Bob Ufer’s enthusiasm for “Meeechigan” football was infectious. (Image: U-M’s Bentley Historical Library.)
On October 26, 1981, the radio voice of University of Michigan football, 61-year-old Bob Ufer, who enthusiastically and with no hint of impartiality broadcasted 364 University of Michigan football games, died of cancer.
In addition to announcing Michigan football, Ufer was also a notable Michigan athlete, setting a 1943 world record in the 440 as a student.
He was in the first group inducted in 1978 into the University of Michigan Athletic Hall of Honor along with Gerald Ford, Bill Freehan, Tom Harmon, Ron Kramer, Bennie Oosterbaan, and Cazzie Russell
Sources:
Mich-Again’s Day.
Frank Beaver, “‘He felt what we felt’”, Michigan Today, October 17, 2018.
It’s a milestone birthday for Michigan’s first governor, and the state plans to celebrate.
The Michigan Historical Commission will commemorate Stevens T. Mason’s 200th birthday today with a historical marker dedication at Detroit’s Capitol Park. The ceremony is set for noon at the park that’s home to an 8-foot bronze statue of the man and his remains in a crypt beneath it.
The state says the marker commemorates the place where Mason led Michigan’s statehood drive.
Mason was reinterred in the park last October. His remains were unearthed as part of a $1 million renovation project.
Mason, known as the “Boy Governor,” was elected the Michigan territory’s first governor in 1835 when the state capitol was still in Detroit. He was re-elected in 1837 and served two more years.
Source : “Michigan’s ‘boy governor’ turns 200, gets a party in the park”, Detroit News, October 27, 2011.
For more information, see Joseph Serwach, Michigan’s Boy Gov at 200 : Stevens T. Mason, the state’s first governor, can still teach us important lessons about success.
Bob Garrett, The Boy Governor Comes Home, Seeking Michigan, January 2, 2013.
The boy governor : Stevens T. Mason and the birth of Michigan politics / Don Faber. University of Michigan Press, c2012. 205pp. : In 1831, Stevens T. Mason was named Secretary of the Michigan Territory at the tender age of 19, two years before he could even vote. The youngest presidential appointee in American history, Mason quickly stamped his persona on Michigan life in large letters. After championing the territory’s successful push for statehood without congressional authorization, he would defend his new state’s border in open defiance of the country’s political elite and then orchestrate its expansion through the annexation of the Upper Peninsula—all before his official election as Michigan’s first governor at age 24, the youngest chief executive in any state’s history….The Boy Governor tells the complete story of this dominant political figure in Michigan’s early development. Capturing Mason’s youthful idealism and visionary accomplishments, including his advocacy for a strong state university and legislating for the creation of the Soo Locks, this biography renders a vivid portrait of Michigan’s first governor—his conflicts, his desires, and his sense of patriotism. This book will appeal to anyone with a love of American history and interest in the many, larger-than-life personalities that battled on the political stage during the Jacksonian era.
The first independent telephone company in Michigan was not in Detroit or Grand Rapids or Ann Arbor, but in Rockland, a town of a few hundred residents in Ontonagan County in the Upper Peninsula. Linus Stannard had visited the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876 and heard Alexander Bell describe his new invention. So when he returned home, he convinced friends to go in with him and set up a private telephone line from Greenland through Rockland to Ontonagan which evolved into the Ontonagan County Telephone Company.
Sources :
Michigan Every Day.
Chris Chabot, Tales of White Pine: An Illustrated Oral History of White Pine, Michigan.
M. L. Saunders, “Some Interesting, Early History“, The Mouthpiece, March 1921, p. 43.
On October 27, 1972, Pontiac became the first Michigan city to ban lead-based paint, which can cause brain damage if eaten by children. The Pontiac ordinance forbid the use or sale of lead-based paints and required corrective action on existing homes.
Source: Mich-Again’s Day.
On October 27, 1972, Pontiac became the first Michigan city to ban lead-based paint, which can cause brain damage if eaten by children. The Pontiac ordinance forbid the use or sale of lead-based paints and required corrective action on existing homes.
Source: Mich-Again’s Day
Established to preserve and interpret the rich copper mining heritage of the Keweenaw Peninsula, the park was headquartered in Calumet.
Copper nuggets
Sources :
Michigan History magazine, October 2003.
On October 28, 1912, Art Smith and Aimee Cour decided to elope to Michigan in a plane because they couldn’t marry in their home state. The 19-year-old Smith and 18-year-old Cour were too young to marry without parental consent in Indiana, and their parents were not exactly in favor of the marriage.
Smith, a stunt pilot, said he would fly them to Michigan for a wedding neither of their parents could stop. Unfortunately, the plane crashed in Hillsdale and the two had to be taken to a hotel for recovery, as there was no hospital in the area at the time. Eventually, someone found a minister, and the two were married from a hotel bed. It was history’s first aerial elopement. The newlyweds spent another three weeks recovering in the hotel. Their parents, happy to see them alive, forgave them.
Source: Bob Garrett, Seeking Michigan, October 27, 2009.
More information from Hillsdale County History
For more information, see Rachel S. Roberts, Art Smith: Pioneer Aviator (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2003). Available through MelCat from the Western Michigan University Library.
On October 28, 2014 shot and killed Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah in Dearborn by during a sting operation.
Although neither Abdullah nor any of his congregants were charged with terrorism related crimes during that sting, the prior infiltration of his mosque by FBI informants was shaped through the narrow focus of viewing the Muslim community through the lens of national security.
The sequence of events which led to the death of Abdullah continues to remind many of the history and negative ramifications of law enforcement viewing entire communities as perpetual threats or de facto fifth columns.
Geri Alumit Zeldes, a MSU faculty member, would later make a documentary about the events, called The Death of an Imam, available via the MSU Libraries.
Source : Dawud Walid (Executive Director for the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI)), “In 5 years since killing of Dearborn imam, what have we learned?”, Detroit News Blog, October 29, 2014.
The Department of Civil Rights has announced that Matt Wesaw will officially start as its new director on October 28, 2013. Mr. Wesaw, a former chair of the Civil Rights Commission, is retiring from his post as chair of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and CEO of the tribe’s gaming authority to take the new job. He is the first Native American to be director of the department.
Note: Matt Wesaw served in this position until October 2015.
Justin A. Hinkley, “Michigan civil rights leader stepping down”, Lansing State Journal, September 4, 2015.
A 60-foot spruce from Menominee County was installed Saturday morning outside the Capitol as the state’s 32nd official Christmas tree.
The tree, from the town of Stephenson, was donated by William Winter and his grandson Alex Stevens, said Christyn Herman, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Technology, Management and Budget, which selects the tree every year.
The spruce is “fully installed and good to go,” she said. This marks the 23rd time the official tree has been selected from the Upper Peninsula.
About two feet of the tree was lost when it was cut down. Another six feet of the trunk are below sidewalk level, so the tree rises about 52 feet above the Capitol grounds, Herman said.
“Today went fairly smoothly,” she said. “We had a couple Boy Scout troops help, and they did a heck of a job twining the trees. They were very excited. They were freezing to death, but they were excited.”
The tree will remain throughout the holiday season, with tree lighting scheduled for Friday, Nov. 17, as part of the Silver Bells in the City celebration.
For more information on Silver Bells in the City, visit www.silverbellsinthecity.org.
For the full article see 32nd official state Christmas tree installed at Capitol“,