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[(How are you enjoying Sina 11th of July,
First of all, I'd like to welcome everyone tonight and thank you for coming out on such
a beautiful evening.
I think the weather may have stopped a few people from making it tonight.
I was talking to some of the people later on today in City Hall and told them usually
when you schedule something for October 26, you don't have to say, gee, I hope it doesn't
snow tonight.
But I guess that's not our luck.
And happy birthday to Bill Stroud, that's right.
Those of you that don't know me, my name is Bill Hansen.
I'm the downtown development director for the city of St. Louis, kind of the person
that tried to tie all this together this evening.
We're combining a couple different things, thinking that we had two different audiences
that might be interested in both items, so we thought we'd do them both at one time.
Want to thank Mac TV for being here tonight.
They've really been extremely responsive to every event we do and to have them be able
to record something like this is really nice and I'm going to take the time as well.
So thank you very much there.
Yeah, let's go ahead.
Also, before we get started, if you haven't noticed, there's cookies, punch, water, de-caf,
coffee up here.
Whenever you want something, just come and get it.
We kind of advertise this as an open house, even though we've got a program going on.
I don't feel like you're hurting anyone's feelings by coming to get something to drink.
Go ahead and do that whenever you want to.
Also a couple of housekeeping items, if you do have a cell phone with you and it's not
turned off, please do that.
So we're not interrupting anyone, I appreciate that.
Consideration of everyone.
I know a lot of you people might not have them, but I leave mine at another room all
the time.
And then finally, we're hoping that this is going to take maybe an hour total for everything,
but if you do have to use a restroom and you haven't seen where they are yet, it's just
turned right.
It's just slightly down the hall here, so if you do need to use a restroom, it's close
to you.
Before we get started, I would like to introduce first our city manager, Kurt Giles.
He's got a little welcome and a few introductions to make.
Kurt.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Also, it's my pleasure to be here this evening to introduce the current members of our city
council up here in the city of St. Louis.
Before I do that, I just wanted to mention a couple of things.
We appreciate their support and leadership.
We've had a great number of accomplishments here at the city in recent years.
This building that we're in this evening, this room and building is just one of the
examples of investment in the community that's made possible as a result of the city council's
efforts.
Our new fire station, we're one of four units of government that participate in the St. Louis
area fire department, and that's another fine example.
The city's water supply replacement project is, I would say, historical here in St. Louis.
It's been a great many other projects, a bit too numerous to mention, and hard to remember
all at one time, but these are due to a large degree thanks to our leadership from the mayor
and city council.
In looking at all the things, thinking about the things that they do in community leadership,
there's no surprise that there's quite a bit of overlap between the folks that are honored
tonight here for receiving the spirit of St. Louis award and members that have also served
on the city council.
We very much appreciate your efforts and leadership.
With that, I would like to introduce current members of the city council and ask them to
stand and be recognized as I call their name.
Members is mayor Jim Kelly.
The next member I haven't seen yet this evening is Melissa Allen, mayor of ProTown.
Longtime member Jerry Church is here.
Member Longtime mayor and current city council member George Coobin and finally city councilman
Tom Reed.
With that, I'll turn it back over to Phil.
Thank you.
Thanks, Curt, and thanks to the city council from my end.
We do a lot of things here in St. Louis, especially lately in trying to aim things in the right
direction.
Our city council is very forward thinking and also very, what's the right word, open
to ideas.
I know Jim has told me more than once, if you come to us with an idea that seems to make
sense, we'll probably say yes.
That's really been the case here ever since I've been around, which is starting to be
a long time now.
Thanks again to them.
Before we get started, this just kind of struck me right now a few minutes ago and I was trying
to think of the right way to describe this situation and here's my best.
It really doesn't matter if we screw up a bunch of names tonight or forget something
or something goes wrong or the podium doesn't work or the punch doesn't taste good.
None of that stuff really matters so much as just watching you people that have known
each other for so long, come into a room and have a chance to sit and talk with each other,
see some folks that you haven't seen for a long time, I mean it's drastically noticeable,
the togetherness that happens in this town and so when we do get finished tonight, make
sure you don't feel like you've got to run out the door.
If there's someone you haven't talked to that you want to sit with for a little bit, we'll
hang around as long as you want to afterwards.
I appreciate you guys being here and I know that's part of it too, is the camaraderie.
So I just wanted to say that at the beginning.
First part of the program and again hopefully we can split this in two halves and it's maybe
an hour total.
We want to talk a little bit about the historic photo project that you can see around you
here.
If anyone has a criticism that they're too high, I guess you can blame me.
I'm kind of a high picture person and other people or low picture people.
My excuse for it this time is we also rent this room out and so we wanted to keep it
clean so they weren't too easily snatched by younger hands.
Do your best if you have to crick your neck up a little bit to see the top ones but we
think the design and everything turned out real well even if you do have to maybe put
your long range glasses on to see the top ones.
A couple people we'd like to introduce and say thank you to for this project.
If you'd stand and then just kind of keep standing until I get done with everyone that's
involved with the project.
First of all Tina Travis from the Gratiot County Community Foundation, the foundation
gave us a $2,000 grant for this project which basically covered the cost of the enlargements
and framing which is the bulk of the cost of the project.
They've been a real partner to us here in St. Louis on a variety of things over the
years and it seems like whenever you've got a good project you can count on them to help
out.
They also did some things for us here with the new city hall building including a lot
of the furniture that exists here in the new city hall.
We had enough money to build it but maybe not enough to furnish it so the foundation
really came through with that too so I'd like to thank Tina for all that.
Tina if you just stay up and we'll get done with the rest of them.
David Macken again if you hold your applause till the end.
David Macken our local historian and author he introduces himself as a storyteller at
all of our chamber meetings.
He had pretty much located the majority of these photos and had them on disc that he's
collected over the years that he brought to the committee so they could select the best
ones to represent this piece of St. Louis history.
David has written four books on the city of St. Louis or the St. Louis community all
of which are just wonderful books, easy fun reads, interesting and just a real unusual
thing to have someone in such a small community that does this.
I mean I don't know that you can find another town that has five or six thousand people
in it that has four history books written about it, a very nice touch for our town.
The rest of the photo project committee, again if you just please stand and we'll talk about
it together, Colleen Boyer I know was here, Don Birch was here but had to run, Colleen
is up already taking pictures and doing video, Mary Riker, I know Gary and Lou Irvin are
here I believe if you'd stand and Joe Ward is also here.
These are the people that met kind of time after time to figure out what pictures do
we select, what kind of frames, what color, how do we group them, how do we design them.
I mean it was quite a production to get all this stuff put together and you really need
a lot of heads knocking together to get something that turns out to look really nice and a lot
of these people are involved with our St. Louis area historical society as well.
Historical society president Judy Wood couldn't be here tonight, she's out of town but she's
also been a real nice leader for that historical society group and they really accomplished
a lot of things at the train depot and the museum and everything around Crawford Street
as well.
A couple more that I don't believe are here right now, Bobby Maher our city treasurer
took the time to do all the framing and matting and putting everything together for that.
I couldn't do it, someone needed to, she was great at it so she deserves a lot of credit.
Mike Parsons our electric department chair along with his staff, Todd Leslie, Jim Fisher
and Dave Giles, they were in here on Monday putting all these things up and trying to
go over the layouts that people had created and Bobby had things cut to scale and they're
in here with laser light levels and the only thing I had to be careful of is I should have
learned my lesson years ago, don't come and talk to them while they're working, very grumpy
people.
I would say that even if they were here so you can tell them if you haven't, but very
talented, helpful people, I mean it looks beautiful, they did it right to a tee so I
wanted to make sure we thanked them as well.
And then finally Mary Ann Ryder our city clerk helped put the program together this evening
as well as doing all the things that you need to do to have it as nice as it is, the decorations,
the pop, the cookies, the whole nine yards, the table settings.
She's getting to be quite an expert at this for all the things we've done over the years
so she really is a key cog in what we do here and keeping things in order.
So if we could have a round of applause for all those folks.
And then I think what we'd like to do now is so that we give you a little bit of the
background of why we did this particular photo project, we'll have Dave McNacken come up
please and he'll give you a little more information than I possibly could.
This is dangerous, I feel history dude kicking in.
First of all, some of you are seated in the Park Hotel.
Some of this area would have been probably the southeast corner of the Park Hotel.
If you were clear out to the far wall you might have been in the boiler house.
I need to talk to you a little bit about buildings because you might not know what you have seen.
When in 1869 they were drilling for brine down on the riverbank they wanted to get salt
which was marketable.
They didn't hit salt, they hit some magical water that healed people and when the word
spread all kinds of people came to St. Louis to drink it and bathe in it and evidently
did help people.
Not only that, you could hold your knife in the flow and it would magnetize so you could
pick up little things like tags and small pieces of metal.
Nobody still knows I guess why that did that but a few years ago I tried it in my regular
tap here in St. Louis and it still does it so it could have had something to do with
an iron.
I'm not sure.
Well, with all the people coming they decided that they would put up a bath house and it
was a monstrous bath house right out here on the riverbank.
I think it was way over a hundred feet long and they gave baths all year round, heated
the water, heated the building.
Some famous people showed up, Alan Pinkerton of the detective agency, he had had a stroke
and his arm was paralyzed, maybe his side.
He came wondering if the water would help him.
General Fighting Joe Hooker, Civil War, only five years over, came, he'd had a stroke,
his arm was paralyzed, he thought maybe it would help him.
Oh, let's see who else.
Well, before too long, General Dan Sickles who had invested in a railroad here in town,
he came in the interest of the railroad but since he'd left a lag at Gettysburg, he was
pleased to take baths here thinking that might make him feel good and then the Chief Justice
of the U.S. Supreme Court came from Washington with his nephew who was his secretary.
Salmon Portland Chase had been Lincoln's secretary of the treasury and a real thorn
in Lincoln's side and he pointed him Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, a lifetime
point, I got rid of him that way so Lincoln was pretty smart.
He came because he had what we would probably call Alzheimer's and he was slipping and he
knew it and he wanted to be president so bad.
He would come to a little far away rural end of the road town to see if that water would
keep him from losing his mind.
It did and within a couple years, he had died.
So those are the people that came but there was a complaint while they had lots of hotels.
We had more hotel rooms in St. Louis than any town in size in the state of Michigan
and they didn't have a good hotel and they had to wait until 1880 before Dr. Willis Andrews
bought the complex and said, I'm going to build a hotel.
So they built a hotel and it would have reached somewhere over there in the hall out to the
street, a three-story hotel and they said this is the good hotel and it was.
And it was so popular that he added on virtually doubling the size of the hotel and running
it on back right through here.
So it was pretty close to the river.
Well, they tore down the old bath house and then they put in a new building that would
have been right where the balcony is outside those windows and it ran, it wasn't as long
as the bath house but it was called the sanitarium and there people, the sick people, the truly
sick people that hadn't come just for R and R, they got medical attention and they took
the baths and drank the water and of course mineral, frankly friends, mineral water was
a big deal back at that time and so were bottles and if the mineral water did what it was supposed
to do and apparently it did, Grandma always said anytime anybody was sick, how are your
bottles? Well, that was the way you check things up and so if you drank a glass of mineral
water, at least took care of that.
So the people came and they were taken care of and pampered and doctored and that sort
of thing.
Well, medicine came along with new things and mineral water lost out and the baths were
still there but if you just wanted to be pampered and you wanted a massage, okay that's fine.
And so they gave the baths down in the basement, somewhere right in here, they had bathrooms,
bath rooms for the ladies and bath rooms for the men and people to give massages and it
was a big deal. Governors came through on a regular basis and stopped here at this site.
In the 30s, the sanitarium had just been used kind of as a storage place for a few years
and so Jim Sumner, who bought the complex in the 30s, decided that he would clean that
out and turn it into kind of, well, a party place and he got some complaint because of
the loud music and the lateness of the hour and then the roust bulbs came in from the
Porter oil field looking for fun, which meant women, and they'd go to this building and
then the local boys showed up there too and they didn't mix real well and the police got
real tired of that place and so he had to close it down.
I would just mention something about him that I always found interesting. His V16 Cadillac,
amazing color in this particular picture. The Hesses bought the complex in the 40s and
they could do this because they were owners of what apparently was the largest duck hatchery
maybe in the world located where the Nuremberg Middle School is located now and so eventually
since they were marketing ducklings, duckling got on the menu in the dining room here of
the hotel and it became very popular. A lot of people would schedule their Sunday afternoon
drives to include Sunday dinner at the dining room of the park and they would have, if they
were a big eater, half a duckling, maybe otherwise a quarter duckling. Some of you know this because
you served these dinners and it sounds very familiar to you, at least I'm only saying
what I'm told, this is way before my time. There were potatoes and gravy and vegetables
and things that went with it and a roll and deserved. It became a very celebrated place,
the park hotel and the famous duckling dinners. Well, by the time that, you know, the free
way went through and a bunch of other things, the big old hotels fell on hard times and
as you know in town after town they were destroyed and that was the case here of the park in
the late 60s, 1960s when it was torn down. So, after it was torn down, the IGA store
was built and it was enlarged and then eventually it became empty and now we have that store
used to be this wonderful, wonderful facility. Somebody, you know, I think came into the
room and they looked at it and the walls were kind of bare and they said, man, we could
put up some pictures, you know, what do we want to do? Finally they said, well, the site
is very historic, you just want pictures of what was the history of the site. And so,
I said, well, I'll see what I've got in my collection, people have owned these many
pictures and they're scanned and I came up with 70, more than 70 pictures of this site.
So Bobby copied off rough pictures and committee laid them out and divided them and said, yes,
no, yes, no, that one will make a good enlargement and that sort of thing and finally came up
with the pictures that we wanted to include so that on this side we've got the hotel and
on this side we have the mineral springs with the spring house and you'll note that the
spring house has been reproduced very generously by a donor down at the Cutler Library YAR.
And so there are some of these very special things in regard to the pictures. These three
big pictures were printed on the digital printer at Elma College, which does big stuff and
all the rest were printed at Walmart where a lady sat by me and leaned over my shoulder
and pushed all the buttons I was too bound to push and blasted her heart and said, oh,
she made my day. That's pretty scary when you don't have a clue and she knew it all.
So we have these wonderful pictures and then this building is very well decorated, probably
more so than almost any city hall in the state of Michigan because if you go down to the
city council chambers, you will find the wonderful paintings done by Mike Patterson of all the
different famous historic buildings throughout the city and they're just wonderful and Mike
is here tonight. Mike, wave your hand. So that's kind of the story of how these pictures
came about. It was a group effort and we are so pleased to have some very talented people
who were able to help us out on this and I say thank you to them and thank you for coming
and sounding like you're at a really good time. Thanks, Dave. Can we give Dave a little
round of applause again? Really, yeah. Unless he's probably the only person I know that
can get away with saying the word bowels. Okay, getting on to the Spirit of St. Louis
Award, part of our program today. The Spirit of St. Louis Award has been presented since
1966. You can see the list of award winners reproduced on the back of those little programs
that we have there. Basically, to honor the St. Louis person of the year, you can describe
the qualities of that person a lot of different ways, but I guess that's the simplest. The
award is chosen by taking nominations from the general public. They turn in the nominations,
there's a four and everything, again from the community at large and then that goes
to a committee of the previous five award winners and they go through everything and
then make the decision on a winner for that particular year. That's done in December and
then the award is presented each year at the Gratid Area Chamber of Commerce's annual
dinner which is held in kind of later January. The award has been given for many reasons
over the years for creating things like a fishing derby, a golf outing, organizing or
volunteering at community events, fundraisers or projects, spurring economic activity or
helping to promote St. Louis in general. The winners have been both male and female. They've
come from a variety of jobs and backgrounds and have been a variety of ages. The Spirit
of St. Louis award really covers a full range of the St. Louis community. It's a very interesting
award and I believe a very prestigious award. The story behind what we're doing this evening
which is to pass out medallions as kind of a memento of the award winners or their families
receiving that award. Over the years we kind of realized that some of the other communities
were doing this kind of thing. The Alma community was the one I first noticed that they actually
did it at the chamber dinner where they as part of their award gave a medallion and a
thing to hang it around your neck with and kind of thought to ourselves that's kind of
a nice idea. We give them a plaque and they get multiple certificates from different legislators
and things like that. But maybe to have something that they could actually wear at different
functions or events or even back to the chamber dinner in following years, we thought that
would be nice. Then the question was how do you do it? How do we figure it out? Do we
just start doing it and everyone else is out of luck? Some people said no, let's try and
figure out a way to get back as many people as we can that are able to be here. Even though
they've already received their award long ago in some cases, we'd like them to have
this as kind of one last little thank you from our community for being that award winner.
A little description of the symbol itself. It incorporates a couple of different things.
One is it's a piece of the existing city of St. Louis logo, kind of the mitten with
the river and sun running into the middle. It has the cities or communities tagline
which is the middle of the mitten, which I think has been for quite a long time, 1950
something long time ago. And it also, the very top of it, the spirit of St. Louis I
know isn't maybe little St. Louis's idea, but the lettering on the top of these medallions
is an actual reproduction of the lettering that's on the plane that Charles Lindberg
flew, the spirit of St. Louis. And so we actually went a little extra mile in making it as historically
cool as we could. And actually that phrase has been used quite a while. I know years
back there were spirit of St. Louis license plates that we still see lurking about every
now and then. And then also from that, a few years back, we painted that same design on
the north side of St. Louis Variety's building, which is still up there right now. So there
is a little history to the phrase itself. We hope that these medallions do serve as
keepsakes for the recipients and their families and their families for years to come. We will,
what we'll do is we'll have, what I'll do is I'll read the entire list of names. Now
obviously some people aren't going to be here tonight, but we feel like we should at least
list the names by year. If you are here or if you have a family member here that would
like to come up, please do so and receive the medallion. I'm going to have two different
people help us when you do come up. If you want the medallion just handed to you, that's
fine. But if you are the actual award winner and you'd like them to put it around your
neck and wear it, that's fine too. Our assistance this evening. A couple of valuable people
in our Chamber of Commerce community. First of all, Terrin Blanshin, who is the new Director
of the Gratid Area Chamber. Terrin's in her first year and has already had a real positive
impact on the organization. Terrin, if you'll come forward, please. And Todd Albee from
Chemical Bank is our local middle of the Mitten Association, which is our branch of the Gratid
Area Chamber of Commerce. He is our president for this year. So if we could have a hand
for these two, please. And again, we understand that not everybody can be here tonight. The
award goes back 50 years. It's tough to get 50 for 50, but it does seem like we have a
fair amount of people that were able to be here. We're sure happy that you are. Again,
if you could maybe please hold our applause until the end. We'll wait until the person
is complete up here and has their stuff and down again before we announce the next one.
All the way back to 1966, Chuck Tuzol, 1967, Fred Carter, 1968, William Dennis, 1969, Larry
Shirely, I believe Ron is here, 1970, DeWayne Parrott and Alan Schultz, 1971, Tom Billing,
I believe it's daughter when he is here tonight, Lucille Peckinpaw, is 1972, I'm sorry, 1973,
Caroline Phillips, 1974, Dr. William Knowles, I'm here tonight. 1975, Frank Starry, 1976,
Richard Green. I'm going to pause here just for a second. 1977, there was no award given.
I don't know the history of that other than I can kind of think of what was going on around
here at that time. I'm going to put a little plug in. When you look at what's gone on here
in the last, let's say, 15 to 20 years, a community that had just some horrendous things happen to it
has done more in probably those last 15 or 20 years than any town or size in Michigan.
I say that without hesitation whatsoever. I know some of you are around here and you
see it happen. Anyone that doesn't live around here anymore and you remember the 1980s, let's
say, and you wander around nowadays in comparison, I think you've got to be fairly happy with the
way things are going. I guess what this makes me think is, how bad must it have been in 1977
if they didn't even give a person a year award? I will just leave that one at that. 1978, Doug
McKinnon. 1979, Ken Barnum. 1980, the St. Louis cheerleaders for the award winners. 1981, Gene
Nickering. 1982, Charlie Brown. 1983, Leroy Hubble. 1984, Bill Mays. 1985, Gary Getzinger
is here. No, you're not the oldest living boy. Don't want him trying to claim anything. 1986,
Greg Seeper is here. 1987, Leonard Johnson. 1988, Linda Johnson is here. 1987,
George Cuban is here. 1989, George Cuban is here. 1990, Jim Ayers. 1991, Penny Wishbier.
1992, Donna Kelly is here. You both have to go. We've got two for you. We've even made
up two of us. Don't fight now. No, you don't have to cut it in half or anything. After you
buy a certain number, they get cheaper, so we thought we'd get them for you. We're actually
set for the next 50 years, you know? 1993, Craig Zeese is here. 1994, Matt Viverwood's
here. 1995, Larry Parsons. 1996, Bill Shrom is here. On his birthday.
1997, Jim Swartzmiller is here. Really? Jim is at the truth or is Sam just being
asked you? Unfortunately, it's the truth. Okay, for that happy birthday to you. Happy
birthday to you, Jim. Happy birthday to you. 1998, Jan Funting. 1999, Dennis Collison is
here. The year 2000, Bill Raskin is here.
2001, Jerry Church is here. Thank you. That was a good ride, Drew, wasn't it, Jerry?
2002, Maynard Peacock. I believe Sun Dan is here, all the way from Portage on a miserable
weather night. 2003, Joe Ward is here. 2004, as you've heard already, Sam Bush is here.
2005, Shada B. Bonnie is here. 2006, Joe Schultz. 2007, Dave McMacken is here.
2008, Gene Nevins. 2009, Norse Bay. 2010, Jane Keon is here.
2011, Lou and Gary Irvine are here.
2012, Corey Bailey is here.
2013, Chuck Oten. I believe he got trapped at the Elk's tonight, he runs the joint. 2014,
it was Bill Cody, camera shy, basically, I'll see him tomorrow. And 2015, Mayor Jim Kelly
is here. And again, thanks to everyone for the meant
for receiving the event in Medallions, whether it was for yourself or for your family. Can
we please take a moment to give all these people a real nice round of applause? In closing,
actually, we did throw the bell timelines. If you know anyone that was not able to be
here tonight and how to get something to them, we did have some people call and say they
couldn't make it this evening. And I've got some addresses and things like that. One way
or another, we'd sure like to get the medallions to the people that were not able to be here.
So whatever help you can be to us, we'd sure appreciate it. The people that we recognized
again this evening, I mean, they are really part of the backbone of this community, the
volunteer hours and the extra things that they've done. Many of them are still involved
here that live in St. Louis that I deal with on a weekly basis pretty much. So really appreciate
all your efforts over the years. And hopefully this is at least some kind of a mentor appreciation
to you. In closing, I touched on it a little bit at the beginning and just wanted to go
over it again. I say this at the end of most of my talks, if I've got any kind of speech
to make for any kind of group. This is an unusual place, St. Louis, and in a good way.
For what it's gone through, there's still a tremendous amount of people that are attached
and love the town and that still do a lot of things and have not given up. I'm hoping
that you've seen some things go on here that maybe you never thought you'd see, whether
it be the city hall building or a water supply that you can count on or $100 million worth
of river cleanup where they tore the water out and built coffer dams and dug the junk
out of here. I mean, the improvements that have been made here are almost unbelievable.
And I really feel like there's a general happiness here right now that things are going in the
right direction. And a lot of it is due to a lot of the people in this room right here.
So I wanted to make sure that we said thank you from the grassy area chamber, from the
middle of the Midden Association, from our historical society, from the city of St. Louis
and their city council for everyone, for all their help. We sure appreciate everything
you do. And again, please take the time if you haven't been around to wander around the
city hall building a little bit. Mike Patterson's paintings, the city council room is open.
If you haven't seen them, you really should. And don't feel like we're chasing you out
of here. You can sit and talk for as long as you want. Okay. Thank you very much, everybody.
