Veterans Day, celebrated nationally on November 11, originated as Armistice Day in 1926, commemorating the date in 1981 when World War I effectively ended. In 1954, President Eisenhower declared that in order to honor veterans who had served in subsequent wars as well as those who served in World War I, the holiday would be known as Veternans Day.
In response, Lansing’s first Veterans Day parade was held on November 11, 1954, with an estimated 30,000 spectators lining the streets. The annual tradition continued until 2005. Since then various events are held at schools, churches, libraries, and cemeteries in Lansing. Parades are still held in neighboring communities including Mason and St. Johns.
Note: Lansing discontinued the Veterans Day Parade in 2014.
Source : Laurie Hollinger, Lansing State Journal, November 9, 2014, p. 6D.
Rev. Richard W. Ingalls Sr. first tolled the Mariner Church of Detroit’s bell 29 times on the morning of Nov. 11, 1975, for each man lost on the freighter S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank in Lake Superior during a storm the previous night. The practice continued until 2006, when Ingalls Sr. died.
In 1976, Canadian troubadour Gordon Lightfoot released the ballad The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, whose includes the lyrics : In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed / In the Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral / The church bell chimed ’til it rang 29 times / For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
On the 10th anniversary of the sinking, Lightfoot himself attended the memorial at Mariners’ Church, an event Richard M. Ingalls, Jr., the current rector, remembers well.
“He didn’t want [the occasion] to be about him, so we took him up a back stairway,” Ingalls says. “We put him in a front pew with his back to the congregation, so they didn’t know who he was.
“We always had a choir member perform the ballad, but when it came time for it, Lightfoot slipped out of his pew, sat on a stool, picked up his acoustic guitar, and played. First, there was a gasp, but after that, you could hear a pin drop.”
On that occasion, Ingalls says that Lightfoot turned to the congregation and announced he would henceforth change the lyrics.
Recalls Ingalls: “He said, ‘I made a mistake referring to this as a musty old hall, but I had never been here before. There’s nothing musty about this place. It’s beautiful. From now on in concert, I’m going to sing rustic old hall instead.’”
Ingalls says Lightfoot has visited the church twice since then and has remained in touch with the rector.
Today, Mariner’s Church has a special Great Lakes Memorial Service each November to honor those who died on the Great Lakes, as well as those who perished in the armed forces. It also has an annual blessing of the fleet in March.
For the full article, see George Bulanda, “Mariners’ Church of Detroit : The downtown house of worship acknowledges the 35th anniversary of the sinking of the ‘Edmund Fitzgerald’”, Hour Detroit, November 2010.
On November 11, 2011, Michigan State University played the University of North Carolina aboard the U.S. Aircraft Carrier Carl Vinson in San Diego, California to honor the nation’s veterans. UNC won the basketball game, 67 to 55. The first Carrier Classic was the result of an idea by Michigan State’s Athletic Director Mark Hollis and took several years to come to fruition.
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For Bill Ford, today’s event to mark the start of production of the all-new 2015 F-150 at the Ford Rouge Center is personal.
“It is a great day for me and the family. The Rouge has always meant something to me personally,” said the executive chairman of the automaker that bears his family name. “The Rouge is the heart and soul of how I feel about this company.”
Bill Ford joined CEO Mark Fields, Jimmy Settles, the UAW vice president who heads the Ford division, and the full workforce at the Dearborn Truck Plant, which shut down the line to watch the ceremonial first 2015 F-150 come off the assembly line.
How crucial is the profitable truck?
“Important with a capital I,” Fields told reporters. It goes on sale in the U.S. next month and has garnered the most interest from potential consumers of any vehicle to date.
The downside is that the slow pace to ramp up to full production with new robots, tooling and manufacturing processes, many customers could be waiting until February or longer to get their 2015 F-150.
Ford cannot rush it. It is the most-watched vehicle launch in the industry, and there is no tolerance for quality issues.
For the full article, see Alissa Priddle, “Aluminum F-150 production begins at Ford Rouge plant”, Detroit Free Press, November 11, 2014.
Bay County has been touched in some way by war as far back as 375 years, if you consider the Sauk Massacre in mid-Michigan in 1642 that marked the beginning of the Beaver Wars between Indian allies of France and Britain.
Capt. Joseph Marsac of Bay City led a company of Indians in the Battle of the Thames in the War of 1812, this nation’s second encounter with the British. It has recently come to light that 400 men from the early community here also fought in the War of 1812; however, they were Indian braves under Chief Tecumseh on the side of the British, many of whom were killed.
According to Gansser’s 1905 History of Bay County, “in the Black Hawk War of 1832, Marsac commanded a company of veteran Indian fighters, organized by Governor (George B., 1831) Porter. John Miller, a veteran of the War of 1812, came in 1855 as one of the first settlers of Merritt Township, where he lived to be 91 years old. The late John Grattan Sweeney, ex-sheriff, served in the Sixth United States Infantry in the Mexican War, and on the Indian frontier from 1849 to 1855. John Duschene, a respected German pioneer of Bay County, aged 89 years, is Bay county’s sole survivor of the Mexican War.”
The county had only about 3,000 residents when it sent 511 soldiers to the Union Army during the Civil War. Local participants included the county sheriff, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Partridge, and Henry S. Raymond, a captain in the 16th Michigan Infantry, the highest ranking local enlistee. We could include two sons of James G. Birney, William, and David, who had lived here in the 1840s and also became major generals and grandson James G. Birney IV, a local resident who enlisted in the 7th Michigan Cavalry in 1862 after he turned 18.
Gen. Partridge was in a reported 54 battles and was wounded several times. He was with Col. Joshua Chamberlain of Maine, along with fellow members of the 16th Michigan Infantry (many from this area) when they defended Little Round Top in one of Gettysburg’s key battles.
Longtime Bay City Times reporter Les Arndt reveals in his book, “The Bay County Story,” that Perry Phelps, a hotel owner here, was riding with the Michigan Volunteer Cavalry and was part of the detail that captured Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy.
According to Arndt, the first Indian from this area to fight for the Union in the Civil War was Thomas Ke-chit-ti-go, a Chippewa born near Saginaw Bay in 1836. Rejected at first, Ke-chit-ti-go finally was allowed to join Company K, First Michigan Sharpshooters and fought in several major campaigns, being discharged after he was wounded at the Battle of Spottsylvania Court House. He became Pinconning village marshal and later a lumberman in Grayling.
“Bay County during those four years sent 511 soldiers forth to battle, of whom 83 died in service, while many more gave up their young lives after being mustered out, from wounds and sickness, before peace again came to bless our land,” wrote Gansser. “When we find that the Federal census of 1860 gave Bay County a population of but 3,164 men, women and children, we can more readily appreciate the sacrifices of men and money made by this community, that our nation might live, one and indivisible.”
A census of Civil War veterans taken in the 1880s showed 500 veterans living here, but most were from other areas who had moved here after the war to work in the lumber industry.
Rear Admiral James Raby, born in Bay City in 1874, who was awarded the Navy Cross for escort duty during World War I. He held a pilot’s commission and often flew his own plane. A destroyer escort was named for Raby, whose son John also became a Rear Admiral and was awarded the Navy Cross in 1942 for action in French Morocco. The Rabys are buried in the same plot in Arlington.
Born in Germany in 1872, Augustus H. Gansser joined the Michigan National Guard by 1891. He participated in the siege of Santiago during the Spanish-American War, 1898, and served in the Mexican border duty, 1916-1918, and World War I, 1917-1918. He was promoted to Lt. Col. of the 125th Infantry, 32nd Division, of the American Expeditionary Forces. In the 1920s he commanded the 340th Infantry, 85th Division. He eventually retired from the Guard in 1934.
Bay City became a bigger part of the nation’s military history on Feb. 15, 1898, when two local sailors were killed in an explosion aboard the USS Maine in Havana Harbor, an incident helping launch the Spanish-American War.
Seamen Howard Hawkins and Elmer Meilstrup were killed while another Bay Cityan, William Mattison, was injured.
In April Bay City’s Peninsular Company, 300 Strong, left by train and were shipped to Santiago, Cuba. After the Spanish surrender in July, the company was under quarantine for yellow fever at Montauk Point, New York. Officials said all the returning men were sick.
An undocumented role in the Spanish-American War was played by a Bay City doctor, Charles T. Newkirk, assigned to the Army camps in Tampa as troops were staged for shipment to Cuba. A librarian at the University of South Florida Library told this reporter that Dr. Newkirk, a veteran of the Brazilian and Argentine armies, instituted sanitation measures that helped control tropical diseases in the camp. Most of the credit for the process, however, went to Dr. Walter Reed, namesake of a medical center in Washington, D.C., she said. (The librarian was a graduate of the University of Michigan). Dr. Newkirk is buried in Pine Ridge Cemetery.
The Bay City American Legion Post No. 18 is officially the Harding-Olk-Craidge post, named for three National Guard soldiers who died in World War I. Corporal Lloyd Harding, Co. I 125 Infantry, born October 14, 1894, was killed in France October 9, 1918.
PFC John E. Olk, of the 128th Ambulance Company, 107th Sanitary Train, Michigan National Guard was killed 29 Aug. ’18 by artillery shell near Juvigny, Pfc. Erwin E. Carl, Sgt. Carl H. Smith, and Sgt. Ben Zielinski were wounded in action by the same shell as the men were trying to place a wounded soldier in an ambulance. Cpl. Robert E. Craidge, from Bay City and assigned to Co. I, 125th Infantry, was the other namesake.
Few experiences can match that of Bay Cityan Carl Boehringer, U.S. diplomat, who was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo when the bombing of Pearl Harbor occurred. Boehringer, born here in 1903, was from a prominent local family that was in the nursery business. He was a graduate of Central High School and Michigan State University. (Boehringer Court off Park Avenue is named for the family.)Boehringer and his fellow members of the embassy staff were interned and exiled to Mozambique until repatriated and shipped to New York in August 1942.
The late Sgt. Major Kirk Timm’s book reveals details of his World War II action and that of several other Bay Cityans.
Local veterans of World War II included the late Sgt. Major Kirk Timm of the 83rd Infantry Division who landed at Normandy and was highly decorated. My wife Dolores and I edited Sgt. Timm’s book about his service in the war entitled “Musings of An Old Soldier.” The book is shelved in the Wirt Library and gives detailed insights into combat in France and Germany during World War II.
Sgt. Christine Gavrila was a Detroit girl who joined the Marines in World War II and was assigned to underground munitions storage at Los Angeles, helping to thwart saboteurs who were stealing artillery shells. She later moved to Bay City and became a principal in the Bangor Township Schools. In 2010, we brought a Detroit documentary film, “Arsenal of Democracy: Our Greatest Generation,” to Bay City to raise funds for veterans.
Sgt. Andy Wendland, 17, landed at Normandy in the first wave, fought through the Bulge and was assigned as a guard at Nuremberg. He recalls the death of Hermann Goering and — has theories about how Goering obtained the cyanide capsule he used to kill himself.
Sandra Schulberg, daughter of Stuart Schulberg who produced the acclaimed 1948 documentary “Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today,” and, because of former Nuremberg guard Andy Wendland, she brought the restored film to the State Theater to raise funds for veterans. An independent film producer she has a book, “The Celluloid Noose,” about her uncle Budd Schulberg’s hunt for Nazi films and evidence used at the Nuremberg Trials.
Jim Whyte of Bay City was a Marine at Iwo Jima who woke up the morning after a firefight to find about 50 dead Japanese lying around him. He picked up some pictures and a letter from one Japanese soldier and 70 years later found the man’s family and traveled to Japan to return the mementos.
Lt. Col. John M. Slattery, (1928-2008) a Bay City native, was a Marine pilot who served in the Pacific Theater, China and was being trained for an invasion of the Japanese mainland when the war was ending. After the war, he returned to Bay City and began college. In 1951 when the Korean War erupted, Slattery was recalled as a Marine and sent to Korea as an infantryman and suffered from frostbite.
Later he graduated from Air Force Flight School and served as a pilot throughout the USA, Libya and two tours in Vietnam.
Slattery flew more than 100 life-saving missions and received 30 citations including the Legion of Merit, the Distinguished Flying Cross with one Oak Leaf Cluster, the Bronze Star, an Air Medal with 15 Clusters, the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with two Silver Stars and the Vietnam Air Cross of Gallantry with Bronze Wings. He had more than 6,000 hours of flying time in rotorcraft. He also won an award for meritorious service as deputy chief of staff for operations (helicopter) with Air Force Advisory Team Two, headquartered at Nha Trang Air Base, from 1971-1972.
Source : Dave Rogers, “Our Military History : Since 1812 Bay Veterans Have Stepped Up“, MyBayCity.com, November 3, 2017. (Repost)
The first graduation ceremony at Michigan State Agicultural College was pre-empted by the outbreak of the Civil War. As a result, the first true graduation ceremony took place on November 12, 1862.
All of the speakers at the first graduation were graduating students. According to the Michigan State University Archives, the college, which would go on to become MSU, had not yet gotten into the tradition of bringing in outside speakers.
Notes from the Board of Trustees minutes 1861, p.88 : A Communication was received from the Faculty reccommending that the Senior class receive their Degrees, and be graduated, without further attendance at College, in consideration of leave of absence granted them to enter a Corps of Engineers to serve under Gen. Fremont.
[Class Graduated to join Army] Resolved that the Degree of Bachelor of Science be conferred upon Albert F. Allen, Adam Bayley, L. Verna Beebe, Henry D. Benham, Charles E. Hollister, Gilbert A. Dickey, and Albert N. Prentiss, members of the Senior Class of the Agricultural College, who were excused before the close of the College Term to enlist in the Corp of Engineers from Battle Creek under command of Capt. Howland. to be attached to the army of General Freemont, and that Diplomas be granted to them.
Commencement Program, November 12, 1862
Source: Michigan State University Archives.
Herbert Hughs of Sault Ste. Marie cut the head off of a chicken which then lived for seventeen days. It is not entirely uncommon for a chicken to run around once its head has been chopped off. However, this usually lasts for no more than a few minutes.
When Herbert Hughs of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan cut the head off a chicken he was planning to eat for dinner, he was shocked when the chicken began running around his kitchen. What was more, the chicken kept moving for seventeen days after that!
This was a headline story in the Sault Ste. Marie paper, and for two weeks spectators took careful notice of the Black Minorca chicken. Hughs was the owner of the Belvidere Hotel and the brief influx of tourists was no doubt good for business.
Source: “Michigan Historical Calendar”, courtesy of the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University.
The first mile of paved concrete road was laid on Woodward Avenue (M-1) between 6th and 7 mile roads.
Laying the concrete
Mission accomplished
Seven years later, the rest of the 27-mile stretch of Woodward was paved.
Sources :
Historical Society of Michigan
Jessica Sheppard, “Detroit’s Woodward Avenue is one of America’s most iconic roads“, MLive, April 6, 2018.
His Imperial and Royal Highness Archduke Stefan of Austria, Prince of Hungary, Bohemia and Tuscany, is buried beside his wife, Mary Jerrine Soper, in the quaint St. Wenceslaus Cemetery in remote Northern Michigan.
Archduke Stefan was born August 15, 1932, in the suburban community of Modling, Vienna. He was the eldest son of Archduke Anton of Austria and Princess Ileana of Romania. The family moved a number of times during his youth, including to Romania in 1942 in the midst of World War II. There, they lived for a period in Bran Castle, made famous by its similarities to Count Dracula’s castle. In 1947, the family fled the Communist takeover of Romania, living for a time in both Switzerland and Argentina before ending up in the United States.
Archduke Stefan graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), came to Michigan to work for General Motors, and in 1961 became a citizen of the United States. He passed away on November 12, 1998, and was buried in this Saint Wenceslaus Cemetery in Leelanau County, Michigan.
The church and adjoining cemetery are situated almost equidistant between Suttons Bay, Omena, Northport, and Leland, and this region along Grand Traverse Bay contains a fairly sizable Bohemian population from central Europe.
Source : Atlas Obscura.
Michigan’s first family more than doubled Sunday with the birth of triplets to Michelle Engler, the wife of Gov. John Engler. Three health baby girls — Margaret Rose, Hannah Michelle and Madeleine Jenny — were born by Caesarean section at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor.
The babies are the couple’s first children. They’re also the first children born to a sitting Michigan governor since 1864. Doctors decided Mrs. Engler, 36, should undergo the C-section before her Dec. 22 due date to reduce the risk of complications.
The births came less than a week after a rotund and beaming Mrs. Engler appeared with her 46-year-old husband on a Lansing campaign stage, waving to supporters following the Republican governor’s landslide re-election victory. Following doctors’ orders, Mrs. Engler limited her activity during the gubernatorial campaign. But state residents had followed her pregnancy closely ever since it was announced in June.
The governor’s spokesman Rusty Hills said the Englers arrived at the hospital at about 8:30 a.m. EST. The babies were born at about one minute apart starting at 10:59 a.m. A hospital spokeswoman said Margaret was born first, weighing 5 pounds, 3.5 ounces. Hannah was second born and weighed 4 pounds, 11 1/2 ounces. Medeleine was third, with a weight of 4 pounds, 15 1/2 ounces. Mrs. Engler was resting comfortably. The governor was with her during delivery. The girls were named after relatives.
Sources:
“Mich. governor’s wife delivers triplets“, UPI News Release, April 13, 2016.
For an update and photos, see Alan Stamm, “Look Who Says ‘Happy Birthday, Dad’ to John Engler from 3 Colleges“, Deadline Detroit, October 12, 2105.