared bills with Ypsilanti’s S.U.N. and his live backing band Gorilla Funk Mob and Ann Arbor’s Invincible.

Bufford pays tribute to those acts and their support of Athletic Mic League in “Made History”: “Forever indebted to those who helped AML / Chill Will, Ill Weaver, S.U.N., Funktell.”

“I wanted to make sure that I made it a point to mention S.U.N.—Scientific Universal Noncommercial—because he was super important in helping AML. I recorded it … so there’s no discrepancy on S.U.N.’s importance not only to us, but to the whole scene, and utilizing a live band, Gorilla Funk Mob,” Bufford said.

“S.U.N. helped with that, Funktelligence helped with that. Invincible—Ill Weaver—they were super critical not only just collaborating with us, but when they moved to New York, that was our pathway [there.] And then Chill Will, of course.”

Athletic Mic League continued to gain momentum through live shows at local venues, collaborations with the Subterraneous Crew and other Southeast Michigan hip-hop acts, and opening slots for national acts like Jurassic 5.

“To be all the way transparent, we had our ups and downs with The Blind Pig, but they were critical,” Bufford said. “They were the venue and we had to have our presence felt there. They were a big part of who AML is, for sure.”

Athletic Mic League also released two other albums—Sweats and Kicks in 2002 and Jungle Gym Jungle in 2004—before pursuing various solo and collaborative projects.

On “Made History,” Bufford raps, “Sold-out shows, we made history / Known around the globe, we made history / When it comes to albums sold, we made history / You proud to call The Deuce your home, we made history.”

“A lot of things that we did before anybody—not even before anybody, that nobody else has ever done—and that’s going to sound very arrogant, but it’s just the facts,” Bufford said.

“As far as hip-hop goes, artists from Ann Arbor—like major label record deals, indie label record deals, touring the world, selling out The Blind Pig multiple, multiple, multiple times—not a lot of people can say they’ve done what we’ve done.”

Native Tongues: Black History in Ann Arbor

Diana McKnight Morton and Curtis Morton of DeLong's Bar-B-Q Pit in 2001. Photo taken from The Ann Arbor News.

Along with honoring its own legacy on “Made History,” Athletic Mic League celebrates Black traditions in Ann Arbor, including Black neighborhoods and Black-owned businesses.

Later in the first verse, Bufford raps, “I can’t forget my early days on The Old West Side / My first bike ride without falling on a test drive / So much Black history in that part of town / Before Kerrytown or Water Hill was thought about / Before Jones School was Community High.”

“A lot of that process was helped by my involvement in the Jones School documentary and my involvement in the Fourth and Catherine Affordable Housing Development with the Ann Arbor Housing Commission and Avalon Housing,” said Bufford, who’s also Director of Washtenaw My Brother’s Keeper. “In that work, it really sparked a lot of my content in that verse that doesn’t have to do with AML.”

Bufford continues to rap, “DeLong’s Bar-B-Q, the sauce they would use on them fries?! / Rosey’s, Rush, where we would go for a cut / Remember this story from Ann Arbor growing up, ay.”

Located south of Kerrytown on 314 Detroit Street, DeLong’s Bar-B-Q Pit operated for 37 years before Curtis and Diana McKnight Morton decided to close in 2001. A July 24, 2001, article in The Ann Arbor News stated: “Robert and Adeline Thompson founded DeLong’s in a former gas station across from the Farmers’ Market in 1964. Today, their daughter, Diana McKnight Morton, runs the business. She says her husband Curtis Morton is ill, restaurant help is very difficult to find and her two daughters have occupations of their own.”

Bufford recalls fond memories of eating there with his father.

“And DeLong’s, I remember walking with my dad [there] and Zingerman’s, too,” he said. “We used to walk to Zingerman’s and get corned beef sandwiches. The fries at [DeLong’s] with that magical barbecue sauce. … I remember the taste, I remember the smell. I was little, I was really young—5 years old—but I remember it.”

Today, the former site of DeLong’s—and later Teriyaki Time—will feature a new luxury condo low-rise complex.

DeLong’s shared that update in a December 7 Instagram post: “As much as this hurts our hearts, the memories had there will forever live on from our stories—your stories and photos. Thus, why my family wanted to reopen the business with you all in mind. Never let [Black] history die!”

Ann Arbor director Kameron Donald pays tribute to DeLong’s in a documentary of the same name. It features the restaurant’s history told by co-founder Diana McKnight Morton. DeLong’s is available to stream on AADL’s website and will be shown December 16 during the Ann Arbor 200 Film Series at the downtown location.

The exterior of Rosey's Barber Shop in 2020. Photo taken from AADL's website.

Bufford also spotlights two barber shops, Rosey’s Barber Shop and Johnnie Rush Barber Shop, on “Made History.”

“Rosey was from my other neighborhood where I eventually moved to in Pittsfield [Township],” Bufford said. “Rosey used to live in Pittsfield. His son Ricco was like a big brother figure to me in the neighborhood. I used to go to Rosey’s to get my hair cut.”

According to an April 16, 2021, article in the Ann Arbor Observer, “Roosevelt ‘Rosey’ Rowry worked in other barber shops in the area before opening his own in 1972. It closed ‘in November 2018’ after [Rosey] passed away.”

Rosey’s Barber Shop was located at 203 East Huron Street in a former gas station and “was one of the last [Black]-owned businesses in [that] area.”

Johnnie Rush in 1960. Photo taken from The Ann Arbor News.

Also located in a former gas station at 1031 Broadway Street, Johnnie Rush Barber Shop operated there for 45 years until Rush retired in August 2020.

Rush earned his barber’s license while working as an orderly part-time at Saint Joseph Mercy Hospital (now Trinity Health Ann Arbor Hospital) and opened his own barber shop in 1961.

He “sold the building a year later to a group that [planned] to open a neighborhood coffee shop and bar called Lowertown Proper,” wrote Dave Algase in an October 25, 2022, article in the Ann Arbor Observer.

While Bufford didn’t go to Rush’s barber shop, three other Athletic Mic League members did.

“I also mention Rush, which I know now is Lowertown [Bar & Café],” Bufford said. “I didn’t go to Rush because he was on the north side, but the guys from the north side—Vaughan Taylor, Wes Taylor, and Trés [Styles]—they did go to Rush.”

Finally, Athletic Mic League gives props to the University of Michigan’s Fab Five on “Made History.” Vaughan Taylor raps in the chorus, “Fab Five era nothin’ better / Wouldn’t trade it back, yea, yea, yea, yea, yea.”

As longtime basketball players and fans, the group was inspired by U-M basketball players Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King, and Ray Jackson in the early ‘90s.

The Fab Five were the first team in NCAA history to compete in the championship game with all-freshman starters.

“I cried at the Chris Webber timeout … that’s how important the Fab Five were. I never got to go to a Fab Five game. I think my older brother got a Chris Webber autograph for me,” Bufford said.

“Much later in life, I got to meet Jimmy King a few times. He would come to my open mic, Elevation Sundays, at the Firefly Club. Obviously, how [the Fab Five] played, their Blackness, how proud they were to be Black, their hip-hop connection, and how much they loved hip-hop and represented hip-hop, it’s super important.”

Playground Legends: Athletic Mic League’s Legacy

Athletic Mic League is releasing new material in 2025. Photo courtesy of Athletic Mic League.

In the last verse of “Made History,” Styles reflects on Athletic Mic League’s lifelong ties to Ann Arbor and the group’s evolution over time: “Moved back to The Deuce and still handlin’ it / ‘Cause it’s only boss moves in our manuscripts / Correction, we not a clique, this is my family, yeah / Since we was kids there was always plans for this.”

“[Trés] is probably the best bragger of AML. He’s good at letting people know how good we are, how important we are,” Bufford said.

“We need somebody to champion us and let people know what we’ve done. If nobody else will, we got to. I love Trés’ verse, and amongst other things, he’s my brother. But that’s one of the things I love about Trés—what he brings to the group.”

At the end of “Made History,” Styles raps, “We out here! And been doin’ damage, man / What you playin’ for if ya ain’t tryin’ to win a championship?! / Life’s too short to waste a chance at this / The Mic League Kings! Tell my kids I ran with them! / We made history!”

“This song will eventually become history,” Bufford said. “We do need an official day though. I don’t know if it’s the mayor’s call or city council’s. … I’m officially vouching for an AML official day with the city of Ann Arbor.”

In 2020, the group reunited after a 15-year hiatus and released Playground Legends, Vol. 1 on October 28, which is the unofficial AML Day. The members recorded the album during a four-day retreat in Richmond, Virginia. During another retreat, the group made Playground Legends, Vol. 2, which came out in October 2022.

Besides advocating for an official AML Day, Athletic Mic League also released a new single, “Plates,” with Detroit MC Boog Brown. The group plans to release Playground Legends, Vol. 3 soon as well. 

“We’re working on Vol. 3 to end that trilogy, so hopefully that will be out early next year,” Bufford said.

Athletic Mic League's Kendall Tucker, Michael Fletcher, Trés Styles, Mayer Hawthorne, Vaughan Taylor, Jamall Bufford, and Wes Taylor. Photo courtesy of Jamall Bufford.

Written by:
Buff1
Vaughan Tego
3Steez

Produced by:
Mayer Hawthorne and DJ Dahi

Complete Lyrics

Buff1 verse:
Sold out shows we made history
Known around the globe we made history
When it comes albums sold we made history
You proud to call The Deuce your home we made history

Back when the 734 was the 313

I was tryina shoot the rock and live out my hoop dreams like 23
Basketball and rap they was my two things
Me and Trés was on the same AAU team

We lost touch then reconnected 1993
I met Grand Cee and KT in the time between
Scarlett middle school, we was from the east
Trés and the Taylor brothers from the north side of things
Mayer went to Tappan kinda the middle between

At Huron we formed like Voltron and assembled the League
Forever indebted to those who helped AML
Chill Will, Ill Weaver, S.U.N., Funktell
I can’t forget my early days The Old West Side

My first bike ride without falling on a test drive
So much Black history in that part of town
Before Kerrytown or Water Hill was thought about 
Before Jones School was Community High
DeLong’s Bar-B-Q the sauce they would use on them fries?!
Rosey’s, Rush where we go for a cut
Remember this story from Ann Arbor growing up ay

Vaughan Tego hook:
Let me take yall back
Before the Blind Pig let us in
Let me take yall back, yea yea, yea yea
Let me take yall back, yea yea
Fab Five era nothin better
Wouldn’t trade it back, yea yea, yea yea yea

3Stees verse:
A Leader in this clique, Iron Man of this /
Future billionaire playboy philanthropist /
Moved back to The Deuce & still handlin it /
‘Cause it’s only boss moves in our manuscripts /
Correction we not a clique this my family yeah /
Since we was kids there was always plans for this /
Grew up round the corner from ya mans and them /
One of us probably dated ya girlfriend and yeah /
You know us, from rec league, summer camps & then /
Ballin w/ Coach Phillips, & Coach Blanchard’s kid /
From hoopin in the “Heights” to high school gyms /
We all academic scholars turned businessmen /
We out here! & been doin damage man /
What you playin for if ya ain’t tryin to win a championship?! /
Life’s too short, to waste a chance at this /
The Mic League Kings! Tell my kids I ran with them! / We made history!

Upon moving to Ann Arbor a few years ago, I was immediately struck by all the large, mature trees. Watching them respond to the change of the seasons is fascinating. My eye is drawn from the excitement of the first fuschia flowers of the Eastern Redbud (Cercis canadensis) in spring to the towering Black Walnuts (Juglans nigra) that ripen so much fruit at the height of summer, from the large Maples (Acer rubrum and Acer saccharum) that turn bright red and yellow in autumn to the Swamp White Oaks (Quercus bicolor) that hold tight their crisp browned leaves until February. There's always something beautiful to observe in the trees that live among us.

The shape and structure of plants and leaves have always interested me, and when I started working with clay, I was most often inspired by nature's forms. For this project, the process of finding the actual native leaves was not always straightforward. While the City of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan both have helpful interactive online tree maps (here and here), once I found a tree, there was still the problem of getting the leaves. If the tree was too tall, maybe I would find some on the ground, but more often than not, I would have to go back to the map and find a shorter tree. The process got a little easier when my partner, Andrew Clapper, helped me by downloading and filtering the underlying data sets using GIS software to identify the most promising specimens.

Each individual piece in this collection was made using a real leaf pressed into stoneware clay using a rolling pin and left to dry. I then carefully peeled the leaf from the clay, revealing an impression that I hand painted with a watercolor underglaze. Next, the pieces were bisque fired, then glazed, before the second and final firing.

One of the most enjoyable parts of this project was visiting areas of Ann Arbor I had never been to in search of specific trees. Many were found by walking in my neighborhood, some via biking, and a few I had to drive to get. You can follow my explorations on the map linked here, which shows where each native species’ leaves were gathered. - Artist Neha Chheda, Samaaj Ceramics

Black Walnut Juglans nigra	American Beech Fagus grandifolia	Basswood Tilia americana	Bitternut Hickory Carya cordiformis
Black Maple Acer nigrum	Black Oak Quercus velutina	Blackgum Nyssa sylvatica	Bur Oak Quercus macrocarpa
Butternut Juglans cinerea	Chinkapin Oak Quercus muehlenbergii	Cockspur Hawthorn Crataegus crus-galli	Dogwood Cornus florida
Eastern Red Cedar Juniperus virginiana	Hackberry Celtis occidentalis	Ironwood Ostrya virginiana	Musclewood Carpinus caroliniana
Northern White Cedar Thuja occidentalis	Pawpaw Asimina triloba	Pignut Hickory Carya glabra	Red Maple Acer rubrum
Red Oak Quercus rubra	Redbud Cercis canadensis	Sassafras Sassafras albidum	Shagbark Hickory Carya ovata
Shingle Oak Quercus imbricaria	Sugar Maple Acer saccharum	Swamp White Oak Quercus bicolor	Sycamore Plantanus occidentalis
Trembling Aspen Populus tremuloides	Tulip Tree Liriodendron tulipfera	White Oak Quercus alba	Yellow Birch Betula alleghaniensis

In her Four Poems, poet Sophia Anfinn Tonnesson explores the literary history of Ann Arbor through engagement with the works of poets who lived and worked here:  Joseph Brodsky, Alice Fulton, and Keith Taylor.  

Sometimes Ann Arbor feels like a bubble from the rest of Michigan.

I have been living in Ann Arbor for 22 years and I find it to be true, but for a reason many wouldn’t expect. Yes there is richness in culture, prestigious universities, and a long-rooted history of leaders and creators, but for me this comfortable bubble is the Korean food this town has to offer. 

I can’t recall a town in Michigan that has such an abundance of Korean restaurants as Ann Arbor. From modern Korean like Miss Kim to known-for-its-BBQ like Tomukun, the variety in taste of Korean food anyone might be looking for in Michigan, you can find it in Ann Arbor. When it comes to Korean food, my nature is to search for a place that tastes and feels like home-

One that feels like my umma’s cooking and gestures of Korean hospitality. 

Two places in Ann Arbor have given me a sense of home I needed when it feels lonely being Korean in America, especially in the midwest. These two restaurants happen to sit almost side by side on a street that often is bustling with college students, S. University Avenue. Perhaps they are looking for a piece of home, too. 

Rich J.C. is a Korean Restaurant that my husband and I have been eating at for nearly two decades. There was a time we ate there weekly. Pungent aroma of kimchi fills the air thick when you walk in. “Ahn-young-ha-sae-yo” greets me with a wave and a warm smile. Whether it’s a hot summer day, bitterly cold winter night, or anything in-between, this space has welcomed me with exactly what my belly and hungry soul needed without fail.

For a few years back then, it used to be called Rich J.C. Korean Cafe before it was changed to Rich J.C. In the early 2000s, I remember the space being pretty empty with only 4-5 customers for dinner service. In the course of eight to ten years and beyond--now, there is a line out the door--from college kids to families, all longing for something delicious. We went for the food, but also for the company. 

Ahjumma and ahjussi never asked once why we don’t have kids, especially after knowing us for so long. This took me by surprise because any other Korean older adult would ask without reservation. I felt accepted. As a school teacher, the first six years were challenging. And on top of that, attending graduate school while teaching full time felt like more than I could bear. Those years were long and fast all at once. 

But, in the midst of the blur, meals we ate at Rich J.C. felt like time had stopped just so I could know I am okay, I will be okay. 

I can still taste the kimchi jigae, a very popular yet ordinary dish. The kimchi and the soup was nothing like I have tasted, at the same time tasted like everything I knew. The spicy, savory, and salty flavors hit your tongue all at once even in a small spoonful. You keep going back for more. The piping hot jigae continues to bubble until the last drop is left. It’s exactly how my umma makes jigaes at home. It’s not Korean until it’s boiling hot, I was taught. There aren’t many dishes in the Korean cuisine that are lukewarm except for the banchans--it’s either piping hot or ice cold. While the owners have changed in recent years, the restaurant continues to do well by serving delicious meals.

A few doors down from Rich J.C. is Kang’s Korean Restaurant. I can hardly believe it has existed since the 1980's. Back then it was a simple coffee shop selling Korean donuts and over the years it became a full service restaurant that is popular for both dining in and take out. I wish I was in Ann Arbor to experience the coffee shop and the evolution of this space, but from the flavors of each dish and the warm hospitality, I can only imagine just how special it was from the start. Each time I walk into Kang’s, the ambience is cozy and welcoming. With Korean pop music playing in the background and self-serve water and boricha, I am transported to a restaurant in Korea even though I have no memories of it. When something is special, it can feel familiar without remembrance. 

You know a space is special when it can take you on a journey you didn’t know you needed. 

The menu is simple, delicious, and unpretentious. My favorites are their kimchi pajeon, dolsot bibimbap with tofu, and their very famous kalbi tang even though I don’t eat red meat. The dolsot bibimbap is generously filled with banchans that my umma would make at home, kimchi pajeon is perfectly crispy on the outside and burn your tongue hot as you take the first bite, and kalbi tang is the best I have had in town. You can taste the sincerity in each dish, depth in aroma, not compromising Korean flavors for anyone. 

Meals at Kang’s are a giant hug that remind me not to be apologetic for being Korean. You just feel good being in there. Only if the lines weren’t so long with people waiting to be seated, you would want to sit and eat for hours. This is a spot my husband and I go to when we want a good home-cooked Korean meal or when we feel a bit weary and need some encouragement. It’s a place where you leave with your belly full and your spirits lighter. 

Restaurants are often spaces of home for many Asian Americans. Whether it’s to eat food that tastes like home, hear the sounds of language that isn’t English, or seeing ahjummas and ahjussis who resemble our family members, the hustle and bustle of a restaurant is where we often find peace. 

Korean restaurants are spaces where I often find solace and joy and I am grateful it’s here in Ann Arbor. 

"Ann Arbor is Tree Town. But which trees are the towniest?

In honor of Ann Arbor’s bicentennial and the Ann Arbor 200 celebration coordinated by the Ann Arbor District Library, we decided to ask residents if they have a favorite individual tree within city limits – and why it was meaningful to them. We made a survey. We shared it widely. Happily, we received a lot of thoughtful responses and selected 20 for this catalog.

We followed respondents’ directions—sometimes exact GPS coordinates, sometimes vague hand waves toward a general wooded area—and found their trees. Some were exceptionally big, or colorful, or otherwise stand-out spectacular. Many of the trees our respondents identified may have seemed ordinary at first glance, yet they held deep, personal significance in their lives. To our surprise, the experience of seeing Ann Arbor through our neighbors’ eyes turned out to be profoundly rewarding. It renewed our appreciation for the iconic trees we already knew and loved and it allowed us to marvel at trees we might not have otherwise noticed—but whose acquaintance makes our lives in this city richer, more personal, and more beautiful.

Beauty, as it were, is in the eye of the tree-holder.

This catalog contains a subset of Ann Arborites’ favorite trees, in their own words, paired with custom oil pastel portraits by Jenny. We included a map so readers can behold these special trees and render their lives richer, too. We highly recommend it."

–Jenny Kalejs & Sam Ankenbauer

Ann Arbor 200 is not the public library's first foray into celebrating a milestone in our community's history by creating resources about it.  For Ann Arbor's sesquicentennial back in 1974, the Ann Arbor Public Library produced a series of videos for television called I Remember When.  This series, produced by Catherine Anderson and hosted by Ted Trost, assembled newly-collected interviews with prominent Ann Arborites into episodes about various topics in history like city politics or the Greek and German communities.  The Ann Arbor District Library digitized all seven episodes of I Remember When from VHS tapes back in 2014 and made them available online.  It has since become beloved not just for its interviews with local people we can otherwise only read about but also for its delightfully goofy 1970s-ness.  It turned out there was more yet to come.

About five years ago, a box was unearthed from a back corner of the basement of the Downtown Library that contained a set of old videotapes in a format with which no one was familiar.  AADL Archives staff took a closer look and realized that what had been found were the original interviews performed to create those episodes of I Remember When.  These were on a long-obsolete format of magnetic tape called EIAJ-1, briefly used by the television media in the early 1970s.  Having sat neglected for nearly 50 years, we had little hope we would get much out of them.  They were shipped to a specialist digitization company in Pennsylvania who knew how to extract the audio and video from these tapes (not as simple as just having a player; these tapes need to be baked in an oven before they can even be played).  

As it happened, almost all of the contents were salvageable, and those contents were more than we could have hoped for.  Interviews with over 30 prominent Ann Arborites of the twentieth-century, each between 20 and 60 minutes long.  We had of course seen bits of these, but at most there might be six minutes in an episode from any given interview, so there was a great deal of material we had not seen before.  In addition, an eighth episode of I Remember When was discovered; whether this episode was never aired or just never transferred onto the VHS tapes we originally digitized we do not know.  

This lost episode, School Days, featuring segments with Lela Duff, Linda Eberbach, David Inglis, Bill Bishop, and Ashley Clague, is now available on aadl.org.  

The complete set of interviews is also available below, offering a wealth of archival material from Ann Arbor's past.  These have been fully transcribed and indexed by AADL Archives staff.  Enjoy hearing voices and seeing faces from Ann Arbor's past, but take note before you do: the sensibilities of 50 years ago are not the sensibilities of today, and some of the things you hear may be surprising coming from these storied citizens.  But the heroes of Ann Arbor history were people, and people of their times, and that knowledge alone is worth the unearthing.

Osias Zwerdling	Linnia Knox Carpenter	John Feiner	Emanuel & Elizabeth Haas
Gerald Hoag	Guy Larcom	Edith & Paul Kempf	Helen Kokales & Frank Kokenakes
Fred Looker	A.D. Moore	Anthony Preketes	Alva Joanna Sink
Nan Sparrow	Burnette Staebler	Neil Staebler	Fred Wahr
Letty Wickliffe	John Hathaway	Ashley Clague & Frances Danforth	Lela Duff
AAHS Class of 1924 50th Reunion - Linda Eberbach, David Inglis, Bill Bishop	1974 Gemutlichkeit German Festival - Albert Duckek, George Sauter, Hans Rauer	Yassoo Greek Festival - Frank Minikes, Andrew Kokenakes

"This project is my interpretation and re-creation of old Ann Arbor photos and postcards of everyday places with a modern twist. While looking through the old photos, I was attracted to those that reminded me of Ann Arbor today despite being from decades ago. I went through many iterations of paintings of both indoor and outdoor spaces and selected these few for this project which to me capture Ann Arbor's natural beauty while introducing some of today's elements into them. These paintings were made using Gouache on Hot Press Paper. " - Artist Anusree Sattaluri

	Dam on the Huron River
	State Street
	Huron River "Where Nature is Instructor"
	Island Park
	View on Huron River

Continue reading

Go to the corner of E. Huron and Fletcher. This puts you between the glass front of the Power Center for the Performing Arts and the stone side of the University of Michigan’s Rackham Building. Cross to the Rackham side of the intersection, face the building, and look down. You’ll see this plaque, which is perhaps twice the size of a tombstone:

It reads:

MICHIGAN'S FIRST JEWISH CEMETERY SITE

At this site the first Jewish cemetery in Michigan was established in 1848-49. The Jews Society of Ann Arbor acquired burial rights to this land adjacent to what was then the public cemetery. Several years earlier, immigrants from Germany and Austria had organized the first Jewish community in the state. The first religious services were held in the homes of the five Weil brothers in the vicinity of the family tannery. J. Weil and Brothers, members of the Jewish community, participated in all aspects of the city's life. Jacob Weil served Ann Arbor as alderman from 1859 to 1861. By the 1880s this original Jewish community no longer existed. In 1900 the remains of those buried here were reinterred in Ann Arbor's Forest Hill Cemetery.

Sponsored by Beth Israel Congregation and the Jewish Historical Society of Michigan, 1983/5743

Look past the plaque, and you’ll see … well, kind of nothing: a hedge partially surrounding a slightly scrubby side yard with a few mature trees.

Historical markers take things no longer visible—the spot where someone famous slept or spoke or went to school, the original location of a notable structure, the site of a forgotten graveyard—and make them visible once more. But in doing so, they often obscure fairly obvious questions. In this case: 

1. What happened to make this Jewish community abruptly “no longer exist” after only about 30 years?  
2. If there is no sign of a cemetery here now, and there was no sign of it when the marker was placed in 1983, and all the Jews who used the cemetery were long gone by 1900, how did anyone know a cemetery was ever here? 
3. What happened in 1983 to make the State of Michigan put up this historic marker?

The final question is the easiest to answer: around 1980 some frat boys showed up at the University of Michigan branch of Hillel with a stone slab. While cleaning up their property, these fellas had flipped over a large rectangular stone paver emblazoned with the frat’s initials, which served as a step outside their door. Surprisingly, the underside was covered in Hebrew engraving. As it turned out, the doormat they’d been using for as long as anyone could remember was some Jew’s tombstone.

One hopes that this was at least moderately upsetting to them. Maybe it was just funny. Kids, amiright?

Either way, their next step—returning the gravestone to the nearest available Jews—was basically decent. Hillel did something a bit more rational, and passed the stone on to Beth Israel Congregation. Beth Israel was (and is) the area’s oldest Jewish congregation, established in 1916 by Ann Arbor’s first Jews. It would be reasonable to assume they’ be able to return this marker to its proper home. 

But the stone proved to be a riddle for the folks at Beth Israel. 

It was dated 1858, which was decades prior to the arrival of Ann Arbor’s “first” Jewish family, the Lanskies, who were among Beth Israel's founders. And it had marked the burial place of “Reila Weil,” a person from a family none of Ann Arbor’s Jews had ever heard of. 

All of this piqued the curiosity of Helen Aminoff, an administrator at the Beth Israel Congregation. Aminoff spent the next several years tracking down the cemetery, excavating and untangling the history of those early Jews of Ann Arbor, and successfully petitioning the State to place the marker in 1983.

This leaves the first question, the one that should probably leap to mind any time someone chooses to use the passive voice when telling you that a whole bunch of people sort of mysteriously “no longer exist.” You know, like how most of the shtetls in Europe no longer exist, or how the Ann Arbor-area settlements of the Anishinaabe people of the Three Fires Confederacy no longer exist.

What happened to make these First Jews of Ann Arbor—men and women who “participated in all aspects of the city's life,” including holding elected public office—abruptly leave after only 30 years?

The short answer is that we don’t know. Gravestones and markers are made of stone and steel; they stick around to tell their tale. Dinner table conversations, late night arguments, and innumerable slights and snubs in the street decay with the bodies of those that experienced them without memorializing them on paper, stone, or steel.

But we do know a few things.

We know Solomon Weil was Ann Arbor’s first Jew. He arrived in 1845.

We know that his brothers soon followed, often bringing their wives and children (including Reila Weil, whose gravestone became a frat doormat; she was the wife of Solomon’s younger brother, Moses).

We know that within just three years the Five Brothers Weil had acquired land for a cemetery, despite having neither a congregation or anyone to bury yet (the earliest burial was likely in 1853). Acquiring the cemetery land was most likely the work of Jacob Weil, the last of the Brothers Weil to arrive in America. Jacob had trained as a rabbi and graduated with honors from the University of Hungary. He was fluent in French (presumably in addition to his native Yiddish, Hungarian, and German). More importantly, Jacob could apparently speak some form of Algonquin. Being conversant in both French and an indigenous dialect allowed him to travel and trade freely among the French-Canadian fur trappers and indigenous populations of Southeast Michigan. This trade in hides and pelts formed the basis of a retail business the Weil Brothers ultimately parlayed into a successful tannery in Ann Arbor.

We also know that in 1850 the Weils held Michigan’s first public Jewish religious services. Doing that required:

1. At least 10 adult male Jews (the minimum needed for public prayer under Jewish law at that time)
2. A Torah

A Torah is a big investment, both in 1850 and today. It is a hand-scribed holy book written on a ritually prepared calfskin parchment scroll by a specially trained rabbi. It takes an entire year to create a Torah—which, predictably, makes Torahs both expensive and scarce. Today, a new Torah costs about as much as a new car. In 1850, the Brothers Weil had to ask their parents (Joseph and Sarah) to bring one from Prague when they emigrated. 

To recap: we know that within five years of the first Weil settling in Ann Arbor, they had brought their entire family here, attracted at least four more adult male Jews, bought land for a cemetery they didn’t yet need, and acquired an extremely expensive ritual object of no practical use (apart from sustaining a religious community of Jews).

All of this seems to be the efforts of people who intended to stay. They owned land here, headquartered prosperous businesses here. Their children were born here, and some of them died and were buried here. By 1859 Jacob Weil was elected alderman for the second ward. He was reelected in 1860. A year after that he’d left Michigan entirely. Over the course of the next few years all the Weils—and most of the other Jews in town—either left for sunnier streets and greener pastures, or got planted in the old Jewish burial ground. 

We know all this. We Just don’t know why Ann Arbor’s first Jews left. 

Go to the second floor of the Ann Arbor District Library’s Downtown Branch. Head to the far corner where they keep the final remnant of the archival microfilm collection in a set of  shallow drawers. Find the boxes of microfilm for the Michigan Argus. This was the area’s local weekly paper when the first Jews came to Ann Arbor. Look at almost any issue between late-1851 and mid-1852 and you’ll find this advertisement:

This ad ran in every issue of the Argus from September 3, 1851 to May 12, 1852 (and potentially longer; there are gaps in the archives). In the context of the papers it seems likely that this ad targets not Jews in general, but one specific Jew: Simon Guiterman. Guiterman was one of the two proprietors of a competing clothier, Sykes & Guiterman. His five-year-old son, Max, would go on to be buried in the abandoned Jewish cemetery.

We’ll never know what Simon Guiterman did to inspire William O’Hara to spend money running the “Opposition to Jews” ad 36+ times. We’ll note that there were other clothiers in town with German, French, and English surnames, but no corresponding advertisements in opposition to Germans, Frenchmen, Englishmen, or (ahem) Irishmen.

We have no record of what the rest of the Jews of Ann Arbor thought of this ad campaign, or when they started to leave. According to Aminhoff’s research the final remnant of Ann Arbor’s first Jewish community, the Fantles (who were probably Jacob Weil’s niece and nephew), left in 1884 or 1885.

At its height Ann Arbor’s first Jewish community likely numbered around 60 souls. We don’t know how many died as residents, nor how many were laid to rest in the old Jewish burial ground. Records show at least ten were buried here, but even that’s extremely hard to piece together, given the state of record keeping at that time, Jewish customs, and the fact that all of the live Jews had gone.

In 1899 the “Old Jewish Burial Ground” was finally obliterated and the “remains taken up.” Ten plots were purchased in Forest Hill Cemetery, but only six Jews were moved to these new digs. What happened to the other four (or more) bodies? Aminoff hypothesized they may have been stolen by U-M medical students, who were notorious grave robbers in the late 19th Century. Given practices at the time, it’s just as likely that these dead Jews are still there, next to Rackham. In the early 1900s, as Michigan communities grew, graveyards often needed to be moved, and the cost of moving those graves usually fell to the families, and was often neglected—even in the case of extremely notable corpses. As a practical matter, it was all too common to move the headstones and leave the bodies in place (a plot point you may recall from Poltergeist). 

Predictably, houses were built on the old Jewish burial ground, and then later demolished to make way for the Rackham Building. Perhaps the odd vacant corner memorialized with this marker, like Felch Park across the street and the Britton Woods section of the County Farm Park, has been left undeveloped specifically because many Ann Arborites suspected that there were still bodies there. 

I probably should have led with a trigger warning, as there are many elements of this story that modern readers may find distressing: religious intolerance and ethnic intimidation; desecration of graves and medical body snatching; blatant public antisemitism evidently left unchecked. 

I don’t have to tell you that the America of 1850 was a much coarser country, one where justice often failed to prevail and freedom’s ring could be quite muffled. The Ann Arbor of 170+ years ago is not the Ann Arbor of today.

Go to the corner of Washtenaw Avenue and Austin Avenue on any Saturday morning since 2003. Look toward Beth Israel Congregation (the oldest Jewish congregation in Ann Arbor). You’ll see this sign, among dozens along a similar theme, being displayed by Ann Arborites:

You’ll also be standing within an easy walk of my home. I came here in 1995, 110 years after the First Jews in Ann Arbor decided to be Jews someplace else. As someone who’s been a Jew in Ann Arbor for about 30 years, I can’t begin to imagine why they left.

“[Ann Arbor’s first Jews] were all very successful and respected. They all until the time of their death, had a warm feeling for Ann Arbor and particularly for their old neighbors.”
—“Old Jewish Burial Ground Will Be Obliterated in a Few Days”
The Ann Arbor Argus-Democrat
September 29, 1899

About the Mural

Following the Ann Arbor District Library's Call for Artists in 2024, AADL installed its Black History Bicentennial mural on the south side of Library Lane. The community-based project is the culmination of nearly a year of work between AADL staff, the local arts community, and a community review panel featuring Jamall Bufford and Marianetta Porter. Artistic Coordinator Avery Williamson helped lead the project and contributed art for one of the eight panels, which includes work from seven other artists reinterpreting images they selected from the AADL Archives: T'onna Clemons, Scott Wesson Everett, Cheyenne Fletcher, Takeisha Jefferson, Lauren Mills, Rachel Elise Thomas, and Ricky Weaver. Two additional panels were selected for permanent display at the AADL Archives by Asha Jordan and Gyona Rice.

About the Photos

As the creative coordinator for this project, Avery Williamson curated over 50 images from the AADL archives and invited the artists to select a single photograph to reinterpret and make their own. The images chosen were of life in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti from the 1850s to the present. Avery wanted this selection to represent the fullness of life: graduations, protests, parades, theater performances, church services and sporting events. Artists chose images that resonated with them for a diverse set of reasons. Some photographs reminded them of their own experiences or those of their relatives. For other artists, the images spoke to themes they explore in their work outside of this mural – music, dance and childhood. Throughout the process the artists explored their experiences and relationships to this city and region, and the power of art to shape the narrative of a place. In the eight images displayed at the Downtown branch, and the two on the wall of the paper vault at the Archives building, artists elevated joy, play and community. It is our hope that these artists and their work can help us better know the Black history of this region and formulate questions to guide us towards the future we want to live in.

Panels & Artists

	Avery Williamson Singing Together Ypsilanti, MI averywilliamson.com Instagram: @aisforavery Avery Williamson is an Ypsilanti based multidisciplinary artist whose work explores historical and contemporary notions of the archive, domestic space, Black pleasure and spatiotemporal collapse. Her hope is that this artwork can be a reminder of our connectedness to each other and the power of joy and community in our everyday lives.   "I was drawn to the joy and excitement that I saw in this photograph. The children seemed to be enthusiastic, embracing each other, and generally having a good time. To me, the best parts of life are when we are with people we trust doing activities we love! I got a sense that these singing children respected their instructor leading them on the piano and were happy to be in a communal space. In my collage work I’m drawn to moments where Black folks are relaxed, playful and at ease. I hope that this artwork can be a reminder of our connectedness to each other and the power of joy and community in our everyday lives. To me this photograph captured a moment where young people were joining their individual voices together and forming a stronger collective voice. To me this felt like a moment where these singers were growing into their power. I’m drawn to pinks and greens because they remind me of the garden: blooming flowers, leaves, grasses, and early spring colors. I associate this color palette with abundance and possibility, and felt that this palette matched the energy of the photograph. I was also inspired by the stars, the sky and the planets, so I incorporated marks that I associate with the activity of the cosmos. Some of the artists that inspire my work are: Lorna Simpson, Deborah Roberts, Andrea Chung, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Hannah Höch, Romare Bearden, Mickalene Thomas and Mildred Howard."
	Dunbar Center Girls, August 1936 https://aadl.org/node/228330 Childhood is childhood regardless of race or color and these youngsters raise their voices in joyful harmony at Dunbar Community center. In 1923, the Reverend R.M. Gilbert, pastor of the Second Baptist Church of Ann Arbor, Michigan, spearheaded the effort that led to the establishment of the Dunbar Community Center. The original intent of the Center was to provide housing for Black laborers working on area roads and University of Michigan building projects. The Center's first building, located at 209-11 North Fourth Avenue, was used primarily for sleeping quarters, but there were also a few areas set aside for club meetings and social events. Gradually the purpose of the Center changed from one of providing temporary housing to that of being a place where Ann Arbor's Black population could gather for social, recreational, and civic activities. In 1926, a new administrator, Mrs. Savonia L. Carson, was appointed Executive Secretary and the Center moved to 1009 East Catherine where it remained until 1937. - Ann Arbor Community Center Records, Bentley Historical Library   What 3 words come to mind when you look at your chosen archival image?  "Joy, embrace, collective" -Avery Williamson
	Rachel Elise Thomas Ann Arbor Community Center Band Members (1961) Detroit, MI rachelelisethomas.com Instagram: @rachel.elise.thomas Rachel Elise Thomas is a Detroit born and based lens-adjacent, interdisciplinary artist, designer, archivist, and researcher. Rachel uses collage, printmaking, mixed media, objects, and site-specific installation as a catalyst to discuss her familial relationships and the effects of colorism. Rachel’s work confronts viewers with the realities of colorism, its misogynoir, and biases–exploring the complexities of racial identity while challenging the conventional notions of beauty. "I was drawn to the lighthearted playfulness that the image exuded. The children’s attire and hairstyles were very reflective of the early 60s, a period that I find fascinating and am drawn to. Having a background working with children greatly inspired and influenced this collage. I wanted to emphasize the joy, excitement, and spontaneity of learning and working together. Although this is considered a digital collage, I used crayon and watercolor paint to redesign the students' shirts, giving them a vibrant new appearance that reflects the theme of being in a band. Adding sheet music was a fun element that brought the piece together. The crayon resist paintings and sheet music were scanned, digitized, and assembled in Photoshop."
	Ann Arbor Community Center band members rehearse for public concert, June 1961 https://aadl.org/node/367764 Rousing Rehearsal: Ann Arbor Community Center band members rehearse for a public concert to be presented at 7:30pm Friday on the patio at the center, 625 N. Main St. Dawson Burt directs the band. Rehearsing are (left to right) Mike Dale, Herbert Ellis, Bruce North, Allan Lutz and Jo Ann Baker.   What 3 words come to mind when you look at your chosen archival image?  "Harmony, collaboration, vibrancy" -Rachel Elise Thomas
	Scott Wesson Everett Ypsilanti Quartet Detroit, MI https://www.wessonart.com/ Instagram: @Wessonart Scott Wesson Everett is a Detroit born entrepreneur, artist, and educator. His work is a celebration of individuality and community, blending vibrant colors with a sense of organized chaos that reflects the energy of life around me. Scott finds inspiration in Detroit's resilience and from the histories and stories of the people within his community.    "This image of four young Black men practicing their vocals resonates deeply, capturing a unique moment in time and spirit. The candid, communal joy and leadership displayed among these young men spoke to me. I’m passionate about portraiture, so creating a piece with multiple faces allowed me to channel my bold, energetic style into each individual, all within a single, harmonious composition. The piece combines my love for music and portraits, using vibrant colors and dynamic lines to capture the “shapes of sounds” these young men create. Inspired by artists who play with movement and vibrancy, like Romare Bearden, I wanted to bring a sense of rhythm and pulse to the composition. In the background, I incorporated the West Park Band Shell, the historic space where these young men once performed, linking the art with the place and the voices that animated it."
	Ypsilanti Quartet, August 1955 https://aadl.org/node/576243 This Ypsilanti quartet will be one of the featured attractions at the talent show at 8 p.m. tomorrow in the West Park band shell. The singers (left to right) are Waverly Chauncey, William Rhan, Albert Roper and Kenny Robinson.   What 3 words come to mind when you look at your chosen archival image?  "Togetherness, Leadership, Joy" -Scott Everett
	T'onna Clemons  December 1954 Ann Arbor, MI www.tlcart.gallery Instagram: @comicbookartist T’onna Clemons is an Ann Arbor based artist specializing in murals, paintings, comic art, videography and design, and president of Youth Art Gallery (Michigan). Finding inspiration in kids and youth, T’onna’s work aims to inspire viewers.   "I thought it was an interesting topic and it inspired me to see what I could create. Polaroids inspire me and New York artists from the 1980’s. I hope my work inspires at least one person."
	Children Along The Ypsilanti Christmas Parade Route, December 1954 https://aadl.org/node/370025 What 3 words come to mind when you look at your chosen archival image?  "Polaroids, vintage, kids" -T'onna Clemens
	Lauren McHale Mills  This Mazda is a Lemon Ypsilanti, MI Instagram: @mchaleincolor Lauren McHale Mills is a Graduate of Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan. She is based in Ypsilanti and is a freelance artist pursuing her master’s degree. Lauren’s work is narrative driven and ethnographic in nature, while also centering on the history, culture, and literary legacy of Black Americans. "I felt a personal connection to the photograph! It reminded me of my Uncle Doug, who for my whole life, was always popping up with a new car every few months, cause the last one turned out to be a lemon. It was very familiar. This Mazda is a Lemon was my attempt at giving a new life to an archival image that was already powerful on its own. Figuring out the best approach was difficult for me at first, for that very reason. In the planning phases of this piece, I was definitely inspired by Mickalene Thomas' use of mixed media, and Titus Kaphar's use of cut-outs. For this piece, I was striving for balance, but also for a colorful and lively feeling. Earlier this year, I began cutting silhouettes out of wood, to use as the foreground of my portraits. I decided to use this technique here, not only to achieve that palpable dimensional feeling you see here, but also to physically separate the past and the present. Another thing I'd like to point out, is that the car was "painted" with cut paper. This technique is a very exciting first for me, that I will likely continue in the future! The only paint that was used, was acrylic for my uncle's portrait, and latex for the blueish/gray background."
	Paul Wasson Drives a "Lemon" Mazda in Ypsilanti, August 1975 https://aadl.org/node/396249 What 3 words come to mind when you look at your chosen archival image?  "Pimp-liscious, laidback, comical" -Lauren McHale Mills
	Takeisha Jefferson You are the dream Detroit, MI www.takeishas.com Instagram: @takeishaart Takeisha Jefferson is a full-time exhibiting artist and international portrait photographer from Ypsilanti, Michigan. She studied Fine Arts and is a proud, disabled Air Force veteran. Her main medium is photography printed on archival paper, and she is inspired by some of the earliest forms of photography, whose unique and timeless qualities are reflected in her work. "I was drawn to the Dunbar Civic Center Quintet photograph because of its powerful depiction of a group of Black women coming together in music, joy, and community. The quintet reminded me of the strong, familial bonds I often celebrate in my work. Their poise and grace inspired me to create a tribute that honors these qualities while also incorporating my own family’s story. I wanted to extend their legacy into the present day, showing not only the harmony among these women but also the continuity of those bonds through generations. The photograph’s connection to music and community deeply resonated with my own experiences, making it the perfect starting point for my interpretation. My piece was influenced by artists such as Lina Iris Viktor, who often uses gold halos to elevate Black figures, and Harmonia Rosales, known for reimagining classic themes with Black representation. I chose vibrant colors to honor the richness of Black heritage, and the gold halos symbolize reverence and divine dignity for the women in this portrait. The figures are members of my own family, which speaks to the theme of generational connection, and I included my elementary school music teacher at the piano as a tribute to her influence on my early love for music."
	Dunbar Civic Center Quintet, May 1944 https://aadl.org/node/314474 The Dunbar Civic Center Quintet, which will broadcast over WJR between 9:15 and 9:45 tomorrow morning and sing for the Center Celebration at 3 o'clock tomorrow afternoon, is shown practicing for their performances. They are, left to right, Colene Bacon, Edith McFadden, Arlena Scott, Theodosia Lee, and Hortense Bacon. Mrs. Virginia Lee Ellis, director, is at the piano.   What 3 words come to mind when you look at your chosen archival image? "Legacy, Heritage and Luminary" -Takeisha Jefferson
	Ricky Weaver "at eight" Detroit, MI www.rickyweaver.com Instagram: @img.weaver Ricky Weaver is a photography based Artist born and raised in Ypsilanti. Her object-oriented work challenges the viewer’s understanding of space and time and gives space for picturing images that extends beyond the photograph. Her work questions how body, hymn, scripture, and the everyday appear as image and how that image functions as both archive and vessel. "When I seen the date on the image I realized I would have been about the same age as those girls when the photograph was taken. Something intrigued me about the overlap and I returned the unique, temporal qualities of photography for inspiration.  Arthur Jaffa's cinematography in Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust inspired the overall aesthetic appearance of the image. I wanted to reference this important conversation migration as most folks I know had grandparents that migrated here from the south. I wanted to reinforce the idea of generational connection between us as a community no matter where we are, there is something that ties us together."
	Dancers Strike a Pose at the African American Downtown Festival, June 1998 https://aadl.org/node/600154 What 3 words come to mind when you look at your chosen archival image?  "Black, girls, share" -Ricky Weaver
	Cheyenne Fletcher  Phil Stamps Teaching African American Dance Ypsilanti, MI https://octokiocommission.wixsite.com/portfolio Cheyenne Fletcher is an Ann Arbor based artist. Informed by their work as a Library Technician at Ann Arbor District Library, Cheyenne’s art is narrative driven, drawing on their own experiences to inform their characters and establish stories.  "I chose this photograph because it reminded me of taking classes at the YMCA and going to summer programs when I was a child.  I am typically inspired by the color palettes of Kerry James Marshall, Ayako Rokkaku, Faith Ringgold, and Hideyuki Tanaka. I wanted to keep the dancer's original leotards in my piece, so I lifted those from the photo. I'm a big fan of highly saturated colors, so I think keeping those black leotards in allowed me to stay faithful to the original photograph while still adding in an interesting element (i.e. texture). For the background, I layered in string as I often do with my pieces. I also took a picture of my friend's braids to layer onto the curtains of my piece. I'm ultimately interested in physical and cultural forms of connection."
	Phil Stamps, Ann Arbor Recreation Department, Teaching African American Dance at Jones School, 1968 https://aadl.org/node/608146 What 3 words come to mind when you look at your chosen archival image?  "Motion, follow, youth" -Cheyenne Fletcher

Other Works

Artists Asha Jordan and Gyona Rice contributed works that were selected for permanent installation on the wall of the paper vault at the AADL Archives building.

	Asha Jordan System 80 through the lens Ann Arbor, MI www.Jordannikart.com Instagram: @jordan.nik.art Asha Jordan is an Ann Arbor native whose family roots to the area date back five generations. She is a freelance artist who finds opportunities to create representation in her home city.  "My favorite place to go in Ann Arbor was the library. I felt safe to be myself and free to be black. The computers and reading programs we had on them felt like a virtual adventure where my imagination took over. I see these little girls reading on this old school reading device and could only imagine how cool they thought it was back then.  When I was 11 years old drawing the power puff girls, my art teacher seen me drawing and said "You're going to be a famous artist one day." I have been pursuing my career ever since. I took it so serious that I joined the arts league of Michigan at age 12 and did the Ann Arbor art fair every year up until I was 17. I also studied with college students at the age of 15 to perfect my craft. From age 12 I had my mentors Hubert Massey and Henry Heading as my inspiration and teachers to become the artist I am today."
	Reading Lab at Perry School, Ypsilanti, January 1976 https://aadl.org/node/354397 What 3 words come to mind when you look at your chosen archival image? "Black Girl Joy" -Asha Jordan
	Gyona Rice Handcrafted in Pride Westland, MI https://gyonarice.my.canva.site/portfolio-artwork Instagram: @gyonarice Gyona Rice is a graphic designer and multidisciplinary artist who is passionate about creating innovative designs that bring ideas to life. She enjoys working in different artistic mediums, and each piece is deeply personal and rooted in her family’s history and the experiences of Black women. "As a multimedia artist and printmaker, I explore Black identity and heritage through the innovative use of materials. This piece, inspired by a photograph of two young brothers in a parade, serves as a heartfelt tribute to the Black community that once flourished in Ann Arbor. The artwork delves into themes of patriotism, childhood, and Black pride, using fabric and paper to recreate the paper-decorated float from the photograph. By incorporating American flag patterns and denim, I highlight the community’s contributions and sense of belonging. The mixed media approach—blending rich textures with delicate details—invites viewers to connect with the vibrant spirit of this community and reflect on its enduring legacy and impact. What drew me to the archive photograph for this project was my realization that, despite living in Michigan my entire life, I never recognized Ann Arbor as a significant Black community. Learning about its history touched my heart and highlighted how a city can erase its past. This discovery inspires much of my art, as I strive to tell the stories of unheard or underrepresented voices. I felt that my artistic skills would be a perfect way to honor these narratives and showcase that they, too, were a part of this community. This piece is a recreation of a photograph of two young brothers on a parade float, beautifully decorated with paper made by the women in their community. Inspired by the incredible work of artists like Judy Bowman, Bisa Butler, and Deborah Roberts—who use paper and fabric to explore Black identity. I wanted to honor the creativity and love those women put into creating the paper parade float. To symbolize American pride and the patriotism of this Black family, I chose materials like denim and fabrics with American flag patterns, both of which are prominent in American culture. By simplifying the boys' features, I aimed to make their figures stand out as powerful symbols of resilience and patriotism, even in a world that may not have fully embraced them. The layers of fabric and paper not only bring the boys' float to life but also celebrate the joy and determination of Black families who proudly embraced their country while continuing to claim their rightful place within it. This artwork serves as a vibrant reminder of their legacy and the enduring spirit that lives on today, inviting you to reflect on the rich history and contributions of the Black community that used to live in Ann Arbor."
	Eldridge & Zonnechris Askew In The Bethel A.M.E. Nursery School Parade, August 19, 1949 https://aadl.org/node/383947   RIDE IN PARADE: Eldridge Askew, 3, and his little brother, Zonnechris, 22 months old, rode in a paper-decorated wagon yesterday in the parade that climaxed summer activities at the Bethel A.M.E. nursery school. A plan to continue to the nursery school through the winter is now being discussed.   What 3 words come to mind when you look at your chosen archival image? "Joy, Heritage, and Resilience" -Gyona Rice

Tracks Harvey's Lens Last Known Address Arbor Oaks Park Eric Farrell's Derby Party North Star Lounge Veteran's Park Ice Arena

Artist's Introduction: 

Located about 18 miles south of where I grew up, Ann Arbor was the cool older sibling to my hometown. Just a short drive down US-23 there were used book and record shops, vintage boutiques, comic sellers, coffee houses, punks, students, hippies, and other college town fixtures less common in the suburbs. During summer festivals you could see scruffy Andean folk bands busking on street corners and Hare Krishnas drumming in the Diag. Brighton had its merits, of course, and my childhood there was near-idyllic, but my young mind really opened up whenever I got to come to Ann Arbor. 

In the late-'80s, my mom drove my brother and me into the city to take guitar lessons from Michael Lutz at Al Nalli Music. Mike was an affable guy with shaggy hard rock hair who correctly deduced that we didn't care about notation and just wanted to learn how to play songs by ear. His band, Brownsville Station, had a hit in the mid-'70s with "Smokin' in the Boys Room," and to us he was a legitimate guitar god. Being too young to get into clubs, I watched in-store acoustic shows at Schoolkids' Records by touring bands like Camper Van Beethoven and Chickasaw Mudd Puppies. When I was a little older I started volunteering at the Ark and eventually got a job as a clerk at Schoolkids'. I never attended the University. I always gravitated toward the townie side and still do. Every job I've held since the age of 18 has been in Ann Arbor and I've built my music career amid its various overlapping scenes. 

Last Known Address is a collection of six short songs related to my life in Ann Arbor. I'll be the first to admit it's a thematically disparate lot, but sometimes memories are like that. You shake your head and unexpected things fall out. Think of it as a little ragtag bouquet of wildflowers plucked from the city's greater ecosystem. I've accompanied each one with a photo and corresponding essay. The songs themselves are intentionally brief; fleeting musical snapshots from a relationship still in progress. The photos offer visual context and the essays add color. My partner throughout the arranging and recording of this project was singer and multi-instrumentalist Carol Catherine, an Ann Arbor native with a long history in the arts. Every June you can find her in Nichols Arboretum, co-directing Shakespeare in the Arb.

Song Essays, lyrics, and photos:

HARVEY'S LENS

"Diag 1994" - © 1994 Harvey Drouillard

LYRICS:
Nudes in the Diag
Nudes on State
Move through the Art Fair
Harvey's lens is an x-ray

Although I grew up in Brighton, Ann Arbor was where the interesting things happened. In the mid-'90s I was a teenager, driving into the city to play acoustic gigs at local coffee houses and shop at record stores like WhereHouse, Wazoo, and Schoolkids'. Ann Arbor also had its share of eccentric gift shops like Middle Earth and Peaceable Kingdom, which sold interesting curated objects that ranged from punk t-shirts and imported folk art to plastic toy bulldog guns that squeaked when you pulled the trigger. These shops also stocked postcards of every stripe. 

In 1994 I remember noticing a series of black and white postcards depicting local events like the Art Fair and Hash Bash. The curious thing about them was that they contained both nude and fully-clothed people in casual interaction, as if it were an everyday occurrence. Even then I recognized how artfully done they were. All I knew was that they were taken by a photographer known mononymously as Harvey.

Harvey Drouillard now lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, and still specializes in guerilla-style nude photo shoots. His models disrobe for less than a minute, mingling with the local flora and fauna while he quickly captures the scene. Usually before anyone is the wiser the models are already clad and moving on. Over the years he has staged nude shoots in dozens of North American cities, but the tradition was born in his hometown of Ann Arbor. 

LAST KNOWN ADDRESS

"Liberty Station" - © 2024 Timothy Monger

LYRICS:
Post office box 8036
Last known address,
Liberty Station
While he lived,
His ghost in town sublet

The downtown post office was moved to the federal building at 200 E. Liberty in 1977, the year I was born. In 1999, my band, the Original Brothers and Sisters of Love, was about to release our first album and required a common mailing address for legal purposes. My brother Jamie and I shared a house on West Ann, but our rented duplex was hardly permanent. So, using money earned from our monthly gig at Arbor Brewing Company, we rented a mailbox in the lobby of Liberty Station. Over the next couple decades it became the de facto mailing address for my various bands, record labels, and other ventures, providing me a consistent presence in town long after I'd moved away. Because of its location, I've always thought of it as ground zero, the dead center from which the rest of Ann Arbor radiates. Wherever my corporeal self roams, my ghost in town keeps residence at Liberty Station. It is my proxy, my last known address. 

Write to me at:
Timothy Monger
P.O. Box 8036
Ann Arbor, MI 48107

ARBOR OAKS PARK

"Arbor Oaks Park" - © 2024 Timothy Monger 

LYRICS:
Been having a hard time, too much on my mind
Got to get on my feet, get lost, just to get by
Hop across Stone School onto Champagne Drive
I found hope at Arbor Oaks Park

I learned to meditate at a picnic table
And a kid was shooting baskets
As the solar eclipse passed
And I wanted to share the moment
So I gave him my dark glasses

In the summer of 2017 I adopted Arbor Oaks Park as my personal refuge. My office building was maybe a half mile away on Varsity Drive and I'd taken to wandering around the suburban fringes of Pittsfield Township during my lunch breaks. It was a melancholy time, and I felt rather lost. One day my explorations carried me across Stone School Road and into a neighborhood I'd never been to. A few blocks in I discovered a quiet little park next to Bryant Elementary where for the rest of that summer I took up residency. To combat my anxiety, I'd begun experimenting with meditation via one of the guided apps that had recently become popular. Several lunchtimes per week, I could be found, eyes closed, focusing on my breath at a picnic table near the park's west entrance. On the afternoon of August 21, I walked over there to watch a total solar eclipse make its way across America. I was alone except for a young guy shooting baskets at one of the nearby courts. As the earth's shadow passed over the sun, he kept on playing through the darkness until I walked over and insisted he wear my eclipse glasses and look up to witness this astronomical wonder. 

ERIC FARRELL'S DERBY PARTY

"Eric Farrell" - © 2008 Timothy Monger

 LYRICS:
Detroit Street, Derby Day
Midwestern fancy
Women in hats
Heels, no flats
Julep drunk in May

Up the stairs at Eric's house
Reckless joy just spilling out
On Derby Saturday

I first met Eric Farrell sometime in the mid-2000s. He was then employed by Zingerman's Mail Order and lived on Detroit Street, just north of the Deli and directly across from the fusty old antique shop Treasure Mart. Every year on the first Saturday in May he hosted a Kentucky Derby party. Formal wear was highly encouraged; women sought out elaborate hats, men were suited, it became a sort of raucous thrift store gala. Good food was always in abundance and Eric premixed a massive punch bowl of bourbon and simple syrup for a make-your-own-julep station with heaps of crushed ice, a bouquet of mint sprigs, and a few silver julep cups reserved for honored guests. 

Gambling was also encouraged, making the actual race-viewing, crammed into his tiny living room, a high-stakes affair. They were decadent and joyous daytime bangers that stretched into night. In 2011 Eric opened the Bar at 327 Braun Court, a beloved Kerrytown space which matured into one of Ann Arbor's legendary in-the-know hangs. The Derby parties eventually faded out and in the spring of 2024, the bar too closed its doors. Like his parties, Eric's bar was a cult classic, something not meant for the mainstream, but cherished and protected by those who found it. 

NORTH STAR LOUNGE

"North Star Lounge" - © 2024 Timothy Monger

LYRICS:
Late November
Cold drives the crowds
Home from market day in Kerrytown
Sun down, moon out
Friends constellate at the North Star Lounge

Phillis Engelbert opened the North Star Lounge in Kerrytown in 2022 as an extension of Detroit Street Filling Station, her popular vegan restaurant. Tucked into a historic two-story brick house on the corner of Catherine and Fifth, it immediately became a bustling micro-venue with a cozy upstairs listening room that could bear 35 patrons if they tucked in their elbows. It was billed as Michigan's first all-vegan bar, but the intimate performance space was the real draw. Carol Catherine and I first played there as a duo in November 2023, and to promote our show I wrote us a short 30-second jingle. We posted a video of us singing it online and then opened our show with it. I assumed it would be a single-use relic meant only for this gig, but a few weeks later I spontaneously wrote several more tiny Ann Arbor songs which became the genesis of this project. 

VETERANS PARK ICE ARENA

"Ice Skating at Vets Park, 1971" - © 1971 The Ann Arbor News

LYRICS:
Snow drifts, mid-July
A pale omen
Car seats on fire
Burning a hole down Huron

Vets Park has smooth ice
They've brought its skin outside

When I was in my early-20s and living on Ann Street, I remember driving up Huron past Veterans Memorial Park and noticing what looked like a pile of snow out front. It was either late spring or early summer. At the time I wrote it off as the stubborn remnants of a large snow plow berm, the kind that are ubiquitous in Michigan parking lots even well into the spring. It didn't make sense, though, and it unnerved me. Also, I saw it more than once. Years later I casually mentioned this phenomenon to someone and they offered me a great revelation. The building outside which this anomaly appeared was an ice rink, and the snowpile was in fact shavings from the ice resurfacer. I was never able to confirm this, but the idea of the Zamboni operator dumping his leftovers to melt outside seemed logical enough. Still, this strange Ann Arbor memory has stayed with me over the years and every time I drive by Vets Park in the warmer months, I find myself looking for a flash of white.

A note on the cover:   The photo on the album cover was taken during a snowstorm on January 16, 2002. It was my last year living on Ann Street and I wanted to document the neighborhood somehow. I climbed to the top of the nearby parking structure and snapped a handful of aerial shots on my cheap 35mm camera. This one looks out west toward Ashley Street with West Park in the distance behind it. In the foreground is my old house, 216 West Ann, partially obscured by a large pine tree. My brother and I lived in that house for five years and wrote most of the songs from our first three albums there. Originally built in the late-1800s, the house was recently demolished and rebuilt from the foundation.

Artist Biography:

Timothy Monger is a musician and writer living in Ypsilanti, Michigan. He has released four solo albums ranging in style from lush baroque pop to pastoral folk and harmony-driven indie rock. In addition to his work as solo singer/songwriter, he is the bandleader of Timothy Monger State Park, co-founder of folk-rock cult heroes Great Lakes Myth Society, and curator of the experimental multimedia project Log Variations. He is also a blogger, music writer, and longtime contributor to the AllMusic database. Monger's latest project is Last Known Address, a collection of short songs and essays commissioned by the Ann Arbor District Library.

Credits:

Recorded February - August 2024 in Ypsilanti, MI
Engineered by Timothy Monger and Elly Daftuar
Mixed by Rishi Daftuar
Mastered by Jim Kissling

Timothy Monger - vocals, guitars, bass, synths, chord organ, bongos, stylophone, drum programming
Carol Catherine - vocals, violin, windchimes, vibraslap, triangle, shaker, maracas, floor tom, tambourine
Elly Daftuar - additional harmonies
Chad Thompson - wurlitzer electric piano, drum set 

All songs written by Timothy Monger © 2024
Happy Maps Publishing Co. (BMI)

Commissioned by the Ann Arbor District Library for Ann Arbor 200

Released by Northern Detective in conjunction with the Ann Arbor District Library
Northern Detective - Case # ND-006
Ann Arbor 200 - #159

Art Fare, a local news publication, began in 1973 when David Friedo saw an opportunity to cover the vast array of arts, cultural, and social events in Ann Arbor. The Ann Arbor Art Fairs inspired the play on words in the title, but its coverage went beyond the arts. Articles touched on many changes in town (including issues of housing and urban design) and offered a counter-perspective to dominant narratives in papers like the Ann Arbor News. Music, cinema, plays, art exhibits, and nightlife were included in an events calendar that predated the Ann Arbor Observer's own. Friedo and his small team worked to publish the magazine through 1979 when it briefly became known as the Ann Arbor Entertainer and then subsequently ceased publication. Issues are available for reading or downloading at aadl.org/artfare.

In 2023, David Friedo, Mary Bleyaert, Paul Wiener, Mary Dolan, and Barbara Torretti sat down with us for an interview to discuss the initial inspiration for the magazine, how it developed, and its reception by the public. Each recounted their roles in the production of the magazine, and reflected on the changes in the Ann Arbor art community and beyond.

Ann Arbor 200 is proud to debut a newly-created piece that is both a map and a work of art: the Natural Ann Arbor Map by Marcy Marchello. The Natural Ann Arbor Map focuses on the nature of Ann Arbor, featuring both contemporary and historical elements. It is an expression of place, rather than a navigational tool, highlighting the Huron River, parks, trails, wildlife and more. Hand-drawn illustrations and text form a mosaic of information that opens the viewer to new understanding.

The Natural Ann Arbor Map is available for sale as an art print and provides alternative frames of reference compared to conventional road maps. Marcy’s map is oriented to the watershed and historical paths of travel through the area. You won’t find most of the built elements in town you are used to seeing and yet you are likely to see something new with multiple viewings!

The Natural Ann Arbor Map evolved over 8 years, through Marcy's explorations while in town visiting family, online research, and 500 hours in the studio. Everything on the map was drawn multiple times to position elements for lively interaction and meaning. 

Marcy is thrilled to offer the Natural Ann Arbor Map to the community during Ann Arbor’s bicentennial year. The art print is available in both black and white ($40) and in color ($75), in a 24” x 36” size, printed with soy-based inks on 30% post-consumer waste recycled paper. The color edition can be purchased downtown at Found Gallery. Both maps can be purchased online at Ferncliff Studio on Etsy.  You can learn more about Marcy and how she developed the map on the Ferncliff Studio site.

About the Artist:

Marcy is an Ann Arbor native who grew up in Dixboro and lives in Massachusetts, where she is an adaptive outdoor recreation manager for Massachusetts State Parks. While her livelihood is in service to quality of life for others, she has been an artist and naturalist since childhood.  Born of two very creative parents - both graduates of the U of M School of Art - Marcy’s graphic arts have taken various forms, including cards and stationery, nature journaling, and custom maps of natural places. 

Marcy recalls, “As a child, while riding in the backseat of the family car, I noticed how the cloverleaf at Plymouth Road and I-23 had brought about a change in the landscape compared to what it must have been previously. I always wanted to go back in time to experience the landscape as it was before Europeans came. This map both celebrates present nature and offers a sense of peeling back time to reveal some of the underpinnings of the area.”

She attended Huron H.S. (‘76-‘79) and the U of M School of Art briefly, worked at Ulrich’s Books as an art department manager, then left Ann Arbor to pursue her “collage” degree. Marcy traveled on the National Audubon Expedition Institute for 2 years, followed by a year at Prescott College in Arizona, earning a B.S. in Environmental Education from Lesley College (now University) in Cambridge, MA. 

With much gratitude, Marcy thanks the following people for their time and support in evaluating the project in process:

• Becky Hand, Natural Area Preservation
• Bev Willis and John Kilar, Washtenaw County Historical Society
• Dave Szczygiel, Ann Arbor Public Schools
• Andrew MacLaren, Ann Arbor District Library
• Paul Steen, Huron River Watershed Council
• Anita Daly, Huron River Watershed Council

Most of the materials in the AADL Archives fit neatly into boxes (both literally and figuratively): bound volumes of newspapers, photographic slides, years of magazine issues. But there are also things in our collection that are a bit harder to categorize and are a bit harder to handle--but that are an awful lot of fun. Some of these things fall under the heading of "advertising ephemera". You've all seen this type of thing before, especially from mid-twentieth century businesses:  things a business might giveaway to promote themselves. Postcards with images of dining booths. A calendar that would keep their company name on your desk year-round. And of course, that most ubiquitous bit of advertising ephemera, the matchbook.

We've digitized and presented a small part of our advertising ephemera collection here to (hopefully) amuse you. Sometimes these pieces were related to the business being promoted, sometimes one scratches one's head at the connection. Ponder over what that elegantly begowned parrot-owner has to do with an exterminator. Picture yourself owning your very own Markwell Punchmaster (available at George Wahr). And just appreciate the design and illustrations from another era.

If you have some of these sorts of delightful items in your collection and you would like to share them with the world, let us know by emailing oldnews@aadl.org. We are happy to add to our collections or simply borrow materials to be scanned and put online so the entire community can enjoy these artifacts of Ann Arbor's bygone businesses.

Ann Arbor Federal Savings and Loan Association, April 1955	This local financial institution was originally founded as the Huron Valley Savings and Loan Association in 1890. In 1939 it converted to a federal savings and loan association known as Ann Arbor Federal Savings and Loan Association. Through a series of acquisitions and mergers it was known as Great Lakes Federal Savings and Loan, Great Lakes Bancorp, Great Lakes National Bank, and TCF. The most recent change took place in 2021, when TCF merged with Huntington Bank.
Fred W. Gross operated a clothing store for 25 years, first at 115 E Liberty St and then at 309 S Main St. The store specialized in clothing for boys and men. After the store’s closure in 1930, Fred was a traveling salesman trading in clothing and gloves, and continued to provide tailoring services to the community.	Fred W. Gross, April 1920
Goodyear's	Goodyear's was an Ann Arbor institution for 95 years. Founded in 1888, it evolved from a dry goods store into a department store 4 times its original size. Despite the store’s growth, it maintained a philosophy of personalized service including free gift wrapping and deliveries. A second store operated at 213 S State St from 1950 until 1958. The Main Street staple, located at 122 S Main, met its demise in 1983 when the state closed it for a failure to pay taxes. It had been unable to withstand migration of retail to Briarwood Mall and the recent recession.
Harold C. Eastman, a real estate dealer and community leader, founded the Eastman Realtors and Insurance Company in the early 1950s. A resident of Ann Arbor for almost 40 years, he held numerous local, state, and national Optimist Club positions. After his death in 1981, the Ann Arbor Breakfast Optimist Club created the annual “Harold C. Eastman Outstanding Youth Award” in his memory.	Harold C. Eastman Agency
J. F. Wuerth Company	J. Frederick Wuerth became known for his ownership of the Wuerth and Orpheum theaters in Ann Arbor, but got his start in business in 1900 when he established Staebler and Wuerth, selling boys and mens clothing. The store eventually became J. F. Wuerth Company and was located next to his Wuerth Theater. In 1923 Albert Fiegel purchased an interest in the store and four years later he became the sole owner, subsequently changing its name to Fiegels.
Kurtis Exterminating was a pest control company that operated in the Ann Arbor area for most of the twentieth century.  Stephen Kurtis emigrated to the US from his birthplace in Karatoula, Greece and started his business in 1930, two years after his arrival in Ann Arbor.  In the 1960s, he passed the business along to his daughter, Constance Opal, who ran it until its closure in 2001.  Kurtis Exterminating was a long-time supporter of local ball clubs, participating in the business softball league and sponsoring boys’ baseball teams.	Kurtis Exterminating Company
Master Furrier	Master Furrier was a shop that provided sales and services such as fur repair, cleaning, and cold storage.  Opened in 1947 by Max and Ella Deess, the business thrived at 215 S Main enough to move in 1950 to the larger space at 221 E Liberty that was once home to Osias Zwerdling’s famed fur shop.  It remained on E Liberty for over 25 years when it was sold to David and Marion Rumford, who moved it to the Lamp Post Plaza then later to the Courtyard Shops, where it operated until the early 1990s.
In 1908, Oscar David Morrill organized the O. D. Morrill Co. in Ann Arbor, selling stationery and office supplies. His brother Ralph became manager of the store in 1925, and owner when Oscar died in 1949. The business evolved by focusing on mechanical implements including typewriters, adding machines, dictation machines, and wire recorders. Customers could also buy or rent office furniture from the outlet. In 1972 it briefly became Morr’s On State before closing for good a few years later.	Morrill's
Mundus & Mundus, 1959	Mundus Insurance Agency, an independent insurance brokerage, was founded in Ann Arbor in the early 1930s by Joseph W. Mundus. The firm became Mundus & Mundus in 1949 when his son William joined the family business. William J. Mundus managed the firm until his retirement in 1983. In 2004, Mundus & Mundus was acquired by ALCOS, Inc., one of Michigan's largest privately held insurance and benefits agencies.
When the Sugar Bowl opened in 1910, it was a penny candy store featuring homemade ice cream and hand dipped chocolates made in the Preketes family apartment upstairs. Greek brothers Paul and Charles Preketes ran the original business, soon joined by two more brothers, Frank and Tony. Over the years the store grew into a beloved restaurant, cocktail lounge, and mainstay of downtown Ann Arbor--though members of the Black community tell a different side of things, remembering it as a place they were not welcome. In 1965, after 55 years of business and the death of Charles Preketes, the remaining brothers sold the Sugar Bowl and retired.	Prekete's Brothers Sugar Bowl
George Wahr, Publisher and Bookseller	George Wahr, publisher and bookseller, operated for over 80 years in Ann Arbor. The first store was located on Main Street, followed by a second location on State Street. Founded in 1887 after Wahr bought out his business partners George Osius and Charles H. Ludlow, the store stocked books for students and residents, wallpaper, pens, stationery, and even sporting goods for a time. The firm’s publishing output included textbooks, novels, children’s books, and calendars. Ownership passed from George to his daughter, Nathalie Wahr Sallade, who handed it on to her son, George Wahr Sallade. The bookstore’s stock was sold to Tom and Louis Borders in the 1970s, but the publishing business continued under the younger George's leadership.
George Wedemeyer started out as a teenager operating the “wireless” on board a ship.  After earning his electrical engineering degree (and helping with Ann Arbor’s first commercial radio station, WQAJ), he became a radio designer and repairman.  His shop, first opened in 1927, was located in a succession of buildings from 110 E Washington to 221 E Liberty to 215 N Fourth (the “Wedemeyer Block”, now a parking lot) and finally to 2280 S Industrial.  The business grew to include all types of electronics and had additional locations in Ypsilanti, Adrian, and Lansing.  The company was purchased by Wichita-based RSC Electronics in 1994 after Wedemeyer’s death and the local location had closed within a decade.	Wedemeyer Electronic Supply Company
W. J. Landers, Contractor	Rev. Willard Jess Landers & his wife Crelia, opened their family business, Landers Contracting Company, in 1945. They operated it together in Washtenaw County until Willard’s retirement in 1971. Their son Doyle Landers took over management until the business was sold in 1978. While overseeing the contracting business, Rev. Landers also served as a minister in the Pentecostal Church of God.

Matchbooks from Ann Arbor's Past

Bicycle Jim's Matchbook	Bill Knapp's Matchbook	Bolgos Restaurant Tuebingen Room Matchbook	Bolgos Restaurant Tuebingen Room Matchbook	Bolgos Convenience Store Matchbook
Campus Inn Matchbook	Clint Castor's Village Bell Matchbook	John Leidy Shop Matchbook	Leo Ping's Matchbook	Lim's Matchbook
Maude's Matchbook	Overbeck Book Store Matchbook	Tee and Ski Matchbook	Thano's Lamplighter Matchbook	The Pretzel Bell Matchbook
The Real Seafood Company Matchbook	The Real Seafood Company Matchbook	University Motel Matchbook

This project was created to highlight the history and progress related to voting and voter rights in Ann Arbor throughout the last 200 years. In preparing these posters, City Clerk's Office staff researched the history of voter registration, student voting, polling places, voting technology, and the ever-increasing ways Ann Arbor residents can access the ballot box. We hope you enjoy!

Images from the Ann Arbor News:

Voter Registration
Darwin L. Wood Registers To Vote With Carport "Curb Service", June 1952
Last Day of Voting Registration, July 1952

Voting Technology
Ann Arbor Voting Machine, April 1963
Mrs. Edward Moore Exits A Voting Machine In Ann Arbor's Fifth Ward Polling Place, November 1946
Sharon & Linda Seyfried Learn About Voting Machines During The Primary Election At The Burns Park Voting Place, August 1952

Polling Places
Busy Election Year Begins, April 1956
Mrs. John McClendon Arrives At Jones School To Vote In The City Election, April 1968
Voters Wait To Cast Their Election Ballots In Ann Arbor's Fifth Ward Polling Place, November 1946

Student Voting
University of Michigan Dames Model "Let's Vote For Fashion" Ensembles, November 1964
Boy Scouts Re-Enact Poster Urging Residents To Vote, October 1956
Members Of Ann Arbor High's Homecoming Court In The Get-Out-The-Vote Rally Parade, October 1956
Voting In the First Ward, Fourth Precinct, April 1973
'Should 18-Year-Olds Be Allowed To Vote?', July 1966

Ward Maps
Ann Arbor's Ward Boundaries To Be Redrawn, September 1964

Access to the Ballot Box
Ann Arbor Second Ward Voters Lined Up Before Polls Open For The 1952 Presidential Election, November 1952
Ann Arbor Voters Wait To Cast Their Ballots For The 1952 Presidential Election, November 1952
Phillis Engelbert & Son Submit Their Election Ballot At Northside School, November 1997

(Scroll right to view exhibit)

When the AADL Archives put together its exhibit of pages from the Ann Arbor Observer, we knew it was going to be a difficult task; we had to select 500 pages from over 60,000, and in doing so we had to attempt to show as much of a representative example of what the magazine is as we could--while still covering its nearly 50-year history of existence.  

We also knew it would be popular, but we didn't realize how many people we would hear from and how many people we would see spending extensive time poring over the pages we put up on the walls.  Being that it was such a hit, we thought it only fair to put it up on our site so people can spend time looking at it at their leisure.

The other thing we didn't realize was how many questions it would leave us with about how that magazine was put together and the people who have worked there over the decades.  A full and detailed accounting of the history of the Observer has yet to be written, but to start the process, we performed interviews with six of the individuals whose writing, illustration, and editorial work have made the Observer what it is over the years.  Take a listen and learn a little bit more about the publication that has been a chronicle of our community over these many years.

Patricia Garcia and John Hilton

The longtime publisher (Garcia) and editor (Hilton) of the Observer talk about how they were selected for ownership, how the community has changed in their almost 40 years of covering it, and how they weathered the changes in the media industry and the pandemic.

Steve Gilzow

One of the Observer's most prolific cover artists talks about the inspiration behind his art, the people and places captured within his covers, and how his work with the Observer has allowed a deeper understanding of the community.

John Hinchey

John Hinchey spent two decades covering city hall and four decades editing the Observer's events calendar. He tells us about how the city and its institutions have changed in his time chronicling it.

Eve Silberman

Eve Silberman has written for the 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.

Laura Strowe

The artist behind over 60 Observer covers tells us about her work from etching to pastels and how art has effected how she views the world.

If you've been in any AADL branches lately, you have probably seen the large cardboard blocks that can be stacked up to construct some of the most iconic buildings around Ann Arbor.  If you know how to have fun, you've even played with them!  Read our coverage of the project in Pulp to learn more about how these came about, including how AADL selected the seven buildings from the hundreds of possibilities around town.

What you might not have noticed is that these blocks are also available for you to take home and cut out to create your very own (smaller) cardboard block Ann Arbor on your own desk or bookshelf.  But maybe you can't make it in to a branch to grab your own?  Well we here at Ann Arbor 200 have you covered!  Below you will find links to the pdf versions of each of these sets of blocks that you can print at home on regular old 8 1/2 by 11 paper.  Want to color them in with your preferred palette?  Print them in black and white!  Want to create your own frankenstein versions of Ann Arbor's great buildings?  Print a whole bunch and stack to your hearts content!

We've also included here the text you will find on each set of blocks so you can learn a bit about each building (even if papercraft isn't your thing).  All of the text on these blocks comes from the premiere source for the history of our local architecture, Historic Ann Arbor: An Architectural Guide by Susan Wineberg and Patrick McCauley.  

Enjoy playing with your own bicentennial blocks and see the buildings you've walked past for years in a whole new way!

"This collage celebrates the seen and unseen female leaders, entrepreneurs, and businesswomen of Ann Arbor." - Johanna Liao, Collage artist

Title: Celebration and Recognition - A Woven Portrait of Local Female Leaders, Entrepreneurs, and Businesswomen
Dimensions: 40"x32"
Materials: Paper, Fabric, Yarn, Thread
The following images were selected by the artist and used in the creation of this collage, from left to right (top to bottom):

• New Women Bus Drivers to Help With Manpower Shortage, September 1943
• Weights and Scales Lesson at Perry School, Ypsilanti, January 1976
• Judith A. Goodman Addresses National Council of Negro Women Local Chapter, February 1976
• League of Women Voters Members With Posters, March 1969
• Dr. Eliza Mosher, first Dean of Women
• Christine Liu - Author Of 'More Nutritional Chinese Cooking', September 1982
• Lola Jones, April 1972
• Hairdresser Vicki Honeyman, 1998
• League of Women Voters Members With Posters, March 1969
• Cheryl Bass-Lee Plays With Annise Summerhill At Noah's Ark Learning Center In Ypsilanti, March 22, 1995
• Carol S. Hollenshead - Director Of Center For The Education Of Women, April 1992
• Kun Hui Ko Serves A Kana Customer, November 1983
• Susan Wineberg, March 1978
• Restaurant Owner Beverly Taylor-Glaza Prepares Caribbean Food, January 1994
• Susie Chen - L'Ultima Clothing Boutique, March 1986
• Barfield Cleaning Company, August 24, 1968
• Huron High School Principal Joetta Mial, April 1989
• Miss Emma J. Pratt - New Program Director At The Ann Arbor Community Center, September 1962
• Patricia Wulp, assistant director of the Center for the Education of Women (CEW), May 1974
• Marguerite Bryant - Ann Arbor Trust Building Elevator Operator, August 1960

The Ann Arbor District Library Archives is home to over 2.3 million photographic negatives, the vast majority of which are in black and white. For decades color photography was nonexistent, prohibitively expensive, or its processing was inaccessible. Since photography’s earliest days people have experimented with applying color by hand to bring images closer to capturing our vivid world.  Many of the postcards in our Making of Ann Arbor collection were hand-colored to create a truer-to-life image of the city's landmarks than the photographic technology of the time allowed.

Below is a selection of photographs from our Ann Arbor News collection that have been colored through a combination of automation and hand-applied hues. In most cases it is impossible to know what colors were originally present, so these should be viewed as an artistic interpretation rather than an accurate depiction of what was.  But adding color to these images, whether accurate or not, allows us to see our past in an entirely new way.  Enjoy!

Kathleen & Johnny Dolan On Horses Entered into the Northville Show, May 1938, Ann Arbor News

Original Caption: Kathleen Dolan on Goldie. Johnny Dolan on Sheba.

University of Michigan Cheerleaders, September 1947, Ann Arbor News

Ice Cream For Everyone, June 1957, Ann Arbor News

Original Caption: JUST ABOUT EVERYBODY'S EATING CONES: Ann Arbor's finally getting some summer-like weather, so, to help commemorate National Dairy Month and also to please their palates, this group of pals downs ice cream cones. They are (left to right) Rodney Spencer, 5, his friend, "Major,", Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity mascot, and Judy Tsuchuira, 3.

Bethel AME Church Groups and Leaders, July 1944, Ann Arbor News

Barton Boat Club Member L. Clifford Dickason Rides the Rail of Craft, September 1947, Ann Arbor News

Original Caption: L. Clifford Dickason, of 1013 Rose Ave., rides the rail of his sailing craft as he comes about on Barton Pond, where Boat Club members congregate every Sunday from April through November to race their boats. A club grand championship is decided at the end of each season.

Children Listening to Story at Dunbar Center, December 1940, Ann Arbor News

Randall H. Nelson & His Leader Dog Sonny, December 1951, Ann Arbor News

Original Caption: AIDED BY LIONS CLUB WORK: Randall H. Nelson of 1201 E. University Ave. (above), a doctoral student in political science at the University who was blinded by a German shell burst in World War II, is one of many sightless persons reaping benefits from a statewide program of Lions Clubs. Michigan Lions, including those from the Ann Arbor organization headed by President S. D. Casey, contribute heavily to "Leader Dog" training at Rochester, Mich. Each dog, such as Sonny, the German boxer pictured with Nelson, costs an estimated $1,200 to train for the task of guiding a blind master. The dogs are purchased from the Leader Dog League for a token payment of $250.

Members of the Devil Dogs Motorcycle Club, Ann Arbor, 1938, Ann Arbor News

Boys Eating Lunches During Nutrition Drive, Mack School, October 1942, Ann Arbor News

Washtenaw County Court House, September 1948, Ann Arbor News

Award-Winning "Let's Play" With Her Trainer Don Webb, September 1939, Ann Arbor News

Original Caption: ANN ARBOR DOG WINS FIRST PRIZE: This 11-month-old cocker spaniel, "Let's Play" won first place in the American bred black female class at the dog show sponsored by the Jaxon Kennel Club of Jackson. Owned by Mr. and Mrs. Harold G. Ristine, 580 Allison Dr., Ann Arbor, the dog was shown by Don Webb of Ypsilanti (above), handler and trainer. Let's Play was sired by Rennard's First Chance of Plymouth, and her dam is Lady In Red VI, owned by the Ristines.

UM International Student & Refugee On Campus, December 1941, Ann Arbor News

Rubber Salvage, Dixboro, July 1942, Ann Arbor News

Pete Brown At Model Airplane Meet, July 1948, Ann Arbor News

Original Caption: YOUNGEST CONTESTANT EXCELS: Five-year-old Pete Brown, son of Howard C. Brown of 827 Brookwood Pl., squats beside the gasoline model he entered in yesterday's model plane meet. A few minutes later he successfully launched and guided the plane for a five-minute flight and brought it in to a perfect landing. He was the meet's youngest entrant.

Ski tow at Barton Hills, January, 1951, Ann Arbor News

Ted Donahue Feeds Treppy At The University of Michigan Zoo, November 1946, Ann Arbor News

Original Caption: Intrepidus - the University's domesticated wolverine - is not eating his gamekeeper's hand, as the above picture seems to indicate, but rather is enjoying a dinner of dog food which Ted Donahue is feeding him by hand at the zoo behind the University museum. Treppy (short for his Latin name) is far more dainty in his table manners than a dog, Donahue relates. Although he usually sits up for his dinner, Treppy did not have the courage to do so when the above picture was taken, due to the fact that The News photographer was standing in the opposite corner of the cage. Donahue is a returned veteran and a student at the University.

"While I work in many artistic mediums ranging from digital to traditional, I have a special love for the very unique and tactile process of blockprinting. Therefore for representing these historical signs, I thought it would only be appropriate to use blockprint, a medium which itself has historical roots going back to older forms of printing like woodcut and letterpress. Each sign was handcarved then handprinted, with each color being printed individually from the same carved block for a layered effect of what is essentially 3 unique prints on the same paper. For the offsetting of the colors, I was also inspired by the slight, flawed offset of colors that was often seen in printing at the time these signs would have been up, resulting in bright colors popping out at the edges of designs unintentionally. This misregistration made it so even commercial pieces which were meant to be identical had slight unique qualities to them, a trait that every blockprint shares as well.

Researching each business and imagining the people who patronized them when they were still open was a delight. From restaurants to bookshops, each sign has a different personality to it, and different challenges involved with carving and printing them. I hope through this series I have been able to bring back a bit of the love these businesses must have had in their lifetime, and possibly remind someone of a good memory they had at them."

-Veronica Ortolan, Printmaker

		Steve's Lunch Steve's Lunch was a classic 1960s lunch counter diner opened at 1313 S University Ave by Greek immigrant Steve Vaniadis. Around 1972 Steve sold the business to an outgoing Korean couple, known to customers as Mr. and Mrs. Lee. They kept the diner’s name and the no frills location grew into a cultural institution with fantastic Korean food. Steve’s Lunch was a hangout for townies and students alike, and one of the first Ann Arbor restaurants to offer standards like Japchae and Bibimbap. In the late 1970s, the Lee family sold the business, much to the dismay of devoted regulars.
The Cracked Crab Located at 112 W Washington St, The Cracked Crab was a tiny restaurant with a big reputation. Opened in 1971, it became a celebrated local landmark for consuming some of Ann Arbor’s best seafood. Although the restaurant closed in 1991, many townies still fondly remember the exceptional Dungeness crab and the funky nautical decor.
		Del Rio Opened in 1970, Del Rio was a cooperatively run Ann Arbor bar, featuring management by consensus, with owners and employees having equal say. Some would call it a bohemian sanctuary, others simply a hippie bar. On the corner of West Washington and Ashley Streets, at 122 W Washington, this dimly lit space served up the legendary Det Burger (a cheeseburger soaked in beer then topped with mushrooms and black olives), an eclectic music selection from a collection of over 1,000 cassette tapes, indifferent customer service, and the best bathroom graffiti in the city. Following a last-night celebration, it closed in the early morning hours of January 1, 2004.
Bimbo's Perfect thin-crust pizza cut into squares, peanut shells on the floor, singing along with the band, and pitchers of beer and red pop were all staples of the legendary Bimbo's at 114 E Washington St in Ann Arbor. Matt "Bimbo" Chutich opened this mecca for families in 1962, where parents and children could both enjoy themselves. The fun lasted until the restaurant closed in 1983. Chutich owned/operated a chain of Bimbo’s restaurants all across the country, with locations in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Minnesota, as well as many other Michigan locations, including another in Ann Arbor known as Bimbo's on the Hill.
		Blue Frogge The basement space at 611 Church St, near South University Ave, once housed a restaurant, bar, and disco known as Blue Frogge. Opened in July 1976, it offered "DISCO Dancing 7 Nights A Week" during the height of disco mania. It lasted two years until it was remodeled as Don Cisco’s Mexican Restaurant & Disco in July 1978. Despite its brief existence, Madonna once mentioned frequenting Blue Frogge to a Rolling Stone interviewer, sealing its status as an iconic Ann Arbor nightclub hangout. In July 1979 it transformed into Rick’s American Cafe, which university students still frequent today.
Shaman Drum Bookshop Shaman Drum Bookshop was an independent Ann Arbor bookstore originally located at 313 S State St. Opened in 1980 by Karl Pohrt, it took over the upstairs space occupied by Paideia Books. In 1994 the beloved store expanded down into two, large, street level storefronts and was frequented by fiercely loyal customers until it closed in June 2009.

World War II. D-Day, June 6, 1944. The Canadians of the North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment went ashore to storm and liberate the French seaside village of Saint Aubin-sur-Mer (code-named Nan Red sector, at the eastern end of Juno Beach) from the Germans. They were followed by the United Kingdom's 48th Royal Marine Commando. Days later, on June 10, 1944, an American fighter plane crashed into the sea near the same beach. The aircraft was pulled to shore at low tide by personnel from the United Kingdom's No. 2 Royal Air Force Beach Squadron. The iconic photo below captured the Saint Aubin-sur-Mer, Calvados, Normandy beach, scarred by the battle and the plane's wreckage. What many people don't know about this grim image of war is that the pilot of the plane was from Michigan. This is the story of Second Lieutenant John Alfred Weese, an Ann Arbor soldier who died in France.

Ann Arbor, Before World War II

John Alfred Weese was born January 26, 1920, in Ann Arbor to Douglas and Lorena Staebler Weese. John Staebler was his maternal grandfather. Alfred Weese was his paternal grandfather. Known as Jack to his family, he had an older sister, Virginia, and two younger sisters, Mary & Nancy. He lived here as a child and later resided with his family in several Michigan cities as his father's employment moved them around. He was a 1938 graduate of Durand High School (Shiawassee County) where his father worked for the Railway Express Agency. The Weese family returned to live in Ann Arbor after his graduation. Jack worked a variety of jobs, and attended Lawrence Institute of Technology in Detroit for one semester. He eventually found work as a lathe operator and machinist at the American Broach & Machine Company in downtown Ann Arbor, which is where he was employed when he enlisted.

Fighter Pilot

On August 5, 1942 Jack enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps. He worked at a Detroit recruiting center, and briefly spent time at Fort Custer. In early 1943 he reported at the Army Air Force classification center in Nashville, Tennessee and then was sent to pre-flight school at Maxwell Field, Alabama. By May 1943 he had been transferred to Souther Field, Georgia, for primary flight instruction. He stood third in his class at Souther Field. From there he moved to basic training at Cochran Field, Georgia. In November 1943 Jack was commissioned a second lieutenant and awarded the silver wings of a fighter pilot at a Craig Field graduation ceremony in Selma, Alabama. Attending the ceremony were his parents, two of his sisters, Mary & Nancy, and Irma Barnard, his girlfriend. Days later, when he was home in Ann Arbor on leave, the engagement of Jack and Irma was officially announced in the Ann Arbor News. Following his leave, Jack spent time at Mitchell Field, New York, and Bluethenthal Field in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he received his final combat training.

In 2020, Kris Koebler, daughter of Jack's sister Virginia, shared some early childhood memories of her uncle. "Jack was (I would put it) devastatingly handsome, smart, and brave.  I remember the portrait of him that hung in my grandparents’ home until they passed. He was engaged to a lovely girl named Irma Barnard.  They were to be married after the war."

"I have memories of riding around Ann Arbor, standing next to him in the front seat of his shiny red convertible.  (No seat belts in those days!!)  We would be singing “The Army Air Corps” anthem at the tops of our lungs. I was the only one of his nieces and nephews that he ever knew. One of my brothers was born when Jack was overseas, and both my sister and younger brother were born after his death, as were Mary’s and Nancy’s children. I truly wish I could have known him longer and that he could have known his extended family. "

Hell Hawks

In January 1944 Jack travelled to England as part of the United States’ 9th Air Force. In April 1944, Jack joined the 365th fighter group, 386th fighter squadron, piloting a Thunderbolt P-47. They were known as Hell Hawks, one of 18 fighter groups that were part of the 9th Air Force. When Jack arrived they were based in Beaulieu, Hampshire, England.

"So who were the Hell Hawks? Even the lowliest lieutenant of the lot had accomplished something at which tens of thousands had failed: he had completed flight training, had silver wings pinned on his chest, and was now officially qualified to pilot an aircraft. He had successfully made the transition to the mighty P-47 Thunderbolt, the "Jug," and survived to reach the combat theater...They were perfect physical specimens, these young men who strapped into an eighteen-thousand pound Thunderbolt, fired up a roaring, two-thousand-horsepower engine, and flew into battle lugging a veritable arsenal of bombs and ammunition. They had superb bodies and minds and the youthful confidence to believe they were unbeatable." - Hell Hawks! The Untold Story of the American Fliers Who Savaged Hitler's Wehrmacht by Robert F. Dorr & Thomas Jones

Jack's letters to his fiancée Irma shared his experiences as a Hell Hawk. He mentioned bombing bridges and installations in Nazi-held Europe, and taking part in strafing missions (attacking ground targets with bombs or machine-gun fire). From Beaulieu Jack flew two Normandy missions on D-Day, June 6th. He flew two more on June 7th, and one on June 8th. Bad weather with low visibility kept his group grounded on June 9th. On June 10, 1944 he flew his final mission when he was reported ”Missing In Action”. Just a few weeks before his final flight he was awarded an Air Medal with two oak leaf clusters.

Saint Aubin-sur-Mer, Calvados, Normandy, France

On June 10, 1944, U.S. Aircraft DH-5 No.276297 crashed into the sea off Saint Aubin-sur-Mer. The body of John A. Weese, United States Army Air Force, was recovered and buried in Grave No 8 of Bernières-sur-Mer White Beach Cemetery. The officiating Chaplain was the Rev. William E. Harrison, H/Capt., Canadian Army. The aircraft was recovered from the sea at low tide the next day and Royal Air Force No. 83 Group were informed so that salvage action could be taken.

Ann Arbor, During World War II

In 2020, Sally Connors, Jack's younger cousin, shared her memory of 1944. “I was 10 when cousin Jack went missing in action. I had two brothers in the service and this news worried me; would my brothers also go missing? I remember the sadness in my Uncle Doug’s family."

News of Jack's death didn't reach the Weese family until June 28, 1944. The Ann Arbor News ran the story on their front page the following day. In July 1944 the Weese family received the news that Jack had received the posthumous award of the Purple Heart.

By June 1945, a year after Jack's death, the Weese family still had few details about what had happened in France. Lorena Weese, his mother, wrote a letter to the headquarters of the U.S. Army Air Forces asking for a letter from Jack's commanding officer. Below is a copy of the response she received. The details in this correspondence were pulled directly from the original Missing Air Crew Report (MACR).

"...On 10th June 1944 John went out on what we call a Fighter Sweep in the Cherbourg assault area. His flight became separated in the clouds at about six thousand feet. This happened around 1245 hours and at 1310 hours he called in on the radio saying his plane had been hit.The propellor was out and oil pressure was gone. John said he was at seven thousand feet and could see the Beachhead. He thought he could "belly-land" the ship. By that we mean he was going to slide in without using the wheels. At this time he was very cool and acted as if he hadn't been injured. This was all we knew until confirmation of his death was received. For some reason John was not able to "belly-land" the ship and his plane crashed into the English Channel. He was buried in grave eight at Bernières-Sur-Mer Cemetery near St. Aubin-Sur-Mer, Normandy, France.

Please accept our sympathies. I am sorry this letter is so late in reaching you. The memory of John has been an inspiration to his fellow pilots and he has left his mark with us all. He was an excellent flyer who really enjoyed flying..."

Repatriation

The U.S. War Department made it clear that men and women who died overseas would remain there until the end of the conflict. The government had committed resources to fighting the war, not managing the storage and transportation of the fallen. The Weese family now faced a new kind of waiting to bring Jack back to Ann Arbor. The first war dead did not reach American shores until October 1947.

At the end of January 1948 the Weese family received the news that Jack was finally coming home. U.S. Army Transport Corporal Eric G. Gibson was loaded with 1,753 caskets in Europe, each shrouded in an American flag. 61 of these caskets belonged to Michigan servicemen, one of them being John Alfred Weese. Most of the dead on this funeral ship had died on the beaches at Normandy. A photographer captured an image of the ship that would dock in a snowstorm at Brooklyn Army base, New York, and it was published in countless newspapers across the country.

On February 7, 1948, Jack's body arrived by train at the Michigan Central station in Ann Arbor. A military escort traveled with him to the Muehlig Funeral home, and then to Bethlehem Cemetery for a private burial with full military honors. His parents were buried in the same cemetery, many years later.

Afterword/Author's Note

In 2014 aviation artist Ken Stanton contacted the Ann Arbor District Library from England. He had been shown a photo of a war plane crashed on a French beach and was tasked with finding out the story behind it. He had found record of John Weese's name as the pilot, and that John was from Ann Arbor. With our resources in the AADL Archives, I was able to piece together the story of John 'Jack' Weese. Through Ancestry.com, Ken made contact with some of Jack's surviving family members (Cousin Sally, Nieces Kris & Marti), and we all pooled our knowledge and findings. In the end, Ken created a painting of Jack's P-47, Jack's family members learned more about his history, and I dove deep into the research and grew quite fond of Jack in the process.

In 2020, Fanny Hubart-Salmon, contacted the Ann Arbor District Library from Saint Aubin-sur-Mer, Calvados, Normandy. "I grew up in the French town of Saint Aubin sur Mer, France. We are actively researching photos, stories and relatives of soldiers who died on our beach in June 1944 as we keep honoring them. It came to our attention that Alfred John "Jack" Weese, from Ann Arbor, had crashed on the beach 4 days after June 6th." I immediately reached out to Ken Stanton, who reached out to Jack's family members again, and we all provided Fanny with the information we had surfaced in 2014. The end result was a memorial plaque honoring Jack. It was installed above the beach where he, and so many others, made history. Below is a photo of the memorial, which you can visit yourself in Normandy.

A brief video of the 2020 D-Day ceremony honoring Jack Weese in Saint Aubin-sur-Mer is available on YouTube.

Special thanks to Ken Stanton, who first brought Jack to my attention. Special thanks to Jack's surviving family members who helped fill in the pieces, especially Sally Connors, Dr. Kristeen Koebler, & Marti Watson. Special thanks to Fanny Hubart-Salmon who brought everything full circle and worked to permanently honor Jack on the beach in Normandy. In memory of John Alfred Weese, 1920 - 1944.

Friends!  I ask you, do you ever have a trouble that gnaws in the deep, dark hours before dawn in recalling all of your facts about Ann Arbor's mayors?  Do you find yourself at cocktail parties stammering your way through the biographical details of nineteenth-century local politicians while your more conversant friends laugh behind their glasses at the sorry state of your civic scholarship?  It's to be forgiven, dear friends, after all for a town that has been around for only 200 years, we've had a quite a few mayors, and that's a lot of Williams and Roberts and Edwards to keep straight--not to mention the Ingrid, the Ebenezer, and the Cyrenus.  

Which one was a scientist?  Which ones died in office?  Which ones were Whigs??  Well, worry no longer that you are fated to wallow evermore in community chronicle confusion!  Now YOU TOO can have all the most-pertinent details about the leaders of our fair city at your fingertips--LITERALLY* (*not literally) with the all-new Ann Arbor Mayor Trading Card Set!  

That's right your friends at the AADL Archives and the City Clerk's Office have teamed up to bring you an exciting set of cards both EDIFYING and ENTERTAINING that can teach you all the most important tidbits about every mayor of your town.  Who had the boldest fur-lined attire?  Who had the most odobenidaean moustache?  Who sported a topping pair of mutton chops?  IT'S ALL HERE!

And!  As an added bonus, these trading cards feature portraits of every mayor (or of every mayor we could find a portrait of) in newly-added color!  Some were already in color--we added more color anyway!  Experience local executive history like never before!  GET YOURS TODAY!

	George Sedgwick, 1851-1853, Whig Attorney Served as village president before the mayorship was established Primarily responsible for the Act of Incorporation, which became the first City Charter Retrieved the Act from Lansing after it passed the State Legislature in 1851 The charter called for four wards, an eight-member common council, a city recorder, greater taxing powers, authority to establish a police force, and a mayor, which he was promptly elected to become
	Edwin R. Tremain, 1853-1855, Whig Won mayorship with 249 votes (which gave him a sizable margin) To date, Ann Arbor's last Whig mayor President of Government Stock Bank and then the Bank of Washtenaw Contributed $100 to increase the size of the University Library No portrait is known to exist of Edwin Tremain, but his signature adorned many bank notes
	James Kingsley, 1855-1856, Democrat Nicknamed James “Honest Jim” Kingsley First member of the Washtenaw County Bar Member of the Territorial, then State Legislature Regent of the University of Michigan Moved to Ann Arbor in 1826, two years after its founding
	William Sumner Maynard, 1856-1858, 1865-1866 Son of Ann Arbor settler Ezra Maynard Wealthy land developer who owned grocery and dry goods stores Co-founder of the Ann Arbor Land Company, which convinced the University of Michigan to move Uncle by marriage to Charles Julius Guiteau, assassin of James Garfield, and hosted Charles in Ann Arbor as he applied for admittance to U of M (he was denied) Suffered from severe depression and died by suicide via morphine in 1866 (while still in office) While we have no portrait of William Maynard, we do have this one of his house
	Philip Bach, 1858-1859, Republican Born on March 20, 1820 in Baden-Württemberg, Germany Emigrated to America in 1829 Moved to Michigan in 1835 Owner of a successful dry goods store Elected to the School Board in 1857 and served for nearly 34 years Husband to Anna Botsford Bach, first female president of the School Board Namesake to Bach Elementary
	Robert J. Barry, 1859-1861, Republican Commanded part of Michigan’s 4th Infantry which was subsequently named “The Barry Guard” We don't know a lot about Robert J. Barry!
	John F. Miller, 1861-1862, Democrat Born in 1822 Banker at Miller & Webster Bankers Co. Candidate for State Treasurer in 1868 Candidate for Michigan Board of Regents in 1869 Died in 1885
	Charles Spoor, 1862-1863 Born in 1813 in New York Original pioneer of Ann Arbor in the 1830s Last remaining member of the pioneers to pass in September 1896 Harness-maker and blacksmith Citizens commended his "even temperment, unassailable integrity, and strict honesty in business" Strong advocate for the Union during the Civil War
	Ebenezer Wells, 1863-1865, Democrat Born May 26, 1813 Physician Built the Ebenezer Wells (later, Wells-Babcock) House at 208 N Division St President of the First National Bank, the first bank chartered in Michigan under the National Bank Act of 1863, from its founding to his death in 1882
	Oliver M. Martin, 1866-1868, Republican Moved to Ann Arbor in 1843 Physician City Marshal, 1858-1859, 1861-1864 & 1865-1866 Owner of Mielke’s Cafe, 120 E Washington St Introduced the first horse drawn hearse to the city for the funeral of his child
	Christian Eberbach, 1868-1869, Republican Born in Stuttgart, Germany Moved to Ann Arbor in 1838 Studied apothecary and chemistry at the Stuttgart Polytechnic First trained pharmacist in Ann Arbor Opened Washtenaw County’s first full pharmacy in 1843 Founding member of Ann Arbor Savings Bank and Bethlehem Church of Christ Member of the relief fire department Electorate for Michigan in 1864’s electoral college to re-elect Abraham Lincoln
	Alfred H. Partridge, 1869-1870 Owned Partridge’s Mill, located at the current corner of Packard and Hill Street Married to Eliza Black After his death, Eliza platted their fruit farm as Eliza Partridge's Addition in 1867, and added Pear, Apple, Peach and Plum Streets to the city We have no portrait of Alfred Partridge, so John James Audubon helped us fill in
	William D. Harriman, 1870-1871 & 1883-1885, Democrat Washtenaw County Probate Judge for four years Considered to have “honesty”, “capability” and “fidelity” as a judge Transparent about his expenses, including the $100 a day cost to run the County Court System Received the fewest appeals to his rulings of any judge in the state at the time
	Silas H. Douglass, 1871-1873 Born October 27, 1816 in Fredonia, New York Physician under Regent Zina Pitcher and Henry R. Schoolcraft Moved to Ann Arbor in 1843 Contributed to the creation of the University of Michigan Medical Department
	Hiram J. Beakes, 1873-1875, Democrat Born on September 6, 1827 in Middletown, New York Lawyer for Beakes & Cutcheon of Detroit Ann Arbor Township Assessor, 1845 Washtenaw County Circuit Court Commissioner, 1855-1857 State Representatives for Washtenaw County’s 2nd District, 1863-1864 County Probate Judge, 1864-1872 Father to Samuel W. Beakes, Ann Arbor mayor, 1888-1890
	Edward D. Kinne, 1875-1877, Republican Born in East Syracuse, New York Head Judge of Washtenaw County Circuit Court, 1888-1917 Married three times: Mary Churchill Hawkins, 1867-1882, Florence S. Kinne, 1884-1904, and Winifred N. Kinne, 1905-1917 Lived at 105 S. 5th Ave, across from present-day City Hall
	Densmore Cramer, 1877-1878, Democrat Born in 1828 in Onondaga County, New York Moved to Washtenaw County in 1838 Studied at Ypsilanti Seminary Studied at Nutting Academy at Lodi Plains starting in 1850 Attended Hanover College, transferred to the University of Michigan, then back to Hanover where he graduated from Delegate to the nominating convention for Abraham Lincoln in 1860 & Ulysses S. Grant in 1868 Died on May 16, 1902 in Ann Arbor
	Willard B. Smith, 1878-1880 & 1887-1888, Republican Born on March 7, 1838 in Orleans County, New York Moved to Ann Arbor in 1858 Graduate of the University of Michigan Medical School, 1861 Assistant Surgeon for the 1st Regiment of Michigan during the Civil War Stationed at Petersburg and Fortress Monroe Received his honorable discharge on November 14, 1863 Ann Arbor School Board member Chief of the Fire Department President of the Board of Public Works Director of the Ann Arbor Savings Bank
	John Kapp, 1880-1883 & 1885-1886, Democrat Born in 1841 in Northfield Township University of Michigan Department of Medicine and Surgery graduate, 1868 Practiced medicine until 1907 Member of the Golden Rule Lodge No. 159, Free and Accepted Masons of Michigan Died in 1911 in Los Angeles, California
	John Robison, 1886-1887, Democrat Farmer and teacher Selected for the State Senate in 1862 and 1864, declined another nomination in 1866 Delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1872 Nominated for Congress in 1874 and 1876, but defeated Member of the State House in 1878 and nominated for House Speaker Boasted that his nominations were never solicited, always bestowed upon him Assistant Prosecuting Attorney for Wayne County
	Samuel W. Beakes, 1888-1890, Democrat Son of Ann Arbor Mayor Hiram J. Beakes, 1873-1875 Prominent in the newspaper business as editor of the Westerville Review in 1884, the Adrian Michigan Daily Record 1884–1886, and the Ann Arbor Argus 1886–1905 Postmaster of Ann Arbor, 1894-1898 City Treasurer, 1891-1893 & 1903-1905 City Assessor, 1906-1913 Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1917-1919 Worked for the United States Department of Commerce & the United States Veterans’ Bureau until his death in 1927
	Charles H. Manly, 1890-1891, Democrat Fought for the Union Army Injured at the Battle of Gettysburg and lost his left arm Member of the Michigan House of Representatives, 1887-1888
	William G. Doty, 1891-1893, Democrat Born in Manchester, Michigan Grandson of Samuel Doty, member of the Michigan House of Representatives in 1838 Member of the Freemasons and Knights Templar
	Bradley M. Thompson, 1893-1894, Democrat Mayor of the City of East Saginaw, 1877-1879 University of Michigan Law School faculty, 1888-1911 Authored several books and journal articles regarding law Served three years in the U.S. Military, earning a distinguished record
	Cyrenus G. Darling, 1894-1895​, Republican Born in 1856 in Bethel, New York Physician Earned his MD from the University of Michigan in 1881 Dean of the University of Michigan Dental College, 1889 Built the Darling Block, 213-293 East Liberty, in 1915 for his private medical practice Contributed to the establishment of the St. Joseph Sanitarium, now the St. Joseph Mercy Health System, in 1911
In March 1895, the term of office of mayor and president of Council was extended to two years.
	Warren E. Walker, 1895-1897, Republican University of Michigan graduate Contractor and builder City Building Inspector alongside Gottlob Luick Alderman on City Council Described by one voter as “a good, sensible, everyday man, of excellent business ability, a reputation for honor, honesty and integrity”
	Charles E. Hiscock, 1897-1899, Republican Born on March 1, 1854 Banker and eventual Director of the Ann Arbor Savings Bank Namesake to Charles Street, which intersects with Daniel Street, namesake of his father Daniel Hiscock (also namesake of Hiscock Street). And did we mention Edward Street, which intersects with Charles Street and is namesake of Edward Hiscock (brother of Charles, son of Daniel)?  Died on November 1, 1920
	Gottlob Luick, 1899-1901, Democrat Born on September 19, 1849 in Lima Township to German immigrants One of 12 children Co-owned Luick Brothers Lumber Company (1873-1930) alongside brother Emmanuel Donated the land in 1931 that makes up the current Ann Arbor Farmers Market Died on September 17, 1931
	Royal S. Copeland, 1901-1903, Republican as Mayor Born in Dexter, Michigan Attended Michigan State Normal College (now, Eastern Michigan University) Taught in Sylvan Township in 1888 Earned his medical degree from the University of Michigan, 1889 Practiced medicine, 1890-1895 Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Michigan, 1895-1908 President of the Ann Arbor Board of Education, 1907-1908 President of the Ann Arbor Parks Commission Dean of New York Medical College Five-term President of the New York Board of Health starting in 1918 during the Spanish Influenza Pandemic Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1922, with Franklin D. Roosevelt serving as his honorary campaign manager Re-elected to the U.S. Senate in 1928 and 1934 Died during his third Senate term in 1938
	Arthur Brown, 1903-1905, Democrat Born on February 14, 1864 in Saline, Michigan Orphaned Attended Albion College Graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, 1894 County Clerk for Washtenaw County Ann Arbor Alderman Member of the Board of Education Officer and Director of the Washtenaw Abstract Company Board member of two local banks
	Francis M. Hamilton, 1905-1907, Republican Graduate of the University of Michigan, 1869 Willed $1,000 to the city for a drinking fountain, which still stands at the corner of North University and State Street Real estate developer who built Hamilton Place and numerous houses on Williams Street and Fifth Avenue
	James C. Henderson, 1907-1909, Democrat Candidate for Michigan’s 2nd District in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1908 Purchased the Ann Arbor Organ Company in 1896, which continued to build pianos under the Henderson name Moved the firm to Chicago in 1914 and established a factory in Texas Retired in 1919 and sons Jack and Jerry took over
	William L. Walz, 1909-1913, Democrat Born in Ann Arbor Served in the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War Alternative Michigan delegate to the Democratic National Convention, 1940 Assistant Cashier at the Ann Arbor Savings Bank, 1912-1917 Senior Warden at Fraternity Lodge No. 262, 1907
	Dr. R.G. MacKenzie, 1913-15, Republican Served as mayor six years after graduating from medical school Head of the University of Michigan’s Obstetrics Department Instrumental in expanding St. Joseph Mercy Hospital Built a house for his family at 1422 W Liberty St in Ann Arbor (currently The Rudolf Steiner Health Center) Moved to Frankfort Michigan in 1926 as his health was failing Died on June 8, 1934
	Charles A. Sauer, April - December, 1915, Republican Born on December 18, 1866 in Stratford, Ontario Responsible, alongside his brother John Sauer, for the construction of the first City Hall Died on December 6, 1915 of typhoid fever at St. Joseph’s Sanitarium six months into his mayorship
	Ernst M. Wurster, Acting Mayor 1915-1917 & Mayor 1917-1921, Democrat Rose to acting Mayor after Charles A. Sauer’s sudden death Sheriff of Washtenaw County, 1927 Alderman for the First Ward, 1913-1915 Michigan Highway Inspector for several years
	George E. Lewis, 1921-1925, Republican Graduate of the the University of Michigan College of Engineering Division Superintendent of the Eastern Michigan Edison Company, including the power plant at Argo Dam Formed the partnership of Ayers, Lewis, Norris and May hydraulic and electrical engineers Member of the Ann Arbor Rotary Club, and Secretary for 31 years
	Robert A. Campbell, 1925-1927 & 1933-37, Republican Born in Toronto, Canada Treasurer of the University of Michigan, 1911-1931 There is clearly more to be learned about Robert A. Campbell!
	Edward W. Staebler, 1927-1931, Democrat Born on December 26, 1872 in Lodi Township, Michigan Early automotive dealer Unsuccessfully ran for the Michigan House of Representatives in 1932 Father to U.S. Representative Neil Staebler, 1963-1965
	H. Wirt Newkirk, 1931-1933, Republican Graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, 1879 Founded the Williamsburg Times after moving to Kentucky in 1884 Moved back to Michigan in 1888 Appointed Interim Lake County Prosecuting Attorney, 1889 Elected Lake County Prosecuting Attorney, 1890 Member of the Shriners, the Odd Fellows, the Woodmen, and the Freemasons
	Walter C. Sadler, 1937-1941, Republican Unopposed in the 1939 mayoral election University of Michigan faculty and advisor for the Sigma Pi fraternity chapter Author of several books regarding transportation and engineering
	Leigh J. Young, 1941-1945, Republican Associate Professor of Forestry at the University of Michigan, 1911-1920 Served on the Ann Arbor Civilian Defense Corps during World War II Passionate about the environment and protecting natural resources Died on December 24, 1960
	William E. Brown Jr., 1945-1957, Republican Born on May 1, 1896 in Lapeer, MI Served in the U.S. Army during World War I Automobile dealer and insurance broker Elected mayor on the promise to “run the town like a business” Introduced parking meters, which funded the creation of the city’s first municipal parking structure at First and Washington Led the city as it doubled in size by encouraging new housing and “clean” industries
	Samuel J. Eldersveld, 1957-1959, Democrat Born in 1917 in Kalamazoo, Michigan Raised in Muskegon, Michigan B.A. from Calvin College M.A. and PhD in political science from the University of Michigan Served as Lieutenant in Navy Communications during World War II University of Michigan professor for 54 years, including during his mayorship Instrumental in the creation of Ann Arbor’s Human Rights Commission
	Cecil O. Creal, 1959-1965, Republican Served in the U.S. Navy during WWI President of the Ann Arbor Common Council during the last years in which the Council President presided over meetings Declined to run for a fourth term
	Wendell E. Hulcher, 1965-1969, Republican Served as a pilot in the U.S. Air Force during World War II Graduate of Illinois Wesleyan University and Harvard Business School Manager at Ford Motor Company, 1954-1967 Deputy Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Relations, 1969-1970 Staff member for the American Bicentennial Commission, 1975-1976 Professor of Economics at Florida Southern College, 1979-1993
	Robert J. Harris, 1969-1973, Democrat Born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts Graduate of Wesleyan University and Yale Law School Professor at the University of Michigan Law School, 1959-1974 Member of a liberal/radical coalition on City Council consisting of four Democrats and two Human Rights Party members Volunteer for Food Gatherers and reading tutor for children after his retirement Passionate about model airplanes and jazz
	James E. Stephenson, 1973-1975, Republican Born in 1926 in Iowa Studied engineering at Iowa State University Worked as an examiner for the U.S. Patent Office to pay for law school City Council member, elected in 1968 Nationally renowned patent attorney until his retirement in 2001 Subject of the 2006 book "Naked Came the Mayor" Helped raise millions for medical research into ALS Died on August 29, 2003
	Albert H. Wheeler, 1975-1978, Democrat Ann Arbor’s first African American mayor (and to date only) Master’s degree in microbiology from Iowa State University PhD from the University of Michigan School of Public Health University of Michigan professor of Microbiology and Immunology First tenured African American professor at the University of Michigan Co-founded the Ann Arbor Civic Forum in the 1960's after experiencing housing discrimination Winner of the 1977 election by 1 vote, leading to a special election in 1978 after it was contested in court
	Louis D. Belcher, 1978-85, Republican Born in 1939 5th Ward City Council member, 1974-1978 Winner of the 1978 “special election” Responsible for initiatives in energy policy, historic preservation, and economic development Established the Mayor's Energy Advisory Board in 1981 (known as the the Ann Arbor Energy Commission since 1985) Spearheaded the purchase and preservation of the Michigan Theater in 1979
	Edward C. Pierce, 1985-87, Democrat Born in Three Rivers, Michigan Raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan City Council member, 1964-1966 Served in the U.S. Air Force Earned his B.A. from the University of Michigan, 1955 Earned his M.D. from the University of Michigan, 1959 Participated in activism against the Vietnam War and the Fermi 2 Nuclear reactor Chair of the Family Practice Department, St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, until his retirement in 1996
	Gerald D. Jernigan, 1987-1991, Republican Born in 1942 in Flint, Michigan Served in the U.S. Air Force Earned his B.S. in Finance from Michigan State University Earned his M.B.A. from Western Michigan University Moved to Ann Arbor in the 1970s Investment officer for the University of Michigan until his retirement in 2001 4th Ward City Council member Spearheaded a voter referendum to raise city penalties for marijuana possession to $25 for a first offense Elected to the Board of Trustees for Washtenaw Community College in 2002
	Elizabeth S. Brater, 1991-1993, Democrat Earned her B.A. in English and M.A. in History from the University of Pennsylvania English Professor at the University of Michigan, starting in 1975 Third Ward City Council Member starting in 1988 Ann Arbor’s first female Mayor Established the city’s extensive recycling program Member of the Michigan House of Representatives for the 53rd District, 1995-2000 State Senator for Michigan’s 18th District, 2003-2010
	Ingrid B. Sheldon, 1993-2000, Republican City Council member, 1988-1993 Declined to run for a fourth term Last Republican mayor to date Remains active in the Ann Arbor community as a bookkeeper for the Huron Valley Tennis Club and member of the Ann Arbor Rotary Club
	John Hieftje, 2000-2014, Democrat Born in Battle Creek, Michigan Raised in Ann Arbor Graduated from Eastern Michigan University, 1997 First Ward City Council member, 1999-2000 Served on the boards of the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, Michigan Theater, Huron River Watershed Council, and Lake Superior Conservancy and Watershed Council Served as Co-Chair of the Washtenaw Metro Alliance and as Chair of Recycle Ann Arbor and of Urban Core Mayors of Michigan Passionate about environmental issues Longest serving mayor to date
	Christopher Taylor, 2014-Present​, Democrat Born on January 23, 1967 in New York City Attended Interlochen Arts Academy for his junior and senior years of high school Four time graduate from the University of Michigan: B.A. in English, B.M.A. in Vocal Performance, M.A. in American History, and J.D. Corporate and commercial attorney with Hooper Hathaway law firm Member of City Council for the Third Ward, 2008-2014 Has performed in a variety of community theaters and local choirs
Approved by City voters in November 2016, and effective with the mayoral election of November 2018, the term of office of mayor was extended to four years.

In August 1932, during the Great Depression, the first cooperative house at the University of Michigan was organized by graduate students in the Student Socialist Club. In return for four to five hours of work and two dollars every week, each of the founding eighteen members received room, board, barber, canning, and laundry service. The first house was a rental house located at 335 East Ann Street. The house was run collectively with all members having an equal vote on decisions. 

With the assistance of the Reverend Henry Lynn Pickerell, the student pastor of the Ann Arbor Disciples Church, and his wife Katheryn, two additional cooperative houses were formed in 1936 and 1937. The Pickerells welcomed students to live in their house in exchange for performing household chores. By 1936, eight students were living in the Pickerells’ attic. With the help of a $700 loan from Reverend Pickerell, the students rented a house on Thompson Street, first named the Student Cooperative House and then the Rochdale House. Since the University did not allow men and women to live together, the women who often visited the Rochdale House sought a cooperative house for themselves. The women rented a house at 517 East Ann Street and opened the Girls’ Cooperative House. In 1939, they had to move to 1511 Washtenaw Street, and took on a new name, the Alice Freeman House, named for the women’s rights activist.

The three independent houses, joining together to allow the purchase of items in quantity, formed the Inter-Cooperative Council in 1937. The houses were organized by the Rochdale principles: open membership; democratic control; political neutrality; opposition to discrimination by race or religion; and the promotion of education.

As the number of cooperative houses continued to expand in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the ICC became responsible for the houses’ financing and assignment of personnel to the houses. By 1941, eight men’s and three women’s cooperatives were operating in rented houses. During this expansion, all the houses were rented until 1943, when the A. K. Stevens House was purchased. Professor A. K. Stevens (the father of Ann Arbor’s late city historian, Wystan Stevens) served as a faculty advisor to the ICC and agreed to co-sign the loan to buy the house.

During World War II, many of the male students enlisted in the armed services. The cost of rental housing was increased by an influx of war factory workers. These two factors caused many of the cooperative houses to close. By 1946, only three cooperatives continued in operation. In 1944, during the war, the ICC voted to buy rather than rent property. After the war, the ICC centralized some functions to meet legal requirements and to limit the liability of the members. The titles to the houses were held in common and the charges at the different cooperatives were equalized through the centralization of finances.

In 1951, despite concerns from some students that paid leadership was at odds with cooperative values, the first ICC employee was hired when the cooperative students voted to approve the hiring of a full-time executive secretary. Luther H. Buchele was hired and continued to work for the ICC for nearly thirty-four years. The Korean War, as in World War II, led to a reduction in the number of male students. College students were not exempt from the draft. 

Over the ensuing years, there has been considerable growth in the number of cooperative houses and the number of students living in the houses. The Baby Boom following World War II created additional demand. Between 1967 and 1972, the ICC tripled in size from roughly 200 to 600 members. The number of cooperative houses grew from nine to twenty-two (this number includes the nine “houses”, now called suites, in the Escher house on North Campus). The number of full-time staff increased from one (Luther Buchele) to three and then four. It would be thirteen years before the ICC purchased another property.

In subsequent years, houses were bought, sold, renamed, renamed again, changed from men’s houses to women’s houses, from women’s houses to men’s houses, houses became co-ed houses, some houses became vegetarian. After a long period of planning and contention with the University, a large cooperative housing complex was built on North Campus, one cooperative became substance free, another focused on QTBIPOC (Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous People of Color), one house burned, and some houses combined. Ruth Bluck, who lived in three of the cooperative houses (Rochdale, Owen, and Osterweil) was the first woman to become ICC President, serving from 1946-1947. Forty-two years later, Jennifer Skwiertz (Minnie’s House) was the second woman elected as president of the ICC, 1978-1979.

The Inter-Cooperative Council now has a house at 337 E. William St. (above) that serves as its headquarters, an education center, and sixteen houses. Additional information on the Inter-Cooperative Council is available at the University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library. The Bentley Library has an extensive archive of materials donated by the Inter-Cooperative Council covering the period of 1932-2015 and the Inter-Cooperative Council at Ann Arbor website includes A Brief History of the Inter-Cooperative Council.
 

Co-op houses north of Central Campus (north of East Huron Street)

Co-op houses south of Central Campus (mostly south of Hill Street)

Co-op house west of Central Campus

Co-op house on North Campus

Three University of Michigan students, Alex Deighton, Curtis Hunt, and Paul Rizik, as part of the course Understanding Records and Archives: Principles and Practices (UMSI 580), in the University of Michigan’s School of Information, created a house-by-house history of each of the houses in the Inter-Cooperative Council at Ann Arbor. Some of that information helped in the writing of the descriptions of each of the houses.

For more information about the Inter-Cooperative Council at Ann Arbor, consult the 1994 book published by the council: In Our Own Hands: a History of Student Housing Cooperatives at the University of Michigan, by Amy Mericle, Suzanne Wilson, and James Jones.

The following excerpt is from the book's Afterword, "How This Book Came to Be," by Jim Jones:

“Until now, this history has largely been hidden away in filing cabinets, basements, and libraries. Of course, the current members are not totally ignorant of the past. Past written histories, stories of past exploits, and oral traditions – some of them apocryphal – have all given members a sense of how the co-ops came to be. This book, however, is the first attempt to exhaustively research and compile that rich heritage.”

For a few, brief years in the 1870s the Mozart Watch Factory of Ann Arbor was on the rise to rival the best watchmakers in America. Don Joaquin Mozart was one of Michigan’s “most promising inventors.” Called a “genius” in the New York Times, he patented 11 inventions related to clockwork. Yet his business skills never quite lived up to his innovations and he died in the county poorhouse. 

A Family Missing & A Family Made

The details of Mozart’s early life are uncertain. He was born in Italy sometime between 1820 and 1826 and moved to America with his family near the age of three. His father’s occupation varies by the source: he was a watchmaker and his son took after him, or a street musician distantly related to the more famous Mozart, or a man of wealth who fled Italy for political reasons and was assassinated in America. None of these are particularly likely, but what can be said with more confidence is that he died when Don was young. 

The remaining Mozart family ended up in the Boston area. It was near the harbor there, when Don was around the age of 9, that he was lured onto a ship “by the promise of curious shells” and taken out to sea. It wasn’t uncommon for ships to capture young men or boys as crew members when they couldn’t find volunteers for arduous journeys, and they often preyed upon poor immigrants. Young Don Mozart sailed for seven years. He searched for his family when he returned, but his efforts failed and he never saw his mother or siblings again.

Fending for himself, Don found work as a tradesman where his skill at mechanics became clear. By age 30 or so he was the established owner of a jewelry store in Xenia, Ohio and filed his first patent for an “automatic fan” propelled by clockwork. The patent advertised a quieter machine that would be particularly useful for fanning the sick or sleeping, and keeping bugs away. With his profession secured, he married Anna Maria Huntington on September 4, 1854.

Don and Anna started their family in Ohio, welcoming their first daughter, Donna Zeralla, on February 28, 1857 and then their second, Estella Gertrude, on November 28, 1858. Don continued to invent, patenting an improved clock escapement (the mechanism that moves the timepiece’s hands at precise intervals) in 1859 wherein he listed himself as a resident of Yellow Springs, Ohio. By 1862 the family had relocated to New York City and welcomed one more daughter, Anna Violet. 

Career Clockmaker

As a resident of New York Don patented another improved clock and watch escapement in 1863 with Levi Beach and Laporte Hubbell credited alongside him. The three men followed this in January 1864 with a simplified and more compact calendar clock that claimed to register leap years and run for a year with one winding.

Don’s talents gained him enough recognition that a company was created to produce his patents. The Mozart Watch Company was established in the spring of 1864 in Providence, Rhode Island and the family relocated there. Capital of $100,000 was secured along with a factory and machinery. Then, before any product seems to have been produced, the stockholders pulled out in the spring of 1866. No distinct reason could be found to explain their change of heart, other than a new belief that they wouldn’t earn a return on their investment. Don was replaced as superintendent, the company was renamed the New York Watch Company and, in contrast to the name, moved to Springfield, Massachusetts. 

Less than a year later, in January of 1867, Don Mozart began anew in Ann Arbor. Advertisements for “Mozart & Co,” a dealer in clocks, watches, jewelry, and silver-plated ware, ran in the Michigan Argus. The shop was located in the Gregory Block on the corner of Huron and Main. Still tinkering with timepieces, his first patent in this new era was filed in July of 1867 wherein he listed himself as living in New York despite his new store in Michigan. Regardless of the residency, the patent was granted on December 24, 1867 and became the basis of his even greater business venture in Ann Arbor. 

Michigan’s Mozart Watch Company

By the summer of 1868 the second Mozart Watch Company was progressing in Ann Arbor. According to a July 24, 1868 article in the Michigan Argus, “the capital for testing the invention has been furnished, a building secured in which to commence operations, an engine put up, the best of machinery purchased, and a force of experienced mechanics set to work, not exactly making Watches, but making tools with which to stock the factory.” The goal was to produce watches based on the recently issued patent that contained no dead-center or setting-point and required only a small number of parts, allowing for cheaper production.

The company’s growth continued, occupying three stories of Dr. Chase's building according to the February 19, 1869 issue of the Michigan Argus. The article concluded, “We shall expect to see the company soon turning out A. No. 1 watches.” On New Years Eve 1869 a gold watch was presented to Reverend Charles H. Brigham of the First Unitarian Church, confirming that the Mozart Watch Company had managed to start production.

Just six months later the Michigan Argus was pleading with citizens to prevent the company from leaving the city. It had “turned out a number of beautiful watches,” but “the few men who took hold of the enterprise find themselves without means to prosecute the work on the large scale which is necessary to make it a success, and that they have not met the encouragement and support which they had a right to expect from the community at large.” 

Advisors to businessmen from Milwaukee and New York had visited the factory to assess the machinery and patent’s chances of success. “The agent of the Milwaukee parties – a practical man – pronounces the watch, and clock soon to come out, a perfect success…If Milwaukee men stand ready to invest $300,000 in it, cannot our capitalists be induced to invest one third of that sum to retain it here?”

The appeals went unanswered and a group from Rock Island, Illinois bought out the Mozart Watch Company, renaming it the Rock Island Watch Company. Then, like in Providence, the company failed to produce anything before the stockholders withdrew their support. A lawsuit commenced in the fall of 1871, alleging fraud in the sale. The battle concluded in the fall 1873 when it was dissolved after an appeal.

Panic & Final Patents

Just as the court case was wrapping up a greater worry replaced it. The financial panic of 1873 swept the nation and the local banking house of Miller & Webster closed its doors for good in September of that year. The Michigan Argus reported that “a large share of the losses will fall upon parties illy able to bear them,” and this seems to have included Don Mozart. 

Don had always been reliant upon his strengths in innovation. He is recounted as saying, “that he never knew the time when, if he was short of money, he could not hide himself in a hole for a month, and work out an idea that would bring him $1,000.” The article concludes that “money has come to him so easily he has valued it little, has spent it with a prodigal generosity, not to say reckless, and having, most of his life, no special occasion for what is called business shrewdness has in later years been victimized by speculators in his genius.” As he had all his life, he persisted, and that same fall the Michigan Argus included an advertisement for watch repairs by Don Mozart.  

Before the loss of his savings, Don had filed a series of three patents that were approved in July of 1873: another improved escapement, an upgrade to calendar clocks, and a self winding watch. This trio held the potential to earn his savings back. They were designed to be used together in one watch that would include dials showing the month, day of the month, day of the week, AM or PM, quarter seconds, seconds, minutes and hour. It would be wound by the user opening and shutting the watch case five or six times a day and no damage would be sustained by heavier use. He is said to have gone to New York to find funding, but the wealthy residents who would be able to offer the capital were away at their summer homes and he was told to return later.

Always seeking improvement, he took a portion of the watch apart during the interim and lost a piece of it in the process. He was never able to figure out how to put it together again. Before he could return to New York, he lost control of his mind. On December 2, 1874, Don Mozart was taken to what was then known as the “Michigan Asylum for the Insane” in Kalamazoo. Reports claimed that his “fits of temporary insanity” had been going on “for some time” and that up until his removal to Kalamazoo “he was talking extravagantly but coherently enough, of his brilliant prospects and the wealth and success that awaited him, and detailed to friends minutely the terms of an agreement that he claimed to have just made with persons in New York, though he had never gone to that City after his visit in the early Summer.”

The papers attributed his loss of reality to “the strain upon his mind made by his newly invented watch” and the failure of Miller & Webster. In 1875 he was moved to the Washtenaw County Poor House, and died there on March 15, 1877 at the reported age of 58. He was buried at Forest Hill Cemetery and obituaries were carried in papers across the country. 

Collectible Chronometers

It is difficult to determine exactly how many Mozart watches were finished. Estimates vary from 13, to 30, to only a few. The examples that were reported on or have since been located often contain personalized engravings indicating that they were made for investors and friends. They remain as exemplary samples of American watchmaking and their rarity makes them highly sought after by collectors. 

In 2016, a "Chronometer-Lever Escapement" watch signed "Mozart Watch Co., Ann Arbor, Mich., No. 7, Don J. Mozart Patent Dec. 24, 1868" was sold by the auction house Bonhams for $5,250 (the patent date seemed to be a mistake, corresponding instead with the patent of December 24, 1867). Sotheby's auctioned another in 2004 as part of their “Masterpieces from the Time Museum” group. 

Remaining watches can be found as part of the National Watch and Clock Museum, the Paul M. Chamberlain collection, which was displayed at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1921 and found a permanent home at Michigan State University, and the Washtenaw County Historical Society.

In 1956, on empty land behind the Botsford Tile business on West Stadium Boulevard, 27-year-old Don Botsford constructed Ann Arbor's first commercial fitness center. From the outside it wasn't much to look at, just a simple 33 x 66-foot concrete block building with a Unistrut ceiling. Don built much of the structure himself, on property owned by his father Tom Botsford. The building still stands today, as part of Top of the Lamp at 415 S Maple Road. The Botsfords were an old Ann Arbor family, dating back to the pioneering days of the city. Don had graduated from Ann Arbor High School in 1946, and then attended Central Michigan University where he majored in physical education and minored in health education. Don felt that his hometown of Ann Arbor needed to improve its approach to the health and well-being of its citizens, and decided to take matters into his own hands. After years of working at his father's tile shop, and saving money for his dream, Don was finally ready to welcome the public into his new facility. He called it Ann Arbor Gymkhana.

gymkhana, noun: a meet featuring sports contests or athletic skills

Ann Arbor Gymkhana appeared in the city long before local businesses offered HIIT workouts, boot camps, pilates, CrossFit, barre classes, and all the other endless exercise options you can think of. Fitness machines weren't readily available. 1950s workouts typically involved calisthenics, and basic equipment like dumbbells and barbells. Extra frills might include hula hoops and jump ropes. Don Botsford's new business offered Ann Arbor a new twist to physical fitness: trampolines. In an Ann Arbor News article, Don boldly claimed "I bet I can get kids on a trampoline faster than on a dance floor". He declared his new business "the only one of its kind in the country, with its safe floor level type of trampolines, and its combination of weightlifting and gymnastics apparatus".

Weights & Trampolines

Opening the first commercial fitness center in town had its drawbacks. One obstacle was the reputation of weight lifting. According to Don Botsford, University of Michigan football coach Fritz Crisler gave his players detentions if he found out they were lifting weights. "They thought it would cause their players to lose all their coordination and become big, dumb weight lifters." Trampolines were also a relatively new method of exercise for Ann Arbor. Botsford himself had benefited from a combination of weight training and trampoline skills, and worked hard to convince townies of the health benefits. Safety was an important factor in using all of the equipment, and instructional classes were emphasized. Don Botsford also encouraged women to visit Gymkhana, an innovative view at the time. His enthusiasm for living a healthy lifestyle, along with his charisma, drew people of all ages to the new business.

Athletically, Ann Arbor Gymkhana was a great success. During the first eight years of business, Botsford coached weightlifters and trampolinists to win more than 125 awards in each sport, including some national and state titles. Many were in the Michigan Association of Gymnastics (MAG). One notable group to frequent the facility, and accumulate awards, was the Huntzicker family.

George Huntzicker, who frequented Ann Arbor Gymkhana as a child, would go on to lead Ann Arbor High School to a State Championship in 1965 by placing first in trampoline, floor exercise, and vault. He attended the University of Michigan, joined the gymnastics team, and was NCAA champion on the trampoline in 1968 and 1970. George also won the silver medal in the 1970 World Trampoline Championships. Newt Loken, who coached the University of Michigan's gymnastic teams from 1947 to 1983, says he believes George Huntzicker excelled and went on to win the world championship largely due to Don Botsford's coaching skills at Ann Arbor Gymkhana.

Tramp-O-Leap

In the summer of 1960, Ann Arbor Gymkhana experienced some competition in the nearby city of Ypsilanti. A franchise known as Tramp-O-Leap, which billed itself as an outdoor "trampoline playground", was spreading around the United States and Canada. Ypsilanti Tramp-O-Leap opened at 205 Ecorse Road in July. It offered 10 floor level trampolines available for 50 cents per half hour, from 10 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week. Not to be outdone, Gymkhana installed four outdoor trampolines, also available for 50 cents per half hour, one month later. Don Botsford called Gymkhana's outdoor experience "Uppen-Gebouncen Floppenfielt". Ypsilanti Tramp-O-Leap didn't last long, but helped to fuel the growing trampoline craze.

Spaceball

Many local residents who remember Ann Arbor Gymkhana will tell you it was THE PLACE TO PLAY SPACEBALL. The game first surfaced at Huron Valley Swim Club in Ann Arbor. When the response was favorable, Don Botsford installed Spaceball trampolines in Ann Arbor Gymkhana.

To understand Spaceball, it's helpful to know a bit about the history of trampolines. A gymnast named George Nissen is credited with designing the first commercial trampoline in the 1940s. His "tumbling device" was granted a U.S. patent in 1945. In World War II, the military used trampolines as training devices for pilots who handled difficult air maneuvers in combat. Near the end of the war George Nissen met a pilot named Scott Carpenter who had gone through the trampoline training. Carpenter would later become one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts and introduced the trampoline into space training at NASA. Together, George Nissen and Scott Carpenter would eventually create a game for astronauts using specially modified trampolines. Carpenter called it "the best conditioning exercise for space travel." Naming the game "Spaceball" was an obvious choice. Combining elements of volleyball and basketball, bouncing players try to put a ball through a hole in a net. If your opponent fails to catch the ball, you get a point. Behind each player a special Spaceball trampoline tilts vertically on each end so in addition to bouncing on your feet, you are able to fall backwards and rebound just as easily. The game combines aerobic exercise and manual dexterity with balance and body control, offering a great workout.

One group of female gymnasts who trained at Ann Arbor Gymkhana became well known in the niche world of Spaceball competition. (See advertisement below.) In 1965, four of these gymnasts traveled to New York City for a Sports Illustrated photo shoot covering the sport. "Like astronauts in orbit, the aerial gymnasts on these pages counteract the force of gravity as they volley the ball in a fast-moving new game called Spaceball." The photos displayed the gymnasts, clad in bright red leotards, on Spaceball trampolines.

The Fitness Business

Behind the athletic success and good vibes of Ann Arbor Gymkhana was the stark financial reality of running a business. Despite his hard work, and the enormous support he gave local athletes, Don Botsford rarely turned a profit. In a 2001 Ann Arbor Observer article, the grim details were shared. According to Botsford, he earned just $5,800 in his first year of business and "didn't make anything". His income in 1959 was $1,200. In 1960 it was only $268. In 1961 Ann Arbor Gymkhana finished in the red with a loss of $246. Don shared that the business had about 200 regulars in its heyday, during the 60s and 70s. Thousands came to take trampoline lessons, casually jump, or play Spaceball, but "the numbers never added up". Ann Arbor Gymkhana was often crowded in the winter, but summers were lean. As a married man with four children, he worked multiple jobs outside of the fitness center to make ends meet. Sign painter, bookstore clerk, and selling hot dogs at A&W were all on the list.

Despite the financial struggle, Don Botsford was committed to keeping Ann Arbor Gymkhana open. He wasn't in it for the money, he was simply passionate about fitness. In 1965, he added a sauna - the first public sauna in Ann Arbor - to the building. In 1967, Ann Arbor Gymkhana doubled in size and enlarged shower and locker rooms. In 1971 the interior balcony was extended to make room for selling health supplements.

Other fitness centers were starting to appear in the area, which took customers away from Ann Arbor Gymkhana. In 1974 a million dollar Vic Tanny health club was opened in Ann Arbor. It featured cardio equipment, a swimming pool, Finnish saunas, whirlpool mineral baths, handball and paddleball courts, sun & steam rooms, special diet plans, and lots of instructors. Vic Tanny advertisements featuring women in bikinis were a level of business competition that Ann Arbor Gymkhana had never seen before. Don Botsford's facility still appealed to children, but many local adults left him behind for the flashier new businesses in town. He decided that his business must grow with the times, and began to design a new dream facility.

Unfortunately, a new Ann Arbor Gymkhana never came to be. After numerous attempts to secure the funds needed to build a state of the art fitness center, Don Botsford finally closed his business in 1986. Ann Arbor Gymkhana was just shy of 30 years old. He went on to pursue other ventures, namely a nature preserve on the edge of the city, but nothing had the spark of the original Ann Arbor Gymkhana. Botsford never gave up on his commitment to bring the public a form of fitness that was fun. His obituary, published in 2011, mentioned "He was still actively instructing trampoline and spaceball at the time of his death".

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.
 

Learn More

Articles | Photos | Oral Histories

Read about Jones School

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

It all began with an advertisement on the front page of the Ann Arbor News. It was Saturday, January 8, 1938, and readers were encouraged to visit page 5 of the newspaper to meet Bobby and the Old Professor "(who knows almost everything)" for an adventure in science. "The feature, written by R. Ray Baker, is intended especially for children but grownups will like it, too."

R. Ray Baker was a known quantity to readers of local newspapers. In 1923 he became managing editor of the Ann Arbor News, then known as the Ann Arbor Times-News, and served in that capacity until 1934 when he became Associate Editor. Baker was also a feature and science writer for affiliated Booth Newspapers, Inc. (Saginaw News, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen-Patriot, Muskegon Chronicle, Bay City Times, Kalamazoo Gazette, & Ann Arbor News). He published articles nearly every day, and tried to keep the public informed on new developments in the fields of science and medicine. Much of his information came from interviewing University of Michigan staff members, and professors regularly cooperated with him on major stories.

Bobby, The Old Professor, And (Sometimes) Julia

The launch of R. Ray Baker's new Bobby and the Old Professor series was geared toward a young audience, but aimed to educate adults as well. The premise was simple: "Bobby" was a boy of roughly 10 years old who was curious about the world around him and had lots of questions. The "Old Professor" had all of the answers. With each article, a photograph depicting their weekly adventure would be published as well. Ann Arbor News photographer Eck Stanger shot all of the staged images for the series. "Bobby" was portrayed by R. Ray Baker's son Russell, and the "Old Professor" was retired University of Michigan Mathematics Professor William H. Butts. Baker thought of the "Old Professor" as a composite of all of the U of M faculty men he had interviewed over the years, and felt that Professor Butts had an appearance to fit this role. Later in the series the character of "Julia" was added, the female counterpart to "Bobby," and Jackie Carl portrayed that role in the photographs.

Scientific Adventures In Newspapers

R. Ray Baker's very first Bobby and the Old Professor article was titled "What's A Leaf?". Each week Baker would consult with experts at the University of Michigan to ensure the accuracy of his writing. Scientific mysteries would be explained in simplified language. Topics varied throughout the first year of the series from radios to turkeys, ancient pottery, the northern lights, quicksand, linotype machines, fire, sabre-toothed tigers, the four seasons, and volcanos.

The scientific adventures of Bobby and the Old Professor (and sometimes Julia) appeared originally in Booth Newspapers, Inc. publications. The Flint Journal, for example, ran the series as part of their "Children's Corner," which eventually grew into the "Wide Awake Club" page in Sunday issues. By March 1938, R. Ray Baker was encouraging children to participate in the series. "WRITE TO THE OLD PROFESSOR," the headline declared. "Boys and girls are invited to write to the Old Professor, in care of this newspaper, for explanation of anything that puzzles them." Soon the Old Professor was directly answering children's science questions in the series, increasing readership of the already popular articles.