I Remember When (Bicentennial Remix)

Fri, 11/29/2024 - 11:40pm

When: 2024

In 2022, the staff of the AADL Archives discovered and had digitized a collection of interviews that had gone into the making of the library's I Remember When series of television programs for Ann Arbor's sesquicentennial in 1974*.  We all knew what the folks in 1974 had made from these interviews, but we thought it might be interesting to see what someone from 2024 would do with the same set of footage.  So we handed the whole lot to filmmaker Aaron Valdez, who combed through 17 hours of footage to create this 15-minute remix for the bicentennial.  Aaron explores the personalities of the interviewees, the stories they tell (complete with contradictions), and the mishaps they all left behind in creating this now 50-year-old work of local history.

*See Ann Arbor 200 release #169

Transcript

• [00:00:11] TED TROST: This is Ann Arbor, 150-years-old on May 24th, 1974. Hi. I'm Ted Trost, and welcome to ''I Remember When.'' Telling the story of the important events that have happened in Ann Arbor's 150-year-old history. The entire series will be recorded on videotape so that future generations of Ann Arbor may see and hear what it was like.
• [00:00:38] CATHERINE ANDERSON: It's making a funny noise.
• [00:00:41] TED TROST: Way back when, in 1974.
• [00:00:43] JOHN FEINER: Around the rugged rock the ragged rascal ran.
• [00:00:47] TED TROST: The year Ann Arbor celebrated her sesquicentennial.
• [00:00:50] CATHERINE ANDERSON: Are we going?
• [00:00:52] TED TROST: I'll just turn and and we'll go on...
• [00:00:55] LINNIA KNOX CARPENTER: This is going to ruin the whole thing.
• [00:00:57] NAN SPARROW: Are you running it now?
• [00:00:58] FREDERICK WAHR: Is this on?
• [00:00:59] TED TROST: We'll be talking with some of the people who remember those events.
• [00:01:02] ANTHONY PREKETES: Hi folks.
• [00:01:06] TED TROST: And who played a part in shaping Ann Arbor's history. Join me now as we take a nostalgic look at the past. Do you remember the names of John Allen and Elisha Rumsey? These revered gentlemen founded what is presently downtown Ann Arbor on February 6th, 1824. Allen, who was living in Virginia at the time, suddenly decided he was going to go west and seek his fortune. He didn't even tell his wife where he was going. There was a natural arbor at the corner of First and Huron Street. Here, Ann Rumsey, the wife of Elisha, would often sit and do her work. It was truly Ann's arbor.
• [00:01:42] DOUGLAS CRARY: It's a little difficult to think of pioneer wives in an arbor having tea or something of this sort. I think they were much too busy for that.
• [00:01:50] TED TROST: This is the most probable explanation of how Ann Arbor got her name.
• [00:01:56] EDITH KEMPF: The federal government had land for sale west of the city of Detroit. There were already fairly big farms, people of English descent and this Conrad Bessinger wrote them back to a village called Thierhaupten.
• [00:02:12] DOUGLAS CRARY: A few settle, they write home.
• [00:02:14] JOHN FEINER: Come to Ann Arbor, it's just like home because you have that little winding road, little hills, little streams between here and Dexter, and that's identical to the area in Germany.
• [00:02:24] EDITH KEMPF: As soon as that Erie Canal was opened, then quite a few Germans came.
• [00:02:27] FREDERICK WAHR: Businesses originally were in the hands of the old American citizens of Ann Arbor. As that generation passed, the Germans came into stronger control.
• [00:02:36] JOHN HATHAWAY: The Second Ward was considered Germantown. The people in the Second Ward all spoke the Swabish German dialect.
• [00:02:45] FREDERICK WAHR: I always think of the Second Ward as one of the loveliest places in Ann Arbor. Beautiful homes, beautiful yards, beautiful gardens, fruit trees.
• [00:02:53] ANTHONY PREKETES: I used to go to German school and used to be church, and they had little school classes on the side. My brothers are here before. That's what really draw me here.
• [00:03:03] HELEN KOKALES: The war started, and depression was in Greece. He thought we'll come here and work.
• [00:03:09] FRANK KOKENAKES: I came New York to Ellis Island, and from there, friend of mine, he says," Let's go to Ann Arbor."
• [00:03:15] ANTHONY PREKETES: We started candy store and ice cream.
• [00:03:19] FRANK KOKENAKES: I worked on State Street on the shoe business.
• [00:03:21] GERALD HOAG: I came to Ann Arbor in 1919 to take over the Majestic Theater.
• [00:03:26] OSIAS ZWERDLING: At that time he used to make ladies clothes to order and I was recommended and that's why I came to Ann Arbor. That's where my luck changed for the better.
• [00:03:35] H.C. CURRY: Got this ad in Little Rock, Arkansas, said they was needing carpenters out here. I told him I was a carpenter, and I was a Black man. He said, if you was here Monday morning, that was Saturday evening. He said you can go to work Monday. I need carpenters bad.
• [00:03:45] GERALD HOAG: But when I came here, my understand it was only 15,000 people and we had streetcars, and State Street wasn't paved.
• [00:03:54] JOHN HATHAWAY: There were two systems. There was the interurban line which ran from Detroit out to Jackson as a local stop railroad and it ran along the center of Packard Street.
• [00:04:02] BILL BISHOP: Trains every hour.
• [00:04:03] DAVID INGLIS: He walked over to the corner of Packard and Wells and took him two hours to get into Detroit.
• [00:04:08] JOHN HATHAWAY: Then there was the local trolley, which was just around town, which went around the campus and down to the Depot and down around Main Street and back around to the car barns, which were out by Burns Park.
• [00:04:20] DAVID INGLIS: They talk about we ought to have mass transit. We used to have mass transit.
• [00:04:23] BILL BISHOP: We did have it.
• [00:04:25] DAVID INGLIS: There's a place where Lincoln Avenue dips down to Cambridge. If you gave a good dose of soap to the rails on both sides of that dip. He had an awful time getting out, and that was just great fun for Halloween.
• [00:04:39] ANTHONY PREKETES: During the WWI I was enlisted. We used to stay, our bunk is in the Michigan Union. It was unfinished at that time. In September it was real cold. I remember we all freeze to death.
• [00:04:53] LELA DUFF: I remember running out in the hall and running clear around the building. "Hear those bells? That means Armistice." Everybody poured out in the streets, there were parades and all sorts of excitement.
• [00:05:07] EDITH KEMPF: Things really changed after WWI in Ann Arbor. Some people were terribly ashamed of their German ancestry.
• [00:05:14] PAUL KEMPF: You're torn in one direction and you're torn in the other direction, and the young kids don't know which way to go.
• [00:05:20] FRED LOOKER: We knew there was a depression. There was no doubt about that because we had a welfare load that had to be taken care of.
• [00:05:26] NEIL STAEBLER: The city's total welfare appropriation was gone in maybe two months.
• [00:05:33] EMANUEL HAAS: Veterans Park. The church, they had a tent out there and they served meals. They used to go out there at six o'clock in the morning until six or eight o'clock at night.
• [00:05:43] JOHN HATHAWAY: During prohibition, there was a lot of amateur brewing and wine making. Everybody had a vineyard in his backyard. Everybody had an apple tree that he could make cider, and everyone had a big crock that they could make home brew in.
• [00:05:59] FREDERICK WAHR: All through World War II, here, the German staff. We had the soldiers here. The soldiers had to take German.
• [00:06:05] ALVA GORDON SINK: I was a full time volunteer with the Red Cross. Well, none of us anticipated Pearl Harbor.
• [00:06:11] JOHN HATHAWAY: The Japanese language school was taught by Nisei Americans and these Nisei were people who had been displaced from California and the university and the Ann Arbor community was quite outraged by the way these people were being treated. There was a program for any of the Nisei Americans who wanted to come to Ann Arbor and the armed forces took advantage of that then and training people and preparing them for military service in the Far East.
• [00:06:38] JOHN FEINER: I remember the night the war ended. I don't know where all the cars came from. All the people. Everybody was out. I had a car at that time, and people would just climb on your car, and you drove up and down the streets and around the town, big celebration.
• [00:06:53] ALBERT DUKEK: In July 1939, we had our first German picnic out here. We opened it to the public. But we didn't have hardly anything. We didn't have a well, so we had to drink beer. [LAUGHTER].
• [00:07:07] GEORGE SAUTER: Beer was always around [LAUGHTER] [MUSIC]
• [00:07:17] TED TROST: Believe it or not, the Greeks and the Germans are alike in many ways. [MUSIC].
• [00:07:28] TED TROST: Unfortunately, we can't look at everything, but there's more to come.
• [00:07:32] A.D. MOORE: I was the main influence in bringing parking meters here over some dead bodies.
• [00:07:36] JOHN HATHAWAY: Some of the people used to take the parking meters right out of the wet concrete, and pull them out and throw them out in the street. They thought that the whole thing was a violation of a basic constitutional right to park your car anywhere you wanted to.
• [00:07:48] A.D. MOORE: Perhaps the outstanding thing that happened during my years on the council was adopting a new city charter.
• [00:07:54] NAN SPARROW: In the '40s, it had got so cumbersome and so out of date. Concerned citizens, realized the only way we could have an improvement would be a complete revision. We depicted the city government as a big modern van being pulled uphill by a rickety old horse. We persuaded four or five of our own members to run for the council. Before you knew it, we had a majority on the council. In the long run, some of those people who were in office even took credit for it.
• [00:08:27] H.C. CURRY: I got a taxi cab that came out to the Veterans Hospital, and when I went out went to work, you better believe me, every carpenter on that job quit working. He said "they struck", wouldn't go to work with me. That's true right here in Ann Arbor. He went out and told the steward out there that said "this man gonna work here." Said "if you guys don't want to work with him, you can go because I can get more just like I got you." They stayed off about two hours and finally came back with the work. But you feel funny when you get a group of guys, and they act that way about you. Well, I was afraid I didn't know whether they might try to hurt me or not.
• [00:08:58] LINNIA KNOX CARPENTER: I was accepted into the YWCA, and no Black boy need to even think about going to the YMCA. Many of the eating places, especially the Blacks couldn't go in. The waitresses would look around, and other people would come in, they'd serve them.
• [00:09:19] H.C. CURRY: You couldn't buy a house in certain places in Ann Arbor for a long time.
• [00:09:23] LETTY WICKLIFFE: The powers that be decided where the Blacks were going to live, then you were sold property in that area.
• [00:09:31] H.C. CURRY: We would picket 24 hours rallying up, night and day. Somebody walking the street every minute into the night, all night long on account the houses in this town, to get houses for Black people live in.
• [00:09:42] GUY LARCOM: Ann Arbor has never had urban renewal.
• [00:09:45] LETTY WICKLIFFE: The North Central Property Owners Association had been organized by my brother, Walter S Wickliffe, who was trying to save the area from urban renewal and through his efforts and the efforts of other people in the area who understood the things that were wrong about urban renewal, urban renewal was defeated.
• [00:10:08] GUY LARCOM: In retrospect, this has probably been good. By renovating and restoring buildings that have some real character, architectural, historical significance, not only do you get an attractive building, a series of buildings, you get an area that's attractive to business.
• [00:10:24] TED TROST: As we've seen throughout the history of Ann Arbor, there's always been a demand for more change, more growth.
• [00:10:30] ALVA GORDON SINK: Ann Arbor has changed greatly, but I think most communities have changed.
• [00:10:36] NEIL STAEBLER: Our problem in the future here is to keep a balance between students and townspeople.
• [00:10:42] LINNIA KNOX CARPENTER: The young people are exposed to so many different things now than they were when I came to Ann Arbor, I shall say. I never heard of LSD and all of these other things.
• [00:10:53] JOHN FEINER: You walk down Main Street. You can walk three, four blocks, you may not see anyone you know, but 20 years ago, you knew just about everybody.
• [00:11:01] GERALD HOAG: Good morning, How are you? Hello. I did to everybody. I didn't have to know them, I just spoke to 'em and I got the funniest looks you ever saw in your life. They thought I was nuts.
• [00:11:09] PAUL KEMPF: We lock our home, we do things that we never used to. You leave them, I never had a key to my home and we lived down Division Street. We'd come home and find people in there, and they're always friends. They're waiting for us to get back.
• [00:11:20] ANTHONY PREKETES: It used to be a model city and more crime lately. It's just terrible. You're afraid to get out of the streets anymore.
• [00:11:26] ALVA GORDON SINK: When letters come in from near and far, saying, we're so sorry to hear about the crime wave in Ann Arbor. I immediately write back and say Ann Arbor is still a wonderful place to live.
• [00:11:40] NEIL STAEBLER: The great virtue of Ann Arbor is that a person from any country, any walk of life, any kind of philosophy, any skill, is located here in Ann Arbor, and you can find them, and you can get acquainted with them.
• [00:11:56] NAN SPARROW: I have met some of the finest women I have ever known with a serious attitude toward life, not just the chit-chat that you get at cocktail parties or at teas. You get under the surface, and I made lifelong friends.
• [00:12:16] LETTY WICKLIFFE: I found out in order to help the area one had to become involved.
• [00:12:21] OSIAS ZWERDLING: My own life. I am very grateful to this day, but all that I've learned, it is from the good people in Ann Arbor.
• [00:12:30] GERALD HOAG: The fun is in pleasing the people. I made it worthwhile working every Sunday and every holiday and every Christmas, New Year's, and so forth, and so on.
• [00:12:39] FRANK MINIKES: I'm more happy and going to miss anything else.
• [00:12:42] TED TROST: You really are.That's good.
• [00:12:44] FRANK MINIKES: Well, I like to see the people. I've been in the restaurant business all my life.
• [00:12:50] LINNIA KNOX CARPENTER: This is a thing that kept me going or made me happy, is working with people.
• [00:12:56] NEIL STAEBLER: You can live the most interesting life here in Ann Arbor of any place I can imagine. I would not want to live anywhere else.
• [00:13:07] TED TROST: I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse of how it used to be and what it's likely to become. [NOISE]
• [00:13:14] JOHN FEINER: Thanks very much.
• [00:13:16] CATHERINE ANDERSON: I think that's good.
• [00:13:17] TED TROST: Thanks a lot.
• [00:13:18] GERALD HOAG: Entirely welcome.
• [00:13:19] CATHERINE ANDERSON: I think that's it.
• [00:13:19] TED TROST: Thank you very much, Mr. Moore.
• [00:13:22] NAN SPARROW: Can you pick out enough then from what we've said?
• [00:13:25] TED TROST: Thank you very much.
• [00:13:26] FREDERICK WAHR: Oh, good god, you're welcome.
• [00:13:28] CATHERINE ANDERSON: Thank you.
• [00:13:29] GUY LARCOM: Is that it?
• [00:13:31] CATHERINE ANDERSON: Thank you.
• [00:13:38] TED TROST: That's just another way of saying that Ann Arbor has come a long way. Our town has progressed from a mere opening in the woods to a wonderful city of over 100,000 beautiful people.