Traverse City Record-Eagle

Record-Eagle 150th Anniversary

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January 4, 2009

Important people of TC's past

Editor's note: Here's a list of people, other than Perry Hannah and A. Tracy Lay, who did much to shape our region's history and destiny.

Morgan Bates, 1806-1874

Founder of the Grand Traverse Herald, Bates also was a U.S. Land Office registrar during Abraham Lincoln's administration (1861-65) and a strong abolitionist. An experienced printer and newsman, well-versed in state politics, he distributed his newspaper all over the country, bringing attention to Traverse City in the era before wire services and telegraphs in northern Michigan.

James W. Milliken -- father, 1848-1908
James T. Milliken -- son, 1882-1952
William G. Milliken -- grandson, 1922-present

Progressive civic leaders and businessmen who served stints in the state Senate, they shared a sense of environmental stewardship that has spanned three generations. J.W. was concerned about pollution in West Bay. James T. advocated for good sewers and sewage treatment for decades and also started the Traverse City Rotary Club.

William, who lives in Traverse City today with wife Helen, served in the state Senate from 1961 to 1965, as lieutenant governor and finally as Michigan's longest-serving governor, from 1969 to 1983. While in Lansing, he focused on environmental matters, including regulating phosphates in the Great Lakes and strong wetlands laws.

R. Floyd Clinch, 1865-1930

Clinch was A. Tracy Lay's son-in-law who split his time between Chicago and Traverse City from 1905 to 1930 to supervise Hannah-Lay's enterprises -- Traverse City State Bank, the Mercantile and Boardman River Power and Light -- after the deaths of Perry Hannah and son Julius. He donated Hannah, Lay land along West Bay for Clinch Park and oversaw the dismantling of the old wooden Park Place Hotel and construction of a new, nine-story brick hotel that opened in 1930, just months before his death late in 1930.

James D. Munson, 1848-1902

Superintendent of the Northern Michigan Asylum, later called Traverse City State Hospital from 1885 until 1924. He believed "beauty is therapy" and also oversaw the health needs of the Traverse City's general public many times. He led the effort to raise funds to build a general hospital here in the 1920s and it was named for him.

Con Foster, 1875-1940

Former city mayor who led redevelopment of Clinch Park at a time "when Traverse City's waterfront was a rubbish heap," the Record-Eagle reported after his death on April 3, 1940. A former Ringling circus promoter, he managed the Lyric Theatre downtown for years.

Ben Peshaba, 1876-1955

A descendant of Chief Peshaba, an Ottawa chief who moved his Ottawa band in 1852 to Eagletown, present-day Peshawbestown. Ben Peshaba led the first petition effort in 1934 for federal recognition of Peshawbestown. A second unsuccessful petition was also filed in 1943. Peshaba was a founding member of the Michigan Indian Defense Association formed in 1933, the first area Indian advocacy organization.

Emelia Schaub, 1891-1995

Daughter of Leelanau County pioneers, Schaub was elected county prosecutor five times, starting in 1936. She helped Peshawbestown Indians save their tax-reverted lands in the late 1930s and persuaded county officials in the next decade to put Peshawbestown lands into trust, a move that helped local Indians gain federal recognition almost four decades later.

John Parsons, 1913-2007

Internationally recognized as the "father of numerical control," for inventing a process with engineer Frank Stulen that transformed manufacturing, Parsons came to Traverse City to run a family kitchen unit factory. It was turned into a World War II munitions plant after the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. The Parsons plant became the world's largest manufacturer of helicopter rotor blades following the war and at one time was a major local employer, with 700 workers. Parsons sold it in 1968 and operations moved to California three years later.

Les Biederman, 1911-1986

Founder of Traverse City's first commercial radio and television stations as well as cable TV, he was an energetic civic leader, sparking efforts to modernize Munson Hospital, start Northwestern Michigan College and use an industrial fund to lure post-war industries to Traverse City. Born in Philadelphia, he grew up as radio was being developed. His first Traverse City public broadcast was Jan. 8, 1941. By 1954, he had a five-TV station chain called the Paul Bunyan Network.

Arthur Duhamel, 1924-1992

"Probably the most important Native American in the Midwest in the last half-century," local historian Steve Harold said of Duhamel, thanks to his decision to go fishing in Grand Traverse Bay using "traditional" methods -- gill nets and small boats. His case and claim that he had a treaty fishing right became a key factor in the Leelanau Indians' successful push for federal recognition. State authorities arrested him several times from 1974-79, but he argued that he had a treaty right to fish and was not bound by state laws. Federal Judge Noel Fox affirmed that right in his landmark 1979 ruling.

-- By Loraine Anderson

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