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November 10, 2018 is the 200th birthday of Jesse W. Fell, the man who named Pontiac and Livingston County and who was one of Abraham Lincoln’s first political backers.

Jesse W. Fell was born Nov. 10, 1808, in Pennsylvania, studied law in Ohio, and had many accomplishments in the Illinois part of his life, including founding the town of Normal, and helping found what is now Illinois State University. He also founded Clinton, Towanda, Lexington, LeRoy and El Paso. He helped develop Dwight, Joliet and Decatur. Fell died Feb. 25, 1887.

Fell suggested the name of Livingston County to honor Edward Livingston, a lawyer and statesman, mayor of New York City, representative in Congress from New York and later Louisiana, U.S. senator from Louisiana, Secretary of State under Andrew Jackson, and U.S. Minister to France. The county was established Feb. 27, 1837, by an act of the Legislature.
Pontiac, the first and only county seat, was incorporated in 1856, and township government was adopted in 1858.

Although Livingston had no connections to Illinois, the General Assembly “found him accomplished enough to name a county after him,” a Wikipedia.com page says.

Local historian and former staff reporter Barbara Sancken wrote in an article that Fell “had more to do with shaping the early events of Livingston County and Pontiac than any other man.” She noted how he walked from Pennsylvania to Illinois in 1831 as a 23-year-old, and who would live in Bloomington from 1832 until his death, except for five years of that period.
He became acquainted with Lincoln in 1832, learning of his service as a captain thin the Black Hawk War. A Quaker, Fell was a good friend of Stephen A. Douglas but opposed him politically, Sancken noted in her story.

Fell became the first attorney in Bloomington, the county seat of newly formed McLean County

Fell was also a great-grandfather of Adlai Stevenson, the governor of Illinois, twice a candidate for president, and ambassador to the United Nations under President Kennedy. “I have a bad case of hereditary politics,” Stevenson once quipped; his paternal grandfather, Adlai Stevenson, was vice president under Grover Cleveland.

Fell explained in a letter how he decided on the names.

The letter, addressed to the Old Settlers group of the county, was printed in the Jan. 6, 1876, edition of The Pontiac Sentinel:

“Being associated somewhat t with the early history of your city and county, it will, I trust, not be deemed intrusive to state, very briefly, why Pontiac and Livingston County came to the names respectively of your county seat and county.

“I have always commiserated the lot of the original inhabitants of our common country, and in view of their certain and rapid extinction, have favored the perpetuation of some of their favorite names. When, therefore, in olden times, my friend, Henry Weed, the first settler and proprietor of what is now your county seat, applied to me to draft a petition for the post office, I inserted the name of “Pontiac,” that being the name of a distinguished Indian chief.

“In drafting the first bill for the formation of the county, some years after, I left a blank to be filled with a name when thereafter agreed upon. Gov. John Moore was at that time one of our representatives in the legislature and had a very decided preference for the name of “Belmont,” that being the name of the county he had lived in Ohio.

“I was for (Edward) Livingston, mainly because, not long before, he had rendered the county an important service in drafting the celebrated proclamation putting down South Carolina…Secession. Finding a majority of the committee on counties of my way of thinking I had no difficulty in inserting the name your county now bears; a fitting compliment to one of the most accomplished statesmen of the age …”

The Fell parks in both Pontiac and Bloomington are named after Jesse Fell.

Source: “Today is bicentennial of birth of Jesse Fell“, Pontiac Daily Leader, November 10, 2008.

If anyone has access to te July 21, 1937 Pontiac Daily Leader, there is a picture and story about Jesse Fell in the  in the centennial issue of the newspaper.

In 2005 Kalamazoo, like many mid-sized cities in America’s “rust belt”, was visibly fading, having gradually lost jobs, home values and tax revenues.

On November 10 of that year, a meeting of the Kalamazoo School Board opened. Janice Brown, the Superintendent of the Kalamazoo Public Schools, stepped to the podium. Brown was about to reveal a closely held secret that she hoped would revolutionize the lives of her students and reach beyond them to the city itself.

A group of anonymous donors had funded a scholarship program to be known as the “Kalamazoo Promise”. Under its terms, any student who lived within the school district, attended its public schools and graduated from one of the district’s public high schools would be eligible for a scholarship paying all tuition and mandatory fees for four years at any Michigan public college or university, or at a community college until attaining a certificate. A student would have ten years to complete the degree. And the program was designed to continue long into the future.

Source : Lawrence M. Glaxer, The Promise, Dome, May 18, 2012.

Mildred (Jane) Baessler in the pilot’ seat.

Jane Doyle held a heavy bronze medal in her creased hands, running her fingers over the engraved surface.

It shone in the light streaming through the window of her apartment in a Grand Rapids senior living complex. The words: “The first women in history to fly American Military Aircraft” were etched on the outer rim.

Doyle, 96, smiled slyly.

She earned it — even if it did take 66 years to get the Congressional Gold Medal. It’s the highest honor that can be awarded to a civilian, and Doyle got it for her service during World War II for flying in the Women Airforce Service Pilots program, known as WASP.

It took an Act of Congress to give the medals to Doyle and the 1,073 other WASP fly girls who boosted the war effort. The women were recruited to fly stateside for the U.S. Army Air Forces during the war, freeing up male pilots to serve in combat overseas.

Doyle is the last living WASP in Michigan, according to Texas Woman’s University, the repository for the history of the group. In all, just 69 remain nationally.

She was a trailblazer unafraid to be the first girl or woman to do just about anything — practically a poster child for today’s feminist mantra: nevertheless, she persisted.

“The Women’s Airforce Service Pilots were groundbreaking in the same way that the iconic Rosie the Riveters were — one in flying and one in building the aircraft,” said Kristen Wildes, director of the Ada Historical Society, which with the Cascade Historical Society, featured Doyle as a speaker at a joint veterans event last week.

“When the men left to serve in the war, these remarkable women stepped in to assist in the war effort and get the jobs done. Through their dedication and service, the WASPs got a foot in the door of a future that would slowly open to women in aviation.”

Doyle said she was the first girl in the marching band at South High School in Grand Rapids, playing the French horn. The band director told her: “You can be in it, but you can’t wear pants. You have to wear a skirt.”

“I think I was a problem child because I was always trying something,” said Doyle, who was born Mildred Jane Baessler in October of 1921. She was the youngest of four children.

“I don’t know why my folks named me Mildred,” she says, chuckling. “They never called me that. They always called me Jane.”

Her father, a German immigrant, worked for the Pere Marquette Railway. It was her mother, Emma Baessler, who took her to see the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh when he came to Grand Rapids in August 1927.

She recalled hearing Lindbergh speak in the outdoor amphitheater at John Ball Park. Doyle was just 6.

“It was a big thing over there. The newspapers gave him a lot of publicity when he came, and my mother was just interested in what was going on. … Then, Wrong Way Corrigan came, too,” Doyle said, “and she took me to that.”

Douglas Corrigan was given the “Wrong Way” moniker when he flew across the Atlantic rather than across the U.S. in what many dubbed an intentional mistake after his plans to fly over the ocean were denied.

“And then, when my brother was in high school, he had a music instructor who was a pilot. He took him up for a ride, and I heard him telling about it. But I had never been in a plane.”

It wasn’t until she enrolled in what was then Grand Rapids Junior College in 1939 that Doyle considered flying an airplane was something she could do.

“I was taking engineering drawing and I was the only girl in the class,” Doyle said. ” I was ordered to sit in the back in the corner and the instructor came in and was talking to the fellas about this Civilian Pilot Training Program.

“After the class, I went up and said, ‘How about women? Can I get in?’ And he said, ‘Well, I’ll find out.’ And then he told me that one woman could get in for every 10 men.

“Men had to be 5-foot-4, but women could be 5-foot-2½. So I stretched, and passed the physical and got into the program that summer.”

She did 70 hours of ground school training, and went on to do 35 hours of flying at Kent County Airport at a time when much of the world was at war. She said most Americans understood why President Franklin D. Roosevelt started programs like the Civil Pilot Training Program to ready the nation for its likely entry into the war.

By the fall of 1940, Doyle was enrolled at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and flying with the Civil Air Patrol to keep her pilot’s license.

“I flew with anybody that would take me,” she said.

Then, Pearl Harbor was attacked. Doyle’s brother, Fredrick Baessler, enlisted in the navy as an officer, serving on a destroyer in the Pacific. Her sister joined the American Red Cross.

And one day, a telegram arrived.

It was from Jacqueline Cochran, the founder of a flying program that was recruiting female pilots from around the country to join the war effort.

“I got a telegram asking, ‘was I interested?’ … I responded that I was interested.

And then I got a notice that said … I had to go pass a physical at Selfridge Field,” Doyle said.

“So I had to get a ride over to Selfridge and pass the physical. And then I waited and then I got a notice that I was accepted and could I start the first of November 1943.”

She passed the tests and made her way to Texas for seven months of training at Avenger Field in the town of Sweetwater. Cochrane was insistent that her pilots would be trained to fly every aircraft in service.

Altogether, Doyle and the other WASPs flew 60,000,000 miles of operation flights from 1942-44 and piloted 78 types of aircraft, according to Kimberly Johnson, the director of special collections at Texas Woman’s University.

“The WASP pilots flew every type of plane the men flew, in every type of assignment and mission except for combat,” said Keith Gill, director of exhibits and museum programming at the Air Zoo in Portage.

“When the B26 Marauder bomber and the B29 Superfortress bombers were first test flown they were considered unsafe. It took WASP pilots to fly them in demonstration flights to prove that after modifications had taken place, and male pilots retrained, that the planes could be trusted and were indeed safe to fly. In fact the B26 went on to have the lowest loss rate of any USAAF bomber.

“But it took women pilots flying it to help convince others that it was safe to fly. WASPs also flew top secret transport for the atomic bomb project, towing targets for live-fire aerial gunners and for anti-aircraft gunners on the ground, and countless test flights for equipment.”

Cadets from the Class 44-W-4, from top left, Dorothy Allen, Mildred (Jane) Baessler, and Odean Bishop, from bottom left, Ina Barley and Stella Jo Baker at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas.

They also worked as instructors, and ferried planes from factories to bases. The women took part in engineering and safety tests, along with demonstrations, administrative flights, tracking and searchlight missions and more.

Because they weren’t considered part of the military at the time — they were civilians, the WASPs had to buy their own uniforms, cover the costs of traveling to the training center, and to their assigned bases. They had to pay rent, and cover other expenses. And when a woman died on the job — as 38 of them did — her family got nothing.

“For those that were lost, whose lives were given during the war, the government didn’t pay to get them back home, for their families to lay them to rest. There was a lot of sacrifice, but they did so willingly,” Johnson said.

“What they did was open so many doors.”

When Nancy Parrish learned about the work her mother, Odean Bishop Parrish, and fellow WASPs did during the war, she started a website called wingsacrossamerica.org to honor them and chronicle WASP history. Over the years, she has interviewed hundreds of women who flew for the group.

“Jane is probably one of the most fearless of the WASPs still alive,” said Nancy Parrish, whose mother was better known as Deanie, and was one of the women who roomed with Doyle during training in Texas in 1943 and 1944. “Jane will climb in anything that flies. I love that. It makes you go back in time and think, she must have been very spunky as a child.

“I’m not sure if any of them thought what they were doing was courageous,” said Parrish, who lives in Waco, Texas. “They just wanted to do something to help their country. And every WASP I interviewed loved to fly, and to have something you love in service to your country was a win-win. The timing was perfect because we needed them.”

But then, suddenly, America didn’t need them anymore.

Mildred (Jane) Doyle, 96, a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II, met her husband Donald Doyle while working at Freeman Field in Seymour, Ind. Donald, a Lt. Col. also flew planes in World War II.

For the full article, see Kristen Jordan Shamus, “Michigan’s last surviving WWII fly girl recalls her time in the sky, blazing new paths“, Detroit Free Press, November 10, 2017.

Meet all 38 of Michigan’s original World War II fly girls

The Fisher Theatre opened as a movie and vaudeville house on November 11, 1928. It featured Mexican-Indian art, banana trees, a goldfish pond and wandering macaws that audience members fed by hand.

Remodeled as a live theatre in 1961 under management of the Nederlander Theatrical Corporation, the Fisher is now adorned with marble, Indian rosewood and walnut paneling, and crystal and bronze decorative work. The original 3,500 seats were scaled down to 2,089 to ensure an intimate atmosphere and optimal sightlines.

Over the last 40 years, the Fisher Theatre has been a favorite venue of many of Broadway’s brightest stars, like Mary Martin, Carol Channing, Joel Grey, Bernadette Peters and Lynn Redgrave, and hosted the world premieres of Hello Dolly, Fiddler on the Roof, Sweet Charity and Golden Boy.

Source : Fisher Theater Broadway in Detroit

Here is the story of how Cedar Springs, Michigan became the Red Flannel capital.

In the winter of 1936, in the midst of the great depression, the whole country was in the throes of a harsh winter with temperatures below zero and heavy snows. A feature writer for the New York Sun newspaper attempted to locate good old fashioned long red underwear to help ward off the bitter cold. He declared them to be OBSOLETE having searched as far west as Cleveland!

The editors of the Cedar Springs Clipper, Grace Hamilton and Nina Babcock (known to all as the Clipper Girls), saw the Sun story. They knew that long red underwear was a common site in Cedar Springs which got it start as a lumber town in the mid 1800’s. So they asked the owner of a local dry goods (department) store, Jack Pollock, if he had them. He didn’t bat an eye. He reached back and pulled a pair right off the shelf behind him as he asked, “What size?” (What the Clipper Girls may not have known is that had they asked Jack about a tutu for an elephant, he would have said, “What size?”) Never the less, it was determined that Pollock’s Store sold them to deer hunters and local farmers and had plenty in stock.

Nina wrote an editorial in the Clipper in reply to the Sun as follows: “Who but a New Yorker would conclude that all the world doesn’t because we don’t? Or who but a Gothamite would expect that there are no Red Flannels just because Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord and Taylor, Bergdorf Goodman don’t wrap ‘em up for their clients? Wait, don’t write off us lumberjacks yet; we’ve got plenty of Red Flannels in Cedar Springs.” It seems that the Associated Press wire service picked up the Clipper story and ran it nationwide.

For the next two years, orders for Red Flannels continued to arrive as the supply dwindled. By 1938, the shelves were nearly bare. After a considerable search Jack found that a woolen mill in Winstead, Connecticut was only manufacturer still making red long johns. With a source supply assured, the it was decided to hold a festival and to proclaim Cedar Springs as “the Red Flannel Town.” There were a few dissenters who objected to having their town associated with underwear but the nickname was eventually approved.

The First Red Flannel Festival was held on November 11, 1939. Featured crowning of a Queen by the local congressman at half time of the high school football game, a parade down Main Street, a lumber jack supper, numerous arrests by the Key Stone Cops of anyone failing to wear something red, and induction of local dignitaries into the Order of the Knights of the Red Flannel Drawers (the password was “itch.”).

With the exception of the World War II years, Cedar Springs has continued the tradition. Some of the highlights over the years were: 1) the story in the December 19, 1949 Life Magazine featuring a full page color photo of the aforementioned Jack Pollock, attired in Red Flannels, taking a picture of seventy-five similarly attired school kids, 2) the establishment of a local Red Flannel manufacturing facility, first by Mae Oppeneer then by Sally Wall, and 3) then-Congressman Jerry Ford leading the parade in 1973 the day after he had been designated as Vice-President of the United States.

This all may sound a bit corny but after ten years of the great depression, this Red Flannel thing helped put a little spring back into every one’s step back in 1939. It has helped ever since to keep a small town of 2000 residents on the map when many towns like it were fading away. So if you are ever in the Midwest on the first weekend in October, head on over to Cedar Springs for a slice of small town America at is best.

Cedar Springs is located 20 miles north of Grand Rapids.

Sources :

The History of Red Flannel Royalty from the Red Flannel Festival website.

Red Flannel – Cedar Springs, Michigan 1949 from The Bulldog Vintage blog.

Photograph featured in Life Magazine, December 19, 1949, showing two gals wearing their red flannels on their way to the Red Flannel Festival in Cedar Springs.