On October 3, 2005, the Tigers introduce Jim Leyland as their new manager. Leyland, who came up through the Detroit organization as a player and minor league manager, replaces the fired Alan Trammell. The Tigers will win the pennant in Leyland’s first season.
Source : Dan Holmes, “This Week in History“, Detroit Athletic Co. Facebook Page, October 3, 2016.
In Major League Baseball, a player earns the Triple Crown when he leads a league in three specific statistical categories.
When used without a modifier, the “Triple Crown” generally refers to a batter who has led the league in batting average, home runs, and run batted in (RBI). The Triple Crown epitomizes three separate attributes of a good hitter: hitting for average, hitting for power, and producing runs.
On October 3, 2012 Detroit Tiger Miguel Cabrera becomes the first Triple Crown winner since Boston’s Carl Yastrzemski in 1967. Cabrera finished with a .330 average, 44 home runs and 139 RBIs.
Source : Wikipedia entry
Former Rep. Mary Schroer, an Ann Arbor Democrat who was one of the Legislature’s most visible supporters of abortion rights and gun control during the 1990s, died earlier this month of cancer. She was 70.
She was probably best-known in that term for leading the opposition to making Michigan a “shall-issue” state for concealed pistol licenses, or as they were then known, carrying a concealed weapon permits. She emphasized law enforcement opposition to the law, and opponents of the legislation succeeded in that term at preventing it from passing.
Ms. Schroer also was a strong supporter of abortion rights and opponent of the regular large increases at that time in the Department of Corrections budget. She was not afraid to cast a relatively lonely no vote as seen on one Corrections budget that she said would leave the state with “castrated, undereducated inmates running around in the dark fixing roads.”
Ms. Schroer also was one of a handful of legislators to vote against a bill banning human cloning, warning the wording of the legislation could deprive researchers of medical innovations. And she did so with wit as was often the case.
“The thought of 110 more of us running around is truly a scary thought,” she said in a floor speech. “But I don’t want research stopped that could save the life of a child or elderly person.”
More from the Ann Arbor News, October 8, 2017:
Mary was a well informed, passionate and energetic legislator in the Michigan House of Representatives spanning the years 1992 through 1998. Her Washtenaw County District was the 52nd house district composed of the northern portion of Ann Arbor and the six townships comprising northwest Washtenaw County. Her introduction to community activism occurred when Mary moved to Ann Arbor in 1972 and joined the group Parents for Alternative Learning, advocates for open classroom teaching in the Ann Arbor Schools. It was during this time that Ed Pierce, Ann Arbor’s mayor, recruited Mary to work on his successful campaign for the state senate. It was there that Mary displayed her firm grasp of campaign politics. She went on to play a prime role in the Ed Pierce campaign for governor. Mary then became active in Lana Pollack’s successful campaign for the state senate. Upon forming her senate staff, Senator Pollack tapped Mary as a legislative assistant. Mary was a trusted and effective legislative assistant for the 10 years preceding her swearing in to the House of Representatives. Mary attended Washtenaw Community College and Eastern Michigan University. She was awarded a degree in political science, summa cum laude, by Eastern Michigan University. Among her many committees and boards, Mary served as chair of the Washtenaw Community College Board of Trustees, as a Board member of the Ann Arbor Community Center and as a board member of the Democratic Michigan Women’s Campaign Fund.
On Oct. 4, 1641, the first Europeans who ventured into the future Michigan arrived in birch bark canoes. French priests Father Isaac Jogues and Father Charles Raymbault arrived at the falls of St. Mary’s River after a 17-day paddling trip from the Georgian Bay in Ontario. They found thousands of Chippewa people when they arrived, who were friendly and open to a permanent mission at the Sault.
Source: Michigan Every Day
On October 4, 1818, Michigan’s first Protestant Sunday School, founded by members of various Protestant denominations, began in Detroit.
Source: Mich — Again’s Day
Joseph Frank “Buster” Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, comedian, film director, producer, screenwriter, and stunt performer.
Keaton acquired the nickname “Buster” at about 18 months of age. Keaton told interviewer Fletcher Markle that Houdini was present one day when the young Keaton took a tumble down a long flight of stairs without injury. After the infant sat up and shook off his experience, Houdini remarked, “That was a real buster!” According to Keaton, in those days, the word “buster” was used to refer to a spill or a fall that had the potential to produce injury. After this, Keaton’s father began to use the nickname to refer to the youngster. Keaton retold the anecdote over the years, including a 1964 interview with the CBC‘s Telescope.
At the age of three, Keaton began performing with his parents in The Three Keatons. He first appeared on stage in 1899 in Wilmington, Delaware. The act was mainly a comedy sketch. Myra played the saxophone to one side, while Joe and Buster performed on center stage. The young Keaton would goad his father by disobeying him, and the elder Keaton would respond by throwing him against the scenery, into the orchestra pit, or even into the audience. A suitcase handle was sewn into Keaton’s clothing to aid with the constant tossing. The act evolved as Keaton learned to take trick falls safely; he was rarely injured or bruised on stage. This knockabout style of comedy led to accusations of child abuse, and occasionally, arrest. However, Buster Keaton was always able to show the authorities that he had no bruises or broken bones. He was eventually billed as “The Little Boy Who Can’t Be Damaged”, with the overall act being advertised as “The Roughest Act That Was Ever in the History of the Stage”. Decades later, Keaton said that he was never hurt by his father and that the falls and physical comedy were a matter of proper technical execution. In 1914, Keaton told the Detroit News: “The secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand. It’s a knack. I started so young that landing right is second nature with me. Several times I’d have been killed if I hadn’t been able to land like a cat. Imitators of our act don’t last long, because they can’t stand the treatment.”
Keaton claimed he was having so much fun that he would sometimes begin laughing as his father threw him across the stage. Noticing that this drew fewer laughs from the audience, he adopted his famous deadpan expression whenever he was working.
He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname “The Great Stone Face”. Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton’s “extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929, [when] he worked without interruption on a series of films that make him, arguably, the greatest actor–director in the history of the movies”. His career declined afterward with a dispiriting loss of his artistic independence when he was hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, his wife divorced him, and he descended into alcoholism. He recovered in the 1940s, remarried, and revived his career to a degree as an honored comic performer for the rest of his life, earning an Academy Honorary Award.
Many of Keaton’s films from the 1920s, such as Sherlock Jr. (1924), The General (1926), and The Cameraman (1928), remain highly regarded, with The General widely viewed as his masterpiece. Among its strongest admirers was Orson Welles, who stated that The General was cinema’s highest achievement in comedy, and perhaps the greatest film ever made. Keaton was recognized as the seventh-greatest film director by Entertainment Weekly, and in 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him the 21st greatest male star of classic Hollywood cinema.
The Muskegon, Michigan Connection:
This bronze statue of Buster Keaton along with a commemorative plaque was purchased and placed in front of the Frauenthal Center in downtown Muskegon on Western Avenue on June 30, 2010.
The Keaton statue, created by artist and sculptor Emmanuel Snitkovsky, depicts Keaton behind an early motion picture camera that towers over the 5-foot-6-inch actor and director.
For the past 15 years on the first weekend of October, a fall convention of Buster Keaton’s fan club — Damfinos: International Buster Keaton Society — has been held in downtown Muskegon. The convention screens Keaton movies at the Frauenthal Theater.
The rest of the story:
In 1908, Joe Keaton, actor Paul Lucier, and agent Lew Earl founded the Actors’ Colony tucked away in the Bluffton neighborhood of Muskegon between Lake Michigan and Muskegon Lake. By 1911 over two hundred vaudeville personalities flocked to Bluffton each summer. They included Keaton, his wife, Myra and his son Joseph Frank, nicknamed “Buster,” who were billed as “The Three Keatons.” Pascoe’s Place, a local tavern, became the unofficial club headquarters.
By the late 1920s, Keaton was among the top silent movie stars and one of the most recognizable – and wealthiest – faces in the world.
Even now, his films rank high in sales around the world and several are on the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry, including:
- Sherlock Jr. (1924) (star and director) : available as part of MSU Library’s ROVI Movie Collection
- The General (1927) (star) : available as part of the MSU Library’s ROVI Movie Collection
- Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) (star and director) : available as part of the MSU Library’s ROVI Movie Collection
- The Cameraman (1928) (star and director)
- Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938) (cameo)
- Sunset Boulevard (1950) (cameo) : available as part of the MSU Library’s ROVI Movie Collection
- Many more Buster Keaton films are available via the MSU Library
Keaton acknowledged Muskegon’s impact on his artistic aesthetic throughout his career. He often called Muskegon home.
A lifelong member of the Muskegon Elks, Buster Keaton stopped by the downtown lodge during a 1949 visit to town with his new bride, Eleanor Norris Keaton. Here he chats with former Actors’ Colony member Charlie Sharp during his stay. According to the local history book “Buster Keaton and the Muskegon Connection” by Pesch and Marc Okkonen, Keaton last visited Muskegon in 1949. He died in 1966.
And there’s more:
A hometown legend and worldwide icon is about to be memorialized once again on screen.
“Buster Keaton: Home,” a documentary film on the early life of Keaton, is expected to interest national and local audiences.
Focusing on Keaton’s years on the road as a young vaudeville star, summers he spent in Muskegon and the experiences that helped shape him, the film will chronicle his early life.
Sources:
Michigan Roadside Attractions: Buster Keaton Statue In Muskegon, April 9, 2016.
Actor’s Colony at Bluffton, 1908-1938 : Buster Keaton and the Muskegon Connection.
Bill Iddings, “Buster Keaton set for permanent stay in Muskegon“, MLive, May 30, 2010.
Charlton Heston, a famous American actor and political acitivist, was born on October 4, 1923, and spent at least part of his childhood in northern Michigan.
When Heston was an infant, his father’s work moved the family to St. Helen, Michigan. It was a rural, heavily forested part of the state, and Heston lived an isolated yet idyllic existence, spending much time hunting and fishing in the backwoods of the area. Heston frequently recounted that while growing up in northern Michigan in a sparsely populated area, he often wandered in the forest, “acting” out characters from books he had read.
As a Hollywood star, he appeared in almost 100 films over the course of 60 years. He played Moses in the epic film, The Ten Commandments (1956), for which he received his first nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama. He also starred in Touch of Evil (1958) with Orson Welles, Ben-Hur (1959), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid (1961), and Planet of the Apes (1968). He also starred in the films The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), Secret of the Incas (1954), The Big Country (1958) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).
A supporter of Democratic politicians and civil rights in the 1960s, Heston later became a Republican, founding a conservative political action committee and supporting Ronald Reagan. Heston was the five-term president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), from 1998 to 2003. After being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2003, he retired from both acting and the NRA presidency. Heston died on April 5, 2008, aged 84, from pneumonia.
Source : Charlton Heston wikipedia entry
On October 4, 1931, Chester Gould’s comic strip, “Dick Tracy,” first appeared in the Detroit Daily Mirror. Less than a year later, the Mirror ceased publication, shocking its staff and its 170,000 daily readers.
Fortunately, the adventures of the square-jawed, plainclothes detective continued to run daily in many other papers to this day. At its peak the comic strip ran in 750 papers.
Sources :
Zlati Meyer, “This week in Michigan history: ‘Dick Tracy’ makes its world premiere in Detroit paper”, Detroit Free Press, September 30, 2012
Detroit Historical Society
Check out the The complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy dailies & Sundays in the MSU Main Library Special Collections Comic Art Collection. While you are there, check out the other copies of Dick Tracy comics.
On October 4, 2015, Cabrera clinched his fourth American League batting title in the past five seasons, etching his name into elite company with the likes of Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs and former Tiger legends Ty Cobb and Harry Heilmann.
Cabrera went 3-for-4 in Saturday night’s loss to the White Sox — his final start of the season — and hit his 18th home run of the season to snap a career-long 29-game homerless drought. He finished with a .338 batting average.
Cabrera becomes the first AL player to win the batting title four times in a five-year stretch since Wade Boggs won four straight with the Red Sox from 1985-88. Gwynn won four consecutive with Padres from 1994-97.
He joins Cobb and Heilmann as the only two Tigers in team history to win four batting titles – Cobb won 12 and Heilmann won four.
For the full article, see Anthony Fenech, “Tigers’ Cabrera locks up 4th batting title in 5 years”, Detroit Free Press, October 4, 2015.
On October 5, 1813, Chief Tecumseh was killed at the Battle of the Thames / Battle of Moraviantown. Tecumseh had been a major enemy of Americans settling in the Northwest territory, including Michigan. As a result of Tecumseh’s death and defeat, Natives were never again considered separate and equal partners in international relations.
The rest of the story:
The real Tecumseh was born circa 1768 in southern Ohio at the beginning of a sporadic but ferociously fought war that did not end until — and largely because — he was killed in 1813. In this conflict his Shawnee, the Miami, the Potawatomi and other nations of the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley region sought to defend themselves against the white settlers pioneering westward across the Appalachians.
Tecumseh was a warrior at 15; later he became a renowned field commander and a charismatic orator. By the early 1800s he had conceived of a Pan-Indian federation. In this union he hoped old tribal rivalries would be set aside so that the indigenous people of the Great Lakes and Mississippi Valley could act as one in resisting the advancing whites. From a base on the Tippecanoe River in northern Indiana, he traveled from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico promoting this federation. His ambition was probably an impossible one; the Indian population of this territory was then less than 100,000 and that of the United States nearly seven million. Still, rumors of what he was up to greatly alarmed many frontier whites, including William Henry Harrison, the federal governor of the Indiana Territory. Formerly a Regular Army officer, Harrison negotiated with Tecumseh face-to-face on two occasions and assessed him as “one of those uncommon geniuses who spring up occasionally to produce revolutions and overturn the established order of things.”
In the fall of 1811 Harrison gathered a thousand men and, when Tecumseh was away, made a preemptive strike against his base on the Tippecanoe. After a brief fight several hundred garrison warriors withdrew from the village. The so-called Battle of Tippecanoe was, in effect, the first engagement of the War of 1812. In that war Tecumseh fought alongside the British because, unlike the Americans, they were not invading Indian lands. In August 1812 Tecumseh, leading a multitribal group of warriors, and a combined force of Canadian militia and British regulars surrounded Detroit. Fearing imminent massacre by “hordes of howling savages,” the aging and ailing Brig. Gen. William Hull surrendered Detroit and his 2,000-man army (Smithsonian, January 1994).
Tecumseh’s warriors soon struck deep into the United States, attacking forts and sending terrified settlers fleeing back toward the Ohio River. Harrison, called back to command U.S. forces in the West, spent nearly a year converting militiamen into passable professional soldiers. In the fall of 1813 he invaded Ontario. The British general, Henry Procter, retreated in panic. Fighting almost continuously for five days, Tecumseh and 600 warriors screened the British retreat, but on October 5 Harrison caught up with Procter at the Thames River near Moraviantown. The British general ignominiously fled; after a single American volley all his regular troops surrendered. Tecumseh meanwhile positioned his exhausted men in a patch of swampy woodland and told them he would retreat no farther. Having finished the British, Harrison sent dragoons and infantry into these thickets. After an hour of fierce fighting Tecumseh was killed, or presumably so. At least he was never again seen alive. For all practical purposes the Indian resistance movement ended in the Northwest.
Warriors who survived the battle told various stories. They had been forced to leave Tecumseh’s body on the field. They had carried him off, either mortally wounded or dead, and buried him in a secret place that whites would never find. As for the Americans, none of those who first overran Tecumseh’s position were acquainted with him. But they found an impressive-looking dead Indian who they were convinced was Tecumseh. Some cut strips of skin from this body, later tanning them for razor strops and leather souvenirs. When people arrived who did know him, some said the battered corpse was indeed Tecumseh’s. Others said it was not. Even Harrison could not positively identify it.
Nevertheless a number of Americans were to claim that they had personally vanquished the Shawnee leader. Most prominent was Richard Johnson, a Kentucky politician who fought at the Thames as a cavalry commander. Whether or not he was indeed “The Man Who Killed Tecumseh,” a great many of his constituents believed he was. With supporters chanting “Rumpsey Dumpsey, Rumpsey Dumpsey, Colonel Johnson killed Tecumseh,” Johnson was first elected to the U.S. Senate and then, in 1836, to the Vice Presidency. With a little help from another catchy jingle, “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” William Henry Harrison became President four years later.
Johnson killing Tecumseh from frieze in the dome of the rotunda of US Capitol. Filippo Costaggini- Architect of the Capitol.
Beyond the details and the accuracy of the scene depicted—they still are debated 200 years later—in retrospect we do know that on October 5, 1813, Tecumseh’s single-minded mission, a secure Indian homeland, died with him in Ontario, Canada, at the Battle of the Thames. Each “Death of Tecumseh” image allegorically, intended or not, captured not just the last moments of the chief’s life but also the demise of his dream.
Ironically, the same moment in time also symbolized an alternative vision. Colonel Richard M. Johnson, the man who took credit for killing Tecumseh, built a political career on his disputed accomplishment. More than two decades after the war, the colonel became the ninth vice president of the United States aided by the memorable and irreverent slogan, “Rumpsey Dumpsey, Rumpsey Dumpsey, Colonel Johnson killed Tecumseh.”
Sources:
Michigan Every Day
Autumn 1813 : Tecumseh’s Death Launches Artwork and Political Careers, National Park Service.
Alysa Landry, “Native History : Tecumseh Defeated at Battle of the Thames, Indian Country Today“, October 5, 2013.
Bill Gilbert, “The Dying Tecumseh and the Birth of a Legend“, Smithsonian Magazine, July 1995.
For more information, see Tecumseh : shooting star, crouching panther / Jim Poling Sr. Toronto : Dundurn Press, c2009.
If you like fiction, you may want to read The Frontiersmen: A Narrative by Allan W. Eckert. Description : The frontiersmen were a remarkable breed of men. They were often rough and illiterate, sometimes brutal and vicious, often seeking an escape in the wilderness of mid-America from crimes committed back east. In the beautiful but deadly country which would one day come to be known as West Virginia, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, more often than not they left their bones to bleach beside forest paths or on the banks of the Ohio River, victims of Indians who claimed the vast virgin territory and strove to turn back the growing tide of whites. These frontiersmen are the subjects of Allan Eckert’s dramatic history.
Against the background of such names as George Rogers Clark, Daniel Boone, Arthur St. Clair, Anthony Wayne, Simon Girty and William Henry Harrison, Eckert has recreated the life of one of America’s most outstanding heroes, Simon Kenton. Kenton’s role in opening the Northwest Territory to settlement more than rivaled that of his friend Daniel Boone. By his eighteenth birthday, Kenton had already won frontier renown as woodsman, fighter and scout. His incredible physical strength and endurance, his great dignity and innate kindness made him the ideal prototype of the frontier hero.
Yet there is another story to The Frontiersmen. It is equally the story of one of history’s greatest leaders, whose misfortune was to be born to a doomed cause and a dying race. Tecumseh, the brilliant Shawnee chief, welded together by the sheer force of his intellect and charisma an incredible Indian confederacy that came desperately close to breaking the thrust of the white man’s westward expansion. Like Kenton, Tecumseh was the paragon of his people’s virtues, and the story of his life, in Allan Eckert’s hands, reveals most profoundly the grandeur and the tragedy of the American Indian.
No less importantly, The Frontiersmen is the story of wilderness America itself, its penetration and settlement, and it is Eckert’s particular grace to be able to evoke life and meaning from the raw facts of this story. In The Frontiersmen not only do we care about our long-forgotten fathers, we live again with them.