Family Tree Sprouts Ripley Appearance

Family tree sprouts Ripley appearance

Dale Leslie manages an office supply firm in Ann Arbor. Active in EMU affairs, the Ann Arbor Kiwanis Club and Dixboro United Methodist Church, he has made several previous contributions to Neighbors □.

NOV 12 198

—-Believe It or Not

RIPLEY INTERNATIONAL LIMITED 1935

by DALE LESLIE

Trivia question: How many local residents have appeared in Ripley’s "Believe It or Not!"?

I know one, my cousin Keith Philo Galpin.

The Ripley syndicated cartoons of unusual people and bizarre events have amused countless newspaper and paperback readers through the years.

It has also spawned a present-day television show that begins with an old film clip of the late Robert Ripley pointedly asking, “Believe it or not!”

My cousin gained notoriety as the eighth succeeding son of an eldest son in the Galpin family. The last five had lived in the historic family farm house at 6820 Plymouth Road in Superior Township.

Keith was just six years old when he appeared in the Ripley cartoon published December 3. 1935. He was somewhat conspicuous as he shared the spotlight with a 90-year-old patriarch known as “William, Man of God" who stood statue-like by a highway roadside daily for 44 years and J.T. Sullivan, a fire chief from El Paso, Texas, who had the distinction of serving two cities, in two counties, in three states, in two different countries (U.S. and Mexico) simultaneously. Believe it or not!

The Galpin family didn't know what to believe during the three years that elapsed between the forwarding of their material and its publication. Gladys Galpin had sent the interesting piece of Galpin history, accompanied by her son's photograph and a picture of their home, to Ripley International in Toronto in 1932. But through copies of correspondence between Mrs. Galpin and the Ripley office we learned that verification of any submitted material was taken seriously.

By the time the strip appeared in print, the caricature of Keith drawn from a photograph submitted three years prior did not resemble a boy of six years old !

Mrs. Gaplin's letters to Ripley of Keith's eldest also were living 1935. And despite for several generations, the homestead for a short [property of a man "Everett” who later resold it to the Galpin family.

Keith was a pupil at rural Frains Lake School at the time of the cartoon’s publication; he later graduated from Ann Arbor University High School (1947). My cousin now resides in Kissimmee, Fl; his sister, Suzanne Galpin Smith and her husband, Garvin, own and live in the family home.

The farm house itself might now qualify for Ripley attention. Over 150 years old, much of the exterior still shows the original handmade bricks. Most of the floors have remained the sturdy black walnut. And at one time the home had seven fireplaces, including two in the basement, and a pair upstairs. Believe it or not!

KEITH PHILO GAPLIN age 6 is the oldest son of an oldest son of an oldest son of an oldest son of an oldest son of an oldest son of an oldest son!

And the last five generations have lived in the same farmhouse on Plymouth Road near Ann Arbor Michigan. 

ILLUSTRATION FROM RIPLEY INTERNATIONAL