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This Month In
DETROIT HISTORY
Nov 6, 1973 ~ State Senator Coleman A. Young elected as mayor
Nov 7, 1960 ~ Detroit News acquired Detroit Times
Nov 9, 1962 ~ Fire destroyed the Ford Rotunda
Nov 10, 1975 ~ The Edmund Fitzgerald sank
Nov 18, 1958 ~ The Carl D. Bradley sank
Nov 24, 1973 ~ Henry Ford II announced major downtown development plan
Eileen,
Once again you have stirred memory after memory of my 57 years in Detroit with your Newsletter.
I was wondering if you have done anything on the weekly yo-yo contests at various locations around Detroit? Mine was Ed's Sweetshoppe on Warwick and Grand River. We used to faithfully show up there after school to try to win patches by doing various tricks. The ultimate goal was to get an official Duncan yo-yo sweater, signifying that you were a junior instructor.
We really worked hard on those tricks and couldn't wait until the yo-yo rep would show up at Ed's. About 20 of us would show him our stuff.
It would be fun to hear from the yoyo generation, to see pictures of their patches and sweaters. Unfortunately, my mother got rid of my stuff after I went to college.
Another great Detroit memory. Keep up the super work!
Bill Morton
West Chester OH
Redford HS '60
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Were you a yo-yoer? Send your memories and pics to eileen@detroitmemories.com
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HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Hudson's Thanksgiving Day Parade 1962
Hi, Eileen,
My uncle, Dr. James M. Ryan Sr., was on the Soupy Sales Show around 1955 giving Soupy
a flu shot. I was about five years old at the time and remember watching it.
This past July, the photo was used on my uncle's 90th birthday party invitation. What a claim to fame!
I love the newsletter!
Sue Ryan Deuby
Jenison MI
Our Lady of Mercy HS '68
CLICK ON PHOTOS TO ENLARGE
Hi Eileen,
My grandfather was Christian L. Janssen (1894-1990). He and my grandmother emigrated from Holland after WWI in 1921 through Ellis Island. They had been dairy farmers in the Netherlands. He was one of the founders of Twin Pines in the late
'30s and had a route on the east side of Detroit. After WWII, he took the area from 13 1/2 Mile to 17 Mile south to north and from Southfield Road to Coolidge west to east. That one route turned into about 12 or so routes in the '50s and '60s. He retired in 1952.
My father, Arthur (Art) Janssen, in the above photo taken by the Royal Oak Tribune in 1950, worked for Twin Pines when he got home from WWII in 1946, the year I was born. His routes were in Birmingham and we had people like Al Kaline, Gordie Howe as customers. He left home delivery out of the Northland branch
(11 Mile and Greenfield) in the mid 70s and delivered school milk until he retired in the mid '80s. An earlier branch in Berkley on 11 Mile turned into a Wilson's Dairy when Twin Pines built the Hollywood cooler (first of its kind in the country) on Greenfield around the early 60s. My father passed in 2004
Uncle George Janssen was a milkman when he came home from WWII also. He became the branch manager for the Northland branch when it was built and left Twin Pines in the '70s. He is still doing very well at the age of 88.
Uncle Earl Janssen had routes in the '50s and then drove semi trucks for
Twin Pines through the '70s. Earl passed in 2001
Uncle Gerrit came over from Holland in the early '50s and had routes in Birmingham and Royal Oak from the '50s through the '70s. He is 82
My brother, who is 14 months younger than me, and I hung around the Dairy from the time I was three years old. The picture above is of Ron (left) and me sitting on a brand new Divco in 1949 on Humphrey St. in Birmingham near Adams and Woodward. My grandparents built a new home near 15 Mile and Adams in 1952 and they were on my father's route. I saw them every day. How cool was that!
"Detroit Memories takes me back to when I was a kid at LPHS in Lincoln Park MI. Just being a small part of Detroit radio at CKLW with
Tom Shannon, Johnny Williams,
Bill Gable and everyone else who sat behind the mike! And my thanks to you Eileen for keeping those
memories alive. I can hear Big Jim Edwards now...''AND THE MEMORIES JUST KEEP ON COMIN!""
Hi Eileen,
Would you put together an Indiana-Detroiters Group?
Diane Masterson
Evansville, IN
Grosse Pointe HS '68
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Eileen: A quick check of my Detroit Memories Newsletter database shows only
nine subscribers who live in Indiana, which, unfortunately, is not enough to create a group, either in my own database or on Facebook. I prefer a minimum of 20. So, your job now is to start forwarding this Newsletter to all of the Indiana-Detroiters you know. Encourage them to sign up for their own subscription. Check back with me in about six months for an update and we'll see if we have enough to form a Group. (This also applies to anyone who'd like a Detroiters group for their state.)
This album is viewable by everyone, not just Newsletter subscribers.
WANTED:
YOUR HOLIDAY PICTURE!
Throughout most of the 1950s and into the mid-1960s, CKLW
was basically a "variety" radio station which filled in the cracks
between full-service features with pop music played by
announcers like Bud Davies, Ron Knowles (who had a rock-
and-roll show on AM 800 as early as 1957), and Joe Van.
After RKO General took over the station and its FM sister (93.9)
in 1963, CKLW began to shed their variety-format approach and,
as "Radio Eight-Oh," began focusing more aggressively on
playing contemporary hits and issuing a record survey. Davies, Knowles, Dave Shafer, Tom Clay, Tom Shannon, Larry Morrow (as "Duke Windsor"), Terry Knight, and Don Zee were among the "Radio Eight-Oh" personalities during this time, and helped raise the station's ratings to the point where it was beating longtime hit station WXYZ (1270) by the summer of 1966 (though WKNR "Keener 13" was still a solid number one).
However it took Bill Drake's "Boss Radio" format and a roster of personalities such as Shannon, Shafer, Gary "Morning Mouth" Burbank, "Brother" Bill Gable,
Pat Holiday, Steve Hunter, "Super" Max Kinkel, Walt "Baby" Love,
Charlie O'Brien, Scott Regen, Ted "The Bear" Richards, Mike Rivers,
Duke Roberts, Charlie Van Dyke, Johnny Williams, and newsmen
Randall Carlisle, Grant Hudson, Byron MacGregor (who had a
three and a half million-selling #1 hit single with his recording of
Gordon Sinclair's commentary "The Americans" in 1973) and
Dick Smyth to raise the station — newly dubbed "The Big 8" —
to number one in the ratings starting in April 1967.
And who doesn't remember the distinctive voice of Byron MacGregor with the very latest CKLW 20/20 News?
CLICK BELOW TO HEAR THE FAMILIAR CKLW I.D.
Or how about the intro for Tom Shannon?
CKLW's coverage was enormous as evidenced by the area shown in white on the above map. In truth, on a clear night, folks even as far as the east coast could pick up the station.
Hall of Fame Tigers manager Sparky Anderson dies at 76
By JOHN LOWE / Free Press Sports Writer
Sparky Anderson, the all-time leader among Tigers managers in victories, visibility and inimitable quotations, died today at his home in Thousand Oaks, Calif. He was 76.
Anderson’s death came one day after the family announced that he was receiving hospice care at his home because of complications from dementia. The family said that at Anderson’s request, there will be no funeral or memorial service.
Anderson managed the Tigers from the middle of the 1979 season through 1995. His 17 seasons are most in club history.
As some of you may recall, last August, while visiting Las Vegas, I happened across a Nevada license plate on a Lexus that read DET MI. In fact, I wrote about it and posted the photo in the Sept 2009 Newsletter.
Last weekend on a driving trip back to Phoenix from Los Angeles, a vehicle passed me on I-10. I couldn't believe it when I saw that it had Arizona plates inscribed with DETROIT. My camera wasn't handy, so I missed getting a picture. Darn.
But, the Motor City gods must have been smiling on me that day because when I stopped at the next rest area, there was the car! I ran over to the driver's window just as he was getting ready to pull out and asked if
I could take a picture of his license plate. He was kind enough to say yes.
Well, we got to talking and I eventually mentioned the Detroit Memories website. Whaddayaknow, turns out, Kevin Williams, a '74 grad of Cass Tech, and I had met this past summer at the L.A.-Detroiters Picnic where he'd been the D.J.! He and his wife, Laura, now live in Surprise AZ.
So, to those of you who objected to the Lexus plates, aren't you happy to see the DETROIT plate on a FORD?
