Category Archives: The Michigan Pages: History: Magazine

Breaking Barriers in Michigan

As a young journalist in the early 1940s, Roberta "Bobbie" Applegate covered sports, police activities and trials at a time when most middle-class women rarely worked outside of the home. If women went into journalism, they were restricted to women's sections that typically featured the traditional role of women: family, fashion, food and furnishings. But [...]

When Carl Sandburg Called Michigan Home

Renowned author Carl Sandburg loved Lake Michigan. In many ways, it influenced his writing. From 1928 until 1945, Sandburg and his family, which included three daughters, called Michigan home. During these years, he lived in the sand dunes in the southwestern Lower Peninsula. It was there that he produced some of his best known [...]

Michigan History: The Tri-Motor Conquers the South Pole

1929 Ford Tri-Motor by Fernando Gomes Semedo
Six hours into their flight, the four explorers aboard the Floyd Bennett, a specially equipped Ford Tri-Motor airplane, stared at the mountain range ahead, blocking their way. Veteran pilot Bernt Balchen eased the plane upwards and entered the pass, which proved much narrower than anticipated. At the end of [...]

Jerry Linengar: Five Months in Space

Jerry Linenger is one of more than a dozen Michiganians who have been (or still are) astronauts. Born in 1955 in Eastpoint (a Detroit suburb), Linengar graduated from East Detroit High School and earned a degree from Wayne State University. After many years of hard work, schooling and experience in the military, Linengar was accepted [...]

George Romney - a "brainwashed" candidate?

Forty years ago this past September, George Romney sat down with Detroit television host Lou Gordon. Responding to a question about an earlier visit to Vietnam, the Michigan governor said that he "had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get when they go over to Viet Nam."
The use of that one word changed Romney's life [...]

Michigan History: Up North with the Hemingways

After entirely too long, we welcome back Michigan History Magazine!
Spending time "up north" in Michigan is one of summer's special delights. The rituals are repeated year after year--making friends (and saying goodbye), enjoying beautiful water and longing all winter for the next summer.
A century ago, the Clarence and Grace Hemingway family summered in northern Michigan. [...]

Michigan History: Making money at the Straits BEFORE the Bridge

Mackinac Straits Ferry from MDOT
part of the Michigan State Ferry Album
Before the Mackinac Bridge opened in November 1957, the hundreds of people waiting to take a car ferry across the Straits of Mackinac (especially during deer-hunting season) provided an economic bonanza for local residents. Most drivers stayed with their cars to avoid losing their place [...]

Michigan History: Soaring Beneath the Bridge

U.S. Air Force Captain John S. Lappo had the heart of a jet pilot--skillful, bold and committed. However, the personality traits that served him so well on bombing missions during the Korean War and covert spy-in-the-sky missions over the Soviet Union also “grounded” him after a playful-but dangerous-stunt that involved the Mackinac Bridge.
On April 24, [...]

Michigan History: They Paid the Highest Price

Louis Stepman was lucky. His desperate hold on thin strands of metal was the only thing keeping him from a 400-foot plunge to a watery grave. Two other men who were with him were not so lucky.On the afternoon of June 6, 1956, Louis "Big Louie" Stepman and three other workers were stringing a catwalk [...]

Michigan History: Bridging the Straits

As early as the 1880s, Michiganians talked about building a bridge across the Straits of Mackinac. When the Grand Hotel opened on Mackinac Island in 1888, railroad and shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, a member of the hotel’s board of directors, declared, “What we need is a bridge across the Straits.”No bridge was forthcoming, but in [...]