In 1885, the Presbyterian Synod of Michigan appointed a committee to consider the establishment of a Presbyterian College within the state and to secure funds for its foundation.
This committee included notable names such as J. Ambrose Wight, who preached about the need for such a college, inspiring wealthy lumberman Alexander Folsom to pledge $50,000 to the cause.
With additional pledges, the committee found Ammi W. Wright, an Alma lumberman with several business interests who was eager to promote religious causes. He offered two buildings to the College and about 30 acres of land.
On Sept. 12, 1887, Alma College opened, with 95 students at the time.
Prior to 1934, the Alma mascot was the Fighting Presbyterians, which became the subject of debate in 1931 due to a series of stories by the The Almanian, a student-run newspaper, expressing discontentment over the limitation on cheers to “Go Presbyterians” or “Go Campbellites,” the latter in support of then current football coach, Royal Campbell. While still maintaining a close relationship with the Presbyterian Church, Alma College offers an environment that welcomes students of all religious backgrounds.
In more than 100 years since its founding, Alma has stayed true to its roots by keeping its Scottish heritage alive. Today, Alma features a marching band clad in kilts, a Scottish Highlands dance troupe, and even its own official tartan. Each year, the College hosts the Alma Highland Festival and Games which feature traditional Scottish games and revelry. In 2011 Alma expanded its Highland Arts Program and participated in its first Piping competition at the 2011 Alma Highland Festival and Games. And of course Almas teams are known as the Scots.
Alma has an enrollment of 1,464 students (46 percent men and 54 percent women).
Sources:
125 Defining Moments from Accents the Alma College Alumni Magazine, Winter 2011
On September 12, 1911 J. Clifford Turpin of the Wright Brothers’ Exhibition Team performed the first airplane flight over Grand Rapids, starting at the West Michigan State Fair at Comstock Park. The new Model B aircraft featured two seats, one for the pilot and one for a passenger. The prop faced backwards! The plane was only 26 feet long with a wingspan of 39 feet and featured wheels instead of skids.
J. Clifford Turpin, taught to fly by Orville Wright, was the first Purdue University graduate (class of 1908) to become an aviator. Turpin set an altitude record of 9,400 feet in 1911, establishing a Purdue alumni tradition that was continued 55 years later, when an X-2 aircraft flown by Captain Iven C. Kincheloe (BSAE 1949) set an altitude record of 126,000 feet in 1956. That record was subsequently surpassed by alumni Neil A. Armstrong (BSAE 1955) and Eugene A. Cernan (BSEE 1956) during their flights to the moon.
After the Wright Brothers’ Exhibition Team was disbanded in 1911, Turpin and his flying partner Phil Parmalee rented Wright Model Cs (with a stronger motor and a propeller facing forward) for their own exhibitions, which normally featurede spins and rolls, and then Parmalee would carry one of their flight team a few thousand feet into the air, where the man would then do a parachute jump. Turpin and Parmalee would then have a five-mile airplane race, and the show would end with Parmalee taking his biplane as high as it could go, and then descending in a “dip of death” dive.
While conducting such as exhibition in a Seattle stadium, Turpin clipped a pylon avoiding a cameraman, and veered into a grandstand, killing several spectators and injuring many others. Turpin was pulled from the wreckage of his plane, alive but with his face badly crushed. The crowd helped move the injured into automobiles for quick transport to the county hospital in Georgetown. Since many remained after the accident, the management asked Parmalee to go up and continue the show!
That evening, Clifford Turpin spoke to reporters from his hospital bed, and described the accident from his perspective. He only caught a glimpse of the photographer who ran out in front of his plane and caused the accident. When Turpin was told that spectators had been killed, he replied sadly, “The only thing I wish is that I had been killed myself” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 31, 1912).
While Turpin recovered in the hospital, Parmalee traveled to Yakima to participate in another air show. During the exhibition on June 1, a gust of wind caused Parmalee’s plane to crash, killing him instantly. Upon hearing the news of his partner’s death, Turpin vowed to never fly again. As a result, unlike many early pilots, Clifford Turpin lived to the ripe old age of 79.
Note: Turpin is sitting on the left in the pilot’s seat of the Wright Model B in the featured photograph.
Sources :
Gordon G. Beld, The Early Days of Aviation in Grand Rapids. Charleston, S.C. : History Press, 2012.
History of the Purdue School of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Alan J. Stein, Washington’s first airplane fatality occurs at the Meadows, HistoryLink, February 3, 2013.
Wilmer T. “Bill” Rabe was born September 12, 1921 and grew up in Detroit, Michigan. A veteran of World War II, serving in the Pacific, Lieutenant Rabe was called up from the reserves in 1951 and served as “psychological warrior” with the Army in Germany. He married Maryann Rady (also from Detroit) in Berlin on November 1, 1952.
During the early 1950s, while serving as publicist at the University of Detroit, Rabe launched what has been described as a “quirky quiz show” called “Ask the Professor” on radio station WJR. SOBS (another Rabe invention that stood for “Stamp Out the Beatles Society”) was a gimmick organization launched in 1963 at the University. He wanted to link the university’s name with raging Beatlemania. Rabe signed up a naive student, Peter Murphy, to be SOBS president. One of the first questions asked when the Beatles arrived in New York on Feb. 7, 1964, concerned SOBS’ supposed campaign. “We’re going to start a campaign to stamp out Detroit,” a Beatle responded, and suddenly Murphy was public enemy No. 1. Beatles fans across America demonized SOBS and Murphy, but the Fab Four played Detroit without incident.
While heading up publicity efforts at tiny Lake Superior State University in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, Rabe created what is now an annual “List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness,” based on submissions from the public. Rabe retired in 1987, but the concept had by then caught on so strongly, that the University copyrighted it and continued with the tradition. Rabe, according to the university’s web site, “was a favorite of columnists and editors around Michigan, because he could always be counted on for a wacky and humorous quote about some issue of the day. Most of these had nothing to do with Lake Superior State, but when they were printed, they always said ‘Bill Rabe from Lake Superior State at the Soo says…’ He probably did more for LSS’s name recognition than every other person associated with it, including the hockey program, did put together. So while the Banished Words List and the Unicorn Hunters [another of Rabe’s creations] are legendary in the annals of PR, they shouldn’t be confused with anything worth serious ‘pondering.'”
While at LSSU Rabe created other events such as the world stone-skipping tournament and the annual snowman burning (something he discovered in Germany, and adapted to an American crowd, complete with roasted hotdogs served to students and guests, all of whom had gathered to say goodbye to winter and hello to spring).
Rabe was a member of the Baker Street Irregulars (BSI), invested as “Colonel Warburton’s Madness” in 1955. His published works include “Once More, Watson, Into the Breach!!!” (1949), the annual “Sherlockian Who’s Who and What’s What” (1961-), “The Remarkable Case of the Fudge Trust” (1968), and “We Always Mention Aunt Clara” (1990). Among Sherlockians, Bill Rabe was also known as the publisher of the original “Commonplace Book” and producer of “Voices from Baker Street.” According to a fellow BSI member, Bill “was the very quintessential model of the modern Sherlockian gentleman: peripatetic, whimsical, inventive and creative–truly one-of-a-kind and a larger-than-life throwback to the ’30s and the ’40s when the BSI membership was less conventional and perhaps more individualistic.” In 1990 he received the Two-Shilling Award from the BSI in recognition of his many accomplishments and contributions.
Bill Rabe was honored by the BSI in January 1992 for his years of service in organizing the Martha Hudson Breakfast (a part of the BSI annual weekend in New York City) and died a few months later, on April 4, 1992 in Texas after a short illness. Peter Blau noted that “Bill’s genius was perhaps best expressed by his talent in making madness respectable, and he did that in many fields: as chief telephone-book critic for the Detroit newspapers, as Detroit Hatchetman of the Friends of Lizzie Borden, as chief executive officer of Hush Records (providing the records with which Silent Record Week was celebrated each year), as public-relations officer for the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island (the Miami Beach of the North), and in so many ways in the world of Sherlock Holmes.”
Source :
Also see Ami Iceman, “Bill Rabe and the Unicorn Hunters”, MP3 Group, March 10, 2010.
Continuing the tradition, see
Scott Kleinberg, “Selfie, twerk, hashtag and more: The banished words of 2014 : University continues New Year’s Eve tradition that dates back to 1976”, Chicago Tribune, December 31, 2013 for the 39th list.
Jeff Karoub, “List: Ban ‘bae,’ ‘foodie,’ ‘takeaway’ from lexicon”, Detroit News, December 31, 2014 for the 40th list.
Kim Kozlowski, “List of overused words: From ‘Conversation’ to ‘So’”, Detroit News, December 31, 2015 for the 41st list.
For more background, see “The History of Word Banishment”, Lake Superior State University website.
On Sept. 12, 1942, Michigan’s first expressway, constructed along U.S. 12 from Detroit to Ford Motor Company’s Willow Run bomber plant, formally opened.
Source: Mich-Again’s Day
Juan Atkins (born September 12, 1962) is an American musician. He is widely credited as the originator of techno music, specifically Detroit techno along with Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson. The three, sometimes called the Belleville Three, attended high school together in Belleville, Michigan, near Detroit. Here’s a sample of Atkin’s techno music via YouTube.
After more than three decades in the scene, Juan Atkins is still performing and making new music. Stateside’s Emily Fox spoke with Atkins about the legacy of Detroit techno.
Sources :
Juan Atkins wikipedia entry, which says he was born December 9, 1962.
Juan Atkins Encyclopedia.com entry which says he was born on September 12, 1962.
Juan Atkins Discography at Discogs
Stateside Staff, “Techno music has its roots in Detroit”, Michigan Radio, February 2, 2015.
MSU Logo Appears on Back of Stadium Scoreboard
Michigan State’s in-state rival may have the best college football uniforms but it is Sparty who can lay claim to the game’s best logo. The second-place finisher in Reddit’s recent logo poll, this Spartan helmet silhouette ranks supreme here because it’s everything you want in a logo: Striking but understated, strong but subtle and just all-around awesome. And after years of endlessly toying with the shade of green, Michigan State finally hit the jackpot.
For the full article, see Jim Weber, “Who has the best logo in the FBS ranks of college football?“, Athlon Sports and Life, September 12, 2016.
Gabriel Richard, the first priest to serve in the U.S. Congress, died in Detroit on September 13, 1832.
Richard, who was born in France, was known as the second founder of Detroit. He founded Detroit’s first news service, a town crier who read the news of the nation and the world in the town square. In addition he founded the city’s first library, brought the first church organ to Detroit, and started what later became the University of Michigan.
In the War of 1812, Richard refused to pledge his allegiance to the British and was locked up by the British (who had captured Detroit) for refusing to do so. He was finally released when Shawnee Chief Tecumseh demanded the British let him go. Richard was elected to Congress as a non-voting member when Michigan was still a territory — the first priest to serve in the U.S. Congress. As a delegate, he was instrumental in gaining support for the Territorial Road, which linked Detroit and Chicago, opening Michigan to settlement
Richard died from cholera, the final victim of an epidemic that started when a troop ship carrying soldiers to put down Blackhawk’s rebellion near Chicago passed through Detroit. Richard’s funeral took place at St. Anne’s Church, where he had been pastor since 1798.
Father Gabriel Richard’s death notice, which did not appear in the Detroit Free Press until September 27, 1832 (column 1) mentions that over 2000 people from all ranks and denominations attended his funeral.
Sources :
Michigan Every Day
Detroit Historical Society
Father Gabriel Richard wikipedia entry
For more information, see “Father Gabriel Richard: Detroit’s pioneer priest”, Detroit News, July 20, 1997.
Central opened its doors on September 13, 1892, as the Central Michigan Normal School and Business Institute, with classes in teaching, business and stenography. At that time, few of the state’s teachers received any formal training in teaching, so school founders made teacher training their mission in founding the state’s second normal school.
Thirty-one students attended classes in second-floor rooms over an office on the corner of Main and Michigan streets in downtown Mount Pleasant. Most students at the time were eighth-grade graduates, attending the “Normal” for a few weeks or months prior to beginning their careers as teachers. Within the first two years, land was acquired and a $10,000 Normal School Building was constructed where Warriner Hall now stands.
Since then the school has undergone significant growth and change, yet still remains committed to preparing students for personal and professional success, as well as civic engagement, throughout their lives after graduation.
Visit History of CMU
Richard Kiel, right, with Roger Moore in the James Bond film “The Spy Who Loved Me” (1977) directed by Lewis Gilbert.
On September 13, 1939, Richard Kiel was born in Detroit. He would later go on to become a character actor, playing the role of Jaws in two James Bond films : The Spy who Loved Me and Moonraker. Kiel dies in 2014.
Source : Richard Kiel wikipedia entry.