Wayne State celebrated the grand opening of Harwell Field on April 18, 2017. S. Gary Spicer, Kirk Gibson and Alan Trammell were among those who attended.

It all started with a simple thank-you letter.

Wayne State athletic director Rob Fournier had an idea in mind but wasn’t sure if it would come to fruition.

After Ernie Harwell spoke at Wayne State’s commencement ceremonies in 2008, the wheels started spinning in Fournier’s head about how to honor the legendary Tigers broadcaster.

Then it hit him: honor Harwell with the Warriors’ baseball program.

The result is a new baseball facility, Ernie Harwell Field, on Wayne State’s athletic campus. The new structure is a hat tip to Harwell and his wife Lulu, and is a replica of the rotunda at Ebbets Field, where Harwell began his broadcasting career with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

It’s adorned with limestone arches with a polished concrete floor designed like a baseball infield.

The red brick accents four limestone medallions with “EH” initials, replicas of the ones worn by the Tigers after Harwell’s death and the illuminated 24-inch letters for the Harwell Field sign above the building are duplicates of those at Ebbets Field.

Displays also adorn the walls, with audio of some of Harwell’s iconic radio calls, his acceptance speech from the Baseball Hall of Fame and his plaque from his induction into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame.

The building is 2,675 square feet and cost $2.3 million — all of which was privately funded, with no state dollars.

It’s the first phase of a multi-part project that will include expanded grandstands and a press box in coming years.

It’s that attention to detail that makes the new facility more a museum and place to see than anything else.

“That adds to the allure of why people would want to see it. If you say Harwell Field, when people get inside, you should see all that stuff,” Fournier said.

“You could listen to all the great calls in baseball and Jose Feliciano’s national anthem. It’s all there.”

Sources:

“Wayne State reaches $1.4M goal for Harwell Field“, Detroit News, December 4, 2015.

Rob Beard, “Harwell Field unveiled at Wayne State“, Detroit News, April 18, 2017.

“Harwell Field: Wayne State honors late Tigers broadcaster“, Detroit News Photo Collection, April 18, 2017.

April 19, 1910.

Mayor Bennett and Lansing’s aldermen have been placed in an embarrassing position. “It seems that city officials who attend these annual meetings, at the expense of the taxpayers in most instances, to obtain valuable ideas from others regarding methods of conducting municipal affairs are not now in favor of having their meeting in dry Lansing.” The Detroit delegation are the prime movers of having the convention switched to Saginaw, or some other wet city. At the last meeting Mayor Bennett had assured the membership that Lansing would remain wet and would offer the attendees a good time!

Source : “Dry Lansing May Lose Convention; Movement Started To Transfer State Municipal League Meeting to Saginaw”, Detroit Free Press, April 20, 1910.

Note : The Main Library now provides the MSU community online access to the historical Detroit Free Press from 1858 through 1922.

Throughout his long career as a scientist of the first magnitude and popular speaker at prestigious scientific gatherings, Glenn Seaborg always liked to mention that he was born in Ishpeming and “I can see by the looks on your faces that are a few people here who don’t know where Ishpeming is. Well let me put your minds at ease : It’s right next to Negaunee!”

Seaborg who died in 1999 was a scientist of the first order — probably the most esteemed scientist to be born in the Great Lakes State. His list of accomplishments is long and varied; at the top is the Nobel Prize for Chemistry and the 1991 National Medal of Science (the U.S.’s highest award for scientific achievement) as well as the discovery or co-discovery of 10 elements and 100 isotopes. He was a trusted advisor to 10 Presidents and an internationally respected figure in the field of atomic energy. He was a key contributor to the Manhattan Project during World War II, allowing the U.S. to win the race in developing the atomic bomb which led to the end of the war. Seaborg was also one of the seven signers of a letter to President Truman asking him to drop the bomb on a deserted Pacific Island rather than on a Japanese city. Later in life he would travel to more than 60 countries to promote international cooperation in science and the peaceful uses of atomic and nuclear energy, as well as helping negotiate the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and laying the groundwork for the later Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In addition to an element (106, Seaborgium) and an asteroid, dozens of research centers, scholarships, and awards still carry his name.

Source : Peggy House, “Glenn Seaborg Citizen-Scholar”, Michigan History, March/April 2015, pp.15-20.

On April 19, 1927, Ty Tyson provided the play-by-play on WWJ for the first radio broadcast of a regular season Detroit Tiger game, an 8-5 win over Cleveland Indians.

Listen to Tyson announcing a game September 20, 1934 NY Yankees Vs Detroit Tigers

Source : Detroit Historical Society Facebook page.

For more information, see “Ty Tyson, the world’s first sports broadcaster”, Detroit News, February 1, 1996.

Ty Tyson wikipedia entry.

On this date, two Detroit statues were forever linked by a spring prank, possibly undertaken by a University of Detroit fraternity but never proved. That night, huge green footprints were painted from “The Sprit of Detroit” (the big green guy outside the City-County Building, now the Coleman A. Young Municipal Building) to the “Passo di Dazna”, the nude woman in front of the former Michigan Consolidated Gas Building. According to a Detroit Free Press story on the following day, “Did the Jolly Green Giant have a date across the street?”

Source : Zlati Meyer, “You haven’t lived here until..you know the love story of two Detroit statues and their late-night rendezvous”, Detroit Free Press, June 9, 2013.

Spirit of Detroit entry from Encyclopedia of Detroit

Passo di Danza

It was April 19, 1973 when hundreds of craters and geysers mysteriously appeared around the small Northern Michigan community of Williamsburg near Traverse City. The 100 to 150 craters ranged from teacup-size fissures to sinkholes measuring up to 25 feet wide and 15 feet deep.

State officials eventually determined the outbreak was caused by gas seeping underground from a natural gas drilling operation four miles away, but not before most of the town’s 450 people were evacuated and displaced for months.

M-72, a highway that was just 3 years old at the time of the incident, was virtually destroyed and the community’s town hall was also threatened, according to a United Press International story published on April 20, 1973.

“The town hall was on the verge of toppling today as gaseous, bubbling craters popped open threatening a massive gas eruption,” the article stated.

“The earth around town hall is almost completely eaten up,” said Grand Traverse County Police Sgt. Tom Schmuckal in the article. “It is less than a foot from surrounding the entire foundation.”

Well E1-22, located south of Williamsburg and owned by Amoco Production Co., then a subsidiary Standard Oil of Indiana, was first indicted by a Department of Natural Resources spokesmen as the cause of the eruptions in the article. The well was immediately sealed.

Many feared that a single spark could set off a massive explosion in the community. The DNR issued an emergency order on April 24, 1973 which required drillers of all new wells to install a layer of protective casing extending below porous rock formations through which the gas can leak.

For the full article, see Brandon Champion, “Natural gas leak nearly destroyed Michigan village this week in 1973“, MLive, April 21, 2016.

On April 19, 1995, a truck-bomb explosion outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, left 168 people dead and hundreds more injured. The blast was set off by anti-government militant Timothy McVeigh, who in 2001 was executed for his crimes. His co-conspirator Terry Nichols received life in prison. Until September 11, 2001, the Oklahoma City bombing was the worst terrorist attack to take place on U.S. soil. Both men were found to be members of a radical right-wing survivalist group based in Michigan.

Oklahoma City bombing
The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building two days after the bombing

Sources:

Oklahoma City Bombing via History.com

Oklahoma City Bombing wikipedia entry.

Dominic Adams, “Oklahoma City bombing memories fade in rural Michigan town at center of plot”, MLive, April 19, 2015.