| Thirteen Things about Dearborn, Michigan 1.It was my hometown.
2. It is the hometown of Henry Ford.
3. They used to build Mustangs there.
4. Edsel Ford High School was the best high school from 1979-1982. Especially the music program. (Not really, but our choirs and jazz ensembles were awesome!) Our Thunderbird mascot and black & white school "neutrals" were neat too.
5. We had public swimming pools and outdoor ice rinks in every neighborhood. (Swimming passes were only $1-$5 and skating was free.) I would spend endless summer days perfecting my sychronized swimming skills preparing for the big show at the end of the summer.
6. During the 70's and 80's it had great recreation programs including ballet lessons, ice skating lessons, musical opportunites for all levels, sports leagues, and theatre.
7. Having the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village practically in your backyard was really cool! Dearborn was covered head to toe in national and local history...that's where the seed was planted in me to study history.
8. Saint Paul American Lutheran church was a beautiful place to get to know Christ and worship Him. (For years, I thought the back door with it's Gothic architecture was the Wittenberg door where Luther wrote his 95 theses!)
9. You could bike ride almost anywhere when I was a kid.
10. Ford Woods Ice Arena (AKA Adray Arena/Dearborn Ice Skating Center)was a great place to take figure skating and hangout on the weekends in the '70s! Being even an alternate Chrystallette, Dearborn's Championship Precision (Synchronized) skating team was a great honor!
11. Dearborn Public Schools had a string program. Many schools don't and I'm still grateful I started taking cello lessons in elementary school instead of the flute! We also had the Dearborn Youth Symphony and those scholarships were pretty great.
12. Nearly 10 years after leaving my childhood neighborhood, nestled behind Oakwood Hospital, I returned in 1997 to give birth to my first born daughter there, right across the street from my elementary school.
13. HOWEVER, I hated the library. It was so exciting when the big, new beautiful Henry Ford Centennial Library opened when I was in Kindergarten. My dad even took me to the dedication of the Marshall Fredrick's stature of Henry Ford, a couple years later. It started out to be a great place, until I tried to use my library skills by myself in 1st or 2nd grade. The librarians (library staff) were so MEAN and they were still very unhelpful when I went back there during library school!!!! Alas, that is why I became the nice librarian I am today!
Links to other Thursday Thirteens!1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!) If I can figure out how!
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11 Comments:
Great start! I learned somethings I never knew about the area.
Happy TT!
You've done good! Very interesting and informative. Did you sign in at the site so others know to visit you?
Very informative. Thanks for taking me on a bit of a trip. :)
I enjoyed your list about Dearborn.
My first car was a Mustang in 1978. My father bought me a 1964 1/2 mustang. Most people don't realize they began making them in 64. I wish I still had it.
What a neat place to live
Other wonderful things about growing up in Dearborn during it's heydays:
No matter what social class you were from, the fact that Ford Motor Company paid the taxes meant we had far more to do than any other city in America. Such as:
1)626 beautiful acres of Camp Dearborn, the finest campground resort in America.
2)Free dances every Thursday of the summer at the Dearborn High School tennis courts.
3)If you were elderly or ill and called the city, the city would come by and plow your sidewalk and driveway free.
4)The Youth Center skating rink, soda fountain, pool and ping pong tables.
5)The finest recreational sports programs in America.
6)Neighbors that to this day are some of the most friendly, neighborly people I've ever met.
7)The cleanest neighborhoods in America as we always won America's City Beautiful Contests.
8)The Henry Ford Estate
9)The Ford, more commonly known as Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum which among it's many artifacts included the chair Abramham Lincoln was assinated in, the Lincolk JFK was assinated in, the Edison Lab and Wright Brothers bicycle shop and planes and far more in the heart of the city and metropolitan area.
10)Free neighborhood libraries.
11)Fordson High School, the 1st million dollar high school in America.
12)Golf at Dearborn Hills or for the elite at the Ford or Dearborn Country Club.
13)Unlike our neighboring cities, well paved streets and sidewalks with little to no flooding due to sewers instead of ditches, well lit streets and side streets were plowed by the city making access easy.
14)Ford Field
15)The Annual 4th of July Fireworks all over the city, now at only Ford Field.
16)Seashore with 4 water slides and 3 diving boards in the deep end at different heights, which sadly was dismantled to build more modern pools.
17)Westborn and west Michigan Avenue where we shopped and hung out at teenagers.
18)Snow Woods which we could explore to our hearts content.
19)The wonderful Dearborn and Calvin Theaters.
20)The soda fountains at SS Kresge's and Cunninghams, 1 pair in Westborn another pair near Michigan Ave and Monroe.
What more could we ask for??? Our childhoods were a dream...
Dearborn Mike,
Thanks for some more memories!!
I actually quoted Mayor Hubbard the other day: "If everyone would sweep his own doorstep, the whole world would be clean." (I was trying to get my kids to clean up after themselves!)
We did have a flood once in the early 70's. It may have only been my neighborhood behind Oakwood Hospital, but they did say it was because the sewers couldn't handle all the water at once. [It was less than 5" though!]
I grew up in Dearborn in the 50's and 60's. I went to Bryant Jr High and Dearborn High. At that time
1. After a snow the city had small tractors that cleared everyones sidewalks.
2. Ford provided driver training cars and Dearborn High had a Drivers Ed "test Track" next to the student parking.
3. Howard elementary school had two ice skating rinks one for Hockey and one for Skaters. The Fire Dept would fill them from the hydrants.
4. Every Jr High had an indoor swimming pool. Boys and girls had separate gym classes and swimming classes. Boys had to swim nude. I've always thought that was strange. Worse was getting swats by the coach with the kick boards. I swear this is true.
Great comment. I had always heard that Dearborn's "Hey Day" was the 50s and 60s...but those of us from a slightly later time sure had it pretty good too!
+Boy, I wish Ten Eyck had two rinks like Howard did. I was terrified of those hockey players trying to scare us into leaving get us beginners to leave so they could play.
+As for the junior high swimming pools...I had my early swimming lessons at Stout. I was convinced you could not learn to swim outside. (We were so spoiled). My start of junior high coincided with the first year of co-ed gym.
(1976) That year, if memory serves me correctly, the 8th and
9th graders at Stout had separate classes and I'm pretty sure the boys still swam nude. I still don't know why the guys had to swim naked and the girls didn't. In my day it wasn't much different...guys were required to wear skimpy Speedos and girls wore "grandma suits".
+I first drove a car on Edsel's test track, complete with traffic lights and all. I would have never gotten out on Rotunda Drive had I not practiced so much on that track.
+While I did come through Dearborn Schools Howe/Stout/Edsel Ford, I do have a scattering of memories of Howard/Bryant/Dearborn High. I know I've played in the park at Howard and Summer String Programs were always at Bryant...City-wide music things meant taking turns for performances. (I won't talk about sporting events...)
"If everyone would sweep his own doorstep, the whole world would be clean." is a quote from Wolfgang von Goethe.
Does anyone have a picture of Seashore Swimming Pool? I would so love to have one. It is a real shame it was torn down. What it was replaced with wasn't near a replacement.
Camp Dearborn has a special place in my heart and the residential camp was outstanding. Or you would be if you were caught talking after lights out.
I lived in Dearborn and I have to say I didn't realize that not everyone had what we had.
My email is: rainbows2butterflies@hotmail.com
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