Schneiders' corner has been a fruit farm, a gas station, and a haven for hungry police officers

In 1903, blacksmith John Schneider sold his shop on Washington Street near Ashley and bought a fruit farm and a farmhouse on South Main Street. The family remained in business on the corner continuously until last summer.

The Schneiders' fruit farm was bounded by what are today Stadium on the south, Edgewood on the west, Main on the east, and Berkley on the north. Later, Snyder Avenue was cut through in front of the house. The new street was actually named for the Schneider family: the Anglicized spelling was a concession to anti-German sentiment during World War I. The war also brought the family a new line of work, when John's son Titus opened a single-pump gas station at the Main Street corner. Titus built a house for his young family next door to the station; originally it faced Main, but an addition in the 1930's gave it more prominence along West Stadium. Titus Schneider ran the gas station until 1946, then leased it to Standard Oil. In 1950, he sold it to his sons John and Titus, who is usually called "Ti." In 1957, the brothers replaced their first building with a new gas station built to Standard Oil's specifications. A perfect specimen of the immaculate, enameled-steel roadside icons of the postwar era, it's still there today, but it has changed use twice.

"In the early Seventies," Ti says, "there was a gas shortage. We couldn't get enough gas, so we started repairing cars. Then things started easing up, but by Seventy-Nine or Eighty, things got tight as far as parts go, and there was computer technology in the cars. So we changed to a convenience store."

The conversion was simply a matter of closing up the big garage doors and changing the blue letters on the wall to read "Grocery" instead of "Standard." But Schneider*s party store had only a brief period of prosperity. "That was sort of the beginning of a boom for convenience stores," Ti says. "Soon they were overbuilt. Every time a new business opened, it would take five or ten percent of ours. So we decided to sell in Nineteen-Eighty. In Nineteen Eighty-Six, we almost sold to Seven-Eleven, but the city wouldn't rezone it," he says. "They said it would make too much traffic. The politics in Ann Arbor has always been anti-business. The business climate isn't anything a small business can deal with."

John Schneider retired in 1984. In 1986, when he thought 7-Eleven would be buying the party store, Ti bought the Fredonia Grocery in Freedom Township. He lives on Pleasant Lake next door to the grocery.

Schneider's party store finally closed this past summer. But while the Schneiders have left their corner, they still own it. Nick Chapekis of Capitol Cleaners and Saline police chief Jim Douglas and his family have taken a lease with an option to buy.

Chapekis and Douglas's first goal is to run a drop-off cleaners on the site. But in September, Schneider was hoping that City Council would approve rezoning of the station, the house next door, and the empty lot next to that. In that event, the Chapekis-Douglas option to buy will go into effect and they'll put up a new building to house the cleaners and some offices. Rick Fabian of Fabian realty company moved his offices to the West Stadium house last January, and he holds the lease on that part of the property. If the rezoning is approved, the new building will include offices for Fabian, who is also the agent for the lease and sale negotiations. "It's the best location in the city for visibility," Fabian says. "I don't have to walk too far to the football games, and I even have some parking thrown in."

Although it's not part of the deal, the old farmhouse facing Snyder is also in the throes of change. Last year, it was renovated by John Sirnpkins for his Group Four realty company. "We were thinking of tearing it down," Simpkins says. "But at that time, we went to Williamsburg in Virginia, and they were restoring buildings that didn't have one-third of the quality of the building we have here.

"You can't write about Schneider's without writing about football Saturdays," Simpkins says. "That was the place for the policemen to park and eat. They made the best hot dogs in town."

"I've been there on many a cold day warming up on a Schneider dog; we all called them 'Schneider dogs,'" police officer George Patak confirms. "We start around nine-thirty or ten on those days and stay straight through as late as five or six. Frequently we don't get lunch. In the morning, when we get there, they say 'Be on point by . . .' and tell you the time you're supposed to be at your place. That left time to stop at Schneider's. For a lot of the guys, that would be the only meal they'd get all day. I called it 'the police tailgate party.' There'd be hot dogs and coffee and whatever his wife and daughter [Betty and Linda] had baked up that day. You'd just throw some money in a jar. I don't know what we're going to do this year."

[Photo caption from the original print edition]: The street leading into the Schneider farm was chauvinistically renamed Snyder during World War I, but the war also brought the family a new line of work when Titus Schneider opened a gas station in a tidy frame building on the Main Street Corner (top). His sons Ti and John replaced it with an enameled-steel Standard Oil station in 1957 (above), converted it to a convenience store about 1980. Ti Schneider closed the store last summer and leased the building to Nick Chapekis's Capitol Cleaners.

From harness making to work clothes

Soon after Herman Ehnis opened his harness shop at 116 West Liberty, he realized he had gone into a dying field. But by adroitly shifting his focus from horses to the workmen who cared for them, Ehnis created a business that is still here eighty-two years later.

The son of a German immigrant, Ehnis grew up in Saline and attended both German and English schools before being apprenticed to the local harness maker. In 1910, he rented a storefront in the Schaeberle Block of West Liberty from Walter Mack, whose Mack & Co. department store was just up the street. Ehnis arranged to repair harnesses for Mack's horse-drawn delivery fleet and to have the fees subtracted from his rent. Evidently, Mack used a lot of harnesses: most months, the repair bill and the rent came out even.

Along with harnesses (most of which he made himself during the slower winter months) Ehnis sold saddles, bridles, horse collars, whips, blankets, and robes. As farmers prepared for the new season, Ehnis could repair their equipment or fit them up with new. But he soon realized that cars were fast replacing horses. When Ehnis opened, the city directory listed just four auto dealers. Ten years later, the classified section of the city directory devoted eight pages to car-related businesses.

By about 1914, Ehnis began selling shoes to make up for the declining harness business: not dress shoes, but the kind of work shoes worn by the farmers and tradesmen he was already serving. At about the same time, Ehnis was joined in the store by his older brother, Matt, who set up a shoe repair business in the back corner.

Ten years later, Ehnis called his shop a shoe store in the city directory, although he continued to sell harnesses to the dwindling number of farmers who were still using horses to plow their fields. A few farmers continued using horses until World War II, but by the mid-1930's harness sales had fallen so much Ehnis quit them altogether, leaving Malloy's on Ann Street as the last harness store in Ann Arbor.

Somehow, Ehnis survived the Depression, a time when many downtown stores--including Walter Mack's fabulous department store--went under. The first year after the crash, business dropped 55 percent, and on some days Ehnis made only a few dollars. But remarkably, he managed to come through with a store to hand down to his son and grandsons.

It was during the Depression that Ehnis began carrying work clothes. His son, Leroy, then a high school student working part-time, remembers there were two basic choices of work clothes before World War II: bib overalls, usually blue but also white for painters and carpenters, and two-piece gray uniforms--fleece-lined moleskin for winter and lighter covert cloth for summer. Although they never sold topcoats or suits, they were soon selling everything else for men--warm jackets, underwear, heavy socks, work gloves, suspenders, belts, and headgear.

Before World War II, Saturday night was the big shopping time of the week. Families from the surrounding farms and small towns would come to Ann Arbor for the evening, bringing along their children and hired hands. Kids might go to a movie at the Wuerth Theater (now Gratzi), the parents would run their errands, and hired hands would go off to buy candy or (after Prohibition) a drink.

Many of the Saturday night shoppers were regular Ehnis customers. They seldom bought in quantity ("In those days people got by with less," says Leroy Ehnis), but they were faithful, generation after generation. Herman Ehnis knew most of his customers by name; he kept track of their diverse genealogies and could talk to them in German if they preferred. Leroy Ehnis remembers that what he calls "low German" --German with a Swabian accent-- was spoken in the country for years after it was no longer heard in town.

After serving in World War II, Leroy Ehnis joined his father in the store. Work clothes began to appear in a much wider variety of styles and colors. No longer all cotton, they now came in synthetics for permanent press and easy care. Another postwar change was the widening popularity of work clothes, especially blue jeans. Ehnis & Son experienced a surge of student business in the 1960's and 1970's as painter pants and bib overalls became commonplace on campus.

Herman Ehnis retired in 1967. As they reached adulthood, his three grandsons, first Steve, then Jim, then Larry, entered the business alongside their father. Steve remembers that his grandfather still worked occasionally in the store until he died in 1974; sometimes he took over on football Saturdays so Leroy could go to the game. Steve remembers his grandfather greeting longtime customers and asking about their cousins and in-laws. He also recalls him wrapping their purchases in brown paper and tying them with string he pulled off a holder that still hangs from the store's ceiling.

Since 1985, when Leroy retired, his sons have run the store. Ehnis & Son still offers long-lasting work clothes, American-made whenever possible. The number of farmers, who once made up about half the customers, has plummeted, but a core of loyal customers from the farm families remains. As Larry puts it, "Farmers can come in here with muddy boots. They'd never think of going to Briarwood like that."

[Photo caption from original print edition]: When harness maker Herman Ehnis (left) posed for a picture c. 1910-1915, bridles, hits, and horse collars hung from the ceiling and fly nets hung spread across the window. As trucks took over, Ehnis adroitly shifted his focus from horses to the men who worked with them, adding work shoes and then work clothes. (Below) Two generations of Ehnises in the store today (1. to r.): Leroy, Jim, Steve, and Larry Ehnis.

Demanding and inspirational, Bill Revelli struck awe into generations of U-M students. Playing under him "was a love-hate relationship," says former regent Tom Roach. "More love than hate."

"A legend in his own time" is a phrase reserved for individuals who have clearly dominated an entire generation in their chosen profession. Football has its Vince Lombardi, Symphony Orchestra has its Toscanini, the film industry its John Wayne. The bigger than life figure in the history of 1he American Band movement is clearly, Dr. William D. Revelli.

--Arnald D. Gabriel, Commander-Conductor, United States Air Force Band, in his foreword to the recordings The Revelli Years

Dr. William Revelli was director of the University of Michigan bands and chair of the wind instrument department of the music school from 1935 to 1971. He built the U-M bands into the best in the nation, toured worldwide to universal acclaim, and won virtually every possible award for himself and his bands. Today, at eighty-nine, he has only two regrets: that he did not learn to speak Italian fluently, although it was spoken in his home when he was a boy, and that he did not get to know John Philip Sousa more intimately.

Revelli met the March King in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1931. The Hobart (Indiana) High School band, founded and directed by Revelli, had just won its sixth consecutive national championship. Sousa was one of the judges of that contest, as was Edwin Franko Goldman, the famous New York bandmaster and composer, who became a lifetime friend and mentor of Revelli. After the competition, Goldman asked Revelli to stop by his hotel room. When Revelli got there, he found six of the seven judges, including Sousa, standing to greet him.

Sousa told Revelli that he had a great future, and he invited the young bandmaster to visit him when he was in the New York area. To this day, Revelli wishes he had accepted the offer immediately. He didn't, and the legendary composer-conductor died the next year.

It was a rare disappointment in a long, accomplished career. Twenty years into retirement, Revelli still bristles with the qualities that drove generations of student musicians to something close to perfection: charisma, autocratic self-confidence, and a single-minded passion for music.

It's Saturday, October 19, the morning of the U-M's Homecoming football game, against Indiana. In one of many U-M band traditions that Revelli introduced, it is also the "Blast from the Past," the annual reunion of Michigan Marching Band alumni.

Some college reunions are just one big party, but Revelli's alumni work hard. They arrived at Revelli Hall early this morning to rehearse the music they'll be performing, some pieces by themselves and others with the current band, which they call the "junior band." Among the Revelli-era alumni on hand this morning are former U-M regent Tom Roach, playing snare drum; Washtenaw County probate judge John Kirkendall, recapping his one-time role as a baton twirler; and local Episcopal priest Alex Miller, who has shown up in his band uniform but decided just to watch.

To a few friends, Revelli is "Bill." To the thousands of students who passed through the band over the years, he is either "Dr. Revelli" or, simply and reverentially, "the Chief." His legendary status among band alumni seems to be made up of equal parts of fear and awe.

Father Miller played in the band in the 1930's, spent his career ministering in Plymouth and Flint, then "retired" to Ann Arbor, where he's a busy volunteer priest at St. Andrew's. After his return, Miller recalls, he ran into Revelli in a bank. He said, "Hi Chief, I'm Alex Miller." According to Miller, the Chief replied, "I know who you are. You played the snare drum in the marching band and the bassoon in the concert band--both equally badly."

Generations of students accepted the Chief's critiques simply because he was the best--and was determined that they would be, too. "He taught everyone the meaning of excellence," explains Tom Roach. "It's not good enough to be almost in step, almost in tune. You had to be perfect."

The air is still crisp at 9 a.m. as the combined alumni-student band warms up on Elbel Field. Several conductors, past and present, stand on ladders stationed on each side of the field to take turns leading the band. Current marching band conductor Gary Lewis starts off with "I Want to Go Back to Michigan," followed by Eric Becher with "Temptation," George Cavender with the "Hawaiian War Chant," and then H. Robert Reynolds, current director of Michigan bands, leading "St. Louis Blues." An announcer, directing the action through a loudspeaker, says that Dr. Revelli will be arriving soon.

Just then, a murmur runs through the crowd as a golf cart crosses the field toward the conducting tower on the south side. There's a hush as the stocky, jovial conductor climbs out of the cart and walks toward the tower. Revelli makes the steep climb easily, then launches the massed band into "God, Bless America."

Revelli directs intensely and energetically. The band responds to him, playing with such precision and feeling that when the song is finished, some spectators have tears in their eyes. The conductor, though, hears plenty of room for improvement. "You'll do it better at halftime," he says. "Take more breaths. Think the words while you play. Cymbals--let them ring." Then he adds, "You're wonderful. I love you very much."

Revelli remounts the golf cart for the short ride back to Revelli Hall, the band's headquarters. As he heads inside, he's approached by a student. The young man asks whether Revelli remembers a certain name, apparently his father's. Revelli asks him to repeat the name, thinks for a minute, and then asks, "Trumpet?" The student nods, beams, and runs off.

Bill Revelli was born in Colorado and raised in a small coal mining town in southern Illinois called Panama, population about 1,800. His father, John, ran a theater and several grocery stores. His parents were not musicians, but his father had grown up in a small town near Milan, where his father often took him to the La Scala opera house. He instilled the same love of music in his own son. "I'll never know as much opera as my dad," says Revelli. "He knew every Italian opera's libretto, all the characters. We had an old Victrola that played cylindrical records. Our family used to wake up and go to bed to opera arias."

As far back as he can remember, Revelli always wanted a career in music. When he was only four, he formed an "orchestra" of neighborhood kids, using a small stick for a baton. When he was seven, he started taking violin lessons in St. Louis. His dad went with him the first time he took the long train ride; after that, he went alone, getting up at five-fifteen every Sunday morning in time to flag down the St. Louis train. He still remembers the cold, dark winter mornings, and signaling the incoming train with his flashlight. The engineer would give an answering toot before stopping for him. Revelli continued the lessons and the seven-hour Sunday round trips on the train until he graduated from high school.

Revelli went on to Chicago Musical College, graduating in 1922 with a degree in violin performance. (Twenty-five years later, the school would recognize his accomplishments with an honorary Doctor of Music degreeóthe first of five honorary doctorates he's received.) He went to work playing in silent movie orchestras at theaters in the Loop. These were complete symphony orchestras, playing music specifically composed for each movie. Occasionally, on a conductor's day off, Revelli would fulfill his boyhood dream by conducting the orchestra himself.

When talkies displaced pit orchestras in Chicago, Revelli took a job at a theater in Joliet, Illinois. He knew it was only a temporary reprieve, but he's still pleased that he took the job: in Joliet he met Mary Vidano, a schoolteacher. They have been married for sixty-seven years.

In 1925 Revelli enrolled in the Columbia School of Music in Chicago to earn a teaching degree. After graduation, he was hired by the Hobart public schools as supervisor of music.

In those days, public school music was primarily vocal, but Revelli wanted to do more. Two weeks after the fall semester began, he asked the superintendent if he could organize an instrumental program. The superintendent replied that the school had no budget, no room, and no time for such instruction. He also suggested that perhaps Revelli could put together a group of four or five students to play at basketball games.

Revelli felt frustrated when he left the office until he realized he actually had what he wanted: permission to organize an instrumental program. He recruited twenty-two students and arranged with his friend the chemistry teacher to rehearse in his lab before class. Every nook and cranny, in town was rifled for instruments. He borrowed a bass drum from a local jazz musician, picking it up early in the morning and getting it back before evening. For scores, he used music from his own library or borrowed from friends.

To support his band, Revelli organized the first Band Mothers group in the nation. "They were my entire budget," he says. The mothers depended largely on chicken dinner fund-raisers, with great success. Years later, when they gave Revelli a farewell chicken dinner on the occasion of his departure for Michigan, he joked, "I don't believe one single chicken is left in Indiana."

Although he had studied clarinet and cornet as part of his teacher training, Revelli knew very little about the other wind instruments or about percussion when he came to Hobart. Like many beginning teachers, he stayed just slightly ahead of his students, studying charts at home to teach himself the embouchure and fingering for each instrument.

Revelli was already commuting to Chicago once a week for lessons from cornetist H. A. Vandercook. At Vander-cook's suggestion, he increased that to twice a week, using the second trip to study other instruments with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He devoted a full year to each instrumentófirst the flute, then the oboe, then the bassoon, French horn, trombone, and percussion.

He went into Chicago twice a week for ten years. It cost him a lot of time and money, but Revelli says it paid off for the Hobart band. "This is why we won six national championships," he explains. "None of the other school band conductors were receiving this type of instruction. I was passing what I learned on to the students."

In ten years at Hobart, Revelli earned a national reputation and developed enormous community support. He created two other bands (grade school and junior high) and was given his own rehearsal building and practice rooms. In fact, he did so well that he actually took a pay cut when he moved on to the U-M in 1935. The Revellis and their two-year-old daughter, Rosemary, also moved from a large house in Hobart to a smaller one in Ann Arborówith a much higher rent.

Revelli accepted Michigan's offer to become bands director and head of the wind instrument department because he believed the U-M was a sleeping giant in the band world. He also wanted to move to the university level because he knew he could have a greater influence on music education; each of his students was a potential bandmaster.

The Michigan Marching Band of 1935 was also a step down from Hobart's. It had been a good band under Nicholas Falcone, a fine musician and conductor, but Falcone had suddenly gone deaf, and the band was foundering under student management.

Rehearsals were held in Morris Hall, an old house on State Street where the LS&A Building is now. Revelli's second-floor office featured a library and large fireplace, he recalls, but the rehearsal space downstairs was "horrible." Furthermore, the band shared the building with the fledgling radio station WUOM; sometimes their broadcasts could be heard during rehearsal, over quiet sections of music.

Revelli describes his first few years in Ann Arbor as "a building process that was anything but easy." At the same time he was rebuilding the U-M bands, he was at first the entire staff of the wind instrument department. He wondered if he'd made the right choice in leaving Hobartó"I did a lot of soul-searching," he says. But very quickly he turned things around.

Alex Miller was in the band at the time. He recalls things changing "dramatically" with the new director's arrival. "Revelli was not fussy," he says drily. "We just had to be perfect." Those who fell short were liable to be criticized publicly. "He would dress you down if you were doing badly," one former band member recalls.

Revelli reinvigorated the students he inherited and recruited new players like a football coach. As the bands grew, he also hired an outstanding staff. Earl V. Moore, then dean of music, gave him a free hand in hiring, Revelli says, and "I got the best."

His desire to bring the laest students to Michigan was indistinguishable from his commitment to encourage top quality high school bands. He worked tirelessly to improve high school music programs, networking with band directors and serving on countless occasions as a clinician, lecturer, adjudicator, and guest conductor.

"Revelli set the pattern for all young band directors to aspire to," says Ed Towers, executive director of the Michigan Band and Orchestra Association, which Revelli helped found. Retired Fowlerville band director Chuck Hills regularly bused his students to U-M band concerts in Ann Arbor. Afterward, he says, "the kids would be sky high. They all wanted to be like Michigan."

Revelli's efforts bore fruit. Tom Roach's wife, Sally, played in a high school band in Muskegon and planned to go to MSUóuntil her band director urged her to go to Michigan and arranged for her to audition with Revelli. Merrill Wilson, a high school student in Fort Pierce, Florida, chose Michigan because Revelli was the only one of the judges in a contest he participated in who took his playing seriously and gave him useful advice. When John Kirkendall was a high school senior in Burlington, Indiana, he visited Michigan because by then Revelli had securely established the Marching Band's reputation as the finest in the country. Kirkendall met Revelli, who asked him to twirl baton at a basketball game. Kirkendall did and, in his words, "was hooked. I decided Michigan was the finest place in the world."

Once the students got to U-M, Revelli worked them hard. "He was rough on his musicians in order to achieve what he desired," says longtime music professor Leslie Bassett, who played in the band as a graduate student. "In the long run, they look back and realize he was after the best in music."

Revelli's students remember how he scared the daylights out of them with his unannounced tryouts. He would go down a row and have each player perform the same passage in front of everybody. But he was very fair. Whoever came the closest to Revelli's ideal became first chair, even if they were brand new and unknown. Merrill Wilson, who went on to graduate school at Juilliard and then played in the New York Philharmonic, said he found the pressure in those later situations no more severe than what he experienced at Michigan under Revelli.

If Revelli was quick to criticize his students, he also made it clear he cared about them. According to Towers, "He was the first to know he had to have a close relationship with the students to make the whole greater than the parts." Former music school dean Alien Brit-ton, who at one time counseled all the music students, says fewer dropped out of Revelli's program than out of any other.

Revelli worked himself as hard as his students. Band directors "must be willing to make sacrifices," he told an interviewer for Impresario magazine in 1970. "My wife, Mary, very seldom sees me before 11 p.m." To spend some time with him, she would accompany him on band trips. "Mary loves bands," he noted, "and after forty-five years of listening to them, she has become a very competent and exacting critic."

Revelli's great expectations, insistence on perfection, and attention to detail worked wonders with his regular band members. But he also couldóand still canóelicit great results from other bands. Alien Britton recalls a music education conference where a band made up of the best students "sounded marvelous under Revelli's direction but like a pick-up high school band under another conductor." Britton credits this phenomenon to "a talent for keeping attention. [Revelli] can walk into a room and everyone will listen to what he has to say. His genius is that he can stand there and get everyone's concentration."

The Michigan Marching Band gave Revelli an opportunity to preach his musical gospel to hundreds of thousands of listeners. "His real contribution was the introduction of standards, which until his time were basically unknown," says his successor and longtime assistant, George Cavender. "Standards in intonation, blend, balance, tone, rhythm, and style." John Kirkendall remembers that the band took pride in playing their opponents' fight songs better than they could.

Revelli also greatly expanded the marching band repertoire. He was the first to play classical music on the field, using special scoring. " Revelli's a natural teacher," explains former band member Merrill Wilson. "He increased the repertoire to educate the public, to expose them to good music."

Although the Marching Band's major activity was performing at football games, the athletic department did not play a large role in its management. "I wouldn't have dared tell Revelli what to do," recalls former athletic director Don Canham. "But he would always keep me well informed." When he was track coach, Canham let the band practice on the inside track when it was too muddy outside. He was later instrumental in getting the athletic department to donate land on Hoover Street for Revelli Hall, built in 1973 as the marching band's headquarters.

Revelli felt the Marching Band had really arrived when it was invited to perform at the 1948 Rose Bowl, the first Big Ten band to appear there. Since it was too cold to practice outside, they practiced for their performance in a hangar at Willow Run Airport. They traveled to Pasadena by a special train that left the day after Christmas, stopping on the way to pick up band members who lived further west. En route, the band drilled at Salt Lake City and played concerts in Denver and San Francisco. Though it was considered impolite in those days for public colleges to engage in overt fund-raising, Revelli had an arrangement with GM's Buick division to sponsor the band's trip. For the last leg, from San Francisco to Pasadena, they rode the GM Train of Tomorrow, a state-of-the-art wonder with glass domes, luxurious dining cars, and electronic systems throughout.

The band received rave reviews and was invited to return to Pasadena when Michigan played in the Rose Bowl again in 1951. Tom Roach played snare drum in the band that year. (He had wanted to go on the first trip, but only two snare drummers were needed, and he had placed third out of ten who tried out.) Roach had already started law school but had stayed in the band specifically in hopes of a Rose Bowl trip. When that looked doubtful early in the seasorjióthe team didn't seem that goodóBuick offered to send the band to New York, where they performed in Yankee Stadium during the Michigan-Army game. Then, after a few lucky wins, Michigan made it to the Rose Bowl after all. Revelli calls that year's band "my transcontinental band."

They again took the train on the twelve-day round-trip but reversed the route, playing at Albuquerque and Los Angeles and returning via San Francisco, Fresno, and Kansas City. Roach remembers that band members were excited to learn that there would be five club cars on the trainóuntil they learned that Revelli had ordered the liquor cabinets locked. On New Year's night, after the Rose Bowl, he had the cabinets unlocked, but the students, having gotten up at 5 a.m., marched seven miles in the Rose Bowl parade, and performed at the game, were too tired to do anything but fall into bed.

The Marching Band played in the Rose Bowl twice more during Revelli's
tenure, in 1965 and 1970. But its most spectacular shows were in Michigan Stadium. Revelli was in touch with many important people in the music world and often invited celebrities to appear with the band at halftime. On September 27, 1958, the guest was Meredith Willson, composer of the Broadway success "The Music Man." It was Band Dayóa since discontinued Revelli innovationówhen high school bands from around the state were invited to play on the field with the Michigan Marching Band. The Guinness Book of Records lists the 186 bands that played that day, made up of 13,500 students, as the largest mass band ever assembled. When Willson conducted the huge band in his hit song, "Seventy-Six Trombones," there were 1,076 trombonists among the players.

For all the spectacle on the football field, Revelli never lost sight of his main objective, to produce beautiful music. "If you want to know how good a marching band really is," he says, "close your eyes and listen."

Revelli's first love was actually the less glamorous U-M Symphony Band, which he called "the queen bee," or the "piece de la resistance." The Symphony Band was larger than the Marching Band and always included members of both sexes. (The Marching Band was for many years solely male, as marching bands were everywhere. When George Cavender succeeded Revelli as director in 1971, his first act was to let women in; he was the first Big Ten director to do so.)

In 1937, Revelli began the tradition of making a spring tour with the Symphony Band. Initially the band toured nearby Michigan cities, then expanded to nearby states, gradually pushing farther until they had performed on both coasts and Florida, and finally touring abroad. They performed at Carnegie Hall and many other prominent concert halls in the nation, including the Philadelphia Academy of Music, Symphony Hall in Boston, Lincoln Center, Hartford's Bushnell Hall, and Chicago's Orchestra Hall. A typical review appeared in the New York Times following the band's 1955 Carnegie Hall appearance. Revelli, the reviewer wrote, "got out of his students what not many bandmasters ever achieveóa brilliant, yet luminous texture of tone, a smart-sounding ensemble, well-balanced choirs and instrumental virtuosity."

The high point of the Symphony Band's touring was the 1961 USSR tour. The band was chosen by the Department of State to represent the United States in the first cultural exchange program, and spent eight weeks in the Soviet Union. After an additional eight weeks tcturing Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Rumania, and Poland, the trip culminated in a concert at Carnegie Hall.

According to George Cavender, the State Department committee arranging the exchange originally opposed the idea of sending the U-M band, saying that a college band wasn't good enough or disciplined enough to represent the U.S. One committee member from Philadelphia, who had heard them play, insisted the committee hear the band before making a final decision. The members all flew out to Ann Arbor to listen to a concert and became converts.

The response was overwhelming. The Soviets "had never heard anything like it," Revelli recalls. The band played encore after encore, and fans even rushed the stage after performances. It was still so unusual for westerners to travel in the Soviet Union that Cavender remembers looking out of his sleeping-car window at five-thirty on a pitch-dark morning and seeing thousands of people at the station; they had come just to see what Americans looked like.

Even more often than with the Marching Band, Revelli invited luminaries of the music world to play with the concert band. Famous composers, performers, and conductors all came at one time or another. The list reads like a Who's Who of musicócomposers such as Percy Grainger, Morton Gould, Edwin Franko Goldman, William Schu-man, Aaron Copland, James Clifton Williams, Vincent Persichetti, Vittorio Giannini, Henry Cowell, Karel Husa, Ross Lee Finney, and Leslie Bassett; and performers such as Victor Borge, Doc Severinson, and the New York Brass Quintetóto name just a few.

Revelli took the band abroad a second time, just before he retired in 1971, to England, Germany, France, and Italy, with a final concert at Carnegie Hall.

Since his retirement, 'Revelli has continued to appear with bands around the world and as close by as Kalamazoo, where he recently conducted a concert by the Municipal Band. At eighty-nine, he has commitments to conduct at the Midwest International Band and Orchestra Clinic in Chicago and to be guest conductor at George Mason University. He will be chief adjudicator for the Festival of Music, held in cities across the continent. He has also been invited to participate in the Discovery Festivals, celebrating the 500th anniversary of Columbus's setting sail, to be held in Spain, the Caribbean, Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago, and . San Francisco.

Revelli still keeps in touch with many former students and still is famous for remembering their names. Those who have known him for many years, like Alien Britton and Alex Miller, say he hasn't changed much at all since he retired. A few years ago Miller, hearing that. Revelli was conducting the Ann Arbor Civic Band, went down to watch the rehearsal. He reports that Revelli was "as demanding as ever."

That's the essence of the Revelli experience. Tom Roach sums up playing for him as "a love-hate relationshipó" more love than hate." When the Chief conducted, "a little chill would run down your spine," Roach recalls. "You played a little louder, a little better."

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Revelli with band alumnus Tom Roach. "He taught everyone the meaning of excellence," says the former U-M regent. "It's not good enough to be almost in step, almost in tune. You had to be perfect."

[Photo caption from original print edition]: As a director, Revelli is intense and energetic. Rehearsing the alumni and current bands in "God Bless America" in October, he elicited such precision and feeling that some spectators had tears in their eyes.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: In the mid-1920's, Revelli was hired to teach vocal music in Hobart, Indiana. Told the school system didn't have the budget, space, or time for a band, he borrowed instruments and held practice in the chemstry lab before school. His Hobart High School band went on to win six national championships.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: As a high school student, probate judge John Kirkendall was attracted to the U-M by Revelli's reputation. After meeting the conductor and twirling baton at a basketball game, Kirkendall recalls, "I was hooked."

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Even with bands he hasn't trained, the charismatic conductor has a reputation for strong performances. "His genius," says former music dean Alien Britton, "is that he can stand there and get everyone's concentration."

[Photo caption from original print edition]: At eighty-nine, Revelli still keeps a busy conducting schedule. People who know him well say he hasn't changed much at all since he retired. A few years ago, former student Alex Miller went down to watch him rehearse the Ann Arbor Civic Band; he was, says Miller, "as demanding as ever."

How Cornelius Tuomy's farm became his children's subdivision

The Italianate house at 2117 Washtenaw, an anachronism of an old farmhouse on a busy thoroughfare, is now the headquarters of the Historical Society of Michigan. The Tuomy family lived there for nearly a hundred years, from 1874 to 1966.

The oldest part of the house--a small Greek Revival structure with a center entry and two rooms downstairs and two up--was built about 1854 by George and Jane Bell on what was then a country road between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. The elegant Italianate front portion, which more than doubled the size of the original house, was built about 1864 by Frederick and Almina Spalding. The Spaldings raised five children on the farm; one of them, Volney, grew up to become a U-M professor of botany and zoology and co-founder of the U-M's botanical gardens.

Cornelius Tuomy bought the house and farm in 1874. Though he taught school as a young man, his real vocation was farming, which he learned from his father, Timothy, an Irish immigrant who had developed a successful farm in Scio Township. Cornelius made a success of his farm, growing vegetables, oats, corn, and potatoes; winning prizes for his horses; and raising sheep. He had a herd of twenty-two dairy cows and sold its products in a milk route in Ann Arbor until 1904, when he switched to selling wholesale.

Cornelius Tuomy quit teaching to become a farmer. He grew vegetables, oats, corn, and potatoes, raised horses and sheep, and sold dairy products on his own Ann Arbor milk route.

Cornelius Tuomy was active in St. Thomas Church and also served three terms as a Democratic supervisor of Ann Arbor Township. (Here, too, his father had set the example, serving as treasurer of Scio Township.) In 1885 he married Julia Ann Kearney, also from an Irish family; they had three children--Cornelius W., known as Bill or Will (1886), Kathryn (1888), and Thomas (1890).

Thomas Tuomy died prematurely in the great flu epidemic of 1918, but Bill and Kathryn lived long lives in Ann Arbor after brief periods elsewhere (Bill in the Army Ordnance Corps in World War I, Kathryn teaching business in Kenosha, Wisconsin). They went into business together as Tuomy and Tuomy, selling real estate and insurance. Their office, originally at 122 North Fourth Avenue, was later in a little building behind the handsome stone gas station that they built in 1930 at the convergence of Washtenaw and Stadium.

The Tuomy siblings turned the family farm into the subdivision now usually called "Tuomy Hills," but which they themselves named "Julia Tuomy Estates" in honor of their mother. They gave the streets either family names, like Tuomy and Kearney, or Irish place names such as Adare, Shannondale, and Londonderry.

Julia Tuomy Estates was marketed as "the most exclusive residential district in the city." The Tuomys stipulated that a house could not cost less than $15,000 and the garage could not be built until the house was two-thirds done (perhaps to prevent the not uncommon practice of living in the garage while the house was being built). They also excluded any buyers who were not Caucasians. Such racial stipulations, now illegal, were never common in Ann Arbor; it's possible the Tuomys were trying to keep up with their competitors in the nearby Ann Arbor Hills subdivision, which had a similar racist restriction.

The streets of Julia Tuomy Estates were given family names, like Tuomy and Kearney, or Irish place names such as Adare, Shannondale, and Londonderry.

Neither Bill nor Kathryn Tuomy married, but both kept busy in community activities that mirrored their interests. Kathryn was a founding member of the Ann Arbor Business and Professional Women's Club and an early president of the Michigan Federation of Business and Professional Women. Bill was a charter member of the Erwin Prieskora post of the American Legion, active in the Army and Navy Club and the Reserve Officers Association, and was first city chair of the Citizen's Military Training Camp.

Following his grandfather's and father's examples, Bill was also active in politics, although he switched to the Republican party. He was elected county drain commissioner from 1932 to 1944. He ran on a platform of doing as little as possible, stating, "If I am elected I propose to eliminate every unnecessary drain project from the county program and cut taxes assessed on drains down to the bone."

Kathryn and Bill followed the family tradition of being active in their church. When the Catholic population in Ann Arbor outgrew St. Thomas, the Tuomys were helpful in the founding of the new church, St. Francis, organized to serve the east side of town. In 1945 they sold to the new parish, at a nominal price, eight acres of land facing Stadium at what had been the southern edge of their farm. Later they donated two more acres and paid for the road around the church, now called St. Francis Drive. When they died (Kathryn in 1965 and her brother in 1966), they left a number of generous bequests, including an athletic scholarship in brother Tom's name and a woman's scholarship in Kathryn's name. The remainder went to St. Francis, allowing the church to pay off its building debt of about $137,000.

The Tuomys stipulated that the family house should be used for a "historical or public purpose." Their executor, attorney Roscoe Bonisteel, Sr., was at the time both a U-M regent and a trustee of the Historical Society of Michigan; he arranged that the house should go to those two groups. The society moved in downstairs, and at the invitation of the regents, the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters occupied the upstairs. (An interesting footnote is that Volney Spalding, who grew up in the house, was a co-founder of the academy.)

In 1982 the regents gave up their share of the house, leaving the Historical Society of Michigan as the sole owner and occupant. Founded in 1828, the HSM is a statewide not-for-profit organization dedicated to preserving state history. It publishes books and magazines, sponsors meetings and conferences, and has lately embarked on a new program to help teachers to teach Michigan history.

Since gaining ownership, the HSM has been restoring the house, making improvements as they raise the money. "Historic restoration is not for the faint of heart," says executive director Tom Jones. He expects the final cost to be about $725,000.

[Photo caption from the original print edition]: The Tuomy farm was still in operation when the photo at right was taken, but not for long: as Ann Arbor spread eastward, farm kids Bill and Kathryn Tuomy turned the land into an expensive neighborhood. Only their old farmhouse still survives (above); it's now the headquarters of the Historical Society of Michigan.

The Beal mansion had a lot in common with the public library For about a hundred years, a fifteen-room Italianate house stood on the corner of William and Fifth Avenue, where the Ann Arbor Public Library is now. The house, described in Samuel Beakes's 1906 Past and Present of Washtenaw County as "the center of true social life and hospitality," was home to the prominent Beal family. Rice Beal took over Dr. Chase's publishing ventures in 1869, and his son, Junius, was the longest-serving U-M regent. Though the mansion was torn down in 1957, the same ambience prevails at the public library that replaced it: the love of books and the encouragement of education in a place where all segments of society meet. The Ann Arbor School Board bought the house in 1953 from Loretta Beal Jacobs, daughter of Junius and Ella Beal, who had inherited the house in 1944 after her mother died. (Her father had died two years earlier.) Mrs. Jacobs and her family lived in the house only part-time, usually summers; her husband, Albert, had a distinguished academic career, ending up as president of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. Bob Warner, now dean of the U-M School of Information and Library Studies, lived nearby on William as a graduate student. He remembers the Beal house as "decorated with Victorian furniture and filled with papers and books." Mrs. Jacobs, he says, was "an intelligent lady who liked to talk." From 1948 to 1950, U-M student Joe Roberts lived in the house during the months the Jacobses were away. (He now works at the library.) His upstairs bedroom, furnished with a cherry-wood four-poster bed, a marble fireplace, and a marble basin, looked out onto the garden's magnolia tree. When it bloomed in the spring, he says, it "made it almost impossible to study." Although the garden was pretty overgrown during Roberts's occupancy, Junius Beal's granddaughter, Loretta Edwards, remembers that in its prime it contained a wildflower area near the carriage house, a rock garden, and many unusual plantings, including an Osage orange tree and an elm grown from a scion of a tree planted by George Washington on the Capitol grounds. The Beal house was built in the 1860's by W. H. Mallory. Rice Beal moved into it in 1865, planning to enjoy retirement in Ann Arbor after earning his fortune in a number of business enterprises in Dexter. Born in 1823, the child of immigrants from New York State, he was raised on a farm in Livingston County and received only a basic education (elementary school and one year at Albion Academy in New York). He taught school for a year, then used his savings to buy a stock of notions and fancy goods, which he traveled around selling until he had enough money to set up a store, first in Pinckney, then Howell and Plainfield. He ended up in Dexter, then an important station on the Michigan Central line, where his many enterprises included a general store, four mills, a lumberyard, and a bank. Rice Beal's "retirement" in Ann Arbor lasted less than four years. In 1869, he could not resist the opportunity to buy Dr. Chase's printing business at the corner of Main and Miller, which included the publication of Dr. Chase's book of home remedies and a weekly newspaper, the Peninsular Courier and Family Visitant. Beal enjoyed using the paper's editorial page to explain his outspoken positions in numerous controversies, including a long-running quarrel with Dr. Chase after the former owner broke a pledge not to return to the publishing business. A Republican since the Civil War, Beal was active in the party, serving as a delegate to the conventions that nominated U. S. Grant and Rutherford Hayes. In 1880 he came close to being nominated as his party's candidate for governor. When Rice's son, Junius, graduated from the U-M in 1882, Rice decided to give retirement another try. He turned over the publishing business to his son, and started out on a trip around the country with his wife, Phoebe. He died just a year later, in 1883, while visiting Iowa Falls, Iowa. Junius Beal, born in 1860 in Port Huron, was actually Rice's nephew, but had been adopted by Rice at eleven months of age, when his mother died. Thanks to his father's extensive holdings, Junius could afford to spend much of his time with civic concerns, concentrating on education and on promoting modern infrastructure. He was one of the founders of the interurban streetcar line, lobbied for better roads, and owned the first telephone in town. An active Republican like his father, he served a term in the state house (1904), twenty years on the Ann Arbor School Board (1884-1904), and thirty-two years as a U-M regent (1907-1939), the longest anyone has ever served. He took part in the selection of four presidents, insisted that Hill Auditorium be built large enough to hold 5,000, and defended the building of the huge Michigan Stadium, arguing that the profit could help other students. When Beal's friend and fellow regent, William Clements, set up the Clements library in 1923 to house his collection of early American historical material, Beal donated some of his own collection of 2,000 rare antique books. More of his books were donated by his heirs, as was the Beal house's book-shaped carriage step, which now sits on the front lawn of the Clements. Because of Junius Beal's many connections with both the university and the town, the Beal house was a natural place for the two to meet. Loretta Edwards remembers that her grandparents entertained a variety of people, ranging from the Methodist minister (who came every Wednesday morning), business acquaintances, university benefactors such as William Cook and Charles Baird, and dignitaries who were receiving honorary degrees from the university. The Beal house was in limbo for three years after its sale in 1953, while the city and the school system tussled over whether the site should be used for a library or a new city hall. During the interim, in 1954, the newly formed Friends of the Library held their first sale in the remains of the Beal garden, selling books, records, picture frames, baked goods, and flowers. As an added attraction, they displayed the old electric car that many older residents remembered Mrs. Ella Beal driving around town. It had for many years been stored on blocks in the carriage house. The new library was designed by Alden Dow (also the architect of City Hall and the home of his sister and brother-in-law, Margaret and Harry Towsley) and opened for business on October 24, 1957. An addition was built in 1974. A second addition, which will add 43,000 square feet, and a renovation of the existing 53,000 square feet are in progress and will be done about Labor Day, 1991.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: (Left) Ella and Junius Beal posed in their carriage with son Travis and their coachman. (Top) Junius Beal in 1938. (Above) The same corner today.

From simple farmhouse to elegant urban hair salon

For more than a century, 512 South Main has mirrored downtown's changes. Originally a small brick house in a residential neighborhood, it was absorbed into the growing Main Street business district as Claude Brown's secondhand store and pawn shop in the 1930's. It's since grown and evolved - under a succession of owners - into a printing firm in the 1950's, an antiques shop in the 1970's, and an elegant hair salon today.

Gottlob Schumacher roomed in a house on the same block of Main in the 1920's. He remembers that at that time the area "was strictly residential, all the way up to William." Even the block north of William was sprinkled with houses, including Bertha Muehlig's home at 315, the Marchese house at 321, and Dr. Conrad Georg's home where the Quality Bar is now.

When Schumacher lived on Main Street, 512 was still owned by Conrad and Katrina Schneider, who had moved into it in about 1886. (The house was probably built in the 1860's.) Like so many Ann Arborites, Conrad Schneider was a German immigrant from the Stuttgart area. He earned his living as a painter, working out of his home. In an interview in the mid-1980's, his grandson, the late William Shadford, remembered him as "capable and industrious."

The Schneiders had five children, most of whom continued to live nearby after they grew up. Daughter Augusta married William Major Shadford and moved to 535 South Ashley, to a house almost directly behind her parents. Daughter Pauline lived just down the street in a house next to what is today Great Lakes Fitness & Cycling. Her son, Ed Ryan, is shown on his tricycle in the picture.

The building changed to a place of business in 1931, when Claude Brown moved his store there from Ann Street. Brown used the two main floors for his business, living in the walk-out basement with his wife, Leah, a cook at Delta Sigma Delta. Originally from Canada, Brown was a heavyset man, weighing about 250 pounds, who had lost an arm in a railway accident. At his store, Jim Fondren remembers, "you could get anything you wanted." Brown sold mostly used clothing, but also had furniture, household goods, jewelry, and even antiques.

Jim Crawford, who knew Brown as a fellow member of the black Elks, remembers the store as "jammed all up," with both floors filled and some of the merchandise, such as old washing machines, spilling outside. According to Crawford, "Brown knew what people wanted. He was always willing to sell, trade, or deal in some kind of way. He also operated sort of a pawn shop. He would give someone, say, ten dollars for something, and if they didn't later come back with twelve or fifteen dollars, he would sell it." During World War II Brown became adept at locating used appliances, like toasters, which were scarce because new ones weren't being made: their factories had been turned over to war production.

When the Elks Pratt Lodge was going through lean years and could not afford a permanent meeting place, Brown let them use his store on Sundays. Crawford remembers that they would "just move the junk back and find chairs to sit on." Although a shrewd businessman, Brown was generous to his fellow Elks, giving clothes and other items to families in need.

After Brown, 512 South Main was owned by Bernadine and Frank Sprague, who also lived on the premises. The Spragues made two additions to the building: they doubled the size of the original narrow house and added onto the basement, which is above ground in the back. Bernadine Sprague ran a printing business called "Letterart" in the building. It advertised services ranging from "expert mimeography" to special mailings. For a while a wig shop rented some of the premises, as did various offices.

In 1967, Richard and Sandra Russell opened an antiques business at 512. They named their store the Old Brick after the building, but later changed it to the Yankee Trader. The Russells made one more change, adding a second story atop the outside portion of the basement.

In 1983 Russell left the antiques business to concentrate on his career as a general contractor. Since then, Laky and Kim Michaelides have used the building for their hair salon.

Laky, who was raised in Israel by Greek parents, speaks Greek, Hebrew, French, and Arabic as well as English. In 1988, the Michaelideses remodeled the outside of the building, restoring a first-floor window that had been replaced by a door, painting the building gray, adding an awning, and landscaping both front and back. They received a Pride of Ownership award from the Board of Realtors for their efforts. Now they are remodeling the inside, in Laky's words, "to keep abreast with styles of the time, to give what clients expect from a classic place."

The biggest recent change in the building was beyond the Michaelideses' control. A couple of years ago, Ideal Auto Body turned a parking lot next to Laky's into a new office--and chose a startling post-modern style to do it in. The result is one of the most jarring architectural juxtapositions in town: a series of shiny metallic steps that appear to march up the sober brick building's north wall.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Downtown stopped at William Street when Ed Ryan (top left) posed in front of his grandparents Conrad and Katrina Schneider's house soon after the turn of the century. Even after the building was converted to business use during the Depression, several successive owners lived upstairs--including Bernadine and Frank Sprague, who more than doubled its size (top right) by the 1950's. The building is now Laky and Kim Michaelides's hair salon.

The Ann Arbor Fluff Rug Company turned old carpets into new

For more than forty years, from 1895 to 1936, thrifty home owners from all over the United States sent their old carpets to Ann Arbor for recycling. At the Ann Arbor Fluff Rug Company, 409-421 West Huron (now replaced by the Performance Network building), worn, shabby carpets were cut and rewoven using machinery developed by owner Henry Schlemmer. The end product was a new rug of a more mottled color than the original but sturdy and strong and usable on both sides.

Schlemmer initially modeled the business after a similar one in Toledo that was, according to his daughter, Geraldine Schlemmer Seeback, "more of a rug cleaning outfit." He offered every conceivable service connected with rugs: sizing, cutting, laying, sewing, repairing, scouring, trading, and buying and selling used rugs. But his biggest business soon became making new rugs out of old.

Schlemmer was born in Ann Arbor in 1864 and grew up on the family farm, which was bounded by the present-day Hoover, Davis, Brown, and Main streets. His father, who had immigrated from Stuttgart, supported the family by drilling wells. Before starting in the rug business, Schlemmer worked as a blacksmith for Staebler and Elmer, makers of road carts and wagons. His training as a blacksmith no doubt gave him some of the know-how to build his rug machines. "He never patented them," says Seeback of the machines. "If he had, we might be rich today. Of course, they are obsolete by now."

Rug prices were high enough back then that recycling was cheaper than buying a new carpet. But even with Schlemmer's machines, the operation was still relatively labor-intensive. When they arrived, all rugs were cleaned and disinfected with formaldehyde. Seeback remembers they were put in a wire bin that spun, shaking the dirt out the bottom. Next, a man named Shepard cut and discarded the totally worn areas. The good parts were then cut into strips approximately two inches wide, with a machine created by Schlemmer. Next, the strips were twisted vertically, again by a machine created by Schlemmer. The strips were then woven with conventional looms. The new rugs, which were softer (if not exactly fluffier) than the originals, could be any size up to nine by twelve feet, depending on the amount of material. The last step was hand-tying the warp into Turkish knots, leaving about four inches of fringe at each end of the rug.

Several old rugs could be combined into one, with the different colors used as stripes or borders. Customers always got back rugs made with their own materials; the only exception was when they needed a larger size than their old carpets could produce and so authorized the company to add extra rugs they had on hand. Some also requested additional materials to brighten the finished product or give it more of a pattern. Chenille curtains and rugs too light or loosely woven to be made into fluff rugs could be made into lighter-weight rugs using the same technology.

When the rugs were finished, they were delivered by horse-drawn cart, either directly to the customer's home if it was in town, or to the Ann Arbor Railroad station on Ashley to be shipped. The cart was pulled by a horse named Nancy, who lived in a barn behind the factory.

Geraldine Schlemmer and her sister, Catherine, made their contribution to the family business by modeling for its advertisements. A picture of Geraldine, still a tiny baby, lying nude on a roll of carpet, was used as the company's logo.

Schlemmer also relied on personal advertising, appearing in parades with floats that displayed his carpets and exhibiting at fairs. He almost lost Geraldine at the 1908 State Fair in Detroit. Still under a year old, she was lying on a fluff rug when a man picked her up and started to run away. Her father sped after him and quickly retrieved her.

The advertising paid off. At one time Schlemmer had fifty agents around the country who could take orders, advise customers on what size rug they could expect from their old one, and arrange for shipping. A 1912 Ann Arbor Fluff Rug Company brochure boasted, "Today you will find our rugs from coast to coast in the most up-to-date homes, churches, theaters, offices, stores, hotels, state capitals, hospitals, charitable institutions, YWCA's, etc."

The staff of the fluff rug company ranged from fifteen to twenty-five and included many Schlemmer family members. Henry Schlemmer's sister, Lydia Schlemmer Carlough, and his widowed sister-in-law, Elizabeth Schlemmer, worked as finishers. Younger brother George worked closely with Henry in the early days, serving as his right-hand man as they developed the rug business. Brother Charlie Schlemmer was a foreman and also drove the wagon. Brother Jake sometimes worked as a cutter. During busy seasons other members of the family were called in.

From 1905 to 1909, family members operated a related business, the Ann Arbor Steam Carpet Cleaning Works, out of the Germania Hall at the corner of Second and William streets (now the parking lot for GT Products). First run by Reuben Schlemmer, husband of Elizabeth, the business was taken over by George Schlemmer after Reuben died. But in 1909 George disappeared and was never seen by the family again. The steam cleaning operation, which also included feather renovation, was absorbed by the fluff rug company and moved to Huron Street.

Henry Schlemmer met his wife, Cortland Ferguson Schlemmer, when she came to work in the rug company office. A widow (her first husband, Jay Ferguson, had been killed in a trolley accident) with a young son, Lee, to support, she was twenty years Henry's junior. Even after the birth of Geraldine and Catherine, it was not unusual for Henry and Cortland to return to work at night, taking the young children with them. When the girls got tired they would just lie down on the piles of rugs and go to sleep. Their parents would wake them when they were ready to go back to their home at 537 Third Street, five blocks away. Catherine usually walked with her mother, while Geraldine rode on the handlebars of her dad's bike. (They never did own a car. If they had somewhere farther to go, for instance to Cortland's parents' farm on Wagner Road, they would ride the company cart with Nancy pulling them.)

Henry Schlemmer retired in 1919. Although he was only fifty-five years old, his health was failing and he no longer felt up to the demands of the business. He sold the company to his longtime bookkeeper, Clarence Cobb, who moved some of the equipment to 1003 Broadway, now a barbershop next to the St. Vincent De Paul store. Elizabeth Schlemmer also stayed with the business. She and Cobb ran the fluff rug company until 1936, but it was never again as big an operation as when Henry Schlemmer owned it. The original building was bought by machine tool innovator Francis La Pointe, who tore it down and built his American Broach factory (now the Performance Network) on the site.

In retirement Schlemmer continued his involvement with the Odd Fellows Lodge, then located in the brick house on Liberty that's now the Moveable Feast. Although totally untrained in music, he could play by ear, and played for all the Odd Fellows' drill teams and marching work. He died in 1945 at age eighty-one.

Geraldine Seeback still has two of her father's rugs, which she is saving to pass on to her two sons. Although both were used in her family's house for many years, they are still in excellent condition, a testimonial to the sturdiness of the product.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Henry Schlemmer employed many relatives in the business and drafted infant daughter Geraldine to pose for the company's logo. Above right: a fluff rag today (Geraldine Schlemmer Seeback is behind it, holding it up).

The Ecology Center was once an apple-packing plant

The Ecology Center's pre-Civil War building at 417 Detroit is a model of recycling: it was a workshop, store, and factory before becoming an office. The Italianate two-story brick building lies on the triangular block between Detroit Street and Fifth Avenue, its front and back walls parallel to the streets they face rather than to each other. It isn't shown on the 1853 birdseye map of the city, but is found on the 1866 map. It was probably built closer to the earlier date, since Moses Rogers, when he bought the building in 1871, referred to it as "the old and well-known apple-packing house of David Henning."

David Henning started his fruit packing business about 1851. After immigrating from Ireland as a teenager, he learned the cooper's trade (barrel-making) in Detroit and then moved to Ann Arbor to set up. One season he made more barrels than he could sell, and he came up with the idea of filling them with apples in order to sell them off. His scheme worked so well that he soon expanded his operation, selling barrels of apples at outlets all along the Michigan Central railroad line.

Henning's original factory was probably a simple wooden building, which he replaced when he began making money with the brick structure that remains today. Henning later branched out into other businesses, including gas companies located all over the Midwest. When he died in 1901, he was reputed to be one of the wealthiest men in Ann Arbor.

The next owner of the Detroit Street building, Moses Rogers, was also a self-made man. Rogers came from New York State at age twenty-one and first worked as a teamster, driving between Detroit and Ann Arbor. (This was in 1831; the railroad did not come to town until 1839.) He found employment in Chapin's farm implement store and in 1843 started his own implement store on Washington Street (where the Washington Street Station restaurant is now). He did so well that in 1860 he was able to move to much more spacious quarters on Catherine, to what was long known as the White Swan building and is now being remodeled as Market Place. The next year, he bought his family a home at 121 North Division, which is today part of the Division Street Historic District.

In 1866 Rogers sold his building and stock and soon joined in a partnership with John Treadwell and the two bought an old hotel, the Monitor, on the corner of Huron and Second Street and converted it into an implement store. According to an article in the March 8, 1867, Ann Arbor Argus, the plan was for Treadwell to be the proprietor and "avail himself of the aid and experience of Mr. Rogers." Rogers must have thought that after thirty-six years of hard work he could step down to an advisory position, but it was not to be. On April 15, 1870, a fire destroyed a group of neighboring downtown businesses. One casualty was the three-year-old implement business, which was uninsured.

Thus when Rogers bought Henning's building on Detroit Street in 1871, it was to start business anew at an age (sixty-one) when most people are thinking of retirement. Rogers had several advantages in this late-life endeavor, including a great knowledge of the implement business, a good reputation (Beakes's 1906 county history says, "He won an honorable name through the exercise of business principles that neither sought nor required disguise"), and a choice business location. Old Fourth Ward historian Susan Wineberg points out that Detroit Street would have been an excellent site for his business, located as it was on the main route between the railroad station and the downtown area, which in those days clustered around the County Courthouse at Huron and Main.

Moses Rogers lived seventeen years after founding his third business, and he managed to regain his former financial status. His obituary in 1883 described him as "one of the most prosperous merchants of the city."

After Rogers's death, his daughter, Katie, gave up her successful portrait painting career to take over the business, running it successfully for seven years. Katie Rogers had been a dutiful daughter all her life. Trained at the Chicago Academy of Design, where she graduated at the top of her class, she had returned home to set up a studio in her parents' home. She continued her art career, painting portraits of many local dignitaries, including her uncle, Randolph Rogers, a sculptor with an international reputation, and Judge James Kingsley. Her Kingsley portrait hung in the County Courthouse for many years.

Katie sold the implement business to Hurd-Holmes in 1895, enjoying what she could of retirement--by then she was an invalid--until her death in 1901. The business died before she did: the building is listed as vacant in the 1900 city directory.

For a short while (1905-1909) the building was used as a creamery. Then Luick Lumber, located across the street in what is today Kerrytown, started using it for a warehouse. In 1915 a machine shop moved in, and this use continued, under several owners, until 1963.

In 1963, Travis and Demaris Cash, who had started the Treasure Mart in 1960, were looking for a place to expand their inventory to include used clothing. They took a long-term lease on both 417 Detroit and a one-story building next door at 419 that had been built in 1921 as an auto repair shop. They remodeled both buildings, adding shutters, brackets, and window boxes found at the Treasure Mart. The wrought iron fence that today graces both buildings came from Marie Rominger's house, which was torn down to make room for the public library parking lot. The Cashes used the smaller building for the Tree, their second-hand clothes store. They considered turning 417 into a restaurant, possibly with an eating area on the Tree's roof. According to Elaine Johns, their daughter, they were dissuaded by the general opinion that "no one would come down to this area to eat."

For the rest of the 1960's the Cashes sublet the building at 417, first to the Lantern Gallery and then to a used-fur company. When the fur company moved out, they moved the Tree's men's and boys' department into the back half of the first floor of 417.

In 1970, a fledgling activist group, the Ecology Center, was organized to continue working on the issues raised by the first Earth Day on April 22,1970. When it wasn't able to find a storefront in the downtown area, the group decided that the Detroit Street location met its primary objectives of being accessible to the general public and far enough from the U-M to establish it as a community group. "We almost didn't start it here," reminisced Doug Fulton, retired outdoor editor of the Ann Arbor News and first president of the Ecology Center board, in 1985. "There was a lot of work to be done. We had clean-up parties and so forth. It was essentially mostly an old storeroom."

Despite the unpromising start, the Detroit Street site has served the Ecology Center well, as first Kerrytown and then Zingerman's brought increasing numbers of people to the area. But the center's increased activities have far outgrown the available space. "It has a lot of charm, but not enough space for the growing environmental needs of our community," says Nancy Stone, a longtime Ecology Center employee now serving as newsletter editor.

The Ecology Center now functions out of several other locations: the Leslie Science Center, Legal Services, the landfill, and the recycle drop-off station. But Detroit Street, although crowded, still houses the offices of administration, issues development, newsletter, membership, events coordination, and recycling education. Twelve employees plus varying numbers of work study students and volunteers use the space to its maximum.

After almost a century in eclipse, epitaphs are making a comeback

When immigrant stonemason Vincel Arnet started work at Lockridge Monuments in Ypsilanti in 1887, most Washtenaw County gravestones were made of limestone sent by wagon from Bedford, Indiana. The soft stone was easily carved, and a trip to any of the area's older cemeteries reveals wonderful examples of monuments decorated with symbolic pictures, such as lambs for dead children, weeping willows signifying sadness, or tree stumps marking people who died in the prime of life. Some include epitaphs, often long ones; like James Warble's 1861 stone in Stony Creek Cemetery in Augusta Township:

Sleep on dear Father
Thy toils and cares are o'er
It was God that called thee home
Where we shall meet to part no more

Even the simpler stones often include information such as the place of death, close relatives, or the deceased's age down to the day.

Unfortunately, these beautiful stones are prey to the elements; the wear over the years makes the engravings harder to discern. Vincel Arnet arrived from Pilsen, Bohemia, at the end of an era. In 1889, granite, a harder, much longer-lasting stone, began to be mined in Barre, Vermont, and later in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and Elberton, Georgia. Previously the only granite available was from Scotland, and shipping costs made it too expensive for general use.

Larry Arnet, Vincel's great-grandson and the owner of Arnet's Monuments on Jackson Road, has become an expert in gravestones, both from his own involvement in the industry and from listening to stories about his family's eighty-five-year-old business. People readily switched to granite for its durability, he says, although it had the drawback of being much more expensive to engrave since it was so hard. Arnet estimates that engraving limestone was about 7 percent of the final cost of the stone, while engraving granite reached about 25 percent. The expense meant that people not only stopped putting symbolic pictures and extra information on gravestones, but sometimes even reduced the engraving to the name and the years of birth and death, omitting the day and the month.

The advent of the automobile and the subsequent scattering of families around the county also affected the burial business. In the nineteenth century, people would buy cemetery lots in groups of eight, twelve, or even sixteen, intending that the mortal remains of the entire family would lie together. Often they identified the area with a big central monument bearing the family name, which they surrounded with smaller stones for each family member.. But as this century progressed and families dispersed, people switched to buying only one or two lots at a time.

The Arnet Monument Company (originally Zachmann and Arnet - Gus Zachmann was a partner for a few years) opened during the switch from limestone to granite and shortly before the rise of the automobile. Founder Joseph L. Arnet, Vincel's son and Larry's grandfather, followed his father and trained to be a stonemason, apprenticing in Flint. In 1904, at the age of twenty-five, he started his own business in Ann Arbor, using the $25 insurance proceeds he received when his father died. His first shop was simply an open lot on the corner of Main and Ann, most recently the site of the Salvation Army Store and now a temporary county park. Says Larry Arnet, "In those days they worked outside. They didn't feel they had to have air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter."

According to family stories, there were six monument companies in Ann Arbor when Joseph Arnet started in business. After two years there were only two, the other four having joined Arnet. The business was given a good start when it received as its third commission a $5,000 stone - 200 times the $25 average at the time. An unmarried schoolteacher died without heirs and, not wanting her money to go to the state, designated that her entire estate be used for a burial stone. Arnet spent a year carving an 8 by 10 foot monument and decorating it with acanthus leaves. (It's in York Cemetery, at the corner of Platt and Judd roads in York Township.)

In 1917 Joseph Arnet finally gave his workers a break from Michigan's inclement climate by moving to an inside location at 208 West Huron, most recently the Whiffletree Restaurant. Up until the restaurant's 1988 fire, Larry Arnet says, it was still possible to see the beams that had held the chain falls used to lift stone in his grandfather's day.

Joseph's son, Frederick, began working in the family business after graduating from the U-M in 1931 with a degree in architecture. He took over completely in 1937 after Joseph suffered a debilitating stroke. Under Frederick's leadership, the company branched into producing architectural features, such as stone facings and copings around walls, a natural outgrowth of his architectural training.

In need of more space for the expanding business that Frederick was bringing in, Arnet's moved in 1933 to 924-936 North Main, the building that now houses Robey Tire.

Larry Arnet grew up in the business, watching his father and grandfather work at the various locations and helping when he was old enough. But when he came of age, he had doubts about whether he wanted to follow the course laid out for him. Frederick Arnet, thinking he would need to sell the business, attempted to shrink it to a manageable size. He moved it in 1960 to a smaller location, 218 Chapin, across from West Park, now the New Hope Baptist Church. But Larry relented and took over the business in 1965. Following the trend of heavy industries leaving downtown for cheaper, more accessible space on the edge of town, he moved Arnet's to its present location at 4495 Jackson Road in 1970. He has since been joined in the business by his son Steve, daughter Carol Bondie, and son-in-law Jim Moomey.

Larry Arnet is a warm jovial man, and it's obvious that his original reluctance has turned into an enormous enthusiasm for the profession. Although he admits the trend is to spend less on funerals and gravestones, Larry Arnet says there is also increased awareness of the importance of formally recognizing a loved one's death and of the comfort that comes from knowing where the physical remains lie. He says a rise in family feeling among young people has led to an increase in requests for memorials with special carvings, symbols, and epitaphs.

Fortunately, technical improvements in the industry now allow more designs and information to be put on granite stones, despite their hardness, at a reasonable cost. Computer-generated stencils are used for sandblasting, and skilled artisans can etch the designs into the stone with a vibrating diamond-tipped pen.

Larry Arnet has worked on unusual gravestones, including those for stunt pilot William Barber and his wife, Elaine, which when viewed together form an airplane, and a monument that resembles a space capsule. Erected at the Jackson Space Center, it honors Roger Chafee and Gregory Jarvis, the two Michigan astronauts who died in the line of duty.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: After three moves, current owner Larry Arnet (in suit) carries on the monument trade with son-in-law Jim Moomey, son Steve, and daughter Caryl Bondie.

[Photo caption from original print edition]: From 1904 to 1917, founder Joseph Arnet (in vest) and his crew worked outdoors at the corner of Main and Ann.

An auto heir's vision of the rural good life, it was a social success but a financial flop

Three miles south of Saline, on Milkey Road, a series of boarded-up houses and deserted farm buildings mark the site that from 1932 to 1953 was Saline Valley Farms. "No Trespassing" signs on trees and fences bar visitors from what was once a busy cooperative farm.

Saline Valley Farms was the brainchild of Harold Gray, "a rich man with rich ideas," according to former resident Ruth Hagen. Gray's grandfather was a practical lawyer who made a fortune as the first president of Ford Motor Company. Harold, on the other hand, was a pacifist and economic dreamer who decided to use his large inheritance to try an alternative method of farming. In interviews at the time, Gray said his idea was to show that by combining agriculture with on-site canning and marketing activities, "a group of people living on the land and working in close cooperation could achieve a standard of living and a degree of security above that of the average farm family."

"Man Looking at Chicken on Lap," Saline Valley Farms

Gray developed his ideas of agricultural economy while studying economics at Harvard (he earned a B.A. and an M.A. and did further graduate work) and as a missionary in China. In the early days of the Depression, he decided to try to put his ideas of farming into action, and after a year of searching found an abandoned 596-acre farm that met his purposes: rural enough for low taxes but near to markets and also to the cultural advantages of Ann Arbor.

Gray's first recruit was Harold Vaughn. Vaughn, a former county extension agent who had retrained as a social worker, became the farm manager. "We arrived on barely passable roads," Vaughn later wrote of his first day, April 4, 1932. "The old farm house and west barn stood empty. Loose doors banged noisily in the wind. The furnace was broken, the water system didn't work and the electricity was off."

Together, Gray and Vaughn found people, eventually twenty families, to move to the farm and turn it into a working operation.

With a lot of work, plus a massive infusion of Gray's capital, the farm was soon transformed: roads built, a lake formed by damming the creek that ran through the property, fields laid out, and orchards planted. Houses for the workers were built with the occupants in mind and varied depending on the size of the family.

"Hog Barn," Saline Valley Farms

The first ones were dubbed "Detroit News" houses because they were taken from plans published in the newspaper, but two of the later ones were designed by U-M professor of architecture George Brigham.

Behind the original farmhouse, a store was built with a recreation hall upstairs that was used for square dances, potlucks, and plays. Attached at the rear of the store was the canning factory; Saline Valley Farms sold its canned goods under its own label, which featured a picture of the twin-siloed main barn.

Gray liked to have the best of everything. The cows were purebred Guernseys that produced very rich milk; the pigs made excellent sausage. The chickens were Plymouth Barred Rocks that Hagen bred carefully, using the trap nest method so he could account for every egg.

The produce and animal products were preserved in the canning factory, the domain of Marian Vaughn, Harold Vaughn's wife. She was a strong force on the farm, organizing cultural events, setting up a summer camp for the members' children, and acting as peacemaker when her husband and Gray, although friends, periodically fought.

J. L. Hudson's food shop was a major customer for Saline Valley Farms products, but the main mode of distribution was through delivery routes that Gray had developed out of his own practice of taking fresh produce to his friends in the Detroit suburbs. Gray himself and several other delivery men would deliver fresh dairy products, produce, canned goods, and meat on a regular schedule.

Although it produced delicious products, Saline Valley Farms was never a financial success, according to Don Campbell, who kept the books. "The whole operation was too expensive to make any money. It never even broke even." Also, although it was called a co-op, it never really was. Day-to-day decisions were discussed at staff meetings, but no one doubted that Gray had the final say. "My husband and the general manager didn't always agree with him," recalls Ruth Hagen, "but he was the boss."

"Farm Buildings," Saline Valley Farms

Although inflexible about the farm operation, Gray was tolerant of most other ideas. Political philosophies ran the gamut from anarchism to Republicanism, and religious beliefs from atheism to extreme piety.

During World War II the farm's diversity and reputation for tolerance increased as they made room for Japanese-Americans whom the government had let out of concentration camps but still wanted to keep an eye on, conscientious objectors paroled from the federal penitentiary in Milan, and European Jewish refugees. Says Daniel Katz, a U-M social psychology professor who lived on the farm for a year during the post-World War II housing shortage, "You wouldn't want a more stimulating group to talk to, or kinder."

After the war, wages went up dramatically and Gray had trouble finding workers for what he was willing to pay.

One by one, crops had proved to be uneconomical and were discontinued. Canning stopped during World War II when rationing made it impossible to guarantee orders. The farm became a shadow of its former self, and in 1953 he decided to stop the whole operation.

After selling the farm equipment, Gray continued to live on the farm with his second wife, Meg, in the larger of the Brigham-designed homes. The farm was turned into a youth hostel, the first one west of the Alleghenies. It was run for many years by Johnny Rule, an English-born jack-of-all-trades who had worked in the farm's poultry department, and his wife, May. People from all over the world and local groups like the scouts enjoyed the beautiful scenery, the lake, and the rural atmosphere.

In 1969, Gray, by then seventy-five, sold the farm to Teamsters Local 299 for a park for their members, but they found it too expensive to operate. Gray died three years later.

Many offspring of the farm families still live in the area and cherish memories of childhoods full of freedom and yet busy, helping from maple syrup season to apple picking time. Says Shirley Hagen Grossman, "I had an idyllic childhood, surrounded by an extended family of twenty. If I fell down and scraped my knee, I just ran to the nearest house." Doris Rule Bable agrees, saying, "Maybe it was a failure financially, but it was a great success in living and in personal relationships; very satisfying to the soul."

[Photo caption from original print edition]: Saline Valley Farms manager Harold Vaughn (left) and founder Harold Gray.

[Photo caption from original print edition:]: Gray sold the farm to a union local in 1969, but it proved too expensive to keep open as a park. It's now deserted.