AADL Talks To: Bob and Patty Creal, Lifelong Ann Arborites and Washtenaw County History Society Board Members

Fri, 04/04/2025 - 12:42pm

When: November 21, 2024

Robert and Patty Creal, married 63 years this summer, are both board members for the Washtenaw County Historical Society with deep family roots in the Ann Arbor area. In this wide-ranging interview, Bob, a retired lawyer, and Patty, a former teacher, talk about their parents' and grandparents' Ann Arbor. They also paint a vivid portrait of Ann Arbor during the 1940s and 1950s with stories of growing up on opposite sides of town during the World War II era of rationing and Victory Gardens to a courtship involving no less than two iconic Ann Arbor institutions. Bob also discusses the signal achievements of his father, Cecil O. Creal, who served as mayor of Ann Arbor from 1959-1965.

Transcript

• [00:00:09] KATRINA ANBENDER: Hi. This is Katrina.
• [00:00:10] AMY CANTU: This is Amy. In this episode, AADL talks to Robert and Patricia Creal. Both Bob and Patty have deep roots in Washtenaw County and grew up in Ann Arbor. They tell us about being raised on opposite sides of town, where Patty attended Angell and Tappan schools while Bob went to Mack and Slauson, both converging at Ann Arbor High School. As the second son of former Ann Arbor mayor Cecil O. Creal, Bob tells us about his father's greatest accomplishments. They both remember Ann Arbor in an earlier era and share with us how they met. Thank you to both of you for coming. Thank you so much for coming today. We'd like to start by finding out how far back your family history goes in the Ann Arbor area. First, you, Bob, can you tell us how many generations have lived here in Ann Arbor, of your family?
• [00:01:09] BOB CREAL: Do you mean just Ann Arbor or Washtenaw County?
• [00:01:13] AMY CANTU: How about Washtenaw County?
• [00:01:15] BOB CREAL: We are the proud owners of a painting, a portrait of an elderly lady who happens to be my fourth or fifth great-grandmother, who came with her husband from Connecticut to Michigan in the 1820s.
• [00:01:39] AMY CANTU: Oh, my gosh.
• [00:01:41] BOB CREAL: We call her Aunt Phoebe. Everybody calls her Aunt Phoebe, but she's actually a great, great, great-grandmother. Phoebe and James Fellows were not the first of her family to come to Michigan. Their son Festus Fellows came before them, and he came initially to Canton Township in Wayne County and then from there into Lodi Township outside Salem. Subsequent to Festus coming to Washtenaw County, his parents came, and they settled out in Sylvan Township. Now, James Fellows was always called here anyway Colonel Fellows because I suspect in their age group at that point, that he was probably in the Connecticut militia during the War of 1812. Anyway, James and Phoebe came out to Washtenaw County, settled in Sylvan Township. They had several children, and I can't tell you how many, except that I know their oldest was Festus, and he's my lead-in to Phoebe. I assume they farmed, as most people did at that point. The interesting thing about Festus, a couple of things: Festus, as I said, initially settled in Canton Township, and as we have discovered from a book that was written some years ago about Canton Township, he lived at down the road on Beck Road from a gentleman who happens to be Patty's great, great, great grandfather.
• [00:04:10] AMY CANTU: My gosh.
• [00:04:11] BOB CREAL: Then there's a map of 1820. That's why I know he came before his parents. There's a map of Canton Township in 1820, which shows properties and the owners of those properties, and there's Festus Fellows at one end, and there's Samuel at the other end.
• [00:04:35] KATRINA ANBENDER: Cool.
• [00:04:38] BOB CREAL: Which really was cool when we discovered it. Anyway, Festus moved to Washtenaw County. He had a daughter, and she had a daughter, and she had a daughter, and there's three generations in there. This was my great-grandmother and my grandmother down the line here. Festus' daughter married a Howard, and the Howard family has been in Washtenaw County for some time. In fact, one of their descendants was a fellow named Red Howard, who was an Ann Arbor police officer. They had, I think, a granddaughter who married a Krasny, who became police chief of Ann Arbor one time. There's that relationship in there. But anyway, there was the Howard and then their daughter Mary Adelaide Howard married Augustus Weissinger. Then, they lived in Saline. Mr. Weissinger was a cabinet maker and a coffin maker. He was, I guess, the equivalent of a funeral man at that time. Anyway, they had a daughter and I believe, two sons, and their daughter was my grandmother. My grandmother was Donna Weissinger, and she married Homer Godfrey. Now, Homer Godfrey was the son of C. E. Godfrey, Charles E. Godfrey, who came to the Ann Arbor area sometime in the early 1880s, I believe, worked as a laborer hauling freight from the railroad station to various places in Ann Arbor. Eventually started his own dray business, and he hauled in his own freight and then, I guess, furniture, because sometime in the 1880s, he hooked up with Junius Beal, and for the life of me, I don't know how that ever came about. But Junius Beal was an entrepreneur and a member of the Board of Regents for the University. He owned a very good-sized home, which used to sit where the library where we're sitting right now is, or it was. Anyway, Junius Beal for C. E. Godfrey built a warehouse, built a building, which was expanded. At some point in time, there was an addition put onto it. In that building, in the addition, are now the main structures of Kerrytown. C. E. also built at the same time, and I suspect probably by the same contractor, the house on the corner of Kingsley Street and Fourth Avenue, which is now the Legal Aid Society. But that was C. E. Godfrey and his wife, Harriet Barrows Godfrey's home.
• [00:08:59] BOB CREAL: C.E. Godfrey had three children, the oldest being Homer and the second one being Effie, and a son, which for the life of me, we've been trying to think what his name was. Anyway, Homer left high school without graduating to go to work in the business. His sister and brother both attended the University, graduated, and his sister married a law student from Duluth, Minnesota and lived the rest of her life in Duluth. But anyway, Homer married Donna Weissinger, who was the descendant of Phoebe Fellows and James Fellows. Donna had been raised, as I say, in Saline. Anyway, after they got married, I think they bought or built a house on Kingsley Street. I think it's 114 Kingsley Street. But if you look from the Historical Society's Museum on Main Street, you can look out the window. As we sit at board meetings, I can sit there and look out the window and see my grandparents' house. Homer and Donna had one child, and that was my mother, who was born October 1 of 1903. In the meantime, or at some time, and I'm not sure when this happened, and it's certainly an unusual fact for the age at the time that it happened, Gus Weissinger decided he wanted a divorce because he had a girlfriend. Pure and simple.
• [00:11:04] AMY CANTU: That's how it goes...
• [00:11:05] BOB CREAL: So they were divorced, and Mary Adelaide, who was known as Addie, she moved in with Homer and Donna and basically raised my mother as a child. My grandmother, bless her heart, was not much of a mother, and so her mother, basically, it was not untypical grandma being the care provider. Anyway, they lived on East Kingsley Street. When my mother went to Jones School, she always said she never had many friends that were in her neighborhood because they were all Catholic, and they all went to St. Thomas. She didn't have schoolmates that lived in her neighborhood, but she had very close friends from school who remained very close friends all their lives, and then she outlived them all. But anyway, mother graduated from Ann Arbor High School when I was on State Street, went to the university, met my father at the university. My father was the middle of three boys, three sons to Charles and Edith Creal, who were farmers in Kiantone Township, which is just south of Jamestown, New York. Grandpa was the son of a farmer and I think that he was the son of a farmer, and he was the youngest of seven children. He was a very close friend of his nephew because they were the same age. His oldest brother's son was his same age as he was, so that tells you... But anyway, they were farmers, and my grandmother was a lady who didn't have much education, but she believed in education. The two of them built a little school house on their property right next to their house. That's where my dad and my uncles went to school with neighborhood children, and the school teacher lived with them in this old farmhouse, which I might say, is still there.
• [00:14:05] PATTY CREAL: We saw it.
• [00:14:09] BOB CREAL: My oldest uncle, Uncle Harold, was... I want to say, 2 or 3 years older than my dad. He ended up going to Cornell, the school, and was very successful at Cornell in the agricultural school. Eventually, when he graduated, over time worked at and then bought a farm in the little town of Homer, which is in Cortland County, New York. He had that farm until he died. But he was a dairy farmer and a very progressive dairy farmer. He went from the hand milking to machine milking to machine milking into cans, machine milking into the big cooling unit. I always appreciated the story that my grandfather used to tell about when he was a dairy farmer. He would milk cows by hand every morning and every afternoon, put them in a big can -- put them in cans -- then he would take the cans into town to the railroad and they would put on the railroad car and taken to New York City, and if they got there without spoiling, he'd get paid. My uncle, when he farmed, had this big cooler, and every day, a truck would come and pull all the milk out the cooler, and he'd be paid right then. My father was born in December 1899. It was obviously easy to keep track of his age because it was always the same year. Anyway, when he was a senior in high school, it was during World War I. He quit high school to join the Navy in, I believe, January of 1918.
• [00:16:46] BOB CREAL: He would have graduated in June. But he did not so-called "graduate" per se, but he quit, went in the Navy, and Jamestown High School at that time, for those students who had done exactly as he did, gave him his diploma in June, even though he had not completed the last semester in school. That's important for one reason. When Dad got out of the Navy, he got discharged after the Armistice. I think he got discharged, like, in January of 1919. He worked for a while at one of his cousin's furniture manufacturing companies in Warren, Pennsylvania. Then he decided that he wanted to go to college, too. He made application to Cornell to be admitted, and they denied him admission because he had not taken the Regents exams, which in New York State, even today, is mandatory for us. I don't know how many grades, but at least a senior had to take the Regents exams. He had not taken them, but they would admit him if he took an entrance exam. As he put it, he said, "Screw you. I'm not taking any." He had to know my dad to appreciate it. He had some distant relative that he knew of or whatever that had gone to the University of Michigan. Dad says, "I'll apply, " and he did to the University of Michigan, and they accepted him as a student based on his diploma. That was the important thing of getting his diploma. In the fall of September of 1920, he got on the train. You have to understand, this is the son of a small dairy farmer who never in his whole life had an extra penny to spend. Whatever he had in his pocket, he took this train to Ann Arbor and met a fellow University of Michigan student, who was a basketball player, which is interesting, if you ever knew him, by the name of Bud Ray. Bud Ray eventually became the Dean of Students at the University. He worked for the university most of his life. But anyway, he was a basketball player. Not very tall, either. He was a short guy. When they got off the train together, Dad said Bud Ray walked up State Street, the hill up from the station, up the hill, and found him a place to stay. Dad got a job right away as working waiting table or whatever. He had to have a job because he didn't have any money to speak of. I don't know how long that lasted, but anyway, he enrolled and then he got a job at the general library. He worked for the next three years practically full time while going to school, joined a fraternity, Phi Sigma Kappa, had a lot of great friends and acquaintances and whatever for the rest of his life from that experience, and guess what? He met my mother. She was interested in him, and he was interested in her. Anyway, they both graduated in June of 1924. Dad went back and started working as a salesman for the Warren Furniture Company that it was owned by his cousin. He was doing, I always think of The Music Man, the musical play about the salesman -- "You gotta know the territory" -- traveling on the train, whatever, to various places. I know much later, he mentioned, as we were traveling one time through Indiana, that that was a part of his territory that he was selling furniture. Anyway, this has always been one of the things that mother diaried, but we never really talked about too much. But they decided they were going to get married. They set a date October 10th of 1925. Dad showed up for the wedding, and they were married at the house on Kingsley Street. His best man was his best friend from his fraternity in college, a fellow with a nickname of Shorty Wilson, and Shorty was much taller than anybody else. He was given the nickname Shorty. One of the guests, of I would guess the whole family, for that matter, the Martins, had a house on Fourth Avenue that's backyard backed up to the Godfrey House on Kingsley Street. Winnie Martin, the daughter, who was younger than my mother by maybe 10 years, had broken her leg. Dad went over and picked up Winnie and carried her over to the Kingsley Street House for the wedding. Well, let me just say this. The Martin house -- that house, the Martin House, today -- is the concert house on Fourth Avenue.
• [00:24:09] KATRINA ANBENDER: Kerrytown Concert House?
• [00:24:10] BOB CREAL: Kerrytown Concert House. But that's where the Martins lived. Anyway, they got married. After the wedding, Mom and Dad and Shorty Wilson... Shorty had a car. The three of them left and drove to Jamestown to see my grandparents, the Creals. Then, from Jamestown, they drove to Orlando, Florida. Mother always said it was the darndest trip you ever saw because they were traveling over roads that weren't really roads. They had red soil in Georgia. I guess it was really a long trip, but they made it to Orlando. Dad got a job at the Florida Electric Power Company as an accountant, and mother immediately got a job as a math teacher at Orlando High School. She was one of the few certified teachers in the whole school. This was in October of '25. In the spring of '26, Dad got sick. They diagnosed him with a hyperactive thyroid. The doctor down there says, "You have to have your thyroid removed, or within days, you're going to die." My mother said, "He's not going to be operated on here." She and Dad got on a train, came back to Ann Arbor, and he had his thyroid removed at University Hospital by the expert in doing so at that point. Well, the recovery, it was a long kind of recovery period. He had to get his strength back. About the same time as his operation, the oldest brother's wife died in childbirth. She gave birth to a daughter who lived, but the mother did not. Harold needed help, so he invited Mother and Dad to come live with him. Mother could take care of Janet, the baby, and the older sister, Ann, and Dad could recover, and he did, and eventually got a job with an agricultural cooperative in the Cortland area. Then, C. E. Godfrey died in 1927, and Homer took over the business, and Homer was anything but a good businessman. He needed help. In 1928, he invited my father to join him in his business. Mother and Dad came back. Mother always said they voted for Herbert Hoover and left the next day. It was early November 1928, when they came back to Ann Arbor to live. They brought Janet with them. They had their niece, and that was basically their first child. Well, they rented an apartment on Dexter, and on June 5th of 1930, my brother was born. Then in 1932 or whatever, 33, Janet, who by this time was 6 or 7 years old, I'm not sure quite when, died of... well, they always said of strep throat, but her death certificate says pneumonia, so one led to the other, I suspect, anyway. This just devastated my father. My mother always said she took it for about a year of him not talking and said, "You either start leading a regular life and start communicating with me or I'm out of here" and my Dad snapped out of it. Though I should backtrack a little bit just a moment because in 1930, they also bought a two-bedroom house on the corner of Miller Avenue and Maple Ridge across from Mack School. They had moved when Janet died and Dick was born, they lived on Miller Avenue. Then I came along in March 29th of 1936. It was my mother and Dad, my brother and I. I lived on Miller Avenue until they built a house out on Cedar Bend Drive in 1957 and moved. But that's basically the history of my parents getting together and where they came from and how they happened to begin. That's the long answer to the short question. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:30:34] AMY CANTU: Yeah, thanks!
• [00:30:36] KATRINA ANBENDER: So can we talk a little bit about your family, Patty, and how you ended up in Ann Arbor?
• [00:30:42] PATTY CREAL: Well, we didn't have quite the adventure that the Creals did, but my grandfather, A. S. Lyndon, was a photographer. There are many photographs that he did that are at the Bentley. He grew up on Beck Road in Canton Township, where his great great-whatever was with the other... Then my grandpa graduated from U of M, and he stayed in Ann Arbor and did the photography business. He had a lot of other jobs. He just liked to do things. He was in his 30s, and I don't know exactly how old he was, I'm not good with numbers like Bob is. But anyway, he went to the west coast of Michigan. My grandmother was raised and so forth in St. Louis, Missouri, and it was so hot down there that her parents used to come up to Michigan for the summer. And he met my grandma. My grandparents met in the summer, and then they were married in October, I think, very shortly, and settled in Ann Arbor. That's how I got here. They had two children and stayed here the rest of their lives. But they had a very short courtship.
• [00:32:39] AMY CANTU: It sounds like it.
• [00:32:42] PATTY CREAL: Yeah.
• [00:32:42] KATRINA ANBENDER: What neighborhoods did you both grow up in then?
• [00:32:46] BOB CREAL: Well, I grew up at the corner of Miller and Maple Ridge, across from Mack School. Wonderful neighborhood. I was just reading something recently. In fact, it was a book of photographs of Ann Arbor. I just pulled it out of our library, and I just was looking at it, and there was a comment in there about the city of Ann Arbor... In 1908, I believe, it passed its first city zoning ordinance. The idea at that time was that the west side of Ann Arbor they set out as housing for working people, and the east side of Ann Arbor was where all the elite big homes were going to be. That was the way they decided at that time, they wanted the city to be situated. Well, Maple Ridge and Arbor View and Miller Avenue and Seventh Street, and then all the houses up on Brooks Street and Miner and Summit and whatever. All these a basement, two bedrooms, maybe a living room, dining room, kitchen -- they're all just about the same house. Somebody made a fortune architecting these houses. Anyway, I had a wonderful childhood. I've often said, it was the most idyllic childhood anybody could have. My mother was a believer in children being as semi-independent as they could. In the summertime, particularly, I'd go out in the morning and mother would call me for lunch, and I'd come up for lunch and then go back out in the afternoon playing with lots of kids on Maple Ridge, Arborview, and that whole vicinity. I had lots of friends. We were just a block away from West Park. We had Mack schools across the street. I had one friend who loved nature. His name was Sherril Gerstler. He just loved being out in the wilderness. I had accompany him, and I could have cared less. I was not and never have been the naturalist that Sherril was, and he ended up being a ranger out in the Rocky Mountains as his career. But anyway, we could wander behind Mack School. It was all wilderness going up all the way almost to Sunset. There was none of the housing that there is now going out Miller Avenue. We would play games. We would play soccer. We would play hide and seek. We would play all the old games that you would play -- Kick the Can.
• [00:36:46] BOB CREAL: I had independence like you wouldn't believe. Nobody checked on me, nobody was worried about me. They used to have a sand pit on Arborview, which was about a block away from our house, one of these sand dune types of things. I know my father was extremely worried about that sand pit because eventually he had it eliminated. He was in city government by that time, and he made sure it was gone. But we were up there playing, playmates and myself. A man that lived above that sand dune saw us and gave us hell and told us to get out of there. He called my dad, and boy. One of the few times I really caught the bad end of my dad's feelings. But we had just a wonderful time. If you put it in perspective too, as to time, this was during the Second World War. I so well remember I had a couple wooden facsimile rifles. They're just play guns. Man, we killed more Japs and more Germans than you could ever imagine. Just because we grew up... If you're familiar at all with the area where Mark Hannah Street is, well, that was a big field. In fact, one of the things we did during the Second World War as a family, and a lot of families all along Maple Ridge and Arborview, is we had victory gardens in this area. Somebody with a plow would come along in the spring and plow up all this land, and of course, then we'd go out and take all the rocks out of the field and make borders for the plots that everybody had, and we'd grow vegetables all summer long. It came down a big hill -- not a big hill -- but there was a hill down to the backyards of the houses on the south side of Arborview, and so we could go up on those hills and lie down and shoot the enemy. This was our play. As I say, it was during the war. Nobody moved. I've often said it was so fascinating because the kids I entered kindergarten with, I graduated from high school with because we never moved. Nobody moved. Everybody was in the same house. Well, I was born in '36, so when the war started, I was five years old, almost six. We didn't go places. It was gas rationing. But it was a very close-knit neighborhood. Albeit, my parents' friends weren't necessarily -- with some exceptions -- weren't necessarily the neighbors, but everybody knew everybody, and everybody was working, the kids all went to school together, except for the Catholic kids, again, they went to St. Thomas.
• [00:40:54] AMY CANTU: So, Bob, you went to Mack Open? I'm sorry, Mack School; it wasn't "Open" then.
• [00:41:01] BOB CREAL: Mack School at the time was a kindergarten through six.
• [00:41:06] AMY CANTU: Then where did you go after Mack?
• [00:41:09] BOB CREAL: I went to Slauson.
• [00:41:11] AMY CANTU: Slauson.
• [00:41:11] BOB CREAL: The principal of Slauson, at that time was Harold Logan. He had started out at Mack School. Mack School was, you may say "Open". But I think originally Mack School was a kindergarten through 8, when the high school was 9-12. When Slauson was built, then it went from K-6, and Slauson was 7-9. But Harold taught at Mack School, and then he became the first principal of Slauson, and was the principal for a long time in Logan Elementary School named after Harold Logan. Harold and his wife Zeta were friends of my parents and also became after I started practicing law and was practicing here. He was a client until his death. Just the dearest, loveliest, wonderful educator. In fact, I have to tell you a story because of that. At his funeral, his two daughters wanted people just to give their memories, anybody who wanted to talk. This one man got up and he says, and I should preface this with saying Harold and Zeta, in later years until both of them died, lived out in Woodbury Gardens down off Industrial Stadium. This man said, ''I was driving down Industrial highway and I saw Mr. Logan walking down the sidewalk." He says, "I just had to stop and say hello." He swung around, made a U-turn, pulled up beside Harold got out and said, "Mr. Logan, I'm John Smith.'' He says, ''Mr. Logan looked at me and he says, 'John Smith, you and your brother Fred lived down on seventh Street. I remember you and I remember your parents.''' He goes on about John Smith's family. He says, "I was never so astounded in my life that he would remember not only me, but my parents where they lived, everything about it." That was Harold Logan. He had a better memory than mine, and I've got a pretty good one. I have to dispute my friend who says I've got the best memory she ever knew, that Harold had a better memory than I. Anyway, he was the principal of Slauson when I went to Slauson. It's funny. The wonderful experiences we had. I can remember the names of all my teachers at Mack School. When I got out of the Army in 1964, late '64 and first of January of '65, I became an assistant prosecuting attorney in Washtenaw County. I was for about 3.5 years before I left to just enter private practice. One night, I was drawing up before Francis O'Brien in district court or, at that time municipal court, drawing a bunch of juries for cases to be held or tried the next week or two. I was drawing juries for everybody, and I was sitting there and what the process is, of course, is they always ask a potential panel of jurors if they know anybody at the consul table. This one lady raised her hand. The judge said, "Who do you know?" She said, "I know Mr. Creal." I look over her and I didn't know who she was. "How do you know Mr. Creal?" She smiled and she says, "I was his third grade teacher." [LAUGHTER]
• [00:46:37] BOB CREAL: Which just blew my mind. But I remember Mrs. Lasher. Anyway, I went through Mack School. We're the same kids in the same class every year. They didn't co-mingle. Boy, once you started with first grade, those kids and any additions that might come along right up through going into Slauson. Then Slauson was a wonderful experience. Not only Mr. Logan, but they were excellent teachers. I had a wonderful time at Slauson. I just thought that was great. Then we went from there up to the old Ann Arbor High School on State Street.
• [00:47:39] KATRINA ANBENDER: You both went to Ann Arbor High School?
• [00:47:42] BOB CREAL: Yes.
• [00:47:42] PATTY CREAL: Yes.
• [00:47:42] KATRINA ANBENDER: Is that where you met?
• [00:47:45] BOB CREAL: Patty was two years behind me. I graduated in 1954 from Ann Arbor High School. One of the wonderful things they did in those days when you graduated, the graduation was held... the ceremony was held in Hill Auditorium. We would all get our caps and gowns on at the old high school, and we'd walk out the door, walk down the middle of State Street, up the middle of North University into Hill Auditorium. If you can imagine a bunch of 18-year-old kids, that was the most exhilarating event you could ever have, is walking down the middle of State Street. The police held the traffic back.
• [00:48:40] AMY CANTU: They should still do that.
• [00:48:42] BOB CREAL: That was a big event in those days. They did that one more year. Then my dear wife was in the class of '56 when they moved into the new high school on Stadium.
• [00:48:56] PATTY CREAL: Spring vacation, they moved. The senior class, they had a Washington club thing, and well, practically everybody in the senior class went to New York for three days and Washington for three days on the spring break. While we were there, the rest of the high school moved from State Street out to the new high school.
• [00:49:28] AMY CANTU: Wow.
• [00:49:29] BOB CREAL: Guess who did the moving? My dad.
• [00:49:32] PATTY CREAL: Godfrey Moving and Storage.
• [00:49:36] BOB CREAL: Godfrey Moving and Storage.
• [00:49:37] AMY CANTU: Now, Patty, what elementary school and middle school did you go to?
• [00:49:42] PATTY CREAL: I went to Angell School in Tappan, and we did the same thing at Tappan. I started out living out past Carpenter Road on Dayton Drive. During the war, my parents were not afraid but wanted to plan ahead in case my dad was drafted. I had a younger brother, and I was about three. We moved to my grandparents' house in case my dad was drafted. He never was because he worked at Huron Motor Sales as the parts manager and supplied parts so the workers in Ann Arbor could get to Willow Run to build the planes. We just stayed there. It was Arlington at that -- well, still does -- crosses Washtenaw and the County Farm was right there. That was county, really. That's where I grew up. And then, when I was about in eighth grade, my folks decided they were going to move to town. At that point, the university was tearing down rooming houses by the Union. Of course, at that time, there were no building supplies. You couldn't really build a house because there wasn't any sticks. So my folks bought a rooming house, took off the third floor, and put it on a truck, and moved it down the State Street hill, out Packard road, and they had built a basement on Brockman. It was really exciting watching this house come down State Street. I was probably 11, 12 at that point. That was cool. Of course, that was still pretty country. There was not a whole lot there. Anyway, I went to Angell School for elementary and then Tappan, which is now Burns Park School. That's where I went for junior high. But when I was in eighth grade, they built the new Tappan. At ninth grade, I can't remember if it was eighth or ninth grade, I remember walking on boards like two-by-tens into the building because it was all mud. So we christened Tappan. Then, the same time, then we went to Pioneer. It was Pioneer then. I went to three very stable schools.
• [00:53:01] AMY CANTU: Various iterations of all these different buildings. You've seen the transition of high schools. Wow.
• [00:53:09] PATTY CREAL: We grew up on the other side of town from where Bob was.
• [00:53:14] BOB CREAL: The wealthy side of town. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:53:17] KATRINA ANBENDER: I was going to say. So, did those two sides of town converge when you went to high school?
• [00:53:24] PATTY CREAL: Oh, sure.
• [00:53:25] KATRINA ANBENDER: Was that ever something that people brought up, or was there, like...?
• [00:53:29] PATTY CREAL: No. Never an issue.
• [00:53:35] BOB CREAL: I exaggerated. I said basically what the thought was back in the early 1900s of what the planners thought should be the way Ann Arbor was, but of course, that's not the way it happened. To the benefit of everybody, frankly, it didn't happen. But saying that, the Old West Side is a historic district in Ann Arbor. But those houses on the Old West Side are very similar to the houses... I should say, after I got out of law school, I went in the army for three years and came back and we bought a subdivision house, but a new house that was being built, four bedrooms instead of two, down on the Southeast side of Ann Arbor, very close to where the Brockman and Pine Valley...
• [00:54:48] PATTY CREAL: Very near where I grew up.
• [00:54:50] BOB CREAL: Things change. I don't know where I was going with that, but someplace.
• [00:54:57] AMY CANTU: I have a question for you, Bob. Since your dad isn't here to tell us what it was like to be mayor, can you tell us what you think he would have said about his time--what did he talk to you about? When did he decide to become involved in politics, and what was it like for your family?
• [00:55:19] BOB CREAL: Dad ran for the office of city councilman from the old Fifth Ward, which was where we lived. As I remember Dad saying, he was defeated the first time in a primary. But then ran and ran again. I think I want to say in 1937, he was elected to city council. Maybe it was '38. He was on City Council as a councilman. I know until there were two-year terms, so it had to be '38 until 1944. Strike that. Yes, 1944, he left the council for a year, and in 1945, he ran for the office of what was then President of the City Council, which was a citywide election as opposed to just being a ward, and he was elected. He served as president of the city council for eight years and left in 1953. Then he was on the planning commission for a while. Then he was elected to the charter revision committee. He was on the group that drafted the new charter that went into effect in 1956 or '57 because the mayor was William E. Brown Jr. from 1945, and he was mayor for 12 years, then he got beat in an election by Sam Eldersveld who was a professor at the University. Sam served as mayor for two years. He just served one term. Dad ran for mayor then in 1959. Was elected, served for six years. He was elected three times and retired in 1965.
• [00:58:03] AMY CANTU: What made him want to become involved in politics, and what would he like people to remember about his term in office as mayor?
• [00:58:14] BOB CREAL: This was a dynamic period of time. Well, let me just say this. Dad was elected in April 1965. Prior to his election, there was a movement in the city, and there were federal funds available and whatever, for what they called at that time, urban renewal projects. The Ann Arbor City Council either just immediately before he was elected or just shortly afterwards, voted to -- it must have been just afterwards because he was already...he was a mayor -- voted to raze R-A-Z-E, the whole area from basically Catherine Street to the railroad tracks. A predominantly African American occupied residential housing. Dad vetoed it. Several of the councilmen that sustained the veto had just been elected in that same election that elected him mayor. It was probably the best thing that ever happened, is that he just said, "No, it's not going to happen" because that whole area since then, is just...
• [01:00:15] PATTY CREAL: ...a wonderful area.
• [01:00:17] BOB CREAL: Wonderful. But he was very insistent and he had a business in that area. He knew the people in that area. Interestingly enough, this was the old First Ward -- I guess it's still the First Ward -- but in his election, in all three elections that he had in 1959, '61, and '63, this was a democratic stronghold in the city. Dad won the first ward all three times. They believed in him, and he believed in them. It was the most wonderful thing. But that wasn't the only thing that happened during that time. When he was elected, the city hall was sitting on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Huron Street, the South West corner, and was a little structure. It was badly outdated. City voters on two or three other occasions, had already turned down funding for building a new city hall. Well, Dad said, "We're going to have a new city hall." One of the early things he did is he got the issue put back on the ballot, and he went out and he strongly campaigned for this new city hall. Dad had a lot of credibility. As I say, he'd been in city government for 14 years, knew a lot of people, made a lot of friendships over the years. Anyway, the voters voted to build a new city hall. That's where the city hall is now. That was one thing. Second thing, Ann Arbor, forever after prohibition was abolished, had the restrictions on the sale of alcoholic beverages. You could only buy beer and wine over the counter. You couldn't buy a hard liquor drink any place except a private club. There was a town club, and there was an Elks Club, and there was a VFW club. There may have been others, but that's the other three I remember that served...you could have a meal and have a scotch and water or martini or whatever. Any place else it was all beer and wine, only west of Division Street. Anything east of Division Street was that you couldn't buy even beer and wine. So on campus, there was no bar, there was no Pretzel Bell, there was no anything that you could do. Realizing that growth of Ann Arbor to a great extent, it depended upon... Well, let me back up a second, too. There was the Old Allenel Hotel on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Huron Street. Seems to me that there was a hotel out on in Scio Township, a motel. But there were no places where people could come and stay, except in the Old Allenel. Dad recognized that the hospitality business in Ann Arbor was going to be an important ingredient of Ann Arbor's future. He proposed they put it on the ballot. It was a charter amendment that needed to be put on the ballot and eliminated Division Street, eliminated beer and wine restriction, allowed for alcoholic beverages to be sold over at restaurants, licensed facilities, any place in town. Of course, if you look now, you see where all these hotels are and how many are there? There are 20 of them or better. They all have licenses. They all can serve. Restaurants... Go down Main Street. Is there any store down Main Street except Slanders? That's not a restaurant. That's hospitality, they ought to rename it.
• [01:06:06] BOB CREAL: Anyway, he accomplished that. The third thing, of course, was about the same time President Eisenhower's interstate highway system was being developed. I-94 came through. US 23 was being planned and forever, prior to that time, trucks, traffic on US 23 and what was then US 12 would come right straight through Ann Arbor. If you were traveling on 12, you would come in Washington to Huron Street or to Forest to Huron Street, heading towards Jackson. If you were going North and South, you'd go 23 to Carpenter Road from Milan, went right through downtown Milan, up Carpenter, Washtenaw, again, down Huron Street to Main Street. Make the turn on Main Street, go out north towards where more like... This was intolerable, as far as Dad was concerned. Anyway, he worked -- and this didn't make any difference to him -- the politics or whatever. John Mackie was the Director of the State Highway Department at that time. Dad worked with John Mackie and all the supervisors and the governments all the way down to the Ohio line, practically, as to where to put US 23 on the east side of Ann Arbor. He was just so happy when that all came together, where we have the beltway, so to speak. Truck traffic doesn't have to come through town to get to the other side. He was very happy of getting rid of all that turning traffic at Main and Huron. The other thing he was always happy about is being able to take care of people's streets. I think Dad walked every street in town at one time or another. Boy, I'll tell you, he was basically a take-care-of-your-citizen mayor. If somebody was on a gravel street, he made darn sure it was chlorinated regularly to keep the dust down. He liked to see pavement, get it paved, get it done. People knew that he cared, and they knew that he was there to serve them. He was always very proud of that. Interestingly enough, he started getting a lot of political flack from some members, and I won't say all of them, but some members of the African-American community -- because we're talking now '59-'65; this is turmoil time -- who claimed he was prejudiced. Dad got more jobs for people that would walk into his office. A little black man coming in and saying, "Mayor Creal, I need a job." He'd get him a job. That happened so often. Then, as I say, the First Ward, which was an African-American community, basically, at that point, voted for him overwhelmingly every time. He had their back. I think that in many respects, going back now 60 years, he probably produced more when he was mayor than any other mayor since.
• [01:10:57] KATRINA ANBENDER: This is a different question, but I asked earlier if you met when you were in high school. You said you didn't meet when you were in high school. So how did the two of you meet?
• [01:11:08] PATTY CREAL: Well, we did, really. We did know each other. I get to tell this part. [LAUGHTER] My grandmother had a bridge club that met for lunch and played bridge, and the day Bob was born was bridge club day. His grandmother, Donna, came out to my grandmother's house and stood in the kitchen. She didn't do anything except stand in the kitchen, according to my grandma, and cried because they wouldn't name Bob Homer.
• [01:11:49] BOB CREAL: Because I wasn't a girl.
• [01:11:50] PATTY CREAL: Oh, first of all, yeah, he wasn't a girl [LAUGHTER] and then they wouldn't name him Homer. She just was very upset. Really, since he was born, we knew who each other was.
• [01:12:07] AMY CANTU: Oh, that's funny.
• [01:12:09] BOB CREAL: Can I just throw in one thing here since I wasn't named Homer. She was just adamant that I should be named Homer. My dad says, "I'll be damned if I'll name him Homer. I'll name him Cecil first." [LAUGHTER] My brother was Richard, so I was named Robert. But my grandfather's middle name was Beryls. So that's where I got my middle name. So go ahead.
• [01:12:44] PATTY CREAL: Anyway, so...but I was on one side of town for elementary school and junior high, and Bob was on the other. I was two years younger. We really didn't see each other very much until we got to high school. I just helped him one time with a campaign for somebody for student council. We didn't know each other. I knew who he was. He knew who I was. Then I guess we really didn't even see each other til-
• [01:13:21] BOB CREAL: I graduated from law school. I'm getting ready to take the bar exam.
• [01:13:29] PATTY CREAL: I was teaching in Wayne, Michigan. A bunch of the teachers that lived in Ann Arbor went down to the Pretzel Bell to celebrate the end of school. We saw Bob down there. Well, we got engaged on New Year's Eve, so it's from June to December.
• [01:14:01] AMY CANTU: You dated from June til December?
• [01:14:02] PATTY CREAL: For six dates.
• [01:14:03] AMY CANTU: Oh, wow. [LAUGHTER]
• [01:14:05] BOB CREAL: Well, saying that, let's tell the whole story.
• [01:14:11] PATTY CREAL: Oh, no, no, no...
• [01:14:12] BOB CREAL: After I saw her at the Pretzel Bell and sat down and talked to her, I called her up and asked her for a date. This date consisted of going out with the German Park for one of their evenings, which is enjoyable. We had some beers. I was very restrained. I didn't drink as much as I would normally. Well, she thought I drank too much, so she wouldn't accept another invitation for a date.
• [01:14:56] PATTY CREAL: True. [LAUGHTER].
• [01:14:57] BOB CREAL: That broke off right away. So I took the bar exam in September. I passed it, and they published in the Ann Arbor News those Ann Arbor residents that had taken and passed the bar exam. Patty saw it.
• [01:15:19] PATTY CREAL: My mother saw it!
• [01:15:21] BOB CREAL: Well, somebody saw it at that end anyway. She sent me a note congratulating me on passing the bar exam. "Well, jeez, she's interested. I'll call her again." This time we went out and guess what? We went someplace to have a beer. Anyway, this ended up going...we had all of four or five dates. Then my parents wanted to take me out for dinner in celebration of having passed the bar exam. They hooked up with Judge John Conlin, who was the probate judge at the time, and his wife and son, Patrick, who... Pat and I took the bar exam at the same time, graduated from the same class. In fact, the Saturday that we took our last five papers of the bar exam, Pat and I went down to the Pretzel Bell to have a beer.
• [01:16:43] PATTY CREAL: It was the only place to go.
• [01:16:45] BOB CREAL: Some place to go. Anyway, Pat and his wife, Ann Ward, who was a classmate of mine in high school. The senior Conlins, the senior Creals, and this bachelor guy invited my new friend that I just met. [LAUGHTER] so to speak. We went to the Town Club for dinner, dance. Really had a wonderful evening. When I took her home, guess what? I asked her to marry me.
• [01:17:28] AMY CANTU: Aww.
• [01:17:31] BOB CREAL: The crazy part is, she said, yes! [LAUGHTER]
• [01:17:34] PATTY CREAL: Then he left for the service four days later. He was out of town.
• [01:17:41] BOB CREAL: I left for the Army four days later.
• [01:17:44] AMY CANTU: And you waited for him.
• [01:17:45] PATTY CREAL: Well, we got married in July.
• [01:17:48] AMY CANTU: Nice.
• [01:17:48] BOB CREAL: We'll celebrate sixty-three years this July.
• [01:17:56] AMY CANTU: Congratulations.
• [01:17:58] PATTY CREAL: Thank you.
• [01:17:58] AMY CANTU: A love story that includes the Pretzel Bell and German Park. It can't get any better than that! I can't get any better local history than that, either. You've both been on the Washtenaw County Historical Society -- you've been on the board. You're interested in local history, that makes sense that you have a deep passion for local history given your roots here. Can you tell us briefly, both of you, what you see as the biggest changes over the years and where you think the city has some challenges ahead, and where you think we're doing things right?
• [01:18:41] BOB CREAL: Frankly, there have been so many changes. I've thought about this a lot because growing up, I just remember so many bakeries, so many dairies, so many pharmacies -- or we called them drug stores.
• [01:19:13] PATTY CREAL: They're not...
• [01:19:14] BOB CREAL: And other types of businesses that frankly have all disappeared. I've often thought, Isn't that too bad? Clothing stores, same thing. Isn't that too bad? I miss Campbell's Bakery, Crippen's Drug Store, which were right next to each other on Miller Avenue--or on Main Street just south of Miller. But I had lunch every day when I was a sophomore in high school at Swift Drug Store down on State Street. The drug stores that existed then all had soda bars. As a boy, my parents would go up on Sunday afternoon to Alexander's Drug Store, which was right across from Hill Auditorium and North University. They had a soda bar, we'd always have a chocolate milkshake or something. Campus Drug was on the corner of State and Liberty.
• [01:20:21] PATTY CREAL: You knew your pharmacist, and they knew you. Not anymore.
• [01:20:30] BOB CREAL: What I remember about Campus Drug was it was owned by Leo Sedgwick, who was a neighbor of ours on Miller Avenue. But their son, Lindsey, and I were in--sang in the St. Andrews Boys Choir for several years. And Lindsey and I, after church on Sunday, we'd go over to have a lunch at the soda bar at Campus Drug Store and then go to either the State Theater or the Michigan Theater, watch a movie, sometimes both, on a Sunday afternoon, walk home. Those places are gone forever. I don't know. I just find that sad. Sad that the bakeries, oh, Quality Bakery. Beautiful. God, they were... Good food. Those changes... We buy our baked goods now at Kroger's or Meijer's or whatever. It's not the same. At least I don't think it's the same. Those are the downsides of what's changed in Ann Arbor. I'm sure it's the same every place else. The upside, of course, is the hospitality industry in Ann Arbor is just out of sight. That's the good side.
• [01:22:11] PATTY CREAL: There's also such a huge medical community. Both the University and Trinity: It's very good medical care for our citizens.
• [01:22:28] BOB CREAL: One of the things -- it's a good comparison, I think, to some extent: My grandfather Homer died of a heart attack in 1941 in the summer. He came up to see his doctor at the Old St. Joe up on Ingalls Street. I happened to have pneumonia at the time. I was in a ward room bed at St. Joe, and this is one of my lasting memories: My grandfather stuck his head in the door. He came up to see a doctor wasn't there, so he just came down the hall and stuck his head in, said, "Hello." He left the hospital, got in his car, and on the way home, he had a heart attack and died. And I, for the life of me, with this last 13 months or so -- Patty had a triple bypass operation on her heart. I've had four stents put into one of my arteries. The cardiac care today is so advanced and so life-saving, that I think back frequently that I missed all those years getting to know my grandfather because they did not have that kind of care.
• [01:24:16] PATTY CREAL: But I think Ann Arbor has kept up.
• [01:24:18] BOB CREAL: Ann Arbor has all of this wonderful... I mean, it's just astounding the technological advances that we are the beneficiaries of. We're here, both of us... We came down from our cottage in December 5th a year ago, not this past December, but a year ago, thinking we were going back up to the cottage. About three or four days later, that's when Patty had her catheterization, and they kept her in the hospital, then operated four days later. We could both be gone right now because of heart attacks.
• [01:25:00] PATTY CREAL: And we didn't know it.
• [01:25:01] BOB CREAL: We didn't even know it. We had not a clue that we had anything wrong with our hearts. So I can sit here -- we can sit here -- now today and talk to you, that we would not have been able to do otherwise.
• [01:25:16] AMY CANTU: Thank you so much for talking to us.
• [01:25:18] KATRINA ANBENDER: Thank you so much. AADL Talks To is a production of the Ann Arbor District Library.