Introducing my great, great, great grandfather, Joseph Phillip Florian

This, I’ve been told, is my great, great, great grandfather, Joseph Phillip Florian. From what I’ve been able to ascertain, he was born in Poland on November 22, 1831, and arrived at the Port of New York on June 9, 1840 aboard a ship from Le Havre, France called the Robert Parker. [This would have been before the immigration stations at either Castle Garden or Ellis Island had been opened.] There are some things that I’m still not quite sure about, like the fact that the passenger manifest lists him as being 14, when I think that he should have been around 9 at the time, but everything else seems to line up. I’ve found both his grave at the Peaks Mill Christian Church Cemetery in Franklin County, Kentucky, and his 1863 Civil War draft registration, as well as several census records, and I don’t have any doubt when it comes to the main facts of his life. [Thankfully, I haven’t been able to find any record of him having fought for the South during the Civil War.] He appears to have farmed rented land outside of Frankfort, Kentucky, where he died on February 13, 1908, having raised an enormous family with his wife, Elizabeth “Betty” Brock.

As for the children, there appear to have been 16 of them; Alonzo, Moses, Maggie, Margret, Rebecca, Melissa, William, Emma, Emily, Joseph, Adeline, Ollie, Laura, Mary Bell, Ballard, and Cora. My great, great grandfather was the 12th, Ollie “Ettie” Florian, born June 6, 1867 in Franklin County, Kentucky. [I think some may have died during childbirth, but I’ve yet to look too deeply into their individual records.] There are some discrepancies, like the fact that, according to at least one source, Joseph and Betty were married in 1860, which would have been after roughly half the children had been born. My first thought was that Joseph may have been married twice, having roughly half of the 16 children with a first wife, and the remaining half with Betty, who is my great, great, great, great grandmother. Looking at the records associated with the first 8 children, though, it looks as though Betty was likely their mother as well. [Margret’s birth record in 1854, for instance, lists Elizabeth Brock as her mother.] I hope to look more into the Brock side of my family soon, but I have to think, giving that she lived to be almost 80, and may have given birth to 16, that they’re people of pretty hearty stock. [According to her tombstone, she was born on July 18, 1827, and lived until February 1, 1906.] I should note that I still have some reservations about Betty being the mother of all 16, as the last few would have been born when she was in her 60s, which seems highly unlikely. [Two of her last three children appear to have died at birth, but one, Mary Bell Florian, lived to be 21. And, if the records are correct, Betty would have given birth to her at the age of 66, which I’m finding difficult to imagine. I suppose anything is possible, but I’m thinking that maybe she claimed the daughter of a relative as her own, or something along those lines.]

As for why Joseph would have come to America from Poland in 1840 with his parents and six siblings, I have no idea. Major Polish immigration to this country didn’t begin until around 1870. There’s some mention of 6,000 Polish resistance fighters being exiled to France in 1931 during a time when the Russians were repressing intellectual and religious activity throughout the country, but I have no reason to think that my great, great, great, great grandfather, who was also named Joseph Florian, was a member of the resistance, involved at all in the armed November Uprising, etc. Still, though, I suppose there’s a chance… As I noted above, relatively few Polish citizens were coming to America prior to 1870, so there must have been a reason, especially for a man who would have been 50 at the time, to uproot his family and move to Kentucky. [So far, all I know of my great, great, great, great grandmother on this side, is that her name is Anna, and that, when she arrived at Ellis Island, she was 40. I am seeing that there may be a Slovakian record of an Anna Skokan marrying a Jacobus Florian, but I’ve yet to figure out how to access it.]

And, for what it’s worth, none of this seems to be contradicted by the results of the genetic testing I had done a year or so ago, which showed that my DNA is 13.9% French and German, 15.9% Northwest European, and 4.5% Eastern European, which includes Poland and Slovakia.

I have a lot of questions, like what brought my great, great, great, great grandfather to Franklin County, Kentucky of all places, or whether there may have been other stops as they made their way west from Ellis Island, but I don’t imagine I’ll ever find those answers. Still, though, it’s good to finally know the name of the ship that brought the Florians to America, and finally be able to confirm that they got their start in Poland, which is what my great grandfather, Curtis Florian, had told my father.

note: I was half-way through writing yet another post about Donald Trump when I decided that my time would be better spent working on my family tree. Sitting here in bed, with my adorably sleeping son laying next to me, I think I made the right decision. Hopefully, some day, he finds this of interest.

Posted in History, Mark's Life, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 53 Comments

Christianity Today: “Trump Should Be Removed from Office”

Remember how, not too long ago, we were talking here about Donald Trump’s desperate attempt to shore up his support among evangelical voters as Congress started moving toward impeachment? Well, it apparently didn’t work so well. Yesterday, the influential evangelical magazine Christianity Today, which was started by Billy Graham back in 1956, published a scathing editorial calling for Donald Trump to be removed from office.

“Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election—that is a matter of prudential judgment,” Mark Galli, the editor in chief of Christianity Today, wrote in the op-ed. “That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties, but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.” Yesterday on CNN, Galli added, “We believe the impeachment hearings have made it absolutely clear, in a way the Mueller investigation did not, that President Trump has abused his authority for personal gain and betrayed his constitutional oath. The impeachment hearings have illuminated the president’s moral deficiencies for all to see.” Here, for those of you who have yet to receive your copy of Christianity Today in the mail, is an brief excerpt.

Trump and his followers, as you might imagine, have started pushing back, calling Christianity Today a liberal magazine that doesn’t really speak for the evangelical community. At the same time, though, the hashtag #ChristiansAgainstTrump is beginning to trend, and the granddaughter of Billy Graham was just on television calling the editorial courageous. “My grandfather always said courage is contagious,” she said. “My hope is that an article like this will be a first step for people to actually stand up.” The question is, how many people are willing to follow Galli’s example, knowing that it could mean career suicide… Galli, for instance, has already said that he would be stepping down as the editor in chief of Christianity Today. Are others in the evangelical world who are willing make similar sacrifices?

Oh, and here’s Donald Trump’s reply, in which he says that he’ll never read “CT,” which he refers to as “ET” for some reason, ever again… which, even by his standards, is hilariously stupid. [I’m picturing him instinctively reaching for a copy of Christianity Today at the White House, only to remember that, as much as he loves keeping up-to-date on all his favorite evangelical publications, he’d vowed never to read it again. I can picture him, with tears in his eyes, calling Melania to his side to join him in prayer, asking God for the strength not to open the issue and lose himself in the pure joy of evangelical theology.]

As for why Trump responded so fiercely to this editorial, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman offers the following… “POTUS has long been gripped by fear of cracks in his evangelical support,” she says. Well, here’s hoping this first big crack leads to others.

Posted in Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 36 Comments

Donald Trump, never one to pass up an opportunity to demonstrate his depth of his smallness, chooses to mark his historic impeachment by coming to Michigan and speculating as to whether or not John Dingell may be burning in hell

It took impeachment, but Donald Trump has finally won his first popular vote!

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach the President of the United States this evening, making Donald J. Trump not just the third person in the entire history of our great nation to earn such a devastating rebuke, but the fastest by far to reach the ignoble distinction. In pure Trump fashion, the President chose to mark the occasion not by apologizing for his well-documented affronts to the Constitution, but by lashing out wildly at those who, unlike him, have chosen to put country before personal self-interest, and actually honor their sworn constitutional obligation. And, unfortunately, he decided to do this here, in my beloved home state of Michigan. Here, to give you a sense of just how low he went during his Battle Creek rally this evening, is a post from Jordan Fabian of Bloomberg Business.

For what it’s worth, Donald Trump, who, by the way, was chosen for office by God himself, wasn’t clear as to why Dingell, a World War II vet and the longest serving Representative to serve in the House in U.S. history, may be burning in hell. One wonders if it was because of his work on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, his tireless work to expand heath care to the American people, or the historic legislation he drafted to ensure that we have clean water to drink and clean air to breathe.

Given that Trump won Michigan in 2016 by just 10,704 votes, I’d have thought that he might take a slightly different approach, and maybe not attempt to shit on the legacy of one of Michigan’s most beloved leaders of all time, but what do I know. Maybe, as Dingell has been dead for almost a year now, people are ready for the President to start theorizing about how he might be burning in hell, and publicly beating up on his grieving window for not giving him anything of value – like a vote against impeachment – in return for doing his job and agreeing to lower the White House flag in recognition of the Congressman’s passing. [Ironically, at the same time this was transpiring, Republican members of Congress were on television declaring that Donald Trump would never look for any kind of personal return on something he’d done as President.] It has, after all, been a few years since Dingell last won a race. When he did, though, he earned almost 70% of the vote… Enough about Trump, though. How about, instead of talking about how he responded to news of his impeachment, we focus on the inspiring and patriotic words delivered today by the likes of Adam Schiff, John Lewis, Maxine Waters and Steny Hoyer? That, I think, might be better for our collective mental health.

Posted in Michigan, Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 88 Comments

Talking about Highland Cemetery’s Starkweather Chapel, and the history of Ypsilanti’s death industry

The Starkweather Chapel in Ypsilanti’s Highland Cemetery, for those of you who may not have noticed, has been undergoing some much needed renovation work this past year. Here, with more on the history of the building, and the preservation work that’s been done thus far, is a conversation I just had with lifelong Ypsilanti resident and troublemaker Barry LaRue.

MARK: OK, before we jump in and start talking about the work you’ve been doing at the chapel, perhaps we could start by talking about the Starkweather family. Who were they, and why were they important relative to Ypsilanti history?

BARRY Well, John and Mary Ann Starkweather moved to Ypsi around 1841, when they bought 160 acres on the Huron River, on either side of Huron River Drive. Their Greek Revival home still sits on a parcel that was once part of the Starkweather farm and orchard, right across Huron River Drive from Cornell Road, at the edge of the EMU campus. John was appointed Assistant Superintendent of Public Instruction by Michigan Governor Stevens T. Mason in the same year of 1841. He assisted Reverend John D. Pierce in the laying out of the system of public schools for the newly formed state. John had married Mary Ann Newberry in Detroit, in 1839. We don’t precisely know what the Starkweather’s sympathies were toward slavery, but George McCoy, father of Elijah McCoy the inventor, lived on the Starkweather property, and was an active participant in the Underground Railroad. He assisted slaves in getting toward Detroit by hiding in the false bottom of a wagon he used to deliver tobacco.

MARK: Speaking of the Starkweather House, I have a piece of trivia that might be of interest. The fact that it’s still standing is due, in a roundabout way, to Playboy magazine… A friend of mine who used to live here made his money primarily by selling things on Ebay. Among his best sellers were Playboy magazines. And he went to an estate sale at the old Startweather home, because they’d advertised that, among other things, there would be Playboys. As it turns out, however, they’d intended to say “Game Boys” in the ad. Well, this friend of mine wasn’t happy, but, as he was incredibly interested in local history, he stuck around and talked with folks on the site. And, at some point during the conversation, he learned that there were plans to raze the house in a few days. So, the following day, when he was talking in front of City Council on some other matter, he brought up the fact that the historic Starkweather home was about to be demolished, which then led to immediate action being taken to stop that from happening. So, thank you, Hugh Heffner, pornography, etc.

BARRY Serendipity. It’s a marvelous thing.

MARK: It’s a bit of a tangent, but I have a question about that George McCoy story. I’ve heard that same story, about him smuggling escaped slaves into Detroit in a tobacco wagon with a false bottom, but I have no idea where it comes from. Do you know the genesis of that story? Did George write it down somewhere? Did his son, Elijah McCoy, include it an autobiography that I’m not aware of? Or is it just a local oral legend that’s been handed down over the generations? I have no reason not to believe it, but I’m curious as to the genesis of the story.

BARRY I’m afraid I don’t know the origin of that particular story. It certainly is a compelling one, but is it accurate? Who knows? Some ancestor of mine perpetuated the story that my great, great, great, great, great grandfather died as a “patriot drummer” at the Battle of Bunker Hill. No such record exists of it, or his service, so I suspect it was a fantasy on someone’s part.

MARK: So, when was the Starkweather Chapel built, and do you know the circumstances surrounding the decision to build it?

BARRY John died in 1883, and, shortly after, Mary Ann inherited a substantial sum of money as a result of the death of her uncle, Walter Loomis Newberry. Since she was a widow with no children, and quite active in the Ypsilanti community, she ultimately made the decision to donate significant funds toward worthy causes. Her most notable gifts were the cast iron fountain in front of the old Ypsilanti Saving Bank, Starkweather Hall at the Normal School, the donation of her home on Huron Street to become the public library, and the Starkweather Memorial Chapel at Highland Cemetery. Oh, and let’s not forget about Mary Ann’s contribution toward the erection of the Civil War monument in Highland Cemetery!

MARK: So what year would the chapel have been constructed?

BARRY 1888. It was completed and turned over to the Highland Cemetery board around May of 1889. The architectural firm that designed the chapel was that of Mason & Rice of Detroit, the preeminent design team of that era. They designed the 1887 Ypsilanti Savings Bank that now houses the City Hall as well as the Ainsworth Mill building just down the hill from City Hall that currently houses the Ypsi branch of the Bank of Ann Arbor. Mary Ann Starkweather’s attorney was involved with the Savings Bank and could have recommended Mason & Rice to her. Plus she may have been impressed with the design on her own. She did, after all, selected the Savings Bank as the backdrop to her fountain.

MARK: You’ve mentioned this fountain twice now, and I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Are you saying that there was a fountain somewhere on the corner of Huron and Michigan Avenue, where City Hall is now? The only downtown fountain I’m aware of is the one outside the old Post Office, where the downtown branch of the Ypsi Public Library currently resides.

BARRY Here’s a photo. It was cast by the J.L. Mott Company. You could order various components out of a catalog and have them shipped to you via rail.

MARK: So what happened to it? Do we know where the statue is today?

BARRY The old story is that the water line died, and the City put it in storage for a while. Then it was put in Waterworks Park, sans the base. Eventually, though, all trace was lost… A sad end to a pretty nice piece of public art.

MARK: You mentioned Walter Loomis Newberry earlier. Should I recognize that name?

BARRY Probably not. He was into shipping early on. He moved to Detroit in the 1820s and then to Chicago, where he made his fortune in real estate and railroads. Half his estate funded the Newberry Library in Chicago. It’s a beautiful structure that is still a functioning reference library. I visited it several years ago, just to say I had. The other half of his estate was distributed after the 1885 death of his widow. When Mary Ann died in 1897, several shirttail relatives sued to get a share of her remaining estate, which took years to settle.

MARK: How did you come to be involved in the renovation of the chapel?

BARRY I was appointed to the Highland Cemetery board early in 2014. Bill French had resigned due to his serious health issues, and I took his seat. I’ve always found Highland to be a beautiful park-like setting, and the chapel a mysterious building that was locked up and little used. My father used to set up the sound system for the Memorial Day observances sponsored by the local American Legion post, and I’d tag along, usually wandering off into the cemetery. Years later, in 1983, when my mother died, I convinced my father and sister to have the final service in the Starkweather Chapel. It was dank and musty, but I really loved using it for its intended purpose.

MARK: So, what was its intended purpose? Was it intended solely as a place in which to host memorial services for the dead being buried at the cemetery, or was there a broader vision for the building when it was first conceived? Having never been inside, I don’t know the answer to this, but are there offices, for instance? Or was the Chapel intended to remain open to the public when not being used for memorial services?

BARRY It was built to provide a venue for memorial services. Prior to roughly 1900, the funeral home as we know it today didn’t exist. Local furniture stores were the ones who built caskets, and those who owned their own homes large enough to accommodate a funeral would host them in the parlor. Those poorer people, or transients at rooming houses or hotels, needed a place to have a funeral. People would generally ask the furniture store if they could have a service in their back room. In Ypsilanti, it would have been either in the Mack & Mack Furniture Store on Michigan Avenue (where Spark East is now) or J.E. Moore’s Furniture Store (where Beezy’s is now). Once you had the funeral, either in the home, in a church, or in the back of a furniture store, you still desired to say a few words over the deceased at the cemetery. Most people would have attended a short service in a tent pitched over the plot. The chapel provided a nice alternative, especially in inclement weather.

MARK: One wonders if perhaps the folks at either Mack & Mack Furniture Store or J.E. Moore’s Furniture Store might have objected to the construction of the Chapel. I’m guessing not, but I suppose it’s possible that these back-room funerals brought in some additional revenue which might disappear with the new Highland chapel…

BARRY The well-to-do of Ypsilanti wouldn’t have been using their funeral services, only buying a casket. So I doubt if the furniture stores would have been bothered by it. The MacAndrew family (Mack & Mack), by the way, are all buried at Highland. Jay E. Moore and his family are also there.

MARK: How would you describe the condition of the chapel when you started work on it? I assume, if it was already dank and musty in ‘83, it was probably in pretty bad shape when you began the rehab.

BARRY It was usable in 1983, just a bit sad. The apse area, beneath the observation tower, had already deteriorated to the point that a “temporary” wall was constructed to hide the fallen plaster and rotted wainscoting. In the intervening years, though, the rest of the roof started leaking and two of the exterior doors deteriorated badly. The former “winter receiving vault” allowed critters to crawl up into the rafters and get into the chapel itself.

MARK: What’s a “winter receiving vault”? Is that where they’d leave bodies in the winter, when the ground was frozen?

BARRY Yep. There are pipe racks to hold the coffins. At that time the graves were dug by hand with shovels. When the ground was frozen you had to wait till spring. That’s where they would stack them. Problem was that the chapel vault is very small. You might only be able to jam five or six coffins in. Around 1905 or so, Daniel Quirk Sr. had a much larger receiving vault built. It was converted into a mausoleum in the 1960s, since, by that time, graves were dug using a backhoe, and it didn’t matter what season it was.

MARK: While we’re on the subject, I guess we should talk about the opening of Highland Cemetery, and what Ypsilantiians were doing with their dead prior to its opening… Speaking of which, when’s the last time human remains were found in Riverside Park?

BARRY Not Riverside Park, but Prospect Park. It’s my understanding that shortly after Highland opened in 1864 that a local gentleman was hired to start the process of disinterring graves on Prospect Street. It took almost 25 years, with one grave at a time being hauled to Highland in a horse drawn wagon.

MARK: Would I be right to assume that there was a heated debate over closing the cemetery on Prospect, and moving the bodies out of town? Or was everyone in agreement that the City needed to grow in that direction?

BARRY I think it was a combination of the fact that the Prospect Cemetery was virtually full and that housing was being constructed up to it. The other thing was that the upkeep was poor and the neighbors were complaining. Certainly there could have been a few lot holders who didn’t want to move Aunt Martha, but I think on the whole an artistically designed cemetery on the outskirts of town was considered a plus.

MARK: OK, so back to the condition of the chapel. In addition to the doors having deteriorated, the roof leaking, and animals having the run of the place, were there any other major issues that needed to be dealt with?

BARRY There was significant damage due to water intrusion. The observation tower originally had window openings with no sash. That allowed the rain and snow to come in during inclement weather. By the 1920s windows had been installed, but they failed to keep moisture from infiltrating the stone walls of the tower. As I mentioned earlier, all that was done was to erect that wall to hide the damage rather than trying to repair the underlying cause.

MARK: Was there a purpose for the tower, or was it just decorative?

BARRY I think it was always intended as a decorative architectural element. The spiral stairs to the observation room are extremely narrow. I doubt if Mary Ann Starkweather could have navigated it. Prior to the window installation, it would have given an excellent view of John and Mary Ann’s graves, and that of their dog “Watch.” There is a French door at the top of the stairs that is currently off its hinges. I intend to re-hang it with cast iron Victorian hinges. In any event, we have to be very cautious about people going up and down the stairs since I consider it a bit of a liability.

MARK: Wait, so they got to bury their dog at Highland? Would I be right to assume that Watch is the only non-human buried in the cemetery? One wonders how much of their philanthropic giving at Highland might have been motivated by the fact that they had a desire to be buried with their dog in violation of cemetery rules.

BARRY Well, we don’t know if Watch is actually under his memorial. Perhaps you could petition the Probate Court to have him exhumed…

MARK: So, in terms of the tower area, they knew it was rotting, but instead of dealing with it, they just walled off the tower, so that the state of decay wasn’t noticeable…

BARRY Right. None of the folks responsible are still with us, so I don’t feel too bad pointing fingers. Past boards of Highland took a kind of “hands off” attitude about day to day functions and did little to encourage charitable donations. In the last several years we have reined in expenses and increased revenue to allow us to start to address the backlog of capital needs.

MARK: Anything else about the condition of the chapel when you started work on it?

BARRY Well, about ten years ago, there was a bee or wasp infestation in the rafters of the Chapel. A decision was made at that time to remove all the lath and plaster from the ceiling in order to deal with the problem.

MARK: So folks have known for a long time that significant work needed to be done…

BARRY Yes. As early as the 1990s Reverend Jasper Pennington from St. Luke’s Episcopal Church attempted to rally folks to preserve the cemetery’s assets. Then local architect Denis Schmiedeke started to lobby the Highland board to preserve the chapel and consider a nomination to the National Register. Around 2009, a Condition Assessment Report was done by Lincoln Poley, an Ann Arbor architect. It noted several of the issues I have mentioned above.

MARK: And, since then, it’s just been a matter of finding the money to deal with everything?

BARRY Yes. In 2016, working with DTE, we leased a small portion of the north end of the cemetery property for use as a solar array. With a 20 year lease, we finally had an income stream to assist Highland with unmet capital needs. Roads, water lines, the historic caretaker’s cottage and the chapel had all been underfunded, and we finally had the ability to speed up work on these important tasks!

MARK: Whose idea was it to reach out to DTE, or did they come to the Highland board?

BARRY DTE worked with the City to try to find public land to place the solar array on. They wanted the income to flow to the general fund. They steered DTE to the old dump site at I-94 and Huron, but DTE balked at using a contaminated site. Then they looked at public school property. That went nowhere. And that’s when they looked at a satellite map, saw the north end of the cemetery, and approached us. Dave Strenski at Solar Ypsi was super excited about our array going on-line as it raised the production of solar power in the City. I like it not only for the environment, and the income stream, but I also think it’s poetic that we have an example of current (no pun intended) technology helping us restore and maintain a really basic part of Ypsilanti’s history.

MARK: OK, so what’s been done so far to bring the chapel back to its former glory?

BARRY Well, in 2017, we updated the electrical service to the chapel by upgrading the buried underground cable and installing a circuit breaker panel. That would pave the way for being able to install up-to-date HVAC. Keeping the moisture level down will help to protect the plaster and wood surfaces as well as maintaining a comfort level appropriate for services and other activities regardless of season.

Then, in 2018, having arranged for a loan based on a portion of the DTE income stream, we hired a roofing contractor to begin tiling the chapel roof to match the original. The tile, from Ludowici in Ohio, arrived in the fall and the process of repairing the roof deck and applying ice guard begun. By the summer of 2019, the roof was complete, along with copper elements, such as gutters and downspouts.

This past August we moved to restoring the interior by drywalling the ceiling and painting it the original grayish-blue color. We found portions of the original ceiling and walls and subject them to chemical analysis by a local conservationist. As soon as the ceiling was done we contracted to have a ductless mini-split installed. This is a reversible heat pump that will allow both heat and air conditioning. Once that unit was installed we engaged a wet plasterer to repair the deteriorated brick walls.

MARK: And that brings us to today?

BARRY Pretty much. Right now, we’re evaluating the wainscoting for touch up, and waiting for the plaster to cure in order to paint them the “ashes of rose” color. We still have a long way to go for a full restoration. The stained glass windows need conservation as does the exterior sandstone trim. Sandstone is very porous and when moisture penetrates it in the winter and it freezes the surface spalls and some pops off. This can be addressed with a European stone consolidant, but it’s a pricey concept that only specially trained artisans can apply properly. It can be sculpted to match the original design of each stone.

MARK: What can you tell us about the stained glass?

BARRY Well, the two large memorial windows are from Tiffany of New York City. I suspect that the rectangular windows flanking the memorial windows plus the two flanking the front doors are also Tiffany. I am less sure about the three Gothic inspired windows in the tower. Someone stole the lower two thirds of each of those windows around the 1960s. They were replaced with plain frosted sheet glass. In general, other than the missing sections, the windows are in remarkable condition given the lack of preventive maintenance over the years. We have a conservation studio with lots of experience lined up to do the work when we have raised the necessary funds.

MARK: Any other things on the horizon at Highland?

BARRY Glad you asked! I mentioned Denis Schmiedeke. He did a great deal of research in an effort to craft a nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. He passed away in the fall of 2016. Eventually I recommended that we hire Robert Christensen, the retired National Register Coordinator for the State of Michigan Historic Preservation Office. He agreed to complete the application of the cemetery and handle research, photography and doing all the hand holding necessary to complete the process. As of December 2019, the application has passed both the Ypsilanti Historic District Commission, as well as the Historic Preservation Review Board in Lansing. It is now on its way to the Federal government for their approval. We should know in early 2020 that we have been listed. It is over 90 pages and is extremely well researched and has been praised for its quality.

MARK: How will inclusion on the National Register help?

BARRY Really the one major benefit is to be eligible for Grant in Aid through the State Historic Preservation Office. The plan is to apply for funding next fall toward either conservation of the stained glass or repair of the deteriorated sandstone. Those two items are the bulk of a “Phase Two” of the chapel restoration. The State funding is fairly modest so I am gearing up to do some fundraising in the spring to allow us to get things totally finished. I need some rest prior to my eternal rest…

MARK: Do you have a spot at Highland picked out? Is there a vacancy in the LaRue section?

BARRY My plot is on the parade route. As you enter the main gates, it’s on the left hand side, which aligns with my political views. Seriously, my parents are in the same plot with a large marker over all. As one of my co-workers told me years ago, “Barry, I really admire you. You’re a guy who knows where he’s going.”

Posted in History, Ypsilanti | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

“With allegiance to our Founders, with our hearts full of love for America, I salute the moral courage of our Democratic Members to Defend our Democracy For The People.”

Have you ever seen the film Mister Roberts? Well, do you remember how, at the very end, when Jack Lemmon receives the letter informing him that Henry Fonda’s character had just been killed in battle, one of the men standing near him on the deck of the ship asks for the letter, so that he can post it for the crew, and how William Powell intercedes, saying in an incredibly solemn manner, “No, post this instead,” handing over a letter that Fonda’s character had written to his former shipmates just prior to having been killed? Well, something kind of similar happened here tonight. I was almost ready to share Donald Trump’s absolutely insane letter to Nancy Pelosi, in which he says the victims of the Salem witch trials had it better than him, when my inner William Powell interceded, telling me to post this instead — Pelosi’s letter to the Democratic members of the House on the eve of tomorrow’s impeachment vote. It’s the better, more inspiring letter for the crew to read tonight.

Posted in Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , | 23 Comments

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