In the fall of 1836 the Kent Company purchased, for about $4,000, the office material of the Niagara Falls Journal, and shipped it from Buffalo on the steamer Don Quixote. The boat was wrecked off Thunder Bay Island, and the press and material were transferred to a sailing vessel, that reached Grand Haven late in the season.
When it was landed, George W. Pattison purchased the printing outfit for $4,100. During the winter he had it brought up the river on the ice by dog teams – six dogs to a sled. The sled, carrying the press broke through the ice some miles below the Rapids, and went to the bottom of the river, but the press was fished out and brought to town.
Nearly all the prominent citizens of the village were at the newspaper office to see the first issue of the Times come off the Washington hand press on April 18, 1837. Printed every Saturday morning, a prepaid annual subscription for the four-page, tabloid-size newspaper cost $2.50. Louis Campau subscribed for 500 copies for a year, paying $1,000 cash in advance, and the Kent Company also took 500 subscriptions.
The first copy was printed on silk-satin, and given to Campau. Others were printed on cloth and distributed for preservation as souvenirs. To get news from Detroit required from four to six days. Politically, a non-partisan newspaper, both Whigs and Democrats were given opportunity to air their views in its columns, which they did, most eagerly.
Sources:
Grand River Times entry from Grand Rapids Historical Commission.
Joseph Labadie (1850-1933) was a Detroit writer and poet, and was involved with nearly every left wing and labor-related issue of the late 1800s.
Jo Labadie was born on April 18, 1850, in Paw Paw, Michigan, to Anthony and Euphrosyne Labadie, both descendants of seventeenth century French immigrants of the Labadie family who had settled on both sides of the Detroit River. His boyhood was a frontier existence among Pottawatomi tribes in southern Michigan, where his father served as interpreter between Jesuit missionaries and Indians. His only formal schooling was a few months in a parochial school.
Later in life he settled in Detroit, becoming a writer, a poet and an active supporter of the Socialist Labor Party. He was key in bringing a new national labor union into Detroit: The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, which was founded by garment workers in 1869 in Pennsylvania.
In October 1878 Charles Litchman, “grand scribe” of the Knights of Labor, traveled to the emerging labor center of Detroit and selected Labadie to form the first cell of the union in Michigan. The group preferred to keep its identity obscured, for its mission to organize all laborers into a secret federation was arousing intense hostility from business leaders. Handsome, dapper, friendly, and always ready with a speech, Labadie was an ideal choice for the Knights, whose ideals of brotherhood and justice were at one with Labadie’s values.
In 1888, Labadie organized the Michigan Federation of Labor, became its first president, and forged an alliance with Samuel Gompers. At age fifty he began writing verse and publishing artistic hand-crafted booklets. In 1908, the city postal inspector banned his mail because it bore stickers with anarchist quotations. A month later the Detroit water board, where he was working as a clerk, dismissed him for expressing anarchist sentiments. In both cases, the officials were forced to back down in the face of massive public protest for the person well known in Detroit as its “Gentle Anarchist”.
In about 1910, when he was 60 years old, Labadie began to prepare for the preservation of the vast collection of pamphlets, newspapers, and correspondence which he had accumulated in the attic of his home. The collection was eagerly sought by the University of Wisconsin, one of the paramount repositories of materials relating to labor and socialist history in the United States, but Labadie spurned their offer of $500 for the collection. The libraries of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and Michigan State University also made attempts to acquire the collection.
Labadie sought instead to keep the material as near to his hometown of Detroit as possible and contacted the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor about their potential acquisition of the material. While the University of Michigan was slow to show interest in the collection, an investigator was eventually dispatched. The report returned on Labadie’s collection was negative, dismissed as a great mass of “stuff.” Labadie remained persistent, however, and he eventually convinced nine Detroit residents, including several businessmen, to donate $100 each for the purchase of the collection, which was then donated to the university with requisite pomp.
In 1912 twenty crates of material were moved from Labadie’s attic to Ann Arbor, forming the foundation of renowned Labadie Collection of radical literature. Labadie spent his later years soliciting donations to the collection from friends and acquaintances, donating hundreds more items himself to the library in 1926.[2] The collection thus preserved is today regarded as among the finest accumulations of 19th Century radical ephemera in the United States.
Sources :
Bill Loomis, “Parades, rallies and picnics popular from the 19th century as unions sought support, pushed for workers’ rights”, Detroit News, September 1, 2013.
Eleanor H. Scanlan, “The Jo Labadie Collection,” Labor History, vol. 6, no. 3 (Fall 1965).
All-American Anarchist: Joseph A. Labadie and the Labor Movement / Carlotta R. Anderson. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1998
Jo Labadie and His Gift to Michigan : A Legacy for the Masses, University of Michigan Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library Special Collections.
In 1900 about 625 students attended the State Agricultural College, commonly known as M.A.C. The schools was the precursor to Michigan State University. Making a new commitment to serious intercollegiate athletic competition, the college purchased land here, along the Red Cedar River, for an athletic field. Intramural sports had been a part of M.A.C. life since its founding in 1855; however contests with other institutions did not begin until 1884. On April 18, 1902, the M.A.C. Aggies baseball team met the University of Michigan Wolverines in the first baseball game held on this site. The new venue had baseball and football fields, circular and straight tracks, and, later, lights and a grandstand. In 1923 footbal moved south to a new stadium, but baseball remained at College Field.
College Field opened in 1902 as the primary sports venue for “the Aggies” of the State Agricultural College. Some sports relocated, but baseball remained here and was later joined by softball and soccer. In 1925 the School became the Michigan State College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences, prompting the change in the team name from Aggies to Spartans. Two men stand out in the history of College Field and Aggie/Spartan sports. Lyman Frimodig (1891-1972) played baseball and football here, earning a record-setting ten letters in three sports. He spent over forty years with the athletic department, serving for a time as the athletic director. John Kobs (1898-1968) coached Spartan baseball for nearly forty years and captured the Big Ten title in 1954. In 1969 the baseball field was named in his honor.
Source : College Field Michigan Historical Marker
According to Jack Seibold’s Spartan Sports Encyclopedia: A History of the Michigan State Men’s Athletic Program (Champaign, IL : SportsPublishing, c2003.), although the MAC team played in brand new green-and-gray uniforms for the occasion, the visiting Michigan Wolverines were not impressed, easily winning 20-2.
Approximate routes taken by the Japanese (red) and Americans (green) on the morning of April 18, 1943. “The Slot” was still Japanese-controlled, requiring the Americans to circle around it to avoid detection. This was the longest fighter-intercept mission of the war, and was so skillfully planned and flown that the Americans arrived at the intercept point just one minute early.
Tom Lamphier, a pilot in the U.S. navy who grew up on army bases near Detroit, Michigan, helped shoot down Japan’s top military leader, Admiral Isoruko Yamamoto, on April 18, 1943.
Tom Lanphier won fame as a wartime pilot and ace for the U.S. navy, flying 112 combat missions, sinking a Japanese destroyer and downing 17 enemy planes, including the fighter-bomber carrying Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, commander in chief of the Japanese Imperial Navy who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Having cracked the Japanese code, American intelligence intercepted a secret message noting that Admiral Yamamoto, on an inspection trip, would fly from Rabaul, New Britain, to Kahili on Bougainville in the Solomon Islands on April 18, 1943.
With orders from the White House to intercept and destroy Admiral Yamamoto, Mr. Lanphier, then a 27-year-old captain in the Army Air Forces, and a small attack group of P-38’s took off in predawn darkness from Guadalcanal, 435 miles to southeast, and, skimming the waves to avoid radar, kept the surprise rendezvous over Bougainville at 9:35 A.M.
Mr. Lanphier, in an article for the North American Newspaper Alliance, described twisting, blazing dogfights with a half-dozen Zeros escorting the admiral’s twin-engine Mitsubishi bomber, and then the final pursuit of the bomber, which had peeled away and skimmed the jungle, heading for the safety of a Japanese base 11 miles away.
Captain Lanphier took on the lead Zero as it dived toward him. ”My machine guns and cannon ripped one of his wings away,” he recalled. ”He twisted under me, all flame and smoke. I spotted a shadow moving across the treetops. It was Yamamoto’s bomber. I dived toward him.
”I fired a long steady burst across the bomber’s course of flight from approximately right angles. The bomber’s right engine, then its right wing burst into flame. The men aboard the bomber were too close to the ground to jump.
”Just as I moved into range of Yamamoto’s bomber and its cannon, the bomber’s wing tore off. The bomber plunged into the jungle. It exploded. That was the end of Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto.”
The Japanese did not announce the death until a month later, and the United States did not credit Mr. Lanphier until five months later because his brother, a Marine Corps fighter pilot, was believed to be a prisoner of war. Mr. Lanphier was promoted to lieutenant colonel and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and many other decorations.
Thomas George Lanphier Jr. was born in the Canal Zone of Panama on Nov. 27, 1915, the son of a World War I Army officer, and grew up at Army posts in the Detroit area. He graduated from Stanford University, joined the Army Air Corps and received his wings a month before Pearl Harbor.
Following World War II, he was a newspaper editor in Boise, Idaho, for several years, and was one of the founding members of the Idaho Air National Guard. He served as president of the Air Force Association from September 1947 to September 1948. In December 1949, to promote the AFA’s “airability program”, an aviation awareness campaign, Lanphier made a round-the-world flight using scheduled airlines, making the 22,140 mile trip in under five days. He carried with him a letter from President Harry Truman commemorating the 46th anniversary of the first flight of the Wright brothers. Upon returning to New York, the letter, postmarked in 12 countries, was delivered to AFA President Robert S. Johnson, for presentation to the Kill Devil Hills Memorial Association at its annual 17 December anniversary of the Wright’s first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. He was then appointed special assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force, and then special assistant to the chairman of the National Security Resources Board. From 1951 to 1960, he was vice president of the Convair division of General Dynamics in San Diego, California. In 1965 he was a senior projects manager at North American Space Division in Downey, California. He later retired to La Jolla, California where he died on November 26, 1987.
Isoroku Yamamoto was born in 1884. His original family name, Takano, was changed through adoption. Graduated from the Japanese Naval Academy in 1904, he was wounded in action during the Russo-Japanese War. Yamamoto attended the Japanese Navy’s Staff College during the “teens” and later studied at Harvard University. As a Captain, he served as Naval Attache to the United States in 1925-28. In the late 1920s and during the 1930s, he held a number of important positions, many of them involved with Japanese naval aviation.
Admiral Yamamoto commanded the Combined Fleet before the outbreak of the Pacific War and during its first sixteen months. He was responsible for planning the attack on Pearl Harbor and most other major operations during this time. His scheme for eliminating the U.S. fleet as a major opponent led to the June 1942 Battle of Midway, in which the Japan lost naval superiority in the Pacific.
Despite Midway’s adverse outcome, Yamamoto continued as Combined Fleet commander through the following Guadalcanal Campaign, which further depleted Japan’s naval resources. While on an inspection tour in the Northern Solomon Islands, he was killed in an aerial ambush by U.S. Army Air Force planes on 18 April 1943. Isoroku Yamamoto was posthumously promoted to the rank of Admiral of the Fleet.
The American pilots — including Tom Lamphier — flew the longest over-water fighter mission ever and ambushed and killed Yamamoto. After his death, the Japanese never won another major naval battle. But the victorious American pilots seemed cursed by the samurai spirit of the admiral and were tormented for the rest of their lives by what happened that day. Davis (see book title below) paints unforgettable personal portraits of men in combat and unravels a military mystery that has been covered up at the highest levels of government since the end of the war.
Although Lanphier was initially given credit for the kill; later studies seemed to indicate 1st Lt. Rex T. Barber of Oregon was the more probable ace. No matter, it was a group effort including Lanphier.
Sources:
Robert D. McFadden, “Thomas G. Lanphier Jr., 71, Dies; U.S. Ace Shot Down Yamamoto”, New York Times, November 28, 1987.
Kennedy Hickman, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, ThoughtCo.Com Military History article which states that the kill is now generally credited to 1st Lt. Rex T. Barber of Oregon instead.
Don Hollway, Death by P38, Aviation History, May 2013.
Lightning strike : the secret mission to kill Admiral Yamamoto and avenge Pearl Harbor / Donald A. Davis. New York : St. Martin’s Press, 2005.
Thomas George Lanphier Jr. wikipedia entry
Isoroku Yamamoto wikipedia entry.
Michigan’s U.S. Senator, Arthur Vandenburg
When Michigan’s U.S. Senator Nathan Ferris, a Democrat, died in office in 1928, Gov. Fred Green appointed Arthur Vandenburg of Grand Rapids to take his place. He was elected by the people of Michigan later that year, and would go on to serve in the Senate until 1951. During that time, he served as the Senate’s president pro tempore and chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1947-1949.
As the Great Depression gripped the U.S., Vandenburg initially favored President F.D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. But by 1935, Vandenburg had turned against the New Deal, only supporting the Social Security Act and Banking Act of 1935, which established the FDIC. He turned down the Republican nomination for vice president in 1936, anticipating that Roosevelt would win another term in office.
A member of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee starting in 1929, he quickly became an isolationist as it appeared the rest of the world was heading for another major conflict. That changed radically on the day that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and in his notes, he wrote that the attack killed off isolationism for any realist.
By the time World War II ended, Vandenburg was convinced that America had to take a leading role on the world stage. He was a staunch supporter of the Truman Doctrine opposing the Soviet Union, the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II and the establishment of NATO.
In the late 1940s, some people were pushing Vandenburg to run for president. However, he announced that he had developed cancer in 1950, and he died the following year on April 18th.
Source : Official Blog of the Michigan House Democrats, April 18, 2016.
“When Michigan had a Giant in the U.S. Senate: Arthur Vandenberg“, The Ballenger Report, November 30, 2017.
James Kirchick, “How ‘America First’ Senator Arthur Vandenberg Became a Globalist Hero“, Daily Beast, February 18, 2018. The politician had a rare quality: the ability to admit he was wrong. After a surprise armed attack on America, he ultimately realized that the world is not zero-sum.
For more information, see Arthur Vandenberg: The Man in the Middle of the American Century / Hendrik Meijer. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2017.
According to State Journal archives, Friday, April 18, 1975, brought a spring storm that dumped between 2.3 to 5 inches of rain on the Lansing area, causing the Grand River to swell to 15.3 feet – four feet above flood stage – and the Red Cedar river to crest at 13 feet, six feet above flood stage.
The ensuing floods resulted in three deaths, while 800 families were evacuated from their homes. The State Journal reported one 66-year-old Howell man was found dead in five feet of flood water after his car slid down an embankment and into a ditch. A 17-year-old boy and 23-year-old man drowned while rafting near the Dimondale dam and were pulled underwater by the current.
Police boats and a helicopter were dispatched to patrol the flooded streets, help with evacuations and prevent looting. Four bridges were washed away in Eaton County, 50 percent of homes in Williamston were at least partially flooded and Meridian Township was described in the State Journal as a “virtual island.”
The 1975 flood was declared to be the worst since 1947, when 2.5 inches of rain in 24 hours sent the Grand River surging to 16.9 feet. The Lansing area’s worst recorded flood was in March 1904, when the Grand River crested at around 20 feet.
Source : “From the archives: Last major flood to hit Lansing comparable to Detroit deluge”, Lansing State Journal, August 13, 2014.
Joey Gaydos Jr. at age 11 with Jack Black in School of Rock.
Canton resident Joey Gaydos Jr., 25, who played the role of Zack in the film School of Rock, now teaches rock guitar to kids at the Ann Arbor Music Center.
Growing up in New Boston, Gaydos was surrounded by music – his father, Joey Gaydos Sr., forged a lengthy career as a guitarist in the Detroit rock scene, and Gaydos has fond memories of listening to his father practice in their home.
“My father played with the who’s who of Detroit rock royalty throughout the years. Everybody from members of the MC5, Stooges, Rockets, Brownsville Station – so a lot of the big names in Detroit music,” Gaydos Jr. said.<
“I remember a home video of myself [leaning] against the baby gate downstairs, listening to my dad play and just bobbing my head, getting into the music. I always loved it,” he said.
When Gaydos was 9, his parents gave him a guitar of his own and he was, in his own words, “off to the races.”
Two years later, Gaydos was invited to audition for “School of Rock.” The audition process took months, and at times he wondered if the part had been given to someone else.
“I remember when I finally got the call after my third Los Angeles call back for the movie, when I met Jack Black, that we got a call from the casting agency saying, ‘Alright, pack your bags, you’re going to New York for five months.’ Obviously, I was overjoyed,” says Gaydos.
Canton resident Joey Gaydos Jr., 25, instructs a student during a guitar lesson on August 23, 2016 at the Ann Arbor Music Center in Ann Arbor.
Looking back, Gaydos says the most meaningful part of the experience is the way the film has touched others, influencing many young fans to pick up an instrument for the first time.
After working on “School of Rock,” Gaydos received offers to act in many other films, but he declined. His sights were set on being a professional musician, and that’s just what he did.
Gaydos has played in many bands, including Joey Gaydos Group, which released an album in 2006, as well as Detroit pop/rock group Stereo Jane.
These days, most of his time is spent teaching guitar in Ann Arbor, often taking off on weekends to play guitar on tour with singer-songwriter Uncle Kracker.
Source: Katy Kildee, School of Rock” child actor, guitarist teaching rock to Ann Arbor kids”, MLive, September 2016.
School of Rock Reunion, September 2013.
Photo of Jim Abbott in 1998
Jim Abbott’s University of Michigan #31 baseball jersey was retired at the Wolverines’ April 18, 2009 home game against Michigan State University.
James Anthony (Jim) Abbott (born September 19, 1967) is a former Major League Baseball pitcher, who played despite having been born without a right hand. He played for the California Angels, the New York Yankees, the Chicago White Sox, and the Milwaukee Brewers, from 1989 to 1999. He graduated from Flint Central High School and grew up in the East Village area of Flint, Michigan. While with the University of Michigan, Abbott won the James E. Sullivan Award as the nation’s best amateur athlete in 1987 and won a gold medal in the demonstration event at the 1988 Summer Olympics. He was drafted in the first round of the 1988 Major League Baseball Draft and reached the Majors the next year. He threw a no-hitter against the Cleveland Indians in 1993.
Abbott played for Michigan three years under coach Bud Middaugh, from 1985 to 1988, leading them to two Big Ten championships. In 1987, he won the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States, becoming the first baseball player to win the award. Abbott was the flag-bearer for the United States at the 1987 Pan American Games in Indianapolis, helping lead the USA to a second place finish. Though baseball was a demonstration sport in the 1988 Summer Olympics, Abbott pitched the final game, winning an unofficial gold medal for the United States. Abbott was voted the Big Ten Athlete of the Year in 1988.
Sources : Jim Abbott wikipedia entry
Bill Castanier, “Home run; Jim Abbott writes about his baseball career and his parents’ love story”, Lansing City Pulse, May 2, 2012.
Jim Abbott and Tim Brown, Imperfect: An Improbable Life. New York : Ballantine Books, c2012. Available through MelCat or interlibrary loan.
So what is this Reed Gunther comic all about?
It’s a comedic western about a cowboy named Reed Gunther; strong, bold, fearless, and not quite as bright as he thinks he is, Reed is often the cause of the problems he faces. Fortunately, Reed can depend on his best friend and trusty steed, a grizzly bear named Sterling, to rescue him. Sterling is fiercely loyal, resourceful and heroic; he may occasionally roll his eyes at Reed’s impulsive actions, but he’s always ready to back up his friend.Together with a tough-as-nails, no-nonsense cattle-wrangler named Starla (whom Reed persists in seeing as a damsel in distress, though she’s not very damsel-like and seldom in distress), Reed and Sterling battle gigantic snakes, mutant mole-people, and various monsters across the West.
The first four issues were self-published by Shane & Chris in black & white in 2009-2010; the Image-produced run will publish those stories in full color, followed by at least six more issues. After the tenth issue, the series may be extended, depending on the sales figures.
The Reed Gunther website has a few kid-friendly features; coloring pages, wallpapers and pin-ups, “how it’s done” features showing the creation process, and a time-lapse video of Chris inking a page. Pop on by and take a look.
More about the brothers:
Writer Shane Houghton is a video editor; his younger brother, artist Chris Houghton, works at Nickelodeon as a storyboard artist. They have been developing Reed Gunther for a few years now, and are very excited to be working with Image to bring the book to a larger audience. I met with them over lunch in Burbank to hear about the project. The very youthful brothers projected a contagious enthusiasm for their comic, which has already become one of my new favorites. One reason for this is their personal connection to one of their characters; Sterling is named after their childhood pet, a golden retriever who shared a lot of personality traits with his ursine namesake. Sterling was a smart and loyal dog; the Houghton brothers grew up in a rural area in Michigan, and their dogs, Sterling and a black Labrador named Riley, often ran free in the woods behind their home. On one occasion, a pair of drunken and irresponsible hunters happened to be nearby and decided that it would be fun to shoot the dogs. Riley died immediately, but Sterling, despite being wounded, managed to make it home and bark insistently at the boys’ mother “just like Lassie” to get her to come to Riley’s aid. Sterling made a full recovery and lived for several more years, and today he lives on in the form of a cartoon bear.
From the Reed Gunter website:
Shane and Chris Houghton have been brothers as long as they can remember. Throughout the years, the two have collaborated on various creative projects, the most prolific being afternoon jam sessions in the garage. While growing up, it was hard to find either of them without a comic book within arms reach, and they are now extremely excited to be working together on one of their own.
Shane Houghton is the writer and co-creator of Reed Gunther. He has also written stories for Peanuts, Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror, and Casper’s Scare School. Aside from writing, Shane freelances as a filmmaker and has edited reality TV shows, shot webseries for Comedy Central, and directs promotional video game advertisements. Shane lives in a big house in Los Angeles with his fiancé Katie. He likes to eat burritos.
Chris Houghton is the artist and co-creator of Reed Gunther. He has also contributed work to The Simpsons, Adventure Time, MAD Magazine, and Kung Fu Panda comics. He is a member of the National Cartoonists Society and is currently working at Disney TV on Gravity Falls. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Kassandra, and wonder cat, Simon.
Little known fact : Shane and Chris started drawing cartoons when they were in 4th and 5th grades.
Got something to say? Shoot us an email: mail(at)reedgunther(dot)com
“Reed Gunther Creators Interviewed (with added DANGER!)“, December 8, 2010. Comic book creators Shane and Chris Houghton answer questions from Steven Surman at BrokenFrontier.com. Everything goes great… UNTIL THEY’RE POISONED!
“Indie Comic of the Week – Reed Gunther“, October 3, 2011.
“Artist Alley: The Houghton Brothers“, June 26, 2012. The Houghton Brothers, creators of Reed Gunther, talk with Kat Kan at the 2012 ALA Annual Conference about their start creating comics, advice for aspiring comic book creators, and what they’d like libraries to do to support comics.
Reed Gunther Behind the Scenes video with Shane and Chris Houghton. June 18, 2012.
Sources:
Shane and Chris Houghton’s Reed Gunther website.
Reed Gunther Comics Facebook page.
Jim MacQuarrie, “Reed Gunther : Big Fun with a Bear-Rding Cowboy“, Wired, April 18, 2011.
Chris Arrant, “Kid-Friendly Cowboy and Brainy Bear Sidekick in REED GUNTHER“, Newsarama, June 16, 2011.
Note: The MSU Special Collections Comic Book Collection has issues of Reed Gunther for consultation. It can also be purchased through local comic bookstores and via Amazon.
President Barack Obama sits in the famous Rosa Parks bus at the Henry Ford Museum after an event in Dearborn, Michigan, April 18, 2012. Parks was arrested sitting in the same row Obama is in, but on the opposite side.
Transcript of speech (Also see YouTube video)
Aaron Foley, “President Obama sits on historic Rosa Parks bus at Dearborn’s Henry Ford Museum“, MLive, April 19, 2012.