Hello.
THE 2020 REUNION of the Seaholm Class of 70 is now only seven months away!
Welcome to classmates receiving this monthly update for the first time. The reunion will be held Friday, July 10, 2020 at The Community House in Birmingham. We hope to have additional events Thursday through Sunday. We have a block of rooms at special pricing at the Holiday Inn Express in Birmingham, use code SEA to get group pricing.
Maiden Names
I hope you will understand that for record keeping purposes it is much easier to go by maiden names. I can remember some of your “new” names, but certainly not all. It will be very helpful if you would please include your maiden name in your communications.
Classmate Search
Martha Barnes and Linda Simpson have really come through for us, responsible for almost all the found classmates this month. Many thanks for their hard work.
You DO NOT Want To Be On This List
I have attached a revised Missing Information List: December Update. The names of classmates found back in October have been deleted, the classmates who were found in November appear in Blue so you can monitor our progress. Please help us find the remaining classmates in Black. All we need is their current email address to remove them from the missing information list.
Detroit’s Art Deco Legacy
I saw this interesting article from the Curbed.com website about the wonderful collection of Art Deco architecture in Detroit:
https://www.facebook.com/249611575061688/posts/2873732765982876?sfns=mo
It even maps their locations. There are walking tours available for this and different interests downtown that you might want to enjoy when you are in for the reunion.
I was impressed at the number of buildings designed by Albert Kahn, who, in a recent New York Times issue, is thought to be as important an architect as Frank Loyd Wright. Here’s one of his buildings you might be more familiar with:
The Wabeek Building, on Maple between Chester and Bates in Birmingham. It was intended to be eight stories tall, but residents fought back.
Sharing Photos
Our group page on facebook, “Seaholm Class of 1970”, is a great place to share photos. I just recently did this, first by searching the App Store for a picture scan app, and I found one for $4 with no additional charges. I downloaded the app, snapped a picture of the original glossy print, cropped it, typed a caption, exported the pictures from the app to my photos and from there imported into my facebook post. Seems more complicated to explain than it was to do. Please try it. I don’t have many photos from high school so I would love to see what you have.
The following pictures are scanned in the same app but directly from a book on Birmingham’s history:
View west from Birmingham on Old Mill Road. It’s now called Maple Road and the mill was operated by a water wheel supplied by Mill Pond, now Quarton Lake.
The corner of Pierce and Maple. It began as a threshing business, became a general store and acted as Post Office, Masonic Hall, insurance office and a bank. After the Old Academy burned down, the high school functioned out of the second floor until the Hill School was built. The Birmingham Eccentric newspaper began in the second floor. It served as Shain's Drugs for over fifty years which is how I first remember it, and a Florsheim shoe store after that. It is now a Paper Source store.
View North on Woodward from Oakland. The Rouge River runs through the valley. The tracks for the Detroit Interurban Railway (DUR) ran along the east side of the road. The DUR power plant was built on the west side (near Harmon). On the east side of the street was Electric Park, illuminated by the DUR power plant eight years before electricity came to the rest of the city. It drew people by train from the entire region. Booth Park is now where the power plant once stood. Up the road on the right is the Reid Building, which I hated for housing both my pediatrician and dentist. A large apartment building is now rising where Carrie Lee’s used to be. They are now considering naming the area “Market” in reference to the farmer’s market that operates on Sunday mornings.
Baldwin High School replaced the The Hill School aka Birmingham High School, and stood from 1918-1974, at the corner of Chester and Merrill. It was replaced by a new Birmingham High School at Cranbrook and Lincoln, later renamed Ernest W. Seaholm High School when a second high school, Groves, was built.
In 1940 Hunter Boulevard looked like this. It was built where the railroad had bypassed the town. I remember it dotted with tall elm trees, one fender-bender in Steve Miner’s car, and several funny, almost bizarre drag races.
Under The Covers
Actually, that’s where I’m writing this. I just returned from a wedding in Los Angeles and have one of those creepy airplane colds; cough, sore throat and congestion. And headache, come to think of it.
Ordinarily by this time, I’d already have greenery and lights up, and a good start at baking cookies for Cookie Sunday, a family tradition I began long ago when I felt bad that our family never did things like that and felt newly empowered by phrases like “You create the world in which you live.” Now it’s filed under “Careful what you wish for”.
Before I take medicine and turn off the lights, let me just say,
“God, I hope I get over this soon!”
Let me also say:
I hope that you make it a wonderful holiday season, celebrating any and all holidays you wish, however you wish, alone or with many.
I hope that you stay healthy if you are healthy, recover quickly if you are not - and if you can.
I hope that you find peace within.
Wood