Collections Magazine, Spring 2020

SPRING 2020

COL L E C T ION S A P U B L I CAT I O N O F T H E B E N T L EY H I STO R I CA L L I B RA RY

SPRING 2020

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contents [features]

No Resignation

Elizabeth Crosby was a brilliant neuroanatomist and the first woman to become a full professor at the University of Michigan Medical School.

She also tried to resign her position numerous times. Her papers show how she may have unwittingly adopted survival techniques in the face of gender discrimination.

10 Milliken in the Middle

Michigan’s longest-serving governor, Republican Bill Milliken, and Detroit Democratic Mayor Coleman Young were unlikely allies, but their friendship typified the way Milliken was willing to reach across the aisle to get work done. Milliken’s collection reveals how one successful politician understood the art of the middle.

16 Eat Your Words

Zingerman’s success—growing from a fledgling deli into a successful chain of businesses—is as much about the food as it is the words about the food. We dive into the newly acquired Zingerman’s collection to explore co-founder Ari Weinzweig’s evolution from food nerd to prolific writer.

[departments] DIRECTOR’S NOTES

PROFILES

1 The Pond Brothers and

29 Making Waves

Democratic Architecture

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2 Select Bentley Bites IN THE STACKS

24 All Aboard!

26 “Our Handsomest Girls are Men”

27 Diary of a Prisoner 28 Food at U-M: Then and Now

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30 “Facts” from the Stacks:

A Closer Look 32 Out with the Mold, in with the New

An artist paints imagery for Artrain, a mobile art museum, in this undated photo. Artrain was supported by Michigan First Lady Helen Milliken, an unlikely champion of the arts and women’s rights.

Read more about Helen on page 15.

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The Pond Brothers and Democratic Architecture THE OPENING OF THE BEAUTIFULLY RENOVATED MICHIGAN UNION

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in January of this year brings to mind the remarkable lives of its original architects, Irving K. and Allen B. Pond. They were principals in the important Chicago architectural firm Pond & Pond, and they designed the Michigan Union, the Michigan League, and the Student Publications Building.

The story of the Pond brothers is a remarkably Michigan one.

The Bentley is pleased to hold the Pond Family papers and to have prepared an exhibit on the architecture of the Union and League and the lives of these two men that can be viewed here: myumi.ch/nbekZ Irving and Allen were both born in Ann Arbor in 1857 and 1858, respectively. Their father, Elihu Pond, was the owner of the Ann Arbor Argus and a committed abolitionist. Their mother, Mary, had met their father while both were students at Albion College. The boys grew up in houses on Fifth Avenue and at State and Huron, and their last family home was actually on the lot that later became the Michigan Union itself. They both graduated from the University, Irving in Civil Engineering in 1879, Allen with a Bachelor of Arts in 1880. Irving, the athletic one, scored the first touchdown in

University football history.

A University of Michigan connection Terrence J. McDonald helped Irving land his first architecDirector, Bentley tural job in Chicago in 1879. Allen joined Historical Library him, and they struck out on their own as Pond and Pond, Architects in 1886. They (Bottom) Irving Pond were also unmarried roommates, living (right) and Allen B. Pond together until Allen’s death in 1929. (left) in their office in an The brothers plunged into the intelundated photo. lectual and civic life of Chicago and became committed social reformers.

Allen was one of the first Chicago allies of the famous social reformer Jane Addams, who founded Hull House, one of the first “settlement houses” in America, in 1889. Settlement houses were designed to bridge the yawning gaps between Americans in those “Gilded Age” days based on class and ethnicity. Their goal was to welcome, host, and help anyone who came to their front door.

The Ponds volunteered to be the architects for the original Hull House and designed every building at the rapidly expanding settlement thereafter. On the strength of that, they became the architects for other famous settlement houses in the city, including Chicago Commons and the Northwestern University Settlement House, both of which opened in 1901.

What they learned through these designs was what Allen would call a “democratic architecture,” that would preserve old forms, meet new needs, but, most importantly, serve the public good by being welcoming gathering places. It was this attitude that led to their commissions for the Union and League in Ann Arbor and, later, to work designing the student unions at Purdue, Michigan State, and the University of Kansas.

The problem at U-M was that the Michigan Union and Michigan League were single-sex organizations before they were buildings, and so these democratic architects were put to work designing sex-segregated buildings that actually defied their own principles.

In particular, women alive today remember the humiliation of being unable to enter the front door of the Union.

The renovated Union today is open to all, full of the history of the University of Michigan, and thronged with students of all genders and all backgrounds, day and night.

Ironically, the Union better fulfills the hopes of these remarkable men today than it did when they designed it.

Terrence J. McDonald

Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Professor of History, and Director

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abridg 3,011 Total number of first-time visitors to the reading room last fiscal year.

43 HAWAII

And the Oscar goes to . . .

When the Academy Awards aired this past February, Ford v. Ferrari was in the running for Best Picture.

The character of Leo Beebe in the movie was actually a real person—a Ford executive who played baseball for U-M and was also captain of the 1939 men’s basketball team.

(Ford v. Ferrari lost Best Picture to Parasite.)

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Number of contributors to the new book Teaching Undergraduates with Archives, written by participants in a three-day, Bentley-hosted symposium of the same name, which focused on teaching undergraduates with primary sources. The chapters describe collaborations between faculty, archivists, librarians, and students.

The book was edited by Bentley Associate Director Nancy Bartlett along with archivists Cinda Nofziger and Elizabeth Gadelha.

Digital downloads have been made available for free at: myumi.ch/VPklR

The word that sixth-grader Justine Pearsall spelled correctly to win the inaugural “Spelldown,” sponsored by the Detroit News in 1922.

The prize was a giant dictionary.

A PREVIOUS PANDEMIC All U-M faculty and students were ordered to wear face masks in the fall of 1918 during a global influenza outbreak post-World War I. U-M student Alfred Wilkinson Wilson kept his in a scrapbook now housed at the Bentley, along with the mask’s directions for use. ⁣ Influenza and pneumonia killed more than 15,000 people in Michigan between October 1918 and April 1919, with the highest death rate among people in their 20s.

ged Cimbalom Hackbrett Yang Chin Kanun

26,500 Number of women registered to vote in Michigan through the Americanization Society after the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed. “One of the main features of this campaign was a window emblem, which was given to the women as they registered at the office of the city clerk,” reads a 1922 Michigan History Magazine article

by Frank Dykema. The Bentley’s copy of this window emblem is in the public domain and can be downloaded for free at: myumi.ch/65eDm ANN ARBOR DETROIT TRAVERSE CITY ONAWAY LITCHFIELD SAGINAW BEAVER ISLAND PETERSBURG Michigan locations visited in this issue.

Santouri

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Alternative names given for a dulcimer, according to a 1981 concert flyer for the Original Dulcimer Players’ Club. Admission to their three-day May event was $6 and promised displays, jam-sessions, and workshops. The Bentley has the records for the Original Dulcimer Players’ Club from its founding in 1963 to 2012.

58 FEET, 0.375 INCHES World-record-breaking distance for the shot put set by U-M track and field athlete Charles Fonville in 1948. The U-M Athletic Department collection contains numerous photos of Fonville, who was inducted into the University of Michigan Athletic Hall of Honor in 1979.

A LITTLE RESEARCH When the U-M Wolverines played Michigan State this past November, Ben Sears came to town with his dad to watch the game and to do research on Michigan football. In the Bentley’s Reading Room, Ben looked at a 1904–1908 photo album as well as the file of Tony Brady, the legendary quarterback and U-M grad. He also tried on a 1940s leather helmet.

Undated sign from the Michigan Theater, from the Gerald H. Hoag collection. @FORDSCHOOL: We were proud to celebrate former U.S. @RepSandyLevin’s lifetime of public service with @umichBentley last month.

Levin donated over 700 boxes of documents to U-M’s Bentley Historical Library.

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RENOWNED NEUROANATOMIST ELIZABETH CROSBY WAS A BRILLIANT RESEARCHER AND A DEDICATED TEACHER WHOSE STUDENTS ADORED HER. SHE SPOKE OF HER MANY YEARS AT U-M WITH FONDNESS. SO WHAT HAPPENED TO MAKE HER ATTEMPT TO RESIGN NUMEROUS TIMES OVER THE COURSE OF HER CAREER? LETTERS IN HER COLLECTION MAY PROVIDE ANSWERS.

BY LARA ZIELIN

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ON OCTOBER 15, 1937, THE CHAIR OF U-M’S DEPARTMENT OF ANATOMY, BRADLEY PATTEN, RECEIVED A LETTER OF RESIGNATION THAT SPURRED HIM INTO ACTION. It was from professor Elizabeth Crosby, a star in the field of neuroanatomy, and she was leaving U-M. Patten immediately wrote to the dean of the Medical School, Albert Carl Furstenberg.

“I do not know what is behind Doctor Crosby’s letter of resignation. Whatever it is, I hope you will join me in trying to persuade her to change her mind. We don’t want to lose her.”

Furstenberg quickly wrote to Crosby, reminding her that she had the “profound admiration and respect of the President of the university, myself, the Director of your Department, and every member of the Medical Faculty, as well as the student body.” He offered his most “sympathetic help” to understand her problem, and asked if she might pay him a visit “at her earliest convenience.”

There’s no record of Crosby writing back, or visiting

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Elizabeth Crosby was born in 1888 in Petersburg, a small farming community in southeastern Michigan.

She was so frail at birth that she almost died, and so sickly that her parents would sometimes “put her in the oven for short spells to bring the color back into her cheeks.”

Crosby’s mind, however, flourished. After graduating from Adrian College in 1910, Crosby attended the University of Chicago, where she was determined to take classes from C. Judson Herrick, a respected neuroanatomist. This, in spite of the fact that she’d only ever taken basic biology and elementary zoology.

Herrick was reluctant to let her in, but after she insisted, he finally acquiesced. Within a few weeks, Herrick wrote, “she was doing as well as the medical students.”

Through Herrick, she was introduced to neuroanatomy, the subject that would become her lifelong passion.

Crosby earned her Ph.D. in neuroanatomy in 1915, producing a groundbreaking thesis titled “The Forebrain of Alligator mississippiensis,” in which she meticulously dissected the brain of an alligator and drew what she saw. The work remains important today.

After graduation, Crosby returned to Michigan to

(OPENING SPREAD) ELIZABETH CROSBY COLLECTION, BOX 6; (THIS PAGE, LEFT TO RIGHT) HS2494, HS2488

him, but whatever Furstenberg said to her in subsequent meetings must have worked. The storm passed, and Crosby stayed.

For the time being.

This wasn’t Crosby’s first time resigning—and it wouldn’t be her last. All told, over the course of her brilliant career at U-M, she would attempt to resign at least four times. And each time, her department chair and the dean of the Medical School would try to change her mind.

It’s an odd pattern for a researcher and professor who was so highly regarded, and who said of U-M, “I only feel gratitude for my time at U-M. I tried hard and I never asked for a raise or promotion but I always got one. I just had a good time.”

What could have caused so many rifts? Letters and records at the Bentley reveal clues about what could have been going on behind the scenes, and how Crosby may have been struggling as a woman in a male-dominated field.

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care for her aging parents. After her mother died in 1918, she and her father moved to Ann Arbor, where Crosby became a junior instructor at the University of Michigan under Carl Huber, a professor of anatomy.

Huber and Crosby became close and effective collaborators. “Their minds and hands almost automatically worked to the same ends,” wrote Russell T. Woodburne, a U-M professor of anatomy, in a short biographical sketch of Crosby. “She has stated that most of her research was inspired by Doctor Huber and that he was the source of much valuable training. He, in turn, regarded her as one of the outstanding research investigators in comparative neurology as well as a superb teacher.”

Together, Crosby and Huber produced the 1,800page work The Comparative Anatomy of the Nervous System of Vertebrates, Including Man. It was comprehensive, accurate, and so detailed that its authority was accepted almost immediately.

Tragically, before it could be published, Huber died in the fall of 1934. “No one will ever be able to assess the shock and sense of loss which this event caused Doctor Crosby,” wrote Woodburne.

It also left Crosby’s role in the department in limbo.

By the spring of 1935, her resignation letters had begun.

“A SOURCE OF EMBAR RASSM ENT ” Crosby wrote her first resignation letter to Dean Furstenberg on February 21, 1935. She began by citing her gratitude for her promotions from junior instructor to associate professor, and said that she “always had adequate compensation and have been given every opportunity to do the work that I wished to do.”

The problem, however, was with her gender.

“It would seem that a woman in my position, as second ranking member in the Anatomy Department, might, under all the circumstances, prove a source of embarrassment to you as Dean and to the Executive Faculty of the Medical School. This has been apparent to me since Dr. Huber’s death . . . .”

Until then, Crosby’s role as a brilliant researcher and teacher was both protected and validated by her close collaboration with Huber, who was the head of the Anatomy Department and dean of the Graduate School. The pair had a great vision for brain research at Michigan, but with Huber gone, she perceived her position as precarious.

“It is quite probable that the University may feel that they should bring in someone from outside to carry out this program,” Crosby wrote to Furstenberg.

“In that event, it does not seem to me that there is any place left for me.”

She proposed to Furstenberg that she be demoted and returned to a quizmaster and laboratory assistant until she could find a different position at another university—unless Furstenberg could find any “middle course” in the situation.

As Furstenberg considered the circumstances— and presumably worked to find Huber’s replacement— friends counseled Crosby to stay put and not do anything rash.

“It would be a great loss to neurology in America if you were to give up your place at Michigan,” wrote Stephen Walter Ranson, a colleague working at Northwestern Medical School, on March 19, 1935. “You will make no mistake in staying at Michigan for a year or two more until you know just how things are working out there.”

Cooler heads prevailed, and Crosby stayed put. A year later, her fortunes would change again, at least on paper.

PATTEN’S FOLLY In early 1936, Bradley Patten became the new chair of the Department of Anatomy, replacing Huber. He had degrees from Harvard and Dartmouth, and would serve at Michigan until his retirement on September 1, 1959.

Patten’s action on Crosby was swift. By April 1936, he’d written to Furstenberg recommending Crosby for the position of full professor in the Medical School.

“Dr. Crosby is one of those unassuming persons

(Opening spread) Elizabeth Crosby, front row left, the lone female among peers including Gerhardt Von Bonin (back row, second from left), Davenport Hooker (front row center) and Olof Larsell (front row right).

(Opposite page, left) Elizabeth Crosby seated near a microscope in 1928.

(Opposite page, right) Elizabeth Crosby in 1908.

(This page) The Crosby family home in Petersburg, Michigan, circa 1915.

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In the course of his research, Schneider received a letter from Dr. John Bean, a Medical School graduate who had joined the faculty in 1944, eventually becoming chair of the Department of Physiology.

He told Schneider that Crosby and Patten’s relationship was strained. “I gather that Patten was a bit envious of Crosby’s reputation and tried to introduce features into Crosby’s courses which were not to her liking.”

Such as the time when Patten forced Crosby to build and use an enormous life-size model of the entire human nervous system for her classes, with wires for nerves.

The Anatomy Department called it “Patten’s folly.”

Patten also dismantled a special research library Crosby had developed with Huber, according to Bean.

Patten even insisted Crosby retire before him so that “any honors which might be due [Patten] would not be dismantled by her greater reputation.”

Crosby herself confirms that Patten had set a retirement date that she was certain wasn’t right. “I was quite sure . . . that the time set was not correct, but I thought that Dr. Patten wished me to retire a year before he did,” she wrote in a 1956 letter.

Ultimately, Crosby’s retirement date was corrected by faculty in the department. She and Patten both retired in 1959.

“Despite her statements . . . that she never was discriminated against, it seems to me that this was [a] real cover up, for she had a major degree of discrimination in actuality,” wrote Schneider.

Others concur. When The Comparative Anatomy of the Nervous System of Vertebrates, Including Man was published, Crosby insisted on her name being third in the list of contributors, even though she wrote most of the book.

“Crosby’s willingness to share the public limelight with her colleagues may have been an unwitting discovery of a survival technique for a woman in science,” writes Leslie Lin a 1983 article in the University

“CROSBY’S WILLING-

NESS TO SHARE THE PUBLIC LIMELIGHT WITH HER COL-

LEAGUES MAY HAVE BEEN AN UNWIT-

TING DISCOVERY OF A SURVIVAL TECH-

NIQUE FOR A WOMAN

Elizabeth Crosby lecturing in this undated photo. By the time she died, Crosby had taught more than 8,500 students.

whose brilliant work has been done so quietly that one finds her almost better known abroad than within her own University. I feel strongly that...the stimulus and confidence given to her by such recognition at this time will make for a stronger and better-rounded development of the work of the Department in the coming years.”

Crosby accepted, becoming the first woman to hold a full professorship in the Medical School.

But her October 1937 resignation letter (cited at the start of this story) wasn’t far off.

Crosby’s would-be biographer, Richard Schneider, may have uncovered clues that her working conditions at the time were far from ideal.

Schneider was an internationally respected neurosurgeon who practiced and taught at U-M beginning in 1950. He collaborated with Crosby in his work, and was also close with her personally. When she died in 1983, he was designated as the representative of her estate.

Soon after Crosby died, he began a biography of her, reaching out to colleagues and friends who knew her best in order to shed light not just on her scientific contributions, but her personal life and the “tremendous odds that she had to overcome in order to continue to do her work.”

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of Michigan Research News, produced in conjunction with six Medical School faculty. “Her apparent disinterest in recognition undoubtedly helped her excel while minimizing antagonism or defensive reactions from male peers.”

U-M Professor Muriel Ross, a student of Crosby, recalls hearing Crosby say that Huber approved of Crosby’s name on co-authored papers, but didn’t think it “quite proper” for her to speak publicly.

Before her death, she was honored by every major professional organization in her field. In 1980, she received the National Medal of Science from President Jimmy Carter.

Crosby died in 1983 and is buried in her hometown of Petersburg, Michigan.

Sources for this story include:

The Elizabeth Crosby Papers. Lin, Leslie: The Research News, University of Michigan, August-September 1933. Whitehouse, Bradley: “The Quiet Genius,” Adrian College Contact, Winter 2005.

(Clockwise from left) Bradley M. Patten (far left), Robert D. Lockhart (middle), and Elizabeth Crosby investigate an unidentified scientific sample circa 1950.

Crosby gives a neuroanatomy lecture in this undated photo.

(CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT) HS11594, HS6092, ELIZABETH CROSBY COLLECTION, BOX 6

Crosby receives the National Medal of Science from President Jimmy Carter in 1980.

P E RSEV E RI N G Crosby acknowledged that women in her field had experienced discrimination, but never counted herself among them. “I’ve had as much opportunity as a man,” she insisted.

Crosby’s attitude, writes Lin in the Research News, “seems typical of her generation’s female scientists.

They asked for so little that any recognition they did achieve was regarded as a ‘bonus’ rather than their due.”

Still, after her 1937 resignation attempt, Crosby would almost leave twice more—considering offers from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and Marquette University in Wisconsin.

U-M won out in the end, and Crosby worked for the University for decades, even after her retirement in 1959.

Ten women wrote their doctoral dissertations under Crosby. She taught more than 8,500 students, and she persevered in spite of osteoporosis, partial deafness, and other physical limitations.

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MILLIKEN Michigan’s longest-serving governor was a Republican renowned for reaching across the aisle to Democratic colleagues, and for making Michigan’s environmental health a priority. His collection at the Bentley reveals a breed of politician that’s nearly extinct.

in the

MIDDLE

By Robert Havey

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“He had a unique ability to bring people from both sides of the aisle together for the betterment of Michigan,” said Governor Gretchen Whitmer about her predecessor. Milliken was a “true statesman who led our state with integrity and honor.”

These sentiments were echoed by people across the political spectrum. A lifelong member of the Republican Party, Milliken had a reputation for being willing to work with Democratic colleagues and even earned the respect of defeated opponents. Sander Levin, who lost the 1970 and 1974 gubernatorial elections against Milliken, said that he “retained respect for [Milliken] after the campaigns, and the years since have vindicated that.”

Milliken’s 14-year term as governor is the longest in Michigan history. Term limits were added to the state constitution in 1992, making this record unlikely to be broken. However, as his archived collection at the Bentley shows, all was not perfect in Michigan during Milliken’s reign. Violence and unrest in Detroit, cascading environmental disasters, and oil shortages made Michigan a tumultuous place to build a political legacy.

T R AV E R S E C I T Y A N D BACK AGAIN Milliken’s name was already famous in Traverse City when he was born on March 26, 1922. His grandfather founded the city’s largest department store, J.W. Milliken, Inc. Both his father and grandfather served as state senators. His mother was the first woman elected to public office in Traverse City when she joined the school board.

Following in his father’s footsteps, Milliken enrolled at Yale with the expectation he would return to take over the family business. The attack on Pearl Harbor and the outbreak of World War II during Milliken’s sophomore year put an end to his neat plan. Milliken enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces in February 1943, and in short order was shipped off to fight in Italy.

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During his 50 combat flights as a B-52 waist gunner, Milliken experienced two crash landings and was wounded when flak from an anti-aircraft round hit him in the torso. His service earned him many accolades, including an Air Medal and Purple Heart.

After the war, Milliken finished at Yale and married the love of his life, Helen Wallbank, whom he had met at a party before leaving for Europe. They had plans to move to Ann Arbor after Milliken was accepted to the University of Michigan Business School, but news came from Traverse City that his father was seriously ill.

Milliken returned home and became the third generation to run the family store. It was the path laid out for him, but Milliken yearned for a career in public service. “It wasn’t my dream, but I felt an obligation to help my father,” he recounted in a 2003 interview with his biographer.

T H E ROA D T O T H E G O V E R N O R’ S M A N S I O N Milliken started his career in electoral politics in 1960 by winning the Michigan State Senate seat previously held by both his father and grandfather. In 1964, over mild reluctance from the incumbent Governor George Romney, Milliken was chosen by Michigan’s GOP to be their candidate for lieutenant governor. The election was a landslide victory for Lyndon Johnson and Democratic candidates for the State House and Senate, but Michigan picked the Republicans Romney and Milliken for the top state offices.

The relationship between Romney and Milliken was cordial but never warm. They worked in very different ways: Romney was instinctual and decisive, whereas Milliken liked to find consensus. “Frankly, except as required by law and circumstance, there was no personal relationship between those two governors,” said a former Milliken aide.

The two men’s iciness became less of a problem as Romeny’s attention turned to national politics. As a popular governor in an important Midwest state, Romney was considered a leading Republican candidate to challenge President Lyndon Johnson in the 1968 election. Romney delegated more and more of the business of running Michigan to Milliken.

Then, on July 23, 1967, a Detroit police raid of an unlicensed bar escalated into a week of rebellion and violence. By July 27, 43 people had been killed and more than 7,000 arrested. The civil unrest would be a defining moment in Detroit’s history. Romney’s hesitation to call in National Guard troops to quell the

(TOP TO BOTTOM) UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN DEPARTMENT OF JOURNALISM; ROBERT KALMBACH, BL018892

FLAGS IN MICHIGAN WERE FLOWN AT HALF-STAFF FOR 14 DAYS AFTER WILLIAM G. MILLIKEN DIED ON OCTOBER 18, 2019, A DAY OF MOURNING FOR EACH YEAR MILLIKEN SERVED AS MICHIGAN’S GOVERNOR (1969–1983).

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(Top) A cartoon from the September 1976 Michigan Journalist titled “No Deposit …

No Return” references Governor Milliken’s environmentally friendly Bottle Bill, which instituted a $0.10 deposit on recyclable containers.

(Bottom) Bottles litter Michigan Stadium in 1969.

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UN-PURE MICHIGAN Growing up in northern Lower Michigan sparked a life-long love of nature in Milliken, but also exposed him to the costs of unchecked industry. Zealous logging in the 1800s denuded many of Michigan’s oldgrowth forests—damage that was obvious even more than a century later.

On January 22, 1970, Milliken issued a 20-point environmental policy plan. “Unless we move without delay to halt the degradation of our land, our water, and our air, our own children may see the last traces of Earth’s beauty crushed beneath the weight of man’s waste and ruin.”

The Milliken administration was the first state government to ban most uses of DDT, which had been found in alarming levels in Michigan salmon. In 1970, Milliken signed into law the Michigan Environmental Protection Act, which enabled citizens to sue polluters.

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Milliken’s was the first signature on the “Bottle Bill” petition, which instituted a 10-cent deposit on recyclable containers. The bill was enacted in 1976 and became the model for similar bills in other states.

Not every environmental problem had a happy ending. In 1973, the Michigan Chemical Company out of St. Louis accidently shipped bags of the fire retardant PBB (polybrominated biphenyl) to the Farm Bureau Service, where they were mixed with feed and sent to farms across the state.

The result was disastrous. PBB is toxic and a carcinogen. After the contamination was discovered, 23,000 cattle and 1.5 million chickens from 500 Michigan farms had to be destroyed. But people had been eating contaminated food for months, not realizing it, even as farmers sounded the alarm. Today, PBB levels in people from Michigan are still elevated and are linked to increased risk of breast and digestive cancers.

Blame fell on the government for the tragedy, in no small part because of a perceived lack of urgency after farmers raised concerns. Later, Milliken expressed regret about his failure of communication about the disaster: “I wish I had more effectively carried the story to the public as an educational issue. I didn’t adequately explain what had happened.”

(Left) Governor Milliken and Detroit Mayor Coleman Young at the NAACP Fight for Freedom Fund dinner in April 1981.

(Right) Governor Milliken, far right, meets with President Ford, far left, in the Oval Office in 1976.

(LEFT TO RIGHT) HS19510, MARY SCHROEDER/DETROIT FREE PRESS/ USA TODAY NETWORK VIA IMAGN CONTENT SERVICES, LLC

situation drew much criticism, not least of which came from his potential presidential rival Johnson.

In a 2003 interview, Milliken said that at the time he saw the violence as a failure of politicians to address underlying problems. “What came out of the riots was an opportunity to consider what caused them in the first place. The plight of the Black population [in Detroit] was finally seen as something to get damned serious about.”

Romney lost the Republican presidential primary to Richard Nixon, but was picked by Nixon to be secretary of housing and urban development. Milliken was now, at last, governor.

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AC RO S S T H E DIVIDE Milliken worked to mend the divide between Michigan’s government and Detroit. Tensions were still high in the aftermath of the rebellion in 1967. But Milliken found support in the most unlikely form: Coleman Young, the brusque Democratic mayor of Detroit.

Despite their differences, Milliken and Young found common ground in their dedication to public service.

Young had also served in WWII, as a member of the Tuskegee Airmen. Each believed that good-faith efforts by the government could make people’s lives better.

Milliken and Young’s biggest joint project was the Detroit “equity package,” a plan to give state funding to institutions in Detroit that benefited all of Michigan. The Detroit Institute of Arts, Public Library, and Zoo all received state funding for the first time.

“As I look back on Coleman Young and that relationship, I consider that to be one of the most meaningful and important friendships and alliances I had in my entire 14 years as governor,” said Milliken in 2004. “We were able to work together constructively to solve critical problems, and I think that’s what the state needed.”

RINGING ENDORSEMENTS

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In 1981, Michigan’s economy was in shambles. Unemployment had risen to 12.5 percent. James Blanchard, a Democrat and Milliken’s gubernatorial successor, often pointed out that Michigan had more unemployed workers than other states had people. Milliken announced on December 22, 1981, that he would not seek a fifth term.

Even in retirement, Milliken continued to talk to reporters about the issues of the day. He increasingly found himself at odds with the Republican Party and partisan politics in general.

Milliken made headlines for endorsing the presidential bids of Democrats John Kerry and Hillary Clinton and the gubernatorial campaign of Jennifer Granholm.

A public memorial service for Milliken is being planned for May 2020. Friends, (Above right) Helen family, and admirers of every sort are Milliken reviews a expected to attend. prototype for ArThe William G. Milliken papers are open to the public.

Sources for this story include:

The William G. Milliken papers. The Helen W. Milliken papers. The George Romney papers. Dempsey, Dave: William G. Milliken: Michigan’s Passionate Moderate (Petoskey Co-Pub, 2008).

train, a mobile art museum that traveled throughout Michigan for more than 30 years.

THE EVOLUTION OF HELEN MILLIKEN In a 2003 interview, Helen Milliken said that her awakening to the issues of women’s inequality was her “second great education.”

Helen was raised in a traditionally conservative household in Colorado. She left to attend Smith College, where she graduated in 1945. That same year, she married William Milliken when he came back from WWII, a partnership that lasted until her death in 2012.

In that time, she went from being the supportive wife of an upand-coming GOP star to a political force in her own right.

When the Millikens first moved to Lansing after William became Lieutenant Governor, Helen became a champion for the arts, supporting the Michigan Council for the Arts and Michigan Artrain, a mobile art museum that traversed the state on rails. (The rail museum was retired in 2008, but Artrain Inc., headquartered in Ann Arbor, still exists today.)

During Milliken’s second term, Helen expanded her interests, taking on the more politically charged issues of environmental protection and women’s rights. She organized garden clubs across the state to support the Bottle Bill petition. She spoke out against oil drilling in the Pigeon River area: “It seems to me this public land should remain unspoiled, a part of the heritage of all the people of Michigan.”

Helen became co-chair of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) committee in 1979. When Gov. Milliken brought the Republican National Convention to Detroit in 1980, Helen was not at her assigned place alongside him at the opening ceremonies; she was outside of Joe Louis Arena, protesting the GOP’s decision to remove its support of the ERA from the party platform.

In a 2006 interview with the Associated Press, Helen expressed concern that young women were shying away from feminism. “They don’t know their history,” she said. “Young women take so much for granted now.”

The Helen W. Milliken papers are open to the public.

BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU 15

Writer James Tobin goes deep into the newly arrived Zingerman’s collection to understand the story of one of Ann Arbor’s most iconic businesses—as in the literal story. Co-founder Ari Weinzweig’s on-paper voice helped a fledgling eatery define a new way to go to market and, eventually, build an empire of businesses that walked the talk.

By James Tobin

Greenberg’s

Delicatessen was getting ready to open in an old brick storefront in Ann Arbor in March 1982. Between stocking shelves and hiring staff (all two of them), the young owners bought a green neon sign and hung it in the window.

We wanted a name that would convey the sense of a good local deli, something that would “sound Jewish,” would somehow telegraph that this was a real delicatessen.

The words in italics are Ari Weinzweig’s. He and his partner, Paul Saginaw, are Jewish, but they thought neither of their own names would work, since “Weinzweig is unpronounceable,” as Ari says, and Saginaw, an anglicized version of “Sagin Or,” Hebrew for “seer of light,” wouldn't work in Michigan, where “nobody hears Saginaw and thinks ‘corned beef sandwich.’”

So they picked the name of a little old lady Paul knew.

And then about ten days before we were due to open, the phone rang.

I answered politely, “Good afternoon. Greenberg’s.

May I help you?”

A pushy-sounding guy on the other end demanded, “Let me talk to Mr. Greenberg.”

“There is no Mr. Greenberg,” I answered honestly.

Not put off in the least, he went on: “Well, where’d ya get the name, then?”

“Do you like it?” I asked innocently.

“Yeah, I like it,” he shot back. “It’s mine, and you can’t use it.”

Mr. Greenberg had just registered the name “Greenberg’s Delicatessen” in Lansing.

He was planning to open in the Detroit suburbs; we were adamant about staying in Ann Arbor. But he was convinced that he was on his way to national fame and franchising.

So the partners made up a new name that would be easy to find in the Yellow Pages.

It sounded Jewish. And, as everyone now says with a chuckle, it has “zing.”

The joke was on Mr. Greenberg, since of course it was Zingerman’s, not Greenberg’s, that rose to

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national fame, and not through franchising. In fact, just the opposite.

The Myth Ari Weinzweig remembered the anecdote about Mr. Greenberg, wrote it down, and eventually published it more than 20 years later in his first book, Zingerman’s Guide to Good Eating (Rux Martin/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003).

When I browsed through the 18 boxes of the Zingerman’s collection at the Bentley, it dawned on me that some unquantifiable part of the business’s amazing success is, indeed, a story, written in hundreds of thousands of words by Ari Weinzweig himself.

Because it turns out that he is not only a guru of good food and an eccentric entrepreneurial genius, but also a first-class writer of prodigious energy and output.

The Bentley collection documents the company’s growth as a dollars-and-cents enterprise, from the little corner-store deli of 1982 to a constellation of food-related businesses with hundreds of employees and millions of dollars in revenue.

But in box after box of papers, what stands out is Ari’s voice as a writer. It’s in the prose of old newsletters on newsprint, mission statements, training manuals and records from the writing of his seven books and a pile of pamphlets and hand-made chapbooks.

In these writings, he has spun what anthropologists might call a myth—not as in a fable, but as in a meaning-rich symbol and ideal.

Here’s my try at defining the Zingerman’s myth: It says that in a country swamped with corporate retail chains selling semi-good-to-mediocre stuff under fake-sincere claims about “quality,” “natural” products, and how much they care about “the communities we serve,” there can still be a strong, profitable business that employs hundreds of people (with benefits); that really is local; that really does sell quality goods; that does more than pay lip service to

(OPENING SPREAD) ZINGERMAN’S COMMUNITY OF BUSINESSES RECORDS, BOX 17; (THIS PAGE, LEFT TO RIGHT) HS19512, HS119513

The Man Ari is from Chicago. (From here on out, I’m going to drop his last name. Even the newest counter help at Zingerman’s calls him Ari.) He grew up with no interest in food. As a student at the University of Michigan (he graduated in ’78; Paul in ’76), he got deeply interested in 19th-century anarchism—not the bomb-throwers but the philosophers who argued for a humane reordering of industrial society.

In the anarchist vision, the individual was to be prized. Communities would come together by mutual consent and thrive on the instinct of mutual aid. The enemies of the individual’s autonomy and well-being—states, class hierarchies, private property, and religion—would go away.

But ideology was less important than a person’s actual behavior, according to Emma Goldman, the Russian-emigre anarchist who appealed most to Ari. She wrote: “I don’t care if a man’s theory for tomorrow is correct. I care if his spirit of today is correct.”

He read the German anarchist Gustav Landauer, who, Ari says, “looked for ways to build up positive community and support the individuals within it. His solution wasn’t to fight the state, but to ignore it, and to create caring, free communities in its place.”

These ideas lodged in Ari’s mind.

He took a job washing dishes at Maude’s restaurant, where he and Saginaw, now the general manager of Zingerman’s, became friends. It’s here he became interested in food. As he worked his way up to line cook, he and Saginaw talked about starting a food business. Thus: Greenberg’s/Zingerman’s Deli.

A delicious selection of smoked and cured meats, sausages, cheeses, smoked fish, prepared foods, baked goods, fresh dairy products & dry goods from around the world. (From the cover of the original 1982 menu.)

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The Method Ari wasn’t happy with the business’s early newsletter copy, so he took over and started writing it himself. In 1991, he and Saginaw added the Zingerman’s Coffee Company next door, then the Bake House, Mail Order, and a catering arm. They also started Food Gatherers, a not-for-profit that went to restaurants and grocery stores for food that would have been thrown out and took it to meal programs for people in need. (This wasn’t just a few food baskets. By 2018, Food Gatherers would be distributing enough for five million meals all over Wash– tenaw County.)

“I never took writing classes,” he says. “I mean, I didn’t intend to write.” He just wrote—newsletter copy, sandwich-menu copy, catalog copy, whatever. “I would agonize over every word and rip up paper and get mad,” he says.

Then he joined a writing group and read books on writing. He relaxed into what English teachers call “freewriting”: just scribbling the flow of his thinking, then revising.

He’d been studying food in books and on world travels. He wrote about it in a conversational voice inflected by his low-key sense of humor (Opening spread) and his . . . what? Call it hippie-capitalist Customers wait egalitarianism. Weird combination, but outside Zingerit was working, both in the writing and in man’s Deli in Ann the business.

Arbor in this undat-

Who’d have thought you could sell so much sheep’s milk cheese in a small town in the middle of Michigan?

Who’d have thought you could sell so much sheep’s milk cheese in a small town in the middle of Michigan?

The business changed the town and vice versa.

You can't really cut too many corners with your corned beef and pastrami when every tenth customer used to live in Manhattan.

Yet he couldn’t devote concentrated time blocks to writing. “I mean, I had a job,” he says. He got in the habit of pulling out a laptop whenever a few minutes opened up.

Eating better food is part of pursuing a better life . . . We do not market our food

ed photo.

(Previous spread) Archived issues of Zingerman’s News feature plenty of storytelling around food, much of it written by Zingerman’s co-founder Ari Weinzweig.

(Oppostie page) This bread packaging tells customers about how Zingerman’s bread is made, the ingredients used, and how it should taste.

ZINGERMAN’S COMMUNITY OF BUSINESSES RECORDS, BOX 17

helping its town. And the myth has been written and vouched for by one of the guys who started the place— an aging hippie in a black T-shirt who may be a millionaire, but who made the money without lying or screwing people.

Am I right? Don’t a lot of Ann Arborites and Michigan alumni believe that story, even if they mutter about paying $19.50 for a good Reuben? (See “Why Our Sandwich Costs What It Does” on the Zingerman’s Delicatessen website, also written in the Weinzweigian voice, which begins: “One of the unwritten rules of the restaurant business is: Never do anything to bring attention to prices. Unless, of course, they’re really low . . . .”) Isn’t Zingerman’s the first place (after the University) that Ann Arborites mention when they try to explain to outsiders what the city is like?

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ZINGERMAN’S COMMUNITY OF BUSINESSES RECORDS, BOX 13

The story around Zingerman’s food has been as important as the food itself. Wordpacked signs, labels, and print pieces detail not just ingredients, but the company’s mission and values.

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to some so-called “gourmet elite.” . . . Toward this end we will give a taste of any product we sell to a guest who would like to try it. We just want people to have the chance to try food they’ve never had . . . We are confident that the more people get to try it, the more of it they will buy. (From the Zingerman's Employee Handbook.)

Friends began to say: “You know, you should write a book.”

He loved to read. But he was a food guy, a businessman, not a writer.

I know I have a lot of strange stuff in this book.

Mixed metaphors, magical thinking, and people you never heard of— anarchists, folk singers, hobos, obscure business writers, pig farmers.

The Manuscript Then, he decided to try it.

He gathered his writings in a manuscript that was much more ambitious than a glorified ad for the deli. Zingerman’s Guide to Good Eating was nearly 500 pages about artisanal foods from all over the world, with chapters on olives, oils, vinegars, cheeses, grains, meat and fish, chocolate, and seasonings.

Recipes were mixed with essays, advice, and travelogue.

Freshly ground pepper doesn't just make you sneeze—it perfumes the entire room. Pick up a bit and rub it between your thumb and forefinger. You should be able to feel the essential oils as you move it back and forth.

He was advocating for high-quality food but without the snobbery. He was urging people just to pay attention. Everybody. It was the anarchism.

Although I long ago left behind my belief in political anarchism, I’ve remained something of an anarchist in my approach to food. The standard industry perception is that the most flavorful foods should be reserved for an elusive upper-crust gourmet elite. But the way I see it, good food is for everyone. . . .

I couldn’t care less whether or not food is fancy; I just want it to taste good . . . What really gets me going are simple, down-toearth dishes. Stuff with substance, with solid roots, with history and heritage.

For example, when Zingerman’s Roadhouse, a full-service restaurant, opened in 2003, it served mac and really good cheese—with really good bacon mixed in.

The Magic National media took notice. Paul and Ari started Zingtrain, their corporate training arm, with long-time friend and U-M alumna Maggie Bayless (M.B.A. ’84) as the managing partner.

The Zingerman’s Community of Businesses emerged, including the Creamery, Candy Maufactory, Coffee Company, Mail Order, a second restaurant (Miss Kim’s in Kerrytown), catering, and event spaces. Today, there are managing partners in all the businesses, as well as more than 200 Community Share owners, i.e. staff members who own a share in the business.

Inc. Magazine called it “the coolest small company in America.”

But no franchising. Great idea, Mr. Greenberg, but no way. They couldn’t visualize a Zingerman’s in Southfield or Chicago. It was the anarchism again.

Zingerman’s was enmeshed in the Ann Arbor ecosystem. They couldn’t pretend it would be the same somewhere else.

Ari still wrote about food. But in a quarter-century he’d learned a lot about running and growing a business, too. He began an even more ambitious writing project.

He had soured on big-time New York publishing.

He wanted to do books his own way. So he launched Zingerman’s Press, which in 2010 published another big, ambitious book: A Lapsed Anarchist's Approach to Building a Great Business.

Three more books made a mega-series of four on management, including A Lapsed Anarchist’s Guide to . . . Being a Better Leader; Managing Ourselves; and The Power of Beliefs in Business.

That includes Ari’s belief in “managing by pouring water,” which he does several evenings each week at the Roadhouse—the founder-boss-philosopher practicing what he calls both “servant leadership” and “just being in the business where the action is.”

I know I have a lot of strange stuff in this book.

Mixed metaphors, magical thinking, and people you never heard of—anarchists, folk singers, hobos, obscure business writers, pig farmers. But hey, if you got this far in the book, you’re either used to it, or you’re nigh on as odd as I am . . .

In the last few years, I've probably learned as much carrying my water pitcher around the Roadhouse as I have sitting down to read. Word has it Emma Goldman once uttered: “When things are bad, scrub floors.”

The Zingerman’s collection is open to the public.

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I N T H E S TA C K S

All Aboard!

Michigan’s railroad history comes to life as we choo-choo-choose images from an extraordinary collection.

By Lara Zielin

CLAUDE STONER LOVED RAILROADS and spent decades collecting photos of trains and railroad history. He rescued photos whenever he could—once saving hundreds of old pictures from the basement of an electrical contracting company. He even used his historic images to locate former landmarks, including old railroad trestles and bridges.

Stoner’s documentation of each photo and its contents was meticulous, often including the number or name of the train engine, construction number, date of manufacture, dimensions, and a list of owners (when available).

When he died in 1977, Stoner’s daughters donated his collection of more than 3,600 photos to the Bentley. Stoner’s collection also contains correspondence with other railroad photos collectors, providing some additional identifying information and context for the images.

Nearly every aspect of Michigan railroad history comes alive through these photographs.

Sources for this story:

Itzkoff, Donald M. Off the Track: The Decline of the Intercity Passenger Train in the United States (Greenwood Press, 1985). Hill, May Davis. Telltale Photographs: The Stoner Railroad Collection (Michigan Historical Collections, 1981). Michigan Department of Transportation. Michigan’s Railroad History: 1825–1914 (online 2014).

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(Clockwise from top left) Passengers prepare to board a train at the Ann Arbor Railroad station in Elsie, Michigan, in 1910. Trains were the primary mode of transportation during this time, reaching peak travel numbers in 1920.

Huge plows were attached to the front of trains to clear snow from the tracks, as on the Boyne City-Gaylord-Alpena route in February 1922.

In the logging boom of the late 19th and early 20th century, trains made it possible to transport cut trees without relying on rivers. Here, a train brings lumber out of Onaway, Michigan, in 1907.

The Michigan Railroad Club, the first railroad enthusiast group in Michigan, was founded in Detroit. Here, they gather

in Jackson, Michigan, in 1952 to see a locomotive from the Grand Trunk Western Railroad.

A New York Central engine derailed and crashed in front of the Ann Arbor train station on September 16, 1940, killing one person. Rails were reportedly thrown 30 feet from the force of the impact.

The Ann Arbor Street Railway (AASR) runs along South Main Street in this 1893 photo. The AASR also connected to the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti Street Railway, which transported up to 600 passengers each day between the two cities.

Claude Stoner at age six, already drawing trains and displaying his love for all things railroad-related.

(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT) HS2452, HS1360, HS15715, HS3345, HS7918, HS3688, HS17892

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I N T H E S TA C K S

A class at the University of Michigan uses Bentley materials to teach students about U-M’s history of female impersonators.

By Cinda Nofziger

Lionel Ames in a performance of Cotton Stockings circa 1920.

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LIONEL AMES WOULD HAVE BEEN USED TO THE SPOTLIGHT. He was a University of Michigan School of Music student from 1921–24, a member of Beta Phi Delta fraternity, a member of the Mimes of the Michigan Union, and a player in multiple Michigan Union operas.

Ames played the lead female parts in the 1922 and 1923 Mimes productions In and Out and Cotton Stockings (Never Made a Man Look Twice). In a review of Cotton Stockings in 1923, a Toledo reviewer described Ames as “a corking impersonator of the feminine. He has a Kitty Gordon back, a figure that can wear stunning plumage to advantage, an assuring stage presence and can dance with ease and grace.”

In his American Culture class, “Transgender American Histories,” University of Michigan lecturer Scott Larson uses the story and images of Ames and the Michigan Mimes, found in the Michigan Union records at the Bentley, to understand broader themes in U.S. history.

For example, by studying Ames, the content of the Michigan operas, and how the local and national press discussed them, current students can see that anxiety about gender crossing can be connected to anxieties about women’s dress, women’s suffrage, and feminism. Reaction to female impersonators demonstrates concerns about the role of colleges as places where students might engage in low culture (read: popular culture), drinking, and concerns

about the “potential for campuses to be incubators for homosexuality,” Larson says.

In spite of Ames being a standout, female impersonation was not unique to Michigan. A 1924 article from the Washington Post cites Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the University of Michigan as schools famously using men to play women’s parts.

Larson says that this was part of a “larger explosion of vaudeville, flappers, speakeasies, and dance halls.” Ames and the Michigan Union opera fit into a “national interest in gender crossing as comic theater.” It was not transgressive, but part of the dominant culture.

The Mimes even took their shows on the road. Both the Michigan Union opera and the Mimes toured regionally, with Cotton Stockings also playing at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia.

Larson hopes the material related to Ames and the Michigan Union opera will help students realize that gender crossing didn’t just happen in places like New York or San Francisco. The University of Michigan and its students also have a place in that history.

MICHIGAN UNION RECORDS

“Our Handsomest Girls are Men”

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NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Diary of a Prisoner A rare Civil War journal documents a Union soldier’s capture by Confederates and his struggle to survive notorious prisoner of war camps.

By Lara Zielin

JOHN KAY LEFT HIS FAMILY’S FARM to enlist in the 6th Michigan Cavalry in October 1862. A year later, on October 11, 1863, he wrote to his parents to say he had been taken prisoner by Confederates at the Battle of Brandy Station in Virginia.

He then began a diary detailing life as a prisoner. The diary, now preserved at the Bentley, provides a firsthand look into life in the prison camps, as well as Kay’s physical and mental struggle to survive unthinkable conditions.

Kay’s first con(Above) A handfinement was in an colored woodcut old warehouse in depicts Union soldiers at AndersonRichmond, Virginia,

ville prison camp.

named Libby Prison. Its multiple floors were overpacked with prisoners. Almost immediately, Kay started to feel ill and believed bad drinking water from the nearby James River could be making him sick.

Even in his terrible state, he worried more for his family than himself. His twin brother, Thomas, was also serving in the Union Army, as was his oldest brother, Edward. He feared his mother was “sick on my account.”

The son of a Presbyterian preacher, Kay journaled about his faith and dependence on God. “Oh, the cruelty of this despotism that keeps us here, but vengeance belongs to God.”

By January 1864, Kay had been transferred to Georgia. “Alas my poor hopes (for release) are blasted. Early this morning we packed up and marched to Belle Isle—no tent and hardly enough to eat—my diarrhea as bad as ever, so I was quite weak when I got over here.”

Kay eventually managed to secure a tent, but not all of the prisoners were so lucky.

He frequently lamented the “poor men” out in the elements with no protection.

When he was loaded into a boxcar on March 8, 1864, he wondered if it meant his release, but when the train went west, his spirits sank. “Oh, how cruel this disappointment,” he wrote.

Kay arrived in Andersonville Prison outside of Americus, Georgia, barely surviving the arduous journey with no water. Once

there, he had no shelter and wrote that the men were “treated like cattle and sheep.”

“I am afraid this is going to be a bad place in hot weather,” he worried.

He estimated there were 15,000 men in the camp, and no doctors. The rations were minimal and contained no fruits or vegetables, making scurvy rampant. Still, Kay was quick to point out his good fortune. “I am thankful that I am so much better off than hundreds of others in this wretched place.”

In September 1864, Kay was transported to Charleston, South Carolina, then on to the Florence Stockade. The rations waned, and so did the length of his entries. Kay wrote about the weather and food almost exclusively, his penmanship increasingly shakier.

On December 11, Kay was finally transferred to a hospital in Annapolis, Maryland. “He had contended as long as possible against hunger, cold, and every kind of misery in those terrible prisons,” wrote Adeline M. Wallace, a nurse who cared for Kay. She wrote to Kay’s family after his death on December 15.

“He was gentle and patient, thanking me in so pleasant a manner for every little service I rendered him,” she wrote. “Toward night he prayed avidly, calling ‘Mother, Mother’ almost with his dying breath.”

The John B. Kay papers are open to the public.

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I N T H E S TA C K S

Food at U-M: Then and Now

By Lara Zielin

WHEN THE RENOVATED MICHIGAN UNION opened in January 2020, it boasted new restaurants such as Taco Bell and Panera, as well as returning eateries such as Wendy’s and Subway.

Grabbing a quick bite to eat is certainly par for the course for students today, but 100 years ago, students’ meals were different.

Although U-M didn’t keep official food or dining records a century ago, Lisa Young, a Department of Anthropology faculty member, has used Bentley archival materials to determine what students were eating, and why.

First-year students in Young’s course Food at U-M: Then and Now studied Bentley scrapbooks from 1910–1920, using food as a lens to understand U-M history. Sorority, fraternity, and church banquets often had programs with menus, and students frequently saved them in their scrapbooks.

Many banquet menus featured dishes unfamiliar to current students: (Above) Josephine chicken timbales, Lang's student scrapbook features tomato aspic, Waldorf Salad, and a menu from a Pi mulligatawny soup Beta Phi sorority (see sidebar). To banquet. Lang was a student from track down how the 1917–1921. dishes were made,

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WHAT’S IN A NAME the class used the Jan Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive at U-M’s Special Collections Research Center to find recipes.

Young and her students also studied accounting books from local farms, including the Bentley’s records from Allen Farm. Seeing what the farm was selling gave them a sense of how small local farms could have provided much of the banquet food.

Because World War I food conservation efforts likely affected some of the banquets, Young’s students paid particular attention to cookbooks in the Longone collection including Conservation Recipes and War-Time Cook and Health Book. These cookbooks explained how to make dishes like the chicken timbales without ingredients such as eggs and butter.

The banquets were special occasions and often included multiple desserts, which would have been a rare treat for students. The most common desserts were ice cream and cake, both of which were labor intensive to make in kitchens without electricity and freezers. For example, making a cake required sifting flour five times, and without electric mixers, everything would have been beaten by hand.

“Ice cream was certainly special,” Young

Mouth-watering? You decide as you read descriptions of the dishes in this article.

Tomato Aspic (above): Tomato sauce and spices mixed with gelatin and set in a mold, sometimes with olives or eggs.

Chicken Timbales: Finely diced chicken coated with a breadcrumb mixture and baked inside molds.

Waldorf Salad: A mixture of apple, celery, and mayonnaise served over a bed of lettuce. Later recipes added walnuts.

Mulligatawny Soup: Inspired by Indian flavors, it was originally made from meat, fried onions, and curry powder. says, because there were no freezers at the time, and making it meant hours of hand-cranking a churn.

Young partners with U-M Dining to make some of the banquet dishes so her students can try them. This year, her students also created a website of their discoveries, which you can visit at: anthrarc180.anthro.lsa.umich.edu/food The Bentley’s student scrapbooks are open to the public.

PROFILES

COL L E C T ION S

Making Waves A Michigan alumnus is giving back to the Detroit Observatory to honor the ways in which hands-on astronomy helped him land his dream career.

By Lara Zielin

THE U-M CAMPUS IN THE EARLY 1970S was a tumultuous place. Anti-Vietnam war protests were rampant. Women had organized and were demanding equal pay from university administrators. And the Black Action Movement had led a two-week boycott of classes to protest low numbers of African American students.

In contrast to the campus unrest was the dark and quiet of the Detroit Observatory. In 1970, a first-year student named Jeff Werner (B.A. ’74, M.A. ’80) got a job there learning stellar spectroscopy— essentially examining the light spectrum of a star—using the (Above) Jeff Werner 37.5” reflecting tele(far right) trains his scope in the Detroit celestial navigation Observatory’s addition. students on using a sextant to take a That addition, noon sight on the built in 1917, has Gulf of Mexico. since been torn

down and the telescope donated to a local museum, but when Werner was there, it was fully functional and, to a budding astronomer, it was a one-of-a-kind undergraduate experience.

“I’m a hands-on person, so having access to learning through these instruments was like nothing else,” he says.

By his sophomore year, Werner was living in a house on Geddes, walking to the Observatory regularly, and using all the instruments on site—including the Meridian Circle telescope and the Fitz refractor. “The equipment was such high quality. I was able to really get an appreciation of how important astronomy was to the daily activities of life, like timekeeping before atomic clocks.”

Werner also observed the moon, the planets, Messier objects (nebulae, star clusters, and galaxies), and watched sunspots migrate across the surface of the sun.

The real-life applicability of the Observatory’s instruments inspired Werner to learn another way to read the stars—through celestial navigation. “As long as there are no clouds out, you can find exactly where you are on earth,” he says.

Today, Werner is a yacht captain with more than 25 years of experience sailing the western Mediterranean, crossing the Atlantic Ocean twice, and cruising the Caribbean, the Bahamas, the Eastern Seaboard, the Great Lakes, and the Gulf of Mexico.

As an instructor, he also teaches celestial navigation to sailors. “On long passages across oceans, I use celestial navigation just for fun as a backup to GPS. “I’ve been able to combine the history of astronomy and sailing in a way to make a living.”

Werner is also committed to supporting the Detroit Observatory to honor the experiences he gained there.

“What happened to me there was learning to follow my dreams and to always enjoy what I do. In recent years, I decided that I wanted to offer another generation of young students the same opportunity to experience this unique connection with our past, through planned giving, to assure the future of the Detroit Observatory.”

He hopes other people will join him in supporting the Observatory so that its historic instruments can once again be used to teach and inspire.

“If the current instruments can be refurbished to once again work properly, it really gives a link back to the technology of the 19th century, and the role the Observatory played in the region and internationally.”

To support the Detroit Observatory, please visit: myumi.ch/QAjAO

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B E N T L EY U N B O U N D

“Facts” from the Stacks: A Closer Look In 1897, Henry R. Pattengill developed a game to help Michigan students learn history. “Michigan Cards,” features a series of 500 Michigan facts across 100 cards, and the instructions offer 11 different ways to play.

By Lara Zielin

WITH MORE THAN A CENTURY of perspective, we decided to take a fresh look at some of Pattengill’s “facts” and provide a little more context. Many of the cards showcase long-forgotten history, and some get history completely wrong. Rose Hartwick Thorpe, highlighted here, is the only woman in the collection—and her name is spelled incorrectly.

Pattengill created the cards while he was the Michigan superintendent of public instruction from 1893–1897. In his work, he championed causes such as rural libraries, free textbooks, and teacher certifications.

Michigan Cards can be accessed through the Bentley and played to this day.

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FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

TAKEN WITH A GRAIN OF SALT

When she was a teenager living in rural Litchfield, Michigan, Rose Hartwick Thorpe (not Rosa) asked a neighbor for his copy of Peterson’s, a popular magazine. In it, she read a story titled “Love and Loyalty” about Basil and Bessie, a pair of lovers in England. Basil is arrested as a spy by Puritans, and Bessie must save him by throwing herself on the “curfew bell” that announces executions in order to keep it from ringing. The heroic love story inspired Thorpe’s poem Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight.

The Detroit Commercial Advertiser first published the poem in 1870, giving Thorpe a subscription to the paper as payment. From there, it gained enormous popularity—it was quoted in books, set to song, and was reportedly a favorite poem of England’s Queen Victoria.

Thorpe became a sought-after magazine editor and published more than 10 books. In 1883, Hillsdale College gave her an honorary Master of Arts degree.

The city of Litchfield erected a memorial bell in her honor.

In 1837, at the first meeting of the Michigan Legislature, elected officials called upon Douglass Houghton, a physician and geologist, to perform a state geological survey.

One of Houghton’s first investigations was into the state’s salt springs. He drilled a well on the aptly named Salt River near Midland, Michigan, to produce natural brine to make salt. A year later, he tried drilling another well near Grand Rapids.

Though neither well produced much salt, investigations continued, since salt was a sought-after commodity for preserving foods, curing meat, and tanning hides.

By 1862, Saginaw had become the state headquarters for salt, with 23 companies in operation. From 1880 until 1892, Michigan ranked first in the United States in salt production.

In 1895, an enormous salt deposit was discovered south and west of Detroit. In 1910, the Detroit Salt Company completed a 1,060-foot shaft to reach it. By 1914, the Detroit mine was producing 8,000 tons of rock salt each month, and it’s the biggest salt dry-mining operation in Michigan today.

PETTICOAT JUNCTION On the evening of April 9, 1865, the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant. It was a major milestone that helped bring the U.S. Civil War to an end.

But there was one loose end that wasn’t so tidy: Eight days before the surrender, Confederate President Jefferson Davis had fled from Richmond, Virginia. A massive manhunt was underway.

On May 5, Davis reunited with his wife and children, whose slow-moving wagon was being shadowed by bandits. Davis wanted to protect them.

The move led the Union soldiers right to him. In a last attempt to escape, he mounted his horse while wearing an overcoat known as a “waterproof” and a rectangular shawl. False rumors spread quickly that he was wearing women’s clothes.

Newspapers printed caricatures of Davis wearing a dress and bonnet. “Jeff in Petticoats” became a popular ballad. P.T. Barnum wrote to the Secretary of War offering a reward for Davis’s hoop skirt.

Davis’s reputation never recovered. He died in December 1889.

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COL L E C T ION S

THE KING OF WISHFUL THINKING In 1850, James Strang donned a red robe and a cardboard crown and appointed himself king—not of Beaver Island, Michigan, where he lived, but rather over the “Strangites,” his Mormon disciples.

Strang had relocated his church from Wisconsin to Beaver Island in 1848. He and his followers built roads, cleared land for farming, and even started a newspaper, The Northern Islander.

However, the non-Mormons of Beaver Island were suspicious of Strang and his fledgling religion, a breakaway sect of Mormonism, and his blatant polygamy.

Tensions flared.

The same year as Strang’s coronation, the U.S. government arrested Strang and accused him of treason. He stood trial in Detroit but was acquitted, then was elected to the Michigan Legislature—twice.

In 1856, when the U.S.S. Michigan was docked in a Beaver Island bay, Strang was invited aboard. But while still on the dock, he was shot multiple times.

After Strang’s death, a mob burned the Tabernacle and Mormon houses and forced Strang’s disciples off Beaver Island.

YOU OTTER KNOW After the French and Indian War ended in 1763, land that previously had been French was now in British hands— including Fort Detroit. Ottawa chief and military leader Pontiac worried that this would mean an influx of new colonists and greater loss of land for his people.

Pontiac famously gathered an army of American Indians to attack Fort Detroit in what is commonly called Pontiac’s Rebellion. His ongoing battles with the British lasted from May to October, 1763.

During that time, when Pontiac needed to re-supply his army, he issued IOU notes out of birch bark. Each one had a drawing of what he needed to purchase, and was marked with the sign of his totem, which was the otter. The French readily accepted the currency, and Pontiac faithfully paid what he owed, according to sources from the time.

In July 1766, Pontiac made peace with the British, but lost sway in his native community as a result. He was assassinated in 1769 by a member of the Peoria tribe.

Sources for this story:

Del Mar, Alexander. The History of Money in America: From the Earliest Times to the Establishment of the Constitution (Cambridge Encyclopedia Company, 1899). Hulett, Sarah. How a Mormon King Shaped a Sleepy Island in Michigan, Michigan Radio, November 4, 2015. James, George Wharton. Rose Hartwick Thorpe and the Story of “Curfew Must Not Ring-Tonight” (The Radiant Life Press, 1916). State of Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. Salt: A Michigan Resource, Michigan.gov.

Swanson, James. “Was Jefferson Davis Captured in a Dress?”

American Heritage, Volume 60, Issue 3.

BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU 31

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Out with the Mold, in with the New

By Lara Zielin

WHEN THE BENTLEY’S CONSERVATORS get word that a new collection might contain inactive mold, “we drop everything else and get to work on it,” says Lead Conservator Dianna Samuelson.

Inactive mold is often dry, but under the right conditions, it can spread or be reactivated. That’s why it’s critical to identify and remediate it right away.

First, Samuelson and her colleague, Conservator Corinne Robertson, make sure to quarantine the materials so any potential mold spores can’t be transmitted to other collections.

Then, they work to determine if mold is truly present or if it’s something else like dirt or soot.

Not all inactive mold can be seen with the naked eye, so they might use a magnifier or an ultraviolet (UV) light, pictured here. Under UV light, some mold will fluoresce, often in spectacularly bright colors like hot pink or orange.

If mold is present, the conservators will manually surface-clean it under an air extraction system, which removes any errant spores from the air as they work.

They may also remove the mold with a HEPA (High-Efficiency Particulate Air) vacuum. If the item will tolerate it, they use isopropyl alcohol and/or heat.

The conservators will green-light the collection for the stacks only when they’re certain that remediation is complete.

32 BENTLEY.UMICH.EDU

COLLECTIONS, the magazine of the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, is published twice each year.

Terrence J. McDonald Arthur F. Thurnau Professor Professor of History and Director Nancy Bartlett Associate Director Lara Zielin Editorial Director Robert Havey Communications Specialist Patricia Claydon, Ballistic Creative Art Direction/Design Copyright ©2020 Regents of the University of Michigan ARTICLES MAY BE REPRINTED BY OBTAINING PERMISSION FROM: Editor, Bentley Historical Library 1150 Beal Avenue Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2113 PLEASE DIRECT EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE TO: laram@umich.edu 734-936-1342 Regents of the University of Michigan Jordan B. Acker, Huntington Woods Michael J. Behm, Grand Blanc Mark J. Bernstein, Ann Arbor Paul W. Brown, Ann Arbor Shauna Ryder Diggs, Grosse Pointe Denise Ilitch, Bingham Farms Ron Weiser, Ann Arbor Katherine E. White, Ann Arbor Mark S. Schlissel, ex officio The University of Michigan, as an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, complies with all applicable federal and state laws regarding nondiscrimination and affirmative action. The University of Michigan is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for all persons and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, religion, height, weight, or veteran status in employment, educational programs and activities, and admissions. Inquiries or complaints may be addressed to the Senior Director for Institutional Equity, and Title IX/Section 504/ADA Coordinator, Office for Institutional Equity, 2072 Administrative Services Building, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1432, 734-763-0235, TTY 734-6471388, institutional.equity@umich.edu. For other University of Michigan information call 734-764-1817.

Giving New Life to Historic Instruments HELP INSPIRE THE NEXT GENERATION OF STARGAZERS.

The Detroit Observatory’s original, 165-year-old instruments can help the next generation of students learn and apply science that’s still relevant today. But many of the instruments need to be restored and conserved.

For example, by adding a spectrograph to the Fitz telescope, students could learn how statistical science is applied. Or students could use the Meridian Circle telescope to learn how to deduce the composition of a star or planet.

The spirit of science and discovery is alive and well at the Detroit Observatory.

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SPORES NO MORE (Above) Bentley conservator Corinne Robertson holds an ultraviolet (UV) light over materials to check for mold, which will sometimes fluoresce in bright colors. See page 32 to read more about how the Bentley conservation team fights the spread of mold through quarantine and other methods to keep collections safe.