Midwest Guest

Read up on the Brumback Library in Van Wert, Ohio

We had to stop when we spotted the castle-like Brumback Library, with its turreted towers and red clay Ludowici roof tiles.

The library, named for benefactor John Sanford Brumback, is an impressive Gothic-Romanesque-style building of Bedford sandstone in a park along Van Wert's Main Street, also known as the Lincoln Highway and the route of America's first transcontinental highway.

Brumback, born in Ohio's Licking County in 1829, lost his father at the age of four. His mother had six young children and 40 acres of undeveloped farmland, and young John developed a solid work ethic and business sense working the farm and taking his family's produce to market.

John left home at the age of 15 with $50 and started a general store in Illinois.

By 1862, he was back in Ohio with a wife and children, using $5,000 in gold to open a dry goods store in Van Wert County near the Indiana state line.

Brumback became a respected businessman and philanthropist as president of an insurance company, and president and major shareholder in the Van Wert National Bank.

In 1890, twelve local women formed the Van Wert Ladies Library Association to establish a 1,400-book subscription library in town. The library became a free public library when the city passed a tax in 1896 for its support.

Brumback felt that all county residents deserved a free public library and pledged the money to make that happen. He got as far as ordering building plans for the project, but became ill and died before seeing the final plans.

Brumback's family built a library in Van Wert County with money in his estate, with the proviso that the county would provide the books and maintain the library.

Toledo architect David L. Stine designed many of the homes in that city's famed Old West End neighborhood and received the commission to design the library. The Brumback family financed construction, sparing no expense to make the building as beautiful and sturdy as possible.

We slipped inside of the library to see the impressive main floor with its cozy sitting area by an open fireplace, a baby grand piano and beautiful architectural touches like massive white pillars and carved-wood trim. I didn't feel it was possible for me to take interior photos without disrupting the quiet of the library that day, but you can see a few interior shots in a virtual tour at the library's site.

An impressive ceremony accompanied the laying of the library's cornerstone in 1899, and the building saw its formal dedication on January 1, 1901.

John Brumback's son, Orville S. Brumback, spearheaded efforts to pass legislation in Ohio approving tax-supported county libraries, and the Brumback Library became the nation's first pubic county library in the nation.

During the mid-1970s, brother and sister Ellen and Orville Reed, grandchildren of John Brumback, began exploring plans to expand the library. Orville had a long career in the insurance industry and Ellen was the long-time Secretary of the Library's Board of Trustees.

The pair left detailed instructions for an ambitious library renovation and expansion after their deaths about 15 years later.

Architect Clyde Henry of the Columbus, Ohio, firm of McDonald, Cassell and Bassett designed the 10,500-square-foot Reed Memorial Addition, which nearly doubled the space of the library to a total of 19,500 square feet.

Viewing the building up close, you can see how seamlessly the addition really is.

The Brumback Library earned a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, and the Ohio Historical Society recognized is as a historic site in 2001.

Check out another great early twentieth-century Ohio library I discovered in my travels at Sandusky, Ohio, more than Cedar Point and see other Highlights along the Lincoln Highway in Ohio at my latest Discovering Ohio blog post.

Want to learn more about Ohio's architectural gems? Check out Building Ohio: A Traveler's Guide to Ohio's Rural Architecture and Building Ohio: A Traveler's Guide to Ohio's Urban Architecture by Jane Ware.

© Dominique King 2012 All rights reserved

Midwest-related reads for your holiday gift list

I love to curl up with a good book on a cold winter night, and I thought I'd share another list of a great Midwest reads--many I've read and several that are waiting on my to-read pile for later this winter.

I love the fact that the voice behind The Night Train blog, Amy Elliott Bragg, put some of her great stories about Detroit and its history into book form earlier this year. Amy's blog is a must-read for fans of Detroit's history and culture, and it was even especially fun to meet Amy in person and see her infectious enthusiasm for her subject at her recent release book release party. Check out her Hidden History of Detroit for some stories and cool vintage photos.

Cleveland Area History by Christopher Busta-Peck is another one of my blog regular reads, so I loved finding the History Press, publishers of Amy's book, published a similar book about Cleveland by Christopher. I especially enjoy his blog's stories about that city's vintage architecture, and I know I'll want to read his Hidden History of Cleveland.

Regular Midwest Guest readers may recognize Matt Forster's name from the guest posts he did for me here earlier this year (Every Day Has its Dog and My Piece on the Rock). Want to read more about Matt's outdoor adventures? Check out his latest book, Best Tent Camping: Michigan.

I'm finally getting around to reading the latest entry in Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli's Emily Kincaid mystery series, Dead Dogs and Englishmen. Be sure to also check out my Q & A with northern Michigan mystery writer Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli to learn more about the characters in this series and Elizabeth's future plans for them.

I just got my contributors copy of The Michigan Companion, a newly released encyclopedia about all things Michigan. Yes, I said contributors copy, as I was one of 25 writers who contributed the 1,200 entries in this 800-plus-page book. My entries include articles on topics like lighthouses, immigration, the history of several well known chain stores based in the state, the Pure Michigan advertising campaign, civil rights, women's suffrage, and more.

Detroit music is about Motown, and so much more! And so guitarist Dennis Coffey's book, Guitars, Bars and Motown Superstars is about his time with Motown, as well as his post-Motown career with its twists and turns. Coffey played as part of the legendary Funk Brothers, the studio musicians who gave so many Motown hits their distinctive sound, and after a somewhat bumpy post-Motown road, has come back full-circle to life as a musician with a truly distinctive sound. Coffey also recently released a self-titled album.

Want to learn a little more about the Funk Brothers? Be sure to check out this Standing in the Shadows of Motown DVD, a great gift for fans of the classic Motown sound and the studio musicians behind it.

Mitch Ryder is a classic Detroit voice who recently raised his voice as the author of a soon-to-be-released autobiography that follows his career from his earliest days as the leader of Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels to now, when we still see him occasionally perform around town. Ryder's Devil & Blue Dresses: My Wild Ride as a Rock and Roll Legend comes out in just a few days.

You can check out another take on Ryder's career with It Was All Right: Mitch Ryder's Life in Music by James A. Mitchell, which includes a forward by Ryder.

Curious about the ripped-from-the-headlines story that inspired the musical "Chicago"? Then check out The Girls of Murder City: Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers who inspired Chicago by Douglas Perry. The title alone was enough to get me to pick up this book, and the 1920s setting makes it one I really look forward to reading.

My mom recently gave me her copy of The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and a Forty-Year Friendship by Jeffrey Zaslow to read. I'm especially curious about how this story of a group of women growing up in Iowa and coming of age during the 1970s and 1980s may, or may not, parallel my own experiences here in Michigan.

So, there are a few of the books and authors I'm reading these days.

Do you have any other favorite Midwestern books or authors I should check out?

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Midwest Guest and Michigan Companion

As much as I like seeing my byline online, I still get a real charge out of seeing my name in an old-school print publication, so I was pretty jazzed to find a copy of The Michigan Companion in my snail mail box the other day.

The Michigan Companion, published by Omnigraphics, is an encyclopedia with more than 1,200 entries covering people, places, history, events, and a whole host of other things that made our Mitten State what it is today.

I was one of 25 contributors credited in this 800-plus-page volume, and my topics included women's suffrage, civil rights, the furniture industry in Michigan, lighthouses, various immigrant groups prominent in Michigan's history, traffic firsts in the state, Idlewild, the history of several major Michigan retailers, and Elizabeth Denison Forth (who became Michigan's first African-American property owner with her purchase of land in Pontiac in 1825).

Interestingly enough, the work came to me in large part because of Midwest Guest and my coverage of Great Lakes lighthouses here on the blog.

It was also an interesting reminder of how long the publishing cycle can be for print. I wrote my entries in late 2009, and they're finally reaching the bookshelves now!

Want to learn more about Michigan history? Look for The Michigan Companion in the reference section at your local library, or purchase your own copy online.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Visiting the bookstore at Indiana's University of Notre Dame

Local bookstores are among my favorite stops on the road, and the campus bookstore at Indiana's University of Notre Dame is a particular favorite of mine.

Good local bookstores are a great source of books by local authors and books about local history. Good college bookstores carry a selection of college logo wear and maybe a few interesting university press books. Bookstores are an especially good road trip stop if they have decent restrooms and a coffee shop. The Notre Dame bookstore has all of the hallmarks of a good local bookstore, a good college bookstore and a great road trip stop.

We've visited college bookstores in cramped classroom sized spaces, in aging store fronts in a nearby downtown and in huge warehouse-like stores on campuses. But the Notre Dame store is special, with its inviting ambience and wide variety of books that appeal to a general audience beyond text book toting students.

The university's bookstore is in the Eck Visitor Center building, and like many buildings on Notre Dame's architecturally photogenic campus, it is a modern building designed to fit in with the university's vintage buildings.

Bookstore visitors enter through the building's sunny atrium.

While you'll find plenty of school supplies and textbooks tucked away on the store's second floor, the store's first floor is a place you can enjoy spending time browsing.

The bookstore's first floor includes a large section of university wear and memorabilia that is larger than many stand-alone clothing stores and a large area with books arranged like a conventional bookstore with plenty of places to curl up with a good book or get in some quiet study time.

The store stocks current fiction, popular non-fiction, children's books, classics, magazines, and a variety of religious books and accessories. We found several popular history books that we ended up purchasing the last time we visited the store.

University officials envisioned the store as a positive reflection on the campus and its strong academic history when building it as a "world-class bookstore" in the late 1990s.

The store is also a center of the wider university life with a cafe/coffee shop and a schedule of events that includes extended hours during home football weekends when cheerleaders and Notre Dame's leprechaun mascot visit as fans shop for t-shirts and jackets to wear to the game.

There is a satellite bookstore across the street from campus in a mixed-use development called Eddy Commons. The satellite store fills the need to pick up a T-shirt or gift book, and it was a nice quick stop when we stayed at the nearby Fairfield Inn.

Still, I appreciate a really nice bookstore and think it's well worth the time to go on over to campus and check out Notre Dame's main bookstore.

Speaking of going to Notre Dame's campus, check out Back to School at Indiana's University of Notre Dame, O'Shag Hall at Indiana's University of Notre Dame, Indiana's University of Notre Dame embraces "Touchdown Jesus", and Basilica of the Sacred Heart is the heart of Indiana's University of Notre Dame campus. I also posted a review of our stay at the Fairfield Inn across from Notre Dame's campus.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Midwest road-trip reads and other useful road tools

For me, there's nothing better than a good road trip, and part of the fun involves planning your route to make sure you don't miss some of the must-sees while you're on the road.

Here are a few great reads and planning tools to check out before your next Midwestern road tripping adventure!

I enjoy Amy Rea's A closer look at flyover land blog, which explores every corner of Minnesota. Her newly published Backroads & Byways of Minnesota looks like a great addition to any Midwest road trips library. Each chapter highlights a different route in the state, offering practical tips, information, and tons of suggestions about what to do along the way. You can also get the book as a Kindle edition.

What Amy does for Minnesota, Matt Forster does for Michigan in his new guidebook Backroads & Byways of Michigan. Matt's book, like Amy's, is also available as a Kindle edition. You can check in with Matt at his Facebook page for the guidebook.

We recently drove the length of the Lincoln Highway through Ohio. Travelers started road tripping along this east-west highway, the first transcontinental highway in the United States, when it opened to traffic in 1913. The highway stretched from San Francisco to New York City, although subsequent realignments and expressways that eventually superseded the old road make it a challenge to follow the historic route in spots. The Lincoln Highway: Coast to Coast from Times Square to the Golden Gate by Michael Wallis is an invaluable guide to some of the most interesting and quirky stops along the historic route.

We want to drive the Indiana leg of the Lincoln Highway soon, so I definitely want to check out The Lincoln Highway Across Indiana by Jan Shupert-Arick and the Indiana Lincoln Highway Association.

Tim and I both love northern Minnesota and enjoyed traveling its legendary Highway 61. I bought Tales of the Road: Highway 61 by Cathy Wurzer, which is a companion piece to a public television documentary, in anticipation of a trip we'd planned to take a couple of years ago. Highway 61 began carrying travelers through the state and along its beautiful North Shore in the 1920s, and Wurzer's book covers a lot of the road's history and stories behind some of the cool roadside architecture that still exists from the highway's early days. Sadly, we had to cancel the trip, but when we do get back to Minnesota, Wurzer's book will make the trip with us.

You can slip the Historic Michigan Travel Guide by the Historical Society of Michigan into a jacket or camera bag pocket. It is chock-full of information about 300 of Michigan's museums, historic sites and other history-related destinations. The listings include information like availability of parking, hours, fees, and accessibility along with each attraction's highlights. We've got an older edition of this book, but the newest edition also includes GPS-ready addresses in the listings.

Love lighthouses and waterfalls?  Check out A Traveler's Guide to 116 Michigan Lighthouses and A guide to 199 Michigan Waterfalls by Laurie Penrose, Bill Penrose and Ruth Penrose. These two guidebooks include maps and photos to help you find your way to some of my favorite Great Lakes State sights.

Best of the Midwest: Rediscovering America's Heartland by Dan Kaercher of Midwest Living Magazine is a few years old, but it's still a great guide to the heritage, scenery, attractions and people of 12-state region the magazine considers to be in the Midwest (for the record, those states are Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin).

Want a real taste of the region? Check out Taste of the Midwest: 12 States, 101 Recipes, 150 Meals, 8,207 Miles and Millions of Memories, in which Dan Kaercher eats his way through the Midwest and shares the stories and recipes for some of our most quintessential Midwest eats.

I wouldn't dream of leaving home without a good map. I've worn out a number of my trusty Michigan Atlas & Gazetteer books by the Delorme Mapping Company over the years, and I think we're working on about our third copy of the Ohio Atlas & Gazetteer at this point. Delorme produces map books for each state that include detailed maps and reference lists that include parks, historic sites, wineries, hiking trails, or other things specific to each state.

Books aside, we also find our GPS invaluable in our travels. We have an older unit similar to Garmin's GPSMAP 62sc Handheld Navigator loaded with Garmin City Navigator maps.

This unit works great when we're out of the car geocaching. On our last outing with it in Ohio and West Virginia, it consistently led us to within a few feet of the caches we sought.

We use it in the car with a holder mounted to the windshield with a powerful suction cup, but we find that the screen is a little small and doesn't always include enough information on it when we're trying to navigate through a larger city on an expressway.

So, we're shopping for a GPS with a larger screen, lifetime maps and traffic information specifically designed for use in the car. We like our Garmin handheld, so we're looking at possibilities like Garmin's nüvi 2460LMT, or maybe even a TomTom VIA 1505TM or Magellan RoadMate 5045-LM.

Do you have any GPS suggestions for us or suggestions for other great road-trip reads?

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Multimedia pioneer Lowell Thomas began life's journey in Ohio

I remember seeing a couple Lowell Thomas books on my mother's shelves when I was quite young, but I never knew much about the pioneering broadcaster and world traveler until my recent visit to the Garst Museum in Greenville, Ohio.

I vaguely knew Thomas as a globe-trotting journalist, but the museum's gallery dedicated to him gave me a new appreciation for his career as a multimedia pioneer. Considering Thomas' life-long fascination with emerging media and experimenting with it, I'm thinking he would be all over today's "new media", just as he was ubiquitous across multiple media platforms throughout his long career.

Lowell Thomas was born on April 6, 1892 in nearby Woodington, Ohio. The museum moved Thomas' birthplace, a two-story Victorian house, to its campus during the late 1980s. Visitors can tour it during summer weekends, although we were there too early in the year to do so.

The museum's Lowell Thomas gallery has plenty of photos and mementos from Thomas' travels, and visitors can watch video footage of Thomas in a pocket-sized theater.

The Thomas family moved from Ohio when Lowell was 8 years old, heading to Victor, Colorado, where his father was a doctor in the gold mining community. The Victor Lowell Thomas Museum celebrates Thomas's life and time there.

Lowell started working for the Victor Daily Record as a newsboy at the age of 10, becoming an editor for the paper by the age of 19.

Thomas earned degrees from five universities, including the University of Northern Indiana at Valparaiso and Princeton.

Thomas continued working as an editor with dailies in Chicago and several other cities, but wanderlust soon kicked in and he began traveling the world in earnest by the late 1910s, filming and writing about his experiences in a nationally syndicated newspaper column.

Thomas set out for Europe in 1917 with his new bride, Frances, and cameraman Harry Chase to report on World War I. He tired of harsh conditions and drab film footage he got at the Western Front, so his wife worked with the Red Cross in Italy while Thomas and his cameraman went to the Middle East.

It was there that he met T.E. Lawrence, a young British Army officer who wore Arab robes as he helped lead Arab forces during the Arab Revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule. The colorful Lawrence captured Thomas' imagination, and the broadcaster's arguably romanticized accounts of the exploits of "Lawrence of Arabia" made Lawrence a star and made Thomas millions of dollars.

Thomas created what was, for the time, highly original multimedia presentations where he narrated his travels from a podium in sync with photo slides and film clips. Lawrence's story intrigued 1920s audiences, and Thomas' presentations played to as many as four million people throughout the world.

Thomas' 1924 book about the subject, With Lawrence of Arabia, became the first of over 50 books Thomas authored during his lifetime.

Thomas began doing daily radio newscasts for NBC in 1930. His authoritative and impartial manner was a distinct departure from other popular radio newscasters of the time. Thomas decided to end each of his newscasts with a light-hearted story, a format that nearly every newscast since that time adopted.

Movie audiences became familiar with Thomas' voice from the many short newsreels he narrated that ran in theaters to accompany feature films during the 1930s.

Over the years at NBC, and later at CBS, he became the first newscaster to report from a ship, an airplane, a submarine, and a coal mine. In 1939, he simulcast his radio broadcasts on television, becoming the first to have a televised nightly newscast.

Thomas appreciated the flexibility radio offered to broadcast from wherever he might be in the world, and he continued his nightly radio broadcasts until he was 85 years old in 1976.

He produced and starred in television series during the 1950s and 1970s and became a Cinerama (3-D movie) producer. Check out the Internet Movie Database site for a listing of Thomas' work in movies and television.

Thomas became rich working as an independent contractor with his own sponsors, buying his own time on networks, and retaining ownership of his material.

Thomas' first wife, Frances, died in 1975, and the widowed Thomas married Marianna Munn of Darke County in 1977.

In 1980, Thomas visited Ohio for the last time, to speak to the local Business and Professional Women's Club.

He died in 1981 at his New York home at the age of 89. His widow Marianna returned to live in Dayton, Ohio, until her death at the age of 82 in 2010.

Many of Thomas' books are out-of-print, but you can still readily find his first book, With Lawrence of Arabia, online.

Want to learn more about Lawrence of Arabia? Check out Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia by Michael Korda.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Greenville

Michigan Civil War vets spark life-long interest in history for Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Young Bruce Catton, who sat mesmerized by the tales of old Civil War veterans in the small northern Michigan town of Benzonia, Michigan, grew up to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of many popular histories of the War Between the States.

We often visit Benzonia, and once found a particularly tricky geocache in the park where young Bruce played Civil War games with his buddies near the turn of the twentieth century.

I knew about the Benzonia/Catton connection, and with the approach of the Civil War sesquicentennial, I thought it was a good time to share the story.

Congregationalists settle Benzonia, establish school

In 1858, Reverend Charles E. Bailey and four families from a Congregational church in Oberlin, Ohio, arrived in northern Michigan's wilderness to establish a Christian community with a college modeled after Oberlin.

The school began as Grand Traverse College offering classes at someone's home, and later in a two-story frame building in Benzonia.

The school offered college preparatory classes and teacher training, accepting students of both genders and of all races and ethnic origin.

The school started with 13 students in 1860. That number grew to 150 students by 1875, with many graduates becoming teachers in western Michigan's lumbering towns.

In 1891, Grand Traverse College became Benzonia College.

Lumbering declined as the forests disappeared during the late 1800s, farming in the area was generally difficult, and the population declined.

Benzonia College struggled, lacking students or money, and it became a college prep school called Benzonia Academy in 1900.

The Catton family in Benzonia

Bruce Catton was born in Petoskey, Michigan. His family came to Benzonia when his father taught at the school and, in 1906, became principal of the 40-student academy.

In 1909, Benzonia Academy's main campus building burned down, and school officials replaced it with a wooden-frame and brick-veneer building called Mills Cottage. It became the girls' dormitory, central dining hall, and home to Principal Catton's family.

Young Bruce Catton had fond memories of old men with long grey beards and wearing blue uniforms with brass buttons that took center stage each Decoration Day (aka Memorial Day) during his childhood. Catton loved the stories they spun about their Civil War days, and history became alive for him as he listened to their tales.

Catton graduated from Benzonia Academy and attended Oberlin College in 1916. His father remained principal of the academy until 1917.

Benzonia Academy closed after graduating one last class of 10 students in 1918.

Catton leaves Benzonia, finds his voice

Catton left Oberlin College to join the Navy during World War I. He worked as a newspaper reporter at the Cleveland News, the Boston Herald-American, and The Cleveland Plain Dealer before moving to Washington D.C. in the mid-1920s to work for a news syndication service. He worked for the Federal government through World War II as a director of information.

Catton wrote his first book, The War Lords of Washington, in 1948, leaving his bureaucratic job for his new career as an author.

Catton turned to the subject that sparked his imagination as a young boy, writing Mr. Lincoln's Army in 1951. It was the first of his 13 Civil War books.

Catton's next book, A Stillness at Appomattox, explored the final campaign of the war in Virginia. It was his first real commercial success, earning him the 1954 Pulitzer Prize for history.

His lyrical writing and love for telling stories of the privates, rather than the generals or simply regurgitating dry facts and figures, made Catton's histories popular beyond professional historians and academicians.

The rest of the story

Catton helped establish American Heritage magazine in 1954. He became the magazine's senior editor in 1959, remaining there until his 1978 death at his summer home in Frankfort, Michigan. His gravesite is in the Benzonia Township Cemetery.

Catton wrote about his childhood in Benzonia during the 1970s in Waiting for the Morning Train.

Mills Cottage became the Mills Community House and Benzonia Public Library in 1925. It earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

If you're looking for a Wi-Fi connection as you travel in the area, you can sit on the building's spacious front porch and access the library's connection, even when the building isn't open according its website.

For the curious, the geocache we found in the park next to the building where young Bruce played Civil War is no longer there, although it remains one of our more memorable finds. It was a two-stage cache where you solved a math puzzled based on information from an historical marker about the academy. The solution led you to a micro cache hidden on the underside of a piece of tree bark about 3/4 by 1-1/2 inches in size and tacked back on the tree with a small hook.

Looking for other Midwest locations with a Civil War connection? Check out my story, Brake for Civil War history in Indiana, about a marker at the site of a Civil War training camp.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Thompsonville

Midwest travel links for March

Check out some of these great Midwest-related stories I read online during this past month:

• Baseball's First Opening Day-Catch this story at Cleveland Area History about the first major league baseball game. Cleveland Ohio's Forest City team and Indiana's Fort Wayne Kekiongas became the first baseball teams to play in a major league game on March 17, 1871, with the Cleveland team falling 2-0 to the Kekiongas at Fort Wayne.

  
  
  Toledo Mud Hens' ball field in Toledo, Ohio
  

• Civic Iconography Done Right: Chicago's City Flag-Aaron writes about Chicago's brilliant use of their flag as an iconic symbol to strengthen the city's visual identity at the Urbanophile blog.  You'll find this readily recognizable civic symbol everywhere in Chicago--flying in front of city and commercial buildings and displayed as a logo on everything from city police cars to tattoos on a local bartender's arm.

• Millennium & Grant Park-I loved reading this story at the designslinger blog about how Chicago's Millennium Park evolved out of an effort to clean up the lake front after Chicago's devastating fire in 1871 and how the original Frederick Law Olmsted plan for a grand park became even grander as famed architects Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett expanded on Olmsted's ideas and incorporated elements of the City Beautiful Movement into its design.

• Gambling? No.-Stop by The Night Train to wish Amy well as she plans her wedding at the beautiful Casino building on Detroit's Belle Isle. Amy tells us that Frederick Law Olmsted, a champion of the City Beautiful Movement, planned most of Belle Isle, although the city rejected his plan for a sheltered promenade. His son later suggested that the casino building include some of the features of the promenade originally suggested by his father.





• Raise a Glass on 313: National Vernors Day-Kath writes about this day dedicated to Detroit's own "deliciously different" soft drink at Great Lakes Gazette. Detroit area ex-pats often go to great lengths to satisfy their craving for Vernors if they can't find it where they live, and I used to carefully pack and ship 12-packs of the pop (yes, it's "pop", not "soda") to my cousin in California until she finally found a local source for Vernors. Ask any Detroiter--if it's not Vernors, it's not real ginger ale.

• The Oldest Ford Plant Still in Operation-I recently saw a presentation a local history conference by a group seeking to preserve portions of the historic Ford plant in Highland Park, Michigan, which pioneered modern mass production with the first continuously moving assembly line in 1913. Ford closed down operations at the Highland Park plant years ago, but check out this story at the Nokohaha blog about a 1924-vintage Ford factory in St. Paul, Minnesota, that now holds the distinction of being the oldest Ford plant still operating.

• Bridges of Madison County (and beyond)-I enjoyed Linda's story about visiting Iowa's famed Bridges of Madison County at Travels with Children. She also includes a few other useful links for finding covered bridges in the Midwest.

  
  
  Pointing the way to covered bridges in Ashtabula, Ohio
  

• Monkey Business in Rockford, Illinois-I always wanted a sock monkey as a kid (in fact, I still do!), but maybe I just need to visit Nelson the world's largest sock monkey in Rockford. Julie writes about her visit with Nelson at the Midway Village Museum and other Rockford attractions at Road Trips for Families.

• Musings on Museums-Amy writes about visiting one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood homes in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, at A Closer Look at Flyover Land. She found the museum there a little disappointing, but advises that fans of Laura's books will find the Ingalls family dugout home site well worth the stop.

• Keeping the Union (and Ohio's Civil War History) Alive-It was all in the family for Kyle Yoho as he grew up the only child of parents who shared their love of historical re-enactments with him. The 21-year-old still travels the country as a member of one of Ohio's most active Civil War re-enactment groups and shares his thoughts with Discovering Ohio's Ashley about why young people continue to enjoy the hobby as we move into celebrations of the Civil War Sesquicentennial.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Helen Steiner Rice: Ohio's "Ambassador of Sunshine"

I remember seeing gift books and greeting cards in card shops bearing the name of Helen Steiner Rice, and I remember seeing a few photos of her as an elderly lady who invariably wore a fancy hat.

I was surprised, though, to see her name on an Ohio historical marker in a Lorain, Ohio, park during our most recent trip along Lake Erie on Ohio's north coast.

Helen Elaine Steiner was born at Lorain on May 19, 1900.

Helen taught religion classes at her local Methodist Church, originally thinking she might like to be a preacher. She liked to write, and had some of her earliest poems published in her school newspapers.

Helen planned to attend Ohio Wesleyan College for a liberal arts degree, study at Ohio State to earn a law degree, and expressed a desire to become a Congresswoman, inspired, no doubt, by the election of Jeannette Rankin of Montana as the first female member of Congress in 1916.

Her father, a railroad worker for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, died during the influenza epidemic of 1918, and Helen gave up her college plans to work at the Lorain Electric Light & Power Company making decorative silk lampshades to support her family after her high school graduation that same year.

Company officials spotted promise in Helen and trained her as a bookkeeper, but her real talent was in marketing and speaking. She eventually became the company's advertising sales manager, which was a rare career for women in the 1920s.

Helen also was the electric company's spokeswoman and chair of Ohio's Women's Public Information Committee of the Electric Light Association. She became a nationally known speaker by age 25 and also used her speaking engagements to advocate improved working conditions and workplace rights for women.

In 1927, Helen started her own speakers bureau called Steiner Service.

Helen spoke at a bankers' convention in June of 1928 where she met Franklin Rice, vice president of Dayton Savings and Trust. She married him on January 30, 1929, and moved into Franklin's grand 14-room house in Dayton.

The stock market crash in October of 1929 cost Franklin his job, as well as his investments.

In 1931, Helen accepted a job with the Gibson Art Company of Cincinnati as a trouble shooter suggesting ways for the company to increase sales in its greeting card division.

Franklin refused to sell his home in Dayton, Ohio, so Helen lived in Cincinnati during the week, commuting back to Dayton on weekends.

Franklin became increasingly depressed about their financial difficulties and committed suicide on October 14, 1932.

Helen worked and lived in Cincinnati after Franklin's death, becoming one of America's leading greeting card writers by 1940.

Helen wrote "When I Must Leave You" when her mother died in 1945. The poem became a popular sympathy card for Gibson, and the company began publishing more of Helen's signed inspirational verses on greeting cards.

The popularity of Helen's inspirational verse soared after 1960 after a reading of one of her poems on the Lawrence Welk Show.

She authored ten books during her lifetime, usually sending her royalties to churches she attended in Lorain and Cincinnati.

Helen retired from full-time work at Gibson in 1971. Her health deteriorated during the 1970s, and she died on April 23, 1981. Her grave is in the Steiner family plot at Elmwood Cemetery in Lorain.

Helen wrote an estimated several million poems during her lifetime. Her poetry continues to sell well, and the foundation she established before her death donates money to a variety of charities helping those in need and the elderly primarily in the Lorain and Cincinnati area.

In 2002, Ohio installed the marker we saw in Lakeview Park commemorating the life of the woman many called the "Poet Laureate of Inspirational Verse" or the "Ambassador of Sunshine".

So, next time I see Helen's name on a sentimental greeting card, book mark, or gift book, I'll have a greater appreciation of her work and life as a tough-minded pioneering businesswoman who liked to wear fancy hats!

Want to learn more? Check out Helen Steiner Rice: Ambassador of Sunshine by Ronald Pollitt and Virginia Wiltse or A Portrait of Helen Steiner Rice by Mary Hilarie Tavenner. Some of the most recent releases of Helen's collected poetry and devotionals include A Celebration of God's Love, A Collection of Joy, A Celebration of Love.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Amherst

Things To Do
Elyria

Mystery, murder and other mayhem in Michigan

I've never been much of a reader of mysteries, although I often enjoy reading a decent true crime book. These days, however, I find myself reading a lot of both fictional mysteries and true crime books written by Michigan authors and/or set in the Great Lakes State.

So, whether you like escaping from the slush and cold by reading a chiller, or you're looking for a few good reads to pack into your beach bag in anticipation of summer, here are a few suggestions for books about Michigan mysteries, murder and other mayhem.

Taking a new look at cold cases always fascinates me, and I found Mardi Link's account of an officially unsolved northern Michigan crime dating to 1968, when an idyllic summer vacation home turned into a horrific murder scene where six members of the Robison family lost their lives, fascinating. Fans of the "Mad Men" television show should also enjoy reading about some real-life 1960s advertising types populating this story.

I saw Link at a book signing where I picked up her next true crime book about another northern Michigan case where she explores the long-held secrets about a nun's death in the tiny northern Michigan town of Isadore-a crime that the locals still only reluctantly, if at all, discuss.

Lest you think tragedies like Columbine and Virginia Tech, where one or two disturbed or disgruntled people take the lives of students as they set about their school day, are unique to our contemporary culture, Arnie Bernstein's book about America's first school bombing that took place in a mid-Michigan town on a spring day in 1927 will be a revelation. Readers learn how the bombing happened, but the reasons for the crime spree that resulted in the deaths nearly 40 people (including the bomber himself) remain shrouded in mystery.

I remember reading newspaper accounts about the deaths of two Detroit-area deer hunters who disappeared during a hunting trip in 1985, as well as the trial that exposed the secrets surrounding their deaths 18 years later. Tom Henderson's book, Darker than Night, is a compelling account of the crime and trial that even earned a 5-star review at Amazon from the prosecutor in the trial. Chapters are extremely short, which I found an effective device to keep me moving through the book as I'd always think I would read just one more chapter...and keep thinking that until I finished the book hours later. I look forward to reading Henderson's other true-crime books.

Richard Carson's book about the death of a 17-year-old girl from Michigan's Thumb area in 1974 is in my "to-read" pile. This case remained unsolved until a rookie detective began investigating it with the assistance of a psychic in 1982. I'm looking forward to reading about the crime, the subsequent trial, and the trial's aftermath.

Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Bryan Gruley gave me the ultimate trifecta of reasons to read his first mystery novel when I saw that he set it in northern Michigan with a protagonist who played hockey and wrote for a weekly newspaper. I buzzed through Gruley's first book about Gus Carpenter and the northern Michigan town of Starvation Lake, both of which have seen better days, and immediately bought and read the next book in the series. There is a nice Q&A with Gruley at the Traverse City National Writers Series site (you can get to it by clicking on the story link in the "Meet the Writer" column or find it by entering "Bryan Gruley" in the site's search box).

And, of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention my friend Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli's Emily Kincaid Mysteries, where struggling writer, journalist and amateur sleuth Emily Kincaid teams up with her friend and small-town deputy, Dolly Wakowski, to solve mysterious cases in a small northern Michigan town.

Be sure to check out my Q&A with Elizabeth for some insight into her three published Emily Kincaid books and a sneak peek at Elizabeth's next mystery series.

Meanwhile, I'm anxiously awaiting the release of Elizabeth's fourth Emily Kincaid mystery, Dead Dogs and Englishmen, due out in July, 2011. Readers can meet Elizabeth in person on July 22 at a book launch and signing at Brilliant Books in Sutton's Bay, Michigan.

I also posted some more great Midwest reads late last year at Midwest books make for good reads and great gifts.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved