AADL Talks To: Lou Belcher, 55th Mayor of Ann Arbor (1978-1985)

Sun, 09/15/2024 - 8:16pm

When: September 25, 2023

In this episode, AADL talks to Louis Belcher, mayor of Ann Arbor from 1978-1985. In addition to his four terms as mayor, Lou was also a city councilman and successful businessman. He recounts memorable stories from his time in office, including the unusual 1977 mayoral contest with former mayor Albert Wheeler; the time he took the RFD Boys to Germany for a sister city celebration; and the infamous Ann Arbor pigeon cull.

Transcript

• [00:00:09] ELIZABETH SMITH: [MUSIC] Hi. This is Elizabeth.
• [00:00:10] AMY CANTU: This is Amy and in this episode, AADL talks to Louis Belcher, Mayor of Arbor 1978-1985. In addition to his four terms as mayor, Louis is also a city councilman and a successful businessman. He recalls several memorable stories about his time in office, including the unusual 1977 mayoral contest with former Mayor Albert Wheeler, the time he took the RFD Boys to Germany for a sister city celebration and the infamous Ann Arbor pigeon cull.
• [00:00:42] AMY CANTU: Thank you so much. It's great to be able to chat with you today. I guess we'd like to start by just getting some brief background. What brought you to Ann Arbor, did you grow up in Ann Arbor. Tell us how you got here.
• [00:00:54] LOU BELCHER: Well, I was born in Battle Creek. Went to high school in Battle Creek and then came up to Ann Arbor and my wife and I were both 19. We got married. Our families are absolutely against everything. It did last for 27 years and three kids and we're still, she's one of my best friends and I'm one of her best friends, so that's, anyway we have different lifestyles completely, but so then I was single for seven or eight years while I was mayor, and then I got married again, and so that basically is--and I--when my wife and I got married, we had a trailer out at Keenan's Trailer Park. You know where Keenan Trailer Park is?
• [00:01:46] AMY CANTU: No. Where was that?
• [00:01:47] LOU BELCHER: The only trailer park inside the city limits of Ann Arbor as you go out. It's the only trailer park and if you go up Packard Road and it's on the right hand side before you get outside the city limits, and Sven Keenan was an old Swedish guy and we barely--my wife worked. I worked in the summer, built--I-- sweating, building that park, pouring some in and all that sort of stuff, and I was up here for college and Michigan was charging $525 a semester and Eastern's business school was $320 and I was making $1.50 an hour. We figured it up and I liked the guys over at business school in Eastern, so I went to Eastern. Graduated from Eastern with a bunch of good guys, but before this, 1957 I was a senior in high school. I joined the Air Guard in Battle Creek and I've been a history buff all my life. I've been an Air Force brat all my life. I didn't know that until later because I didn't meet my dad til I was 20. I always wondered when I was in kindergarten what my dad did and who was your dad? I don't know. Where is he? I have no idea. I met him 20 years later on the road, the highway to Battle Creek. He pulled me over. He said like this and I pulled over, I thought I had flat tire and pulled over by Jack--in Jackson somewhere. He said, Lou Belcher and I said, he said I'm Lou Belcher too.
• [00:03:34] ELIZABETH SMITH: Wow.
• [00:03:34] AMY CANTU: That doesn't happen very often?
• [00:03:35] LOU BELCHER: No. What's even more often is that he was an air force career man, and he was still in the Air Force and I did get a chance to fly with him. But, we were married, and we went through the same thing everybody else did, all my buddies I met at the trailer park, Paul Raeder from Michigan's Raiders and a couple of other Michigan football players out there, and of course I've been a Michigan fan since I was a little kid about that high. And from Battle Creek, 1957 I was in the Air Observer Corps when I was 13, so I went to spot Russians coming in. My grandmother, God bless her soul. She spent 17,000 hours volunteer time for the U.S. She and her husband, my grandfather, they ran the USO in Battle Creek. We had 22,000 troops down there.
• [00:04:40] AMY CANTU: Wow.
• [00:04:40] LOU BELCHER: My house was full of troops all the time. Sleeping on the floor, all over my bedroom I would--they were just great people, and my grandmother volunteered for everything.
• [00:04:51] AMY CANTU: Was this in the '40s, in the '50s?
• [00:04:52] LOU BELCHER: Yeah, '40s.
• [00:04:53] AMY CANTU: Yeah.
• [00:04:55] LOU BELCHER: I was 13-years-old, so it's just '50, 1950, and she volunteered to be an air observer. She volunteered for everything. They said you--we need spotters and she said Butch, I don't know a thing about airplanes, so you come with me. I went out of course I knew all the airplanes. I was looking for Russian bison and the Russian bears, they're going to come over the North Pole. We knew they were coming. When I got 17, my senior year in high school, I enlisted in the Air Guard. I was out there. I got to know 'em because I was in the tower looking for airplanes and they got to know me and I got to know them, and Kellogg was a big, huge air base and we flew F-89s, Scorpions, so I joined up and then I was put in a pilot training program there first and all the pilots adopted me. I was only a kid, so I got a good flavor--they put me in a cockpit and we'd go out and fire the 20 millimeter cannons and so on. They were teaching me all this stuff and I had to go away to get trained, so that was my Air Force career. Waiting the Russian bombers coming and we're setting then that was where I was going when my dad met me. I was an hour and 15 out. I was the outer ring of the intercept squadron, so I had an hour and 15 minutes to get to Battle Creek. Anyway, I spent the next 10 years waiting for the Russians to come and they never came.
• [00:06:41] AMY CANTU: They never came?
• [00:06:42] LOU BELCHER: I'm glad. I was going to college and still flying and blah, blah, blah and it got to be where I got in politics and I didn't really get into politics, but I wasn't really a political guy. The only education I had was my grandfather who thought that Truman should be a tree, and he should be a dog and piss all over him, so I got a hint that he wasn't a democrat. That was my whole total upbringing in politics. Anyway, we're home and my wife and I and I get a knock on the door and it's Paul Raeder of Raeders' Raiders. He said, Lou we want you to be a leader in in the Fifth Ward and I said well, I'm flying and I got school to go to and I'm working summers. I don't know where I'm going to fit that in. He said, you'll fit it in. I said well, he said you got to do it, so Paul said you got to do it, so I ran. I'll be damned I won, so that was start of my career and I spent the next 13 years in there. That's where I was and from--first of all this is a great city. I love the city. The people, when you make a call--and I made a call--and the real secret to running a city like this is to not run a city like this to let the people run the city and when I needed help I could call democrats and republicans and I had an equal amount on my advisory committee. Neil Staebler, you need power on the side. I had a whole bunch of guys. They were all President of Ann Arbor Bank, President of National Bank, President of the Apple Bank. All three presidents of the bank were on my staff committee, and this is where we turned Ann Arbor around, and this is a strategic move that to this day made Ann Arbor what Ann Arbor looks like today because I got a call from the president of the university. My favorite president he's a hell of a guy. Harold Shapiro, and Veronica his wife was a really nice person and Harold and I we got vibes and he said, Lou we're going to clean up State Street down to State Street from East U. Will you guys clean up State Street, this is while I was mayor, and it sounded good to me, and so we did. And then I get a call from Main Street Association. Said Lou, can we have the same kind of money to clean up Main Street that you put into State Street? How much did we put into State Street? Then I got a call from the Huron Street people and the Street Art Fair. Pretty soon I had four calls from different locations in downtown that wanted us to do the same thing for them and that's when I got Earl Greene, a democrat. Our first, I think he's our first gay male. Greene was a really good guy. I liked him a lot, and I said, you've had an idea and I've had an idea. We've been talking about it. I think we should have a downtown authority for just one area and Earl said no, I think we need the whole downtown and I thought about it a while I said you're were probably right, and he was.
• [00:11:07] AMY CANTU: This was the start of the Downtown Development?
• [00:11:09] LOU BELCHER: This was the start of the Downtown Development.
• [00:11:12] AMY CANTU: Can I ask a question to clarify? What year was this roughly do you--
• [00:11:16] LOU BELCHER: I was there from '78-'85.
• [00:11:23] LOU BELCHER: I had the one-vote election.
• [00:11:25] AMY CANTU: I know, we have to talk about that. But the Downtown Development Authority started right around this time then, because of the work that you had done?
• [00:11:36] LOU BELCHER: I sat--I sat in my den, at home and drew the boundary lines of downtown, and I gave it to Earl the next day. I said, Is this okay with you? He said, "Yeah", so I had to get through my caucus, and that was no problem. I had a bunch of really outstanding people, really good people. And they understood that what we were doing the Downtown Development Authority, it was a big thing because I had to go around to every taxable entity, the school board, the county, and get them to say, we'll give you part of our taxes to put the Downtown Development Authority. The reason we did that is because I watched every downtown Jackson, Kalamazoo, my home city of Battle Creek, downtown just go dry. Because the shopping malls are all happening and all the people are deployed out there. Your story the other day of downtown isn't downtown. That was basically the start of the not Mom and Pop stores. It took a while, but they just couldn't afford the rents out there, and they stayed downtown. We decided that we just needed to finance downtown permanently.
• [00:13:01] AMY CANTU: And you got the Democrats and the Republicans to work together. That's part of the--
• [00:13:05] LOU BELCHER: Absolutely.
• [00:13:06] AMY CANTU: That was the big deal.
• [00:13:08] LOU BELCHER: All the big projects were that way. That formed the downtown. I don't know how many millions, but the last I knew it was bringing 20-30 million a day, and it's been going for 30, 40 years now. We put a lot of money in downtown. I wasn't happy when they built City Hall with that money, but that's another story.
• [00:13:31] ELIZABETH SMITH: We skipped over your city council position. What was working there, and how long did you do that for?
• [00:13:37] LOU BELCHER: Well, I was in my first two years. Basically, what learning. I had no crap about running a city. I ran a company. I ran an Air Force squadron. But I had no idea how to run a city. It just was not a political thing. If Paul Rader and his wife hadn't shown up that night, probably never gotten into politics, I--honest to God. First two years, I'm just learning. My senior council member was Bud Fairbanks, redhead, banker here in town. And he led me through all of the loops and hoops and everything else. My secret was, I get along with everybody. I just do. My first, almost the second or third day in office, I'm down in my own condo. I get, the door bell rings. I go out and it's a huge, maybe 20 women with signs. It says, I didn't even know what LGBT was. They were there to see what I was going to do as mayor for them. I said, "Hell, I don't even know who you are". That was so they came in. I said, "Okay, let's have some coffee. I said, hot chocolate, whatever you guys want. Let's talk about what you want. Well, what you want is our support. Well, you're citizens, you'll get my support. As long as you don't break the law, you'll get my support. Well, I never had a problem after that with gay community or any other. I treat them all the same. The first few years I was basically learning. Bob Henry was the Mayor Pro Tem at that time Bob was the attorney in town, one of my mentors. They elected me as Mayor Pro Tem, I don't know, my second and I had seven votes, and Mayor Wheeler had well, he only had three because HRP would then switch back and forth who they voted for depend on who gave them what favors. That's basically the first but then the second year, Kathy was the only one left of the HRP. I just adopted her just because I felt so sorry for her. Didn't have anybody there talk to.
• [00:16:01] AMY CANTU: This is Kathy Kozachenko?
• [00:16:04] LOU BELCHER: Anyway it was fun to see that picture because she was kind of a loner, all alone, nobody to talk to, politics, anyway. Anyway, Al Wheeler and I were great friends. Behind the doors.
• [00:16:21] AMY CANTU: Behind the doors.
• [00:16:23] LOU BELCHER: He loved to smoke Camels. I'd say when I wanted to get some legislation through, the mayor has got that power. The veto power takes eight votes override a veto. I'd come up with something that we really wanted through. And Al would say, I don't know about that Lou. I said, well, look at, it t's good for blah, blah, blah. I would just keep council going. We went all night one night until seven in the morning. He said, "Look, I can't keep this up". I said, "Well, you start going with me". We'll get out early. In fact, why don't we have a camel break about every hour? We had fun.
• [00:17:07] AMY CANTU: Now, that was a very unprecedented election that had never happened. The votes were so close. Tell us how you came to an agreement.
• [00:17:16] LOU BELCHER: We didn't.
• [00:17:17] AMY CANTU: You didn't?
• [00:17:17] LOU BELCHER: Well, we came to an agreement. Al is Mayor Pro Tem. He was our first Black mayor. I knew that, Ann Arbor's a fairly open liberal city, and I thought, well, I I didn't really want to run, but the guy we wanted to run, his wife died just 40 days before the election. This is when they said, "You're Republican chairman." I was Republican chairman, just before I got on council. They said, the chairman has to run if we don't have a candidate. I ran against Jack Garris. Jack Garris was a renegade right wing Southern Democrat. He was everything I'm not every way I'm not, but I lost to him, so he became the Republican candidate against Al and Al beat him.
• [00:18:21] AMY CANTU: That was in '71? Now we're at '77 election. Tell us.
• [00:18:27] LOU BELCHER: This is where it really becomes good, and this is where Ann Arbor didn't know that it was going to get some of the biggest favors in the world. The election is run. It's a rainy day. I knew it was going to be a tough race. The results come in. One vote, out of 11,000. One vote. I had employees the next week say, I got to tell you this. I didn't vote. It was rainy and I needed my bicycle. Total shit. I started getting letters and calls, "God, we didn't vote. I'm sorry." Well, all the absentee ballots, there were eight that were in dispute. It's just a one vote. I mean, this is not Donald Trump. This is one vote. There's eight votes, and we got to know every one of those votes by heart. There's a squiggly line that went off the square. There's a cross that was somewhat out of the square. It came down to they accepted all the votes. But then one of the biggest democrats in town. Just a big democrat. Probably the biggest democrat in town. He's a very, political lawyer in town. He found 20 votes that were--this was when we were counting and re-counting and everything. He found 20 votes that belonged to township people.
• [00:20:07] LOU BELCHER: Now there are 20 votes that were illegal. We're called by lawyers saying, "Hey, you got 20 votes there," and both sides agreed we're going to go to court and get a new election. Wheeler and I both agree. We're going to go to court, get new election this is too muddy, but the judge who was a visiting judge decided that wasn't what we're going to do. What we're going to do is we're going to call all 20, subpoena to all 20 and ask them how they vote. What do you mean? Give you guys who live in a township two votes? The first vote and then the second vote. We can't do that. My Lord, it just exploded because of a freshman at the University of Michigan. The judge had all 20 of them sitting there and the court's jam packed. All the media's in there. Newsweek and, oh God. You think there's the election of the President of the United States. [LAUGHTER] The first one gets up and the judge says, how did you vote in the election? The first guy said, I voted for Belcher. Give Belcher one vote. Take away one vote from Belcher. The next one said, I voted for Wheeler, take away one vote for Wheeler. We're down to stills one vote and we're in the third, and the school freshman comes up. I can't remember her name, it's in there, somewhere. The judge says, "How did you vote?" she said, "I'm not going to tell you." "What you mean, you're not going to tell me? You're going to tell me." She said, "I don't have to tell you." "What do you mean you don't have to tell me?" She said, "I'm an American. My vote is sacred. It's secret. " So he said. "Hold this woman in contempt. If you don't tell me right now, I'm going to have the bailiff take you out," and handcuffed her. She said, "I'm not going to tell you." They took her out, put her in jail. Took her handcuffs off. I found out after they got her out the door.
• [00:22:15] AMY CANTU: It was all for show.
• [00:22:16] LOU BELCHER: Yeah, all for show. This now, now the judge is really, I mean he's backed into a corner, because now everybody's, Life Magazine, and the whole crew is down here now. This one little freshman who stood up and said, you are not [INAUDIBLE]. The judge finally said, call this ball in, my lawyer, me, Al and his lawyer. Said, gentlemen, I think we need to have a new election. We'll order it for next spring the same time and you're going to keep your positions the same way they are. There's where Ann Arbor's whole fate turned because I got a call week after the new election was announced from the Republican Chairman Bill Brock for the Republican Party. He says, "You don't know me." I said, "I know you, Bill, from TV." He said, "Well, we've got 40 new election workers for the Republican Party, challengers. People who are going to be working on elections. Can I send those to Ann Arbor? Could you use them in your re-election?" Wow, "Send them down, it's your expense. I don't care." These kids came down and they're all elbows, and they're into it. They just organize this thing, and they did everything they possibly could. They went door to door. They just worked the little butts off. The next election, it was a year. It was back and forth, back and forth. Belcher is a Greek. He goes to the Greek church. Do you want Greek as your mayor? I don't know any Greeks. I've never been to Greece. I don't know anybody. That's the way the election went. All the people who didn't vote on election day, the first election was 21,000 votes. They were cast. This one was 35,000.
• [00:24:32] AMY CANTU: Wow.
• [00:24:33] LOU BELCHER: I won by 214 votes.
• [00:24:36] AMY CANTU: Wow.
• [00:24:37] LOU BELCHER: My caucus called me "Landslide Lou." [LAUGHTER] That wasn't the end of it because now Washington knew Ann Arbor, and Washington knew me. My workers went back to Washington. I was sort of a hero back in Washington. Well, then I got a call from the White House said, we'd like you to serve on the Domestic Advisory Committee for the president. I said, okay, I'll do that, be glad to. Then I was elected chairman of the Michigan mayors. Now I got a little bit of power, which I didn't want to use in any bad way, but I knew we had a lot of work to do to make Ann Arbor what Ann Arbor needs to be. From that time on, and we changed Ann Arbor, and I had a great council, and I had some democrats that we got along. The Michigan Theater bothered me because I couldn't get one of their votes that I almost had to dump the whole theater.
• [00:25:54] AMY CANTU: Yeah, you have to tell us that story, too. Tell us about that.
• [00:25:58] LOU BELCHER: Well, I got a call an appointment to see me from the head organist at the Michigan Theater. He said, "Mr. Mayor, you got to come down and save this theater. The organ, they're going to lose the organ. This is the only organ like this is in the world." The theater. Well, it was important because that's where the organ was. He said, "You got to save this theater, and the organ Society is going to help you if you take it on." I thought, God, 'cause they'd already signed the sales agreement with this restaurant group. I was going to put a cafeteria in where the theater was. They had already signed the sales agreement. Now I had to go break that sales agreement. Then I didn't have the eighth vote. They were going to sell that theater and I went to the restaurant people and I said, look, I'll tell you what. If you'll give me your signature to take your sales agreement away, I'll find you a place downtown. I didn't know where, but I'll find a place. They did, but then I couldn't get the eighth vote. Time was running out. I bought the theater myself. Signed a sales agreement, Louis D. Belcher, blah, blah, blah, blah, one million. I said, kids, if this doesn't work out, my three daughters, you're going to live in a theater downtown, [LAUGHTER] we just can't afford both places. I don't know how I'm going to afford the million anyway. My partners are really going to have to come in and help. They we'll make a headquarters for our factory, I don't know. I said, I'll take it on, and I did get them to say, "We'll buy your sales arrangement. We'll take ours out." Now I got to come up with $150,000 in two days.
• [00:28:23] AMY CANTU: What did you do?
• [00:28:24] LOU BELCHER: I called two of my good friends, Harriet... Dow.
• [00:28:30] AMY CANTU: Judith?
• [00:28:30] LOU BELCHER: Judith. No, no. That's her daughter. I'm talking about Mr. and Mrs. Dow, Doctor Dow.
• [00:28:36] AMY CANTU: Got you.
• [00:28:37] LOU BELCHER: I went over and there, and they've been my supporters forever. I mean, they supported me forever and ever. I liked them both very much. I was kind of a son to them they didn't have. This was even before. I sat on the couch with them, one on each side and I said, guys, here's the deal. I need $150,000 in two days for the Michigan Theater. Is the only way we're going to save it. I say, Can you help? Margaret says, "Of course we'll--I'll give you the $150,000." Just like that. I'll have it down to your office tomorrow. Just like that. I get, next thing, Bob Henry, the lawyer, who is also on city council brings me a check for $150,000 and it's made out to me. Now I don't want that money. I have to pay income tax on that money. I said, "No, it goes to the foundation. You have to remake the check." Bob said, "You're going to figure this out yourself. I'm not going back to Towsley." I had to sign some paper that I gave, so I got out of that thing. We had $150,000, but that theater was in such a mess. Nothing worked. The electrical system didn't work blah, blah, blah. Ann Arbor. Love this city. Put out a call to the best lawyers I could get the best accountants. They all volunteered their time. Got this big group together, the--Eugene Power, the whole bunch. All my buds, said, guys, we are going to form a foundation. You people are going to be the centerpiece of this foundation. Both parties, everybody's in this thing. Well, I can't get the damn eighth vote. I need to get rid of that theater. Finally I went to Earl Greene. I said, Earl, I mean, of all the things in the world you can do for us right now is to get that theater. I said, "That theater will anchor this whole area, retail, and the theaters are going." He said, "Okay, I'll take the gas from my from my caucus." So we had the eighth vote, and it was even--the thing was even more complicated, because I had now to find these guys a rest place. I went to one of my buddies, who's the president of Ann Arbor Bank, Bruce Benner. I said, "Bruce, you own that land right next to the theater. It's a parking lot right now. Can the city buy that from you? Because we're going to put another parking structure down here. If we buy that, we'll put up a parking structure." But in the basement, I'm going to put this--He said, "Can we have the air rights?" I said, "You can have the air rights. I just want to build a parking structure." He said, "Well, we're thinking about maybe some housing on top." Finally, it all ended. He says, take the whole thing. I got council to buy the land. I gave the theater a head start a little bit. I didn't know what I had. I didn't know what kind of support I was going to get from the citizens. But I had suspicion it was pretty high only because of the volunteers I got from the first group. The Towsleys coming on board really kicked it off, because it's complicated. One company owned the seats, and the projector and the organ, and the other company owned the building. Now I got to get those two to sign off. We got them to sign off. We got a rule, and now we got a theater, no money. We got a theater. We're going to start making money. First we hired a theater manager who turned out to be a dud. [LAUGHTER] Damn. All this work, we got a dud.
• [00:32:58] ELIZABETH SMITH: Then you did some benefits and fundraisers?
• [00:33:01] LOU BELCHER: We started right away. First act was going to be at the University of Michigan Marching Band. Yay! [LAUGHTER] We got the band down there for a concert, put them on the stage and all 300, Or whatever they got, and the goddamn electrical board caught fire, and the fire department had to come, the band had to go outside. We're all standing on the street. [LAUGHTER] In the rain.
• [00:33:24] ELIZABETH SMITH: Oh no.
• [00:33:24] LOU BELCHER: The band is all, God's sakes alive, the wood's--so the fire Department went in, we put the fire out. They put the fire out. Now I got a smoking electrical system. Anyway, we dismissed the band. They played a few, but people up in the 19th floor of the Tower Plaza didn't particularly like band play at that time of night, but anyway, what the hell. [LAUGHTER] We went back to the drawing board. Now the foundation is formed, and it's the foundation of the money and the people who do things in Ann Arbor. Both parties. The big guys and gals. It started out modestly. We had the first millionaire party, I think we raised about $20,000. A Gambling party.
• [00:34:14] AMY CANTU: How did you do a gambling party? Wasn't that illegal?
• [00:34:17] LOU BELCHER: Well, we made it legal.
• [00:34:19] AMY CANTU: How did you do that?
• [00:34:20] LOU BELCHER: Well, Second Chance Club. Real real swinger entrepreneur. He's the one who wanted it. He said "I'll have it at Second Chance club. You can have the club. We'll have poker." I went to state of Michigan and we got license to have a fund raiser. I think we made $15-20,000 or so. But after that, the Millionaire Party really became a wealthy thing, but that wasn't really the money. We started getting money right away. In fact, a real funny story, a lawyer in town, very eccentric. He's my nemesis of experts. The problem of being a mayor in Ann Arbor is there is an expert for every field. [LAUGHTER] They all have a mouth and they all have a theory of some sort. He was expert of the United States almost on zoning. Every time I screw up something with zoning, he'd come down and lecture me. I got so goddamn tired. I could see his office down there. I could see him walking up towards me. My Secretary says, "Here he comes." I said, "I know, I can see him." He throws down a whole wad of paper on my desk. He says, "You're going to need this goddamn thing more than I am, " and walks out. It was $16,000 worth of GM stock. That was him.
• [00:35:46] AMY CANTU: You didn't expect that, did you?
• [00:35:50] LOU BELCHER: Oh no. [LAUGHTER] On my desk, $16,000. [LAUGHTER] Do with it, belcher, you need it more than I do. He's just a ornery old, something. He had a gas station down there with his law office with flowers, big, zoning lawyer, he was all over the world. But that was--that's the way the whole city reacted. We started getting contributions from everybody. I thought what we really got to do, sell this to my council, my caucus, I got to have bond issue. I've got to put it on a ballot. I mean, I can't $15,000 here 50--we're talking a big theater. This is going to be a big job to renovate this thing. I went to council and I'm kind of a, really cheap skate when it comes to spending their money. I never even put an expense report into the city in eight years. Anyway, I said, What can we get away with a bone bond issue that you guys will accept? Well, we argued back and forth. Finally came down to $600,000. They said, well, we're not sure it's going to pass. I said, well, 600,000 is a start. We can start with this. We put a bond issue on. And damn, it's still passed by the biggest margin any bond issue ever passed. All these people that made out in the second floor balcony. The alumni. [LAUGHTER].
• [00:37:28] AMY CANTU: They came through for you. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:37:33] LOU BELCHER: Not only that, but you imagine that theater right now it is up. It is class. They've restored it all. We've had millions of millions of dollars in just contributions coming from all over every alumni probably everyone that theater--and that anchored that whole area because when we created the Downtown Development Authority, now we got money, big money. I can't understand why they can't keep the roads clean with 30 billion a year. But back to State Street being dirty again. For God's sake, keeping all the money in the world, what the hell are you guys doing with it? But that's not my job anymore. Get somebody else to do it. But anyway, that's what anchors that whole thing then State Theater. But the greatest thing we ever did is bringing Russ Collins.
• [00:38:26] AMY CANTU: Yeah, tell us about Russ.
• [00:38:28] LOU BELCHER: I told Russ, I said "Shit, you can't do worse than the first guy." [LAUGHTER] I did, I said, he's a horrible job. Tell me why you're going to do a good job, and he said, because I'm going to do a good job. I said, what are you doing about theater? He said, I'm taking theater right now. He says, I think I can run that theater. That was probably the wisest decision. Of course, I had to go and sell him to the board now. When you appoint a board, you lose all your power. You can't dictate [INAUDIBLE]. The caucus said, "Well, If you want him, we'll give it to you." I said okay. We start out with 600,000 bucks, 500,000, something like that. But we had the greatest lawyers in the world, all the accountants in town. They were all pitching in. Let's do this, let's do that. We got to do this. They'd argue a bit. Then at that time, you have to really think. I think this is where we really made the decisions that made Ann Arbor, what it is today. A series of events took place. And the events basically were shutting off the borders for the townships, drawing our city line hard in the sand and going to the townships, each one, and say, if you, and the reason we did this is because at the time, there were a million islands of township property inside city limits. We went through a horrible fire with the Gallup Silkworth fire, the gas company had all the above ground tanks and everything else. That caught fire. I didn't even know it wasn't in the city. These tasks are blowing up, and so I went through the fire. Went to all the fires because you never know when you had to call an emergency or what? Of course, now it would be a snap. You got cell phones. Now, you know what we used? We had to evacuate a mile around that place--it was gonna--cause they had a 60,000 gallon tank propane in the middle of this whole field of propane tanks, small ones. They said, the chief told me he said the assistant chief, Plymouth Road is here. The street I went up was this way. There's a fire truck up there with light going, so I just turned up there instead of going up Plymouth Road. I find out later, the chief is over here. Assistant chief is down here. I said, "I got to get over to the chief." I said, "Can I borrow your hat and coat?" He says, why? I said, "Well, I got to go and talk to the chief, how bad this is going to be? You tell me this whole thing is going to blow. If it does, it's going to take a mile radius out. We're going to have to figure this out, what we're going to do and how many departments we get in here." He said, "What are we calling?" "Just give me your coat and hat." I put the helmet on, the coat, and I walk through the fire. Every fireman, I stop behind and say, how are you doing guys? Keep it up, blah blah blah. Walk through. I come out the other side, and the chief is up there with a whole bunch of people on the street, say, "Get your goddamn ass up here, you dumb shit!" He said "You know how much paperwork I'll have to fill out if I kill mayor in a goddamn fire? [LAUGHTER] Get up here, Belcher. What are you doing?" I said, "Well, I was out of the street. If it was going to kill within a mile. I was going to be gone anyway. I might as well walk through the fire. What the hell?" The next council meeting the fire department came here. The guys all came up. They gave me my own helmet, a yellow helmet. They said, now we can spot you when you come through a fire. Anyway, I said, "Well, how are we going to notify all these citizens?" Well, we used the Paul Revere method, send a bunch of police cars out: "Two arms, swarms. The British are coming! Two arms swarms, evacuate the whole place." Now it'd be a snap you *pikew*, like that. That really pissed me off because that was a Township island. City of Ann Arbor ordinance says all those tanks have to be underground. But they didn't have to follow it. That was step number one. It really started to piss me off. The second one that really got to me was the fact that the townships had to become a charter township, and you couldn't annex the whole township. There was only one out of all the townships surrounding us, that was Pittsfield. Bob Lilly was the supervisor, and he had made this a charter township. You couldn't annex this because I was going to annex them all. You're going to be under--but then I got thinking, this is all rural. We've got farms, 10,000 acre farms out--this is all farm land. This whole thing. There's a Greek house up here. They sold the first lot here. They paid 10,000 an acre for it. The developers did. After that, every house on the street, on Textile had their farm up for sale. It's rural. This isn't the city. Anyway, I thought, this has got to stop. We've got to--so I got all the townships together. I said, here's the deal. We will not annex you. We will set our border up. We will not annex you, if you agree to giving us all the islands within our city limits. That was for two reasons. Number 1, I did not want Ann Arbor to go to a horizontal annexation. I mean, I did not want us to annex this and have to build the fire department, police department, tear it out of these farms. This wasn't going to happen. These people were happy out here. They had rural areas. Let's let them alone. Just give us all your islands inside the expressway. That's where it--
• [00:45:07] AMY CANTU: Okay.
• [00:45:08] LOU BELCHER: That's the deal we made with all townships. That set the boundaries of Ann Arbor, knowing full well that all of our growth with our Downtown Development Authority was going to go into the downtown area. There was going to be high rises. We knew that, that article they had in the paper the other day said downtown's not--I knew that was going to happen. But I also knew that this city is just a bustling city. It wasn't voted the best place to live two years in a row by the National Press. Ann Arbor has got everything and the people make it, not politicians. People make it. We have such an eclectic population. It's all over the board. As they say, the curse was you've got an expert on every field. But that's also the blessing, because I could call up anybody to get the best advice of the world, free. Zoning, come on in. Tell us what we're doing wrong. That kind of thing. Then to put the theater on. Then so you sat down, and I did. With my people and the democrats and everything I said let's take a look at what Ann Arbor's going to be. We're not General Motors. We don't make cars. We don't come from my home city. We don't make cereal. Cereal City, Motor City. What are we? Why are we attractive? What are our industries? If you boil down our industries, our industries are education. It's research. It's music, arts, performing arts, still arts. It's all those things. That's us. We bore a lot of small companies. They all don't stay out here. They all go.
• [00:47:13] AMY CANTU: Economic development was a big initiative of yours.
• [00:47:16] LOU BELCHER: Absolutely. But this isn't just me. This is Harold Shapiro. Harold and I. We got along really well. The University. I get really P.O.'d At these politicians who say, "We can't lose another acre to the university's taxable income."
• [00:47:36] LOU BELCHER: That property taxes are peanuts, and I'll show you an example of peanuts. When Pfizer, they just pulled out of Ann Arbor. They built all the labs up in South. They bought Parke-Davis out. When they folded up, they just left. One day, they left. 4,000 employees out of a job and they were big enough in the world, they just left. Tried to sell it, but who in the hell is going to buy it? Well, it was everything the university wanted and needed, wet labs and all kind of power plants and everything. This is way after I've gone. I'm not mayor anymore. But Parke-Davis started it. When we set of this philosophy is, what are we? What are we going to do to make this city livable, safe and a haven for thought and arts, because that's us. Well, I opened my mouth too much because Eugene Power came to me and said, "I'd like you to take over a theater for us. There's a new University of Michigan Theater Director coming from Egypt. I'd like you to become president of the University of Michigan Theater program." I don't know anything about theater, particularly this theater. This theater's so off the wall. I went to play. I couldn't understand a damn thing they were doing. Then I was a consultant for Tom Monaghan, which is a whole other--I mean, that's way off the wall. Anyway, Tom comes to me and says, "Marcel Marceau. He's going to be my centerpiece for, we're going to make this the classical arts area." He said, "So I'm sponsoring Marcel Marceau. He's coming over here, and he's going to be the point man for our classic arts. I'd like you to take over as president of the Marcel Marceau theater." Now I got the theater, and I got the university theater. Then I get a new best friend, I don't know of. I get a call from Gail Rector, who's head of the May Festival and Gail says, Eugene, director of the Philadelphia, Eugene Ormandy.
• [00:50:18] AMY CANTU: Ormandy.
• [00:50:19] LOU BELCHER: He said Eugene wants to meet you. He's interested in politics, and I know you love classical music. He knew, Gail and I were good friends. He said I know you want classical music. Gail introduces me to Eugene, and Eugene and I for the next seven years had lunch almost twice a week. I loved him. He loved me. He was very interested in politics, and I was very interested in classical music. If you're mayor of Ann Arbor and you don't have fun, you're not a mayor. For God's sake. You got all kinds of people to do things. You have to have department heads. If they don't do the job, you kick their ass out. That's as simple as that. That's what I do my companies. It's what I did in the Air Force. I mean, you've been a bad pilot? You were in the ground crew for a while. I mean, that's the way you run it. But this city is, you've got so much energy and I got a cute story for you. Eugene and I had lunch. We always ate at the Campus Inn. Lunch, once or twice a week, and Eugene and I were having lunch, and a police officer comes in. We don't have cell phones now, I have to tell them everywhere I'm going. Everywhere, the bathroom, blah blah blah. Not quite that bad. This police officer comes in and says, "You've got a Japanese visitor down City Hall. He's the president of the Bank of Shiga," which is the province that our sister city Hikone sits in. "He'd like to meet you. He and his wife, would you mind me bringing him out?" And I tell I said, I call him Maestro. I didn't call him Eugene obviously, way above that. "Maestro, would you mind if we have some guests come up? The Japanese." I said to the police officer, Yeah, bring them up here, but you've got to bring a Japanese interpreter if they don't speak English. We have a bunch of interpreters down there. If you need anything in Ann Arbor, you got it. The three of them come up and we sit down, I introduce them. I said this is Maestro Eugene. Maestro of the director of the Philadelphia. All of a sudden, this guy breaks into a sweat, and I mean a sweat. Now he's blibbering. His wife said, she spoke in a low voice. Then the interpreter was there. His wife spoke to the interpreter and the interpreter said Eugene Ormandy is his biggest hero of the world.
• [00:53:07] ELIZABETH SMITH: Wow.
• [00:53:08] AMY CANTU: Fortuitous.
• [00:53:09] LOU BELCHER: This guy doesn't know what to do. Follow one story. He just sat there, and of course, Eugene was very good with people. I mean, when he heard that he really played to the guy. Usually, when I had lunch with Eugene, I have a bag full of Eugene's records, new records. If there was a real special guest, he would sign one of the records. I didn't have it there today. This guy had nothing. But a business card from me. I had a menu, a business card, and Eugene signed his business card. Fast forward, we went to Japan a year or two later my wife and I. I said we've got to stop at the Bank of Shiga and say hello. They were, and this guy is a [Murai?] of Hikone, he's a great, great grandson of the premier who was killed and murdered because he opened trade with the United States. [Murai?] is a very important guy in Japan, and this guy is [Murai?] and by, anyway, so I went to visit him. As my wife and I walked in this big lobby of the big bank. There's a big about that size with a little business card in the middle.
• [00:54:46] AMY CANTU: Great story.
• [00:54:49] LOU BELCHER: It is. Anyway, Eugene and I now I've got into the arts completely now. If you've ever tried to control. I mean, you had to control. I wouldn't ever say that about any employee or anybody ever but with, God. Marcel Marceau. I've got a budget that won't quit from Dominos for him, seven million dollars, I mean, but that's for the whole theater and all that stuff, and he's flying over on the Concorde every other week. It's 2,800 back then, 2,800 bucks. I'm at dinner with him. Trying to say nicely, Eugene, can we start taking regular airline? There's $2,800 every two weeks. We're going to go through. Once Marcel started to talk, couldn't shut him up. "Mr. Becher, I must show you the three hours I'm here, early." Well, anyway, Marcel and I got along very well. I enjoyed him completely. I loved his performance. I never knew him until Tom asked me, to take over classic arts. Tom would say, I want the greatest performing arts. I want to make the Boston Pops look little.
• [00:56:19] ELIZABETH SMITH: Did you remain involved in the performing arts after that?
• [00:56:24] LOU BELCHER: Yeah, I did. I pulled off one of the biggest blubs in the world. It wasn't a blub. It was intentional. I'm doing all things for Monaghan, and he is really different. That's why I was attracted to him. He's so different than me. He thinks so differently. We're going to a Tiger's ball game. He owns the Tigers. right. We're driving his mother's limo, which is a Rolls Royce limo, the only Rolls Royce limo in the world, and his staff is in the back and with Tom. What? His staff gets a call. He said, Tom, Tom.
• [00:57:11] LOU BELCHER: "No they have the house for sale. It's the Science Museum in Chicago. He said that we've got a house in the basement of the Science Museum for sale for Frank Lloyd house. He says it's for sale for $750,000." Tom says, "Is it authentic?" The guy says, "It's authentic, it's in the Science Museum we're down there getting rid of it." Tom says give em 100,000 for it. I hung up I said, Tom why did you do that for? He just added 25,000. He said, Lou if I had left a 750,000 I wouldn't got any press, pay a million for it. It's worth every dime. I paid for the publicity I'm going to get.
• [00:58:04] AMY CANTU: This is happening in the car?
• [00:58:05] LOU BELCHER: In the car, because he rounded me up. He said you got 18 nuns. I've got a meeting down with the Tiger staff so you got 18 nuns in the box up there and you got to entertain them for the ball game. [LAUGHTER] He did pay a lot of money, his firm to my firm because we were usually engineers' consultants, but Tom knows I'm in the arts. I should have not kept my mouth all shut.
• [00:58:40] AMY CANTU: We skipped over. You became an engineer at some point. Can you talk a little bit about your engineering?
• [00:58:45] LOU BELCHER: Well my engineering company. This leads up to my other adventures but my engineering company basically was an aeronautical engineering company. The reason my partners and I got together is we basically did the battle tactics for the navy and aircraft carrier protection on the fleet and then we designed air missiles. That's where the engineering came in.
• [00:59:18] AMY CANTU: What was your company called?
• [00:59:20] LOU BELCHER: FAAC, F-A-A-C. Still has a campus up here.
• [00:59:24] AMY CANTU: Wow.
• [00:59:25] LOU BELCHER: That became a huge company after I sold it. All of the companies I sold became huge companies after I sold them. In fact made its way back here after being bought by McDonnell Douglas. The other firm I sold, it came back in the form of Raytheon back to Ann Arbor. A little office out there that they have engineers. Anyway, that's what we did. The liberals never found out that I owned property downtown. Well they did, because we bought the old YMCA right behind the county building.
• [01:00:11] AMY CANTU: Yeah.
• [01:00:12] LOU BELCHER: We bought it when it was a derelict. It was not being used so we bought it, and we're going to redo it. In fact, I was looking at redoing it for our offices downtown, but we didn't do that. Finally, some of the real radical liberals found out that I was in the defense department business, making missiles, and that I owned buildings that weren't being utilized. They came to the city council to embarrass me and said, you bought that building for $1 million and now you're going to use it for office space, that could be for the homeless. We've done architectural study on it, and we can do it for $1 million, and we would like you to sell us that building. I knew what the architects had told us. My partners, they really didn't like this too much. I just said, we'll sell it to you for the same price we paid for it. You come back in a few months and give me an architect estimate what it's going to cost to rehab it. They came back in two months and said we can't do it for less than two million. I said, you had a chance. I sold it and became really better building after I sold it. Another failure of mine to keep on anything. [LAUGHTER] That's how we stayed in the defense business, and we had an office in Warminster. It's where naval fighters play and did one in the Air Force. We did a lot of tactics, fleet protection, air to air combat, so that's what my firm did. Then that came in handy because unbeknownst to Ann Arbor when the University of Michigan was invaded their administration building by the students they sat in.
• [01:02:21] AMY CANTU: Yeah.
• [01:02:22] LOU BELCHER: Demanded the University of Michigan get out of the defense business. They did. They took all their, in Michigan. U of M had probably the biggest repertoire of defense contracts Willow Run, lamps alone all the radar for--God. They were the U.S. radar specialist. When they formed that, they formed a not for profit called the Research Center of Michigan, Scientific Research Center. Then the defense department came down and said you better add something else to that or you catch flat and the students again. Why don't you put environmental in front of the environmental research, ERIM? ERIM became ERIM. That's where my next adventure came. I was in charge of part of the defense. We did things that no one in Ann Arbor has ever known about. We pulled Russian scientists out of Russia during the collapse of Russia. We didn't want them floating out to the Mideast so, and I was in charge of that. We bring them back here. It was Fisher, "body by Fisher" from General Motors. He's the one financed that. Originally, it was to get Jewish scientists out of Russia. Russia was in total collapse. Yeltsin and Putin as security Chief. We were in the middle of that damn thing and we were worried that Yeltsin would be taken out of power. He was a drunk, obviously, and we were afraid he was going to lose power and someone else would come in a vacuum like they did. One of our jobs is to get as many scientists out of Russia as we could. Then we teamed with some other university that got kicked out of their university to basically set up factories in Russia, not factories, think tanks or we paid them a minimum wage. The lower ranked scientists, we would bring in and pay them a living wage because at that time, there was no jobs in Russia. When we went over to Russia had to take a money belt with $40,000, and there's no credit cards or anything else.
• [01:05:06] AMY CANTU: What did you do? Did you travel over there? What was your role?
• [01:05:10] LOU BELCHER: My role was to get rid of them.
• [01:05:11] AMY CANTU: How would you do that?
• [01:05:13] LOU BELCHER: I'd call universities and everything we'd pay for them. The federal government would pay their salaries. We'd bring them over the states, and ERIM built apartments for them because ERIM was top secret. Everything we did was top secret. We couldn't have Russian scientists in the same building that we were working on the radars to detect our B1s and B2s.
• [01:05:43] AMY CANTU: Who in Ann Arbor knew about this?
• [01:05:45] LOU BELCHER: Not many.
• [01:05:47] AMY CANTU: Just you and a few others?
• [01:05:49] LOU BELCHER: Well, no, there's a couple of hundred people that knew about this program.
• [01:05:55] AMY CANTU: Yeah.
• [01:05:55] LOU BELCHER: Because we would hold them at ERIM and put them to work doing some stupid thing, but they had to do in their apartment. It was like herding the worst cats in the world. They were jealous of each other. We got a call from one university he said, you got to take one of these guys off our hands. They're fighting all the time, University of Michigan put two at U of M, they're fighting all the time. He said, ruining our whole department, so take one of them back. I don't know where we put those. Anyway, that whole thing was just five years of, but again, ERIM, you want something, Ann Arbor, it's there.
• [01:06:43] ELIZABETH SMITH: Do you have any other interesting stories from your time as Mayor?
• [01:06:47] LOU BELCHER: Lord, yes. Goodness, gracious. Well, after we mapped out this strategy, what we're going to do. Now we got to go do it. Science, entertainment, arts. That's us, research, education.
• [01:07:06] LOU BELCHER: We started targeting particular industries. The first one was Parke-Davis. Jerry Weisbach was the president of Parke-Davis here. It was a small operation. Jerry came to me and said, could you help us put together a bid to get the research center for Parke-Davis here in Ann Arbor. We have a proposal we have to get in, we're against other cities not only in the United States but the world. I called Harold Shapiro up and said, can you have dinner tonight? Jerry Weisbach, myself and President Shapiro, met at Shapiro's house, the president's house and we had dinner. We put together our proposal that night and went around the table. The university said, we'd like some chairs sponsored by Parke-Davis. Jerry said, we can do that. We get this. We'll give you two chairs. Parke-Davis said to me, it's $60 million tax abatement. I would never has given a tax abatement to anybody. No one. Even my caucus would probably not go for that. We'll get you the $60 million tax abatement. Anyway, worked on the whole, the whole thing that night in its broad sense. Then after that, Parke-Davis put together the proposal in Ann Arbor won. Parke-Davis now is now the research center for Parke-Davis here, at least in North America. Well then along comes our big company. University paid $108 million and got $6.2 billion in assets, including all the wet labs, and all the power plants, all the offices on Plymouth Road.
• [01:09:16] AMY CANTU: What date, what year was this?
• [01:09:18] LOU BELCHER: The 1983 and the university bought it just a few years ago, about 10-15 years ago. Anyway, I wanted to just comment on when Warner-Lambert, Pfizer left Ann Arbor, just overnight. They just left. That whole area over the next two years just died. All the restaurants. The property values went down. I mean, the property values going down. The cleaners, restaurants, all the ancillary little businesses that keep something going close down. You saw then the power of payroll. That's where the money is. It's giving people the money to buy things to go places. That's the money. People, don't be stupid! Property taxes are nothing. That's the money that keeps giving, and it dried up. Until the university bought it and put 4,500 people out there, then the whole place bloomed again. It was just like watering a plant. It just bloomed and they're back where they were. Except for 1,000 more, and the university has great facilities, and that started from a little meeting in President Shapiro's office of bringing Parke-Davis. The best story of all, this is really an Ann Arbor story. I'm in Japan. I'm working with the Japanese NASA. We're doing some work over there. I thought, well, I'm over in Japan. I might as well stop at our sister city, see [Murai?], which is an adventure itself. They invited me to go to the communal bath with their city council and decline that [LAUGHTER] Anyway, I'm in Hikone, and I'm leaving because I made an appointment with, of all places Toyota. The word was out in Ann Arbor that Toyota was going to make some city in the United States, their research center of--I'm in Japan. I made an appointment with one of their chief planners in Toyota City, and I was going to take the bullet train up from Hikone, it's 120 miles to Toyota 120 miles. I'm at the hotel. I'm ready to go. The next day. I get a call my hotel and said, Mr. Mayor. I said, "Who knows I'm here?" Says, "We'd like to have a car there for you in the morning to take you to Toyota." I thought, "Who is this?" "It's Toyota. We're in Toyota City. We'll send a car for you. You don't have to take a train." Well, first of all, I hung up I thought, how do they know I was here? How do they know I was coming by train tomorrow? Because he said, you don't have to take a train tomorrow, we. I've checked my like, where I'm going, where what hotel I'm staying at. Really weird. The next morning, I go down to the desk to check out, and there's a guy in a chauffeur outfit, and I checked out and he said, "Mr. Mayor, your car is waiting out here for you, " and I went outside and there's a big limo, a tail limo, huge limo. The glass between that driver he's in his uniform and I don't know what's happening. Why would I get this car? The car's got flowers, tea service, coffee, music going, man. Opens the window after he climbs It's 120 miles. We'll be there in about two hours. Close the window. It's last I saw him. If you need anything. If you nething, there's a button on your table. Let me know. We take off. We get to Toyota City, and I've never seen anything like. It's like a military base there. There's little marching brigades. They're flags of what departments they work in going up down the streets of Toyota City and I get to the main administration building, and there are lovely ladies all the way up the steps, about ten steps with flowers and as I walk up the steps, they all bow, and I get into the building, and there's another group of flower-laden ladies and one says, Mr. Mayor, the chairman is ready to see you now. What is happening here [LAUGHTER] This is really weird. They take me to the elevator, and I go up to the floor, and they walk into this big huge office is a very distinguished looking white haired Japanese chap there and he said, "Mr. Mayor, we are so glad to see you." Wow. Thank you and he said, "Do you mind if I dismiss the staff?" And all these people are hanging around there. The flowers and everything. I didn't know it until later. If you're a guest of honor, you have to dismiss the staff 'cause you over rank him. I said. No, not at all. So they leave the room. Closed the door. He said, "How are my Wolverines doing?" [LAUGHTER]
• [01:15:25] LOU BELCHER: Honest to God. This is the chairman of the board of Toyota. He said, I love Ann Arbor. I spent three years at Ford looking at their production lines. I love Ann Arbor. That's--we got in. "How are the Wolverines doing, the bars. We went out to old German restaurant." He knew Ann Arbor. He said, all we did is talk about Ann Arbor, the football team here because I was supposed to go to the M Club in Tokyo and give a speech. They didn't want me. He said, can you bring some of the game films of the last three games? Again, cell phones. If I only had them. Anyway, we sat down and talked about Ann Arbor for the next hour. He said, I just got a message that you have about an hour to catch the airplane back to Ann Arbor. I said, what I really came here for, Mr. Chairman, "I know why you came here." They had the lab in Ann Arbor. Every foreign company has a lab in Ann Arbor to test the emissions before they go through the Emission Control Center here in Ann Arbor. He said we knew you were coming. We followed you. We know where you were. He said, "You don't have to, I know why you're here." Well, of course, because I have 2,000 engineers here in Ann Arbor. I had nothing to do with it. That decision was made way beyond my pay grade, but he just wanted to jump by her. That's all he wanted to do.
• [01:17:04] AMY CANTU: We have photos of a protests about the Fourth Avenue bookstore. An article was that the Fourth Avenue Red Light District. Did you have to engage in protests about that?
• [01:17:16] LOU BELCHER: No, I imagine that that was a protest of the left-wing that wanted the book--I don't know. Maybe they weren't selling--it wasn't a big deal with me. Some funny stories. If you want funny stories. The origin of the Naked Mile March. I get a visitor in City Hall. It's a cute little girl. She's a junior in Michigan. She came in and said, "You know that we won the Big 10 title?" For scull, the boats. I said, "Yes, I read that, and congratulations." She said, "Well, it's our first Big 10 title. We've never won. Can you give us a parade permit?" I said "We don't give up parade permits, I'm sorry." She said, "Please," said "just down Main Street and up State Street. That's all." That started the Naked Mile. A little innocent girl. [LAUGHTER] From that, next year, she came back. She said, wait. We want it again. I said, yeah, well, you performed very well last year, and then suddenly, it started growing. Then it came night. Then I'm out of office now, but I had some insight as to how the decision was made to stop it because we're always trying to stop something like the marijuana bash. The Hash Bash was a pain in the ass because every parking spot legal or non-legal is taken up. Well, our police officers came on and said, I've got a solution for you, Mr. Mayor, he said, why don't we take down the license number of all the illegal parked cars, and we'll call their parents?
• [01:19:10] AMY CANTU: That's a great--
• [01:19:11] LOU BELCHER: It was. I mean, you imagine these kids--"This is the Ann Arbor Police Department. We have your car parked up here in a lot." "Where are you at Ann Arbor? What's the hell is it doing in Ann Arbor?" "Well, I guess your son or daughter, whoever it was drove the car it's the Hash Bash." "The Hash Bash!?" Holy crap! Boy, I'll tell you the next two years. The police department just got a big phone bank going. They call all these parents all over in the Midwest, say "your son daughter is here, blah, blah, blah." That really quieted down from the week that went down to about 200 or 300 people, but it was just--I didn't care about the Hash Bash. The problem was, we had people parked in. They couldn't get out. Customers couldn't get in. It was just a pain in the butt. Anyway, I felt sorry for him because at the Art Fair, I had the same problem, people parking all over the place in our--I go into City Hall, Saturday morning. I'm in my shorts. I got a briefcase and I'm going up to my office Saturday morning to work on some things. I'm in my shorts and the Art Fair is going on. As I get into City Hall, there's this huge line of people lined up to the police department. They're all there trying to get their cars. Figure out where their cars are, how much they were going to be. They're hot, sweaty. They've got kids. They're not in a good mood. I get to the elevator. One of the police officers who must not have liked me said, "Hello, Mr. Mayor, how are you doing today?" The whole crowd turns on me. Talk about fragging an officer. Worse than a hand grenade. I barely made it onto, and I said, "Who in the hell said that?" Anyway, from that came, we're not going to do this anymore. We're not going to--give them fields to park in. We'll run buses back and forth. I'm not going to have this crowd of people with all these sweaty kids and everything else lined up not having a good time in Ann Arbor so that's what we did. That was one. The other one that was just amazing was Ann Arbor is such a neutral city of everything. The Nazis from Indiana and the Commies from Detroit decide to come down to Ann Arbor to have a confrontation. They picked Ann Arbor. We didn't have a damn thing to do with the thing. You guys want to fight go in the field somewhere outside the city of limits I give a hell with them. At that time, we had a police. My police commissioner was just a top drawer. We hired him. He was the best police commissioner I ever had. He just took it over. He said, we'll stop them at the city limits, put them on bus, bring them down here, let them yell, scream, talk to each other, throw rocks and everything. We'll arrest those guys. Then we'll take them back out and put them on buses take them back out and shove them off. It worked really well. The first time. The second time, they got a little testy. People started to throw rocks and everything else. Then we just decided that we weren't go to be nice to anybody anymore.
• [01:22:38] AMY CANTU: What did you do?
• [01:22:40] LOU BELCHER: We just told them go to hell. Come on in and see what you can do, because we'll arrest every one of you for trespassing. We ask every business, tell them they are trespassing. We had to do that. I was just getting so much out of hand. Our people didn't do a damn thing to deserve this, but there were some other just funnier than hell things that went on. The big kit pigeon die off.
• [01:23:09] AMY CANTU: Tell us about that.
• [01:23:11] LOU BELCHER: God. Horrible. I mean, you're a mayor. You've faced all kinds of crap. I mean, everything in Ann Arbor. You faced it once. Everything you faced in the company, everything you faced in the Air Force. Nothing compared to the pigeon drop. Innocent call to our planning department from the University of Michigan Planning Department, that these two I've learned never let planners get together without supervision. We have a problem here at the University of Michigan. We have a problem with pigeons nesting in the hospital windows and the dorm windows, and we have a health problem with the medical people. We're going to have a pigeon kill this weekend up on Campus. They're coming in on Friday night. We're going to put out the poison, and we're going to be out early in the morning to take care of the whole flock, cause we had a huge flock of pigeons. If you ever lived in Ann Arbor back then you see big black cloud every day flying around Ann Arbor. "Mr. Mayor, this is a good deal, because we got complaints from the hotels that these pigeons are nesting in, and people can't even open the window. There's a mess in all of our high rises with pigeons sit and so forth. Can we join them? Will you pay for it?" What did Machiavelli say, "If you have to do something distasteful to do quickly," get it over with, people forget. What could go wrong? What could go wrong--possibly go wrong? You say the poison wasn't enough? You've got 4,000 drunk pigeons walking around the streets of Ann Arbor, and people are taking them to the vets. The vets don't know what the hell to do with these sick pigeons. I had a woman come in. I mean one of the tree huggers in Ann Arbor, the one that didn't want me to expand the Gandy Dancer, came running into my office, past my secretary with a pigeon. Put it on my desk, the thing shit all over my desk. Threw up. She said, "Do you realize what you've done to these pigeons," she said. Of course, I get a call from the vets and said, We don't know what to do. There people are bringing pigeons--only in Ann Arbor would they bring--most cities would eat them. I heard from every pigeon lover in the United States. [LAUGHTER] Looked like they drink a whole pop of Jack Daniels. Now, I got police forces, my whole police force, and firemen and everyone else putting pigeons into sacks.
• [01:25:55] ELIZABETH SMITH: Oh no.
• [01:25:56] AMY CANTU: That's awful.
• [01:25:59] LOU BELCHER: I mean, this is just a day in Ann Arbor. That's the way it's worked. All the mayors I've known, they just don't have fun. Now, I bet no one else got a pigeon call that said, "Can we kill the pigeons?" Well, those are some of the funny stories. It's just amazing how I really enjoyed my time, as mayor. It's a fun city. It's a great city. You need help. They're there. You need money for a good cause. They're there. They're very supportive. I have to tell you really one thing. When I was a city council member, I got a call all the time from somebody. My garbage isn't picked up by sewage. When I became mayor, no one ever called me and my number's listed. I had one call. I can remember in eight years at night, three o'clock in the morning, I get a call.
• [01:27:03] LOU BELCHER: "Mr. Mayor," she said, "I'm on the 19th floor of the Tower Plaza. There's a band down on the street and they're playing, and I can't get to sleep. Can you have the police or somebody go over and see that they quit playing?" I called Second Chance. He's always in trouble. I said, "Can you get that band to stop? It's your band." He said, "Okay, I'll go." Pretty soon, he came back to me and said, "We pulled the plug. It's all done." I said, okay, so I waited an hour. I called up the woman and said, "We stopped the music." I know she'd gone to sleep by that time because she woke me up at two o'clock in the morning. I woke her up at four. There are so many great stories. One more, and then--our sister city's Tübingen. Great city. It's very similar to Ann Arbor. Many of our citizens came over in 19, or 18--1870, the big migration from Stuttgart and Tübingen and Tübingen is only 19 miles, 19 kilometers, it could from Stuttgart. This is a university, say, 76,000 people in a university of research; in a university like Michigan, where you can tell there's a lot of interplay because a lot of the relatives from Tübingen live in Ann Arbor or around Ann Arbor. I guess that's why our city fathers pick Tübingen, and Tübingen picked Ann Arbor. Anyway, it's their 900th birthday. They've invited all 13 of their sister cities over for a celebration of 900th birthday. Little funny side story. I'm walking around Ann Arbor with a mayor of Tübingen, and I said, did you see a bus station over that Greyhound bus station? I said, they want to make that a sacred city monument. He said, how old is it? I said, about 50 years. He says, we don't even consider until 700 years old. [LAUGHTER] We're going to make a monument of a 50 year-old bus station. Anyway, so they said, also, "We want to invite you to bring a musical group with you." I couldn't afford the University of Michigan band. But one of my favorite bands is the RFD Boys. How many times you go to Bimbos to watch the RFD Boys? I called the RFD Boys. I said, "Hey, you want to all paid trip to Germany? We'll take you over there." "Oh yeah, we'd like that. That'd be fun." We took them over and lo and behold, I never got to see them because I had to go to see all the other bands from all these other cities. We get over there and first of all, they mixed up. Do you remember Sy Murray? You probably don't. Sy Murray was our City Administrator. He's our first Black City Administrator. Hell of a good guy. He told me, and he says, "Mr. Mayor, I'm glad you hired me, but I'm not going to be here forever. My goal is to be the city manager of the biggest city in the United States that has of city manager." He said, "My next stop," and he did. After he left us, he went to San Diego, and then from there, he was going to go then to Texas to the biggest city. But before he got there, he got fired in San Diego. I guess he and the mayor didn't get along. I don't know what it was. He went over to Germany with me, along with some other city people, and they didn't know how a city administrator was. They didn't know where the rank was. Where's the mayor and where's city administrator, and so forth? I thought the city administrator outranked the mayor. Because they have an Oberburgermeister, a burgermeister, an under Burgermeister, 11 under Burgermeisters. This administrator has got to be a real big shit. He's got to be the king of the realm. They give him the suite of rooms with a balcony and they give me a little room with a big closet. He comes out next morning and he said, "Man, you don't--I had four horsemen outside my balcony, waking me up with bugles today. He saying hail, played hail to the chief and all that shit. Man, is that good shit or what?" I said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "I got your room. They didn't know where to put me. I got your room." The oberburger, God, do you want to check up the Germans? Tell them they really screwed up. They came over, 12 people to tell me, I'm sorry, why did we know? We'll move him out completely. I said, don't you touch him. You just leave him alone. He loves it over there. I got a closet. That's all I need. Every morning, he got the horseman out there. That wasn't the funniest part of it because the funniest part was the oberburgermeister came, that one of the mornings after we were there. He says, "Mr. Mayor, you got to control your group. The RFD boys. Is that what they call the RFD boys?" He said, "They were up. We couldn't get the crowd out. There were 30,000 people around the square last night and they're all college kids, and they wouldn't let him quit." Finally, it was somebody in the morning said, I got to pee, so we let them go. They shut it down for someone lying to the--Anyway, we got to figure this out how we're going to control this crowd. They, I mean, none of the bands. The RFD boys just they drew them in from all over. I mean, 30,000 people around a square, and they wouldn't let them shut up and the mayor's going nuts. I said, I've had that problem before at the 19th floor of the Tower. Anyway 80th birthday party, was at the Michigan Theater. They put that on for me. I hadn't seen the RFD boys since then. They all came up to me, all four of them, and they said, do you know what that trip did for us? They said, first of all, we had more fun with the Germans. He said, they just wouldn't let us alone and they just, it was the greatest crowd we've ever played before, it was huge. He said, you know what? We thought, why don't we come over to Europe all the time and he said, since that trip, we made the trip to Europe every year. We've just been burning up though. He said, what you've done. I married one of the German girls I met. [LAUGHTER] He said, what a trip that was. It changed our whole, we take several months and go over European tour and he said, they love country music over there.
• [01:34:56] AMY CANTU: That's great.
• [01:35:00] LOU BELCHER: I had the fun for the whole time I was mayor. I really did.
• [01:35:12] AMY CANTU: AADL talks two is a production of the Ann Arbor District Library.