Shelf Life

Tag: Lake Michigan

  •  Local author to appear at bookstore for book signing of new “Lost East Chicago and Indiana Harbor” history book

     Local author to appear at bookstore for book signing of new “Lost East Chicago and Indiana Harbor” history book

    Award-winning author and journalist Joseph S. Pete will appear at a Northwest Indiana bookstore to sign copies of his new history book, “Lost East Chicago and Indiana Harbor.”

    Pete, a Lisagor Award-winning reporter and columnist, will do a book signing from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, July 20 at Miles Books at 2819 Jewett Avenue in Highland.

    He will sign copies of his latest history book about East Chicago and copies of his other books “Lost Hammond, Indiana,” “Secret Northwest Indiana” and “100 Things to Do in Gary and Northwest Indiana Before You Die.” Pete also will sign copies of University of Arizona Professor and East Chicago native Gloria McMillan’s “Children of Steel” anthology about life in steel mill towns, which he contributed a short story to.

    “Lost East Chicago and Indiana Harbor” chronicles the Indiana steel town on the shore of Lake Michigan in north Lake County just outside of Chicago that was a melting pot, drawing immigrants from all over the world to work at its bustling steel mills. As the population boomed in the early 20th century, East Chicago was home to more than 100 nationalities who came for the opportunities in a highly industrialized city that earned nicknames like “The Workshop of America,” the “Arsenal of America” and the “Industrial Capital of the World” while forging the steel that built up 20th-century America.

    Home to one of the most storied basketball rivalries in the state, East Chicago was also known as “The City of Champions” as it produced several high school football and basketball championship teams, including the only two back-to-back undefeated basketball teams in state history and the only two athletes to compete in both the Final Four and World Series. East Chicago gave the world many greats like the NBA’s all-time winningest coach Gregg Popovich, the Milwaukee Bucks star and later corporate magnate Junior Bridgeman, the baseball speedster Kenny Lofton, the actress Betsy Palmer, the boxing legend Angel “El Diablo” Manfredy and the Academy Award-winning screenwriter Steve Tesich, who penned the classic sports film “Breaking Away.”

    Pete’s new book is based in large part on interviews, including with Bridgeman, the state champion who went on to lead the Louisville Cardinals to the Final Four, get his number retired by and Bucks, and build a business empire that made him one of the wealthiest former athletes of all time.

    “Lost East Chicago and Indiana Harbor” takes a fond look back at bygone landmarks like Washington and Roosevelt High Schools, Inland Steel Christmas parties, the Washington Park Zoo, Taco Joe’s, the Mademoiselle Shoppe, movie palaces like the Voge and the gym where Michael Jordan played his first Bulls game. It recounts planned worker communities like Sunnyside and Marktown, the English village designed by noted architect Howard Van Doren Shaw where people park on the sidewalks and walk in the street and that’s featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not and enshrined on the National Register of Historic Places.

    Pete, who has covered East Chicago for a decade for The Times of Northwest Indiana, relates stories about the Katherine Home, St. Joseph’s Carmelite Home, Big House, bolita, the Wickey Mansion, the Tod Opera House, the Patrick machine and the Crazy Indiana Style Artists graffiti crew, which hung out with the acclaimed artist Keith Haring, appeared on network television, and went on to exhibit their artwork internationally. His book also explores industrial pollution, political corruption, and unsolved mysteries like the deaths of Jay Given and Henry Lopez and the disappearance of the soccer great William “Wee Willie” McLean.

    “Lost East Chicago and Indiana Harbor” looks back at fondly remembered East Chicago intuitions like Albert’s, Dominic’s, Puntillo’s, Shrimp Harbor, Los Burritos, and El Patio Restaurant, as well as curiosities like the East Chicago Hermit and a mummy a local funeral home used to let kids see for a nickel. It also examines the city’s impact, such as producing Indiana’s first Latino elected official, the Hoosier State’s first and longest-running Mexican Independence parade, and the Midwest’s longest-running Mexican American–owned business, as well as the steel that helped shape America and countless other products.

    Pete is an Indiana University graduate, a combat veteran and a board member of the Indiana Society of Professional Journalists and the Chicago Headline Club. He is a playwright and literary writer whose work has appeared in more than 100 literary journals, earning Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. He’s received many journalism awards, including from the Inland Press Association, the Hoosier State Press Association, the Chicago Journalists Association, Columbia University and the National Association of Real Estate Editors as well as local honors from the Indiana Small Business Development Center and the Duneland Chamber of Commerce.

    For more information or an interview, contact Joseph S. Pete at 219.841.1030 or jpete@alumni.iu.edu.

  • “Ladies of the Lights” Showcases Female Lighthouse Keepers

    “Ladies of the Lights” Showcases Female Lighthouse Keepers

    “Ladies of the Lights” Presentation by Michigan Maritime Expert Dianna Stampfler Showcases Female Keepers of Michigan’s Historic Beacons

    “Ladies of the Lights” Presentation Showcases Female Keepers of Michigan’s Historic Beacons

    Michigan lighthouse historian and author Dianna Stampfler has announced a series of presentations of her popular “Ladies of the Lights” in honor of Women’s History Month. This program, which includes readings from newspapers and autobiographies, as well as countless historic photos, sheds light on the dedicated women who served at lights around the state dating back as early as the 1830s.

    These were women before their time, taking on the romantic yet dangerous and physically demanding job of tending to the lighthouses that protected the Great Lakes shoreline. Given this was also a government job, their involvement was even more unique. In all, nearly 50 women have been identified who excelled in this profession over the years.

    One of the most notable was Elizabeth (Whitney) VanRiper Williams who took over the St. James Harbor Light on Beaver Island after her husband, Clement, died while attempting to rescue the crew of a ship sinking in the harbor. She later became the first keeper of the Little Traverse Lighthouse in Harbor Springs, retiring after a combined 44 years of service.

    There is also Julia (Tobey) Braun Way who outlived two husband keepers at the Saginaw River Rear Range Lighthouse in Bay City, and some say who still haunts the place today. Anastasia Truckey served as the interim keeper at the Marquette Harbor Lighthouse in the 1860s while her husband, Nelson, was off serving in the Civil War. Mary Terry served 18 years before she died in a fire at the Sand Point Lighthouse in Escanaba in 1886 – her death still shrouded in mystery 137 years later.

    Stampfler has been researching Great Lakes lighthouses for more than 25 years and is the author of Michigan’s Haunted Lighthouses (2019) and Death and Lighthouses on the Great Lakes (2022) both from The History Press. She has penned countless articles and been interviewed extensively about the lighthouses and their keepers. She is also the president of Promote Michigan.

    The March 2023 program schedule includes:

    • Tuesday, March 14 (6-7:30pm)

    Chesterfield Township Library

    www.chelibrary.org

    • Wednesday, March 15 (10am-Noon)

    Saginaw Valley State University, University Center

    OLLI Class (Registration required: $20 members/$40 non-members)

    www.enrole.com/svsu/jsp/session.jsp?sessionId=275W23&courseId=275LADIES&categoryId=D488D638

    • Wednesday, March 15 (5-6:30pm)

    Harbor Beach District Library

    www.hbadl.org

    • Tuesday, March 21 (6-7:30pm)

    Livonia Public Library ZOOM

    https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88565136420

    • Wednesday, March 22 (6-7:30pm)

    St. Clair County Library, Port Huron

    • Thursday, March 23 (7-8:30pm)

    Novi Public Library Zoom

    www.novilibrary.org 

    Stampfler will be selling/signing copies of her books following each presentation.

  • The Death and Life of the Great Lakes

    The Death and Life of the Great Lakes

    “The Great Lakes are a trove of freshwater like nowhere else,” says Dan Egan, author of the New York Times bestseller The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. “They contain one-fifth of the world’s fresh water, and there are about 40 million people who live in the Great Lakes basin. The lakes matter to us for many reasons—economically, culturally and, for me, emotionally.”

    Dan Egan

                  Indeed, for Egan, a journalist for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel who has covered the Great Lakes for over a decade, it’s not just a job or the realization that these bodies of water are important for commerce but also because they define a region.

                  “I live just a few blocks from Lake Michigan and I’m not sure I would have move back to Wisconsin after living in Utah and Idaho after college if it the lake wasn’t here,” says Egan, a senior water policy fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences. “Milwaukee wouldn’t be Milwaukee without Lake Michigan.”

                  For those of us who grew up in Northwest Indiana, that same feeling prevails. Lake Michigan is part of our history and our present from the industries that lined its shores and made this area a powerhouse in manufacturing and shipping to the beauty of the dunes and beaches and all the recreational opportunities they offers, it’s all encompassing. But Egan sees the Great Lakes as being more fragile than we realize.

                  “When you look out at the lake, you see this beautiful body of water but there’s so much going on that you don’t see,” he says.

                  From the alewives that plagued the beaches back in the 1970s to new dangers, Egan says many of the difficulties with the Great Lakes began when they were opened up to the ocean by building the St. Lawrence Seaway, allowing large ships to bring in such invasive organisms as zebra and quagga mussels. Each year, it costs millions of dollars to remove these mussels from water intake plants.  

                  “No one had ever heard of these before 2000,” he says, noting that while the shipping industry has taken steps to eliminate these unwelcome passengers, the technology is not enough to completely stop them from hitching a ride into our waters.

                  In ways, it’s been one crisis after another. The Clean Water Act of 1972 helped clean up the pollution that industries and cities were dumping into the water by holding them accountable. But then came the invasive species.

                  “Lake Erie, the smallest of the lakes, is probably in the worse shape,” says Egan, “because of its algae blooms and dead zones. But all the lakes are vulnerable.”

                  Interestingly, Egan says that global shipping accounts for less than 5% of the traffic on the Great Lakes which he describes as being equivalent one train a day, yet they are the major cause of the problems impacting the lakes’ ecosystems.

    Egan thinks it’s important for people to know the issues putting the lakes in jeopardy.

                  “An informed public is an empowered public,” he says. “I hope this book gives a baseline knowledge about these glorious lakes.”

    Ifyougo:

    What: Dan Egan talk and book signing

    When: Wednesday, January 15 from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

    Where: Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St., Chicago, IL 60605

    Cost: Free; seating is first come, first served. Books are available for purchase and Egan will be autographing books at the end of the program.

    FY: 312-747-4300; chipublib.org