September 2014: The Sporting Scene

     Michigan Football: Michigan Football and the Athletic Department seem to be in dire straits these days. Students and alumni alike are clamoring for the firing of the head football coach Brady Hoke and the Athletic Director Dave Brandon. When Rich Rodriguez was the coach these same folks wanted him replaced with a "Michigan Man." Well, they got their wish. Brady Hoke was an assistant of Lloyd Carr from 1995 - 2001. Brandon, who came in a year before Hoke in 2010, is probably even more of a "Michigan Man" given that he played football for the late great Bo Schembechler from 1970 to 1974. Brandon was a backup quarterback who only an appearance in one game.
      Brandon runs the Athletic Department like he ran Domino's Pizza where he was CEO when Bain took them over. He brought his corporate style to the Athletic Department. He runs things in a no nonsense bold and determined style where performance is demanded and expected. In his first year, he fired Rich Rodriguez and hired Hoke who by all reports was not the first choice. It looked like exactly the right move as Hoke went 11-2 in his first season beating Ohio State and then going to the Sugar Bowl and beating Virginia Tech. Excellent. The faithful was delighted. We all thought that this new coach in Bo and Lloyd tradition was bringing us right back to glory. Everyone was psyched. The problem was the Hoke massed that impressive record with Rich Rod's guys which included the great Denard Robinson at quarterback. The fan base did not see that as the problem until maybe last year and for sure this season.
     Hoke's record deteriorated from 11-2 to 8-5 in 2012, 7-6 in 2013, and this year 2-3 so far. He has recruited well or supposedly well per the rankings. Either the recruiting was over rated or Hoke and his staff have not developed that talent into a team that meets the expectations of the fan base. The criticism is opposite that of the Rich Rod era. In every year of his coaching tenure at Michigan, Rodriguez had improved offenses. The continual improvement in offense was impressive and exciting. His issue was on the defensive side. His teams were not able to hold the opposition to fewer points than the substantial numbers the offense was posting. Hoke has the opposite problem. The defense has improved... a lot. The offenses of last season and this season are giving up too many turnovers that have turned into points that the defense is marginally responsible for.
      To top all of this off, Hoke blew it this past Saturday against Minnesota. Quarterback Shane Morris suffered a leg injury. He was clearly limping and he was left in the game. A few plays later, Morris took a vicious helmet to his chin hit and was clearly woozy. He was again left in the game. There has been massive criticism of Hoke for not putting the health and safety of his "kids" on the priority and requirement that is college football in 2014. He first claimed that he was not aware. By saying that, he dug a deeper hole for himself on many levels. As head coach, he is supposed to the CEO or general of his team. The devil is indeed in the details and when he blows something like this... well, everyone jumps to the conclusion that everything else is run in the same haphazard manner and thus it is clear why a team with class recruits is underperforming. It is not just about headphones (Hoke is the only major head coach who roams the sidelines without headphones), but it is most definitely about his management style.
     During the Notre Dame trouncing, I was tweeting and Facebooking about the differences between Brian Kelly and Brady Hoke on the sidelines. Kelly was animated and on fire. Hoke looked like he was not engaged in the game. Kelly was coaching his key players after both spectacular plays and mishaps. Hoke was not shown talking to his players at all and when he did, the conversations did not seem energizing and motivating but rather benign. Cool and calm works if you are John Wooden with his record. For Hoke, with his record, his sideline behavior looks more like deer in the headlights.
     Suffice it say, what many reporters, tweeters, bloggers, and Facebookers have already noted or wished: Hoke, as head coach of Michigan, is a dead man walking. He will lose his job unless by some miracle they run the table for the remainder of the season. The sentiment, at least on the fan and student side, extends to Brandon as well. Whether one or both go, this matter is clearly out of my hands. The new Michigan President Mark Schlissel has some tough decisions to make in this his third month in the position.
     Here is my fear. I do not want to get into the same coach musical chair cycle that both Michigan State and Notre Dame experienced before they settled on their current program defining coaches. Michigan could be headed in that direction if they replace Hoke and get another coach that does not deliver a string of 10 win seasons in short order.
     We are a spoiled lot, us Michigan fans. From the day Bo beat Ohio State in his first season, the expectation and pride has been very high. The Big House aura and record string of 100,000+ crowds, the overall winning percentage, the number of successive years going to bowl games, the record string of games not being shutout, the distinctive helmets, and so much more have given the fan base both pride and high expectations. It has been a much bumpier road of late. "Of late" either started when Ohio State hired Jim Tressel or Appalachian State upset us (some say the biggest upset in the history of college football).
     What will happen? With regards to the AD and head coach? I will have to wait and see how Schlissel and Brandon or just Schlissel alone handles this. I hope it is just in Schlissel's hand and I hope that he replaces Brandon and then he and new AD layout a strategic plan that the AD then carries out, the first action item of which is what to do about the head football coach. In the meantime, I do hope Michigan runs the table as I am still a big fan. What is the probability of that happening? Very low.
      Wrigley Field: I went to a Chicago Cubs game the evening of September 24th. They played their longtime rival, the St. Louis Cardinals, against whom they always play well. It was the last home game of the season and the weather was just perfect for any sport played outside. It was a pretty good baseball game that the Cubs won 3-1.
     I have not been at the opening day of any major league baseball team. Now,

I can say that I have been to a last game. This was the Cubs last home game of the 2014 season. This does not have the same coolness as being able to say I was at opening day. But, in this case, there was a coolness factor. Being at that game was something very special.
       It was the last game in the Old Wrigley Field. On September 25th, the Cubs are beginning a major renovation of Wrigley Field. It will be a four year project that will be done, for obvious reasons, in the off season. The project will cost half a billion dollars is being funded entirely by the Rickett family who are the Cubs’ owners. While the plan includes expanding concourses, vending, and restrooms to bring those spaces and offerings up to modern standards, the whole project is designed to keep preserve and maybe enhance what makes Wrigley Field so special. The plan is being called both a renovation and restoration. Both words describe what they intend to accomplish in terms of both renovation and restoration:
 

• Wider concourses, more restrooms, and more food and drink vending are absolutely needed in this modern era. Currently the concourses floors are cement and the atmosphere is dingy to drab. The renderings of what is planned look like a brand what can be called both retro with ironwork reminiscent of the 1930s with modern amenities. 
• Any plan for a modern baseball field has to include state of the art corporate suites with all the appropriate luxuries that will bring in premium revenues. While doing this, the seating capacity of the stadium. 
• The iconic parts of the stadium will be restored and look the same. The ivy covered walls will remain. The historic marquee will remain. It seems that even the classic old time scoreboard will be preserved though a Jumbotron will be added in left field. 
• The press box will be expanded and modernized to state of the art telecommunications standards.
• Many of the changes will not be noticeable to the fans. The current stadium is old and is common with old structures the cement and structural steel need to be replaced. The plan calls this in terms of replacing the wooden roof with a more modern structure. The cement in the stands will be removed and new seating platforms installed. The water pipes into the stadium and the plumbing within are all being replaced. The electrical in the stadium will be replaced.

     The Cubs fans are truly a die-hard lot. They are very reminiscent of the Boston Red Sox fans before their recent post season successes. Both teams have been part of major league baseball for well over a century and both teams had early success followed by long agonizing droughts throughout which their fans were incredibly loyal. My Grandmother Gavoor was one of those Bosox fans. She would watch every game and would refer to them as the “Gosh darn Red Sox” when they lost. For a comprehensive history of the Red Sox nation before the Red Sox World Series wins in this new century check out Fenway Park Living Museum. There was also a great soliloquy in the Farrelly Brothers movie Fever Pitch in which Jimmy Fallon explains the whole curse of the

With my good friend and Cardinals
fan extraordinaire Claude Ohanesian

Bambino.
     The Cubs have been in ten World Series. They have only won twice: 1907 and 1908 hardly the modern era. Their last appearance was in 1945. In 2003, the Cubs did make it to the NL Championship but did not advance to the World Series.

Back in 1945, a man by the name of William "Billy Goat" Sianis attempted to bring a goat named, Murphy, to Wrigley Field during Game 4 of the World Series. Sianis was the owner of the "Billy Goat Tavern" and was a diehard Cubs fan.

Since there was no signs or warnings that barred animals from the park, Sianis figured he would have no problem bringing Murphy to the park. Ready with one ticket for himself and one ticket for Murphy, Sianis and his pet watched the game until late in the game when they were asked to leave. Orders came directly from Cubs owner, P.K. Wrigley, asking that both Sianis and his pet goat be ushered out of the park. The reason given was "because the goat stinks". As a disgusted Sianis left, he was heard saying "The Cubs ain't gonna win no more. The Cubs will never win a World Series so long as the goat is not allowed in Wrigley Field."

After the Cubs lost the Series to the Tigers in seven games, Sianis sent a telegram to Wrigley that said "Who Stinks Now?" Diehard Cubs fans believe the curse still exists today.

     While the Billy Goat curse is well known, it is not the only curse. In fact, there is entire website dedicated to Chicago Cubs Curses. There are five of them which may be independent or actually related to the Billy Goat Curse (cue the eerie music soundtrack). The most recent incident was in the 2003 playoff game against the Marlins when:

Steve Bartman, a local 26-year old global human resources worker from the Northern suburbs of Chicago, became the latest "goat" when he attempted to catch a foul ball near the left field wall. As Cubs left fielder, Moises Alou, attempted to catch the same ball, Bartman, and others could be seen deflecting the ball. What could have been a momentum killer for the Marlins eventually was a major blame to the collapse of the Cubs after being one game away from the World Series.

     One of the weirdest Cub curses was about the 1986 World Series between the Red Sox and Mets in which Boston’s first Bill Buckner flubbed a routine ground ball that went between his legs for a hit. The Mets won that game forcing a game seven which the Mets also won. Until they won their World Series earlier in this century, that play is prime proof of the curse of the Bambino to the Red Sox faithful. What does this have to do with the Cubs? 

A picture taken over 20 years ago showing Buckner walking off the field after committing the error revealed something that has been undiscovered until recently. As Buckner walked off the field, he removed his glove, exposing a worn Chicago Cubs batting glove with the Cubs logo on the back. Buckner had previously played for the Cubs before joining the Red Sox and was apparently wearing the batting glove for luck. Instead it acts as one more piece of evidence as to why the Cubs Curse exists.

     Buckner was wearing a Red Sox uniform and a Cubs batting glove. He was double cursed.

     To see and learn more of what is planned go to The Wrigly Field Plan Site. It is a most informative website.

September 2013: Musing and Meandering Along

Some months this letter comes easier than in others.  This is one of those months where a topic that compels me has not emerged.  I might attribute it to all the writing and blogging I did earlier this month leaving me kind of an empty vessel at this time.  It might be a more than full time teaching schedule that has me a bit stretched.

Whatever the case, when I find myself in this predicament I go back to the name of this letter that my friend Marilyn Zavidow helped me select:  This Side of Fifty - A letter of musings and meanderings.  At times like this, when the end of the mont is approaching and a compelling topic has not emerged, I simply decide to muse and meander.  That is exactly what I will do this month.

First musing:  Apple announced their new iPhone earlier this month.  They actually announced two of them the iPhone 5s and 5c.  I am not sure what the differences are between the two or why there are two models.  The feel is more line extension and marketing tweaks than any new innovation.  I have not really studied the new models enough to validate that last statement.

Even though I am due for an upgrade, I have no burning desire to upgrade from my iPhone 4s with which I am happy.  In the same vein, I have no burning desire to replace my iPad 2 with any of the later versions either.  This is a testimony to the quality and utility of Apple products.  I am quite content with older versions and feel no need to upgrade when the latest and greatest is launched.

The thing I like the most about the new Apple products is the new operating system iOS 7.  I loaded it on both my older devices:  iPad and iPhone.  I was not sure if I should because I heard comments from others that were less than complimentary. 

At first, I thought the critics might be right.  It was very different and I was pretty used to the old version and this was visually very different.  Let's admit it, I am, age-wise, at the threshold where technological change starts to become more confusing than helpful.  The whole look and feel of this operating system is different.  It had a flatter look on screen, is less colorful, and more Microsoft-like as many folks had mentioned.

At first, I was not sure I liked it and thought that perhaps I had made a mistake installing it.  As I am not savvy enough to uninstall it, if that is even possible, I was resolved to just having to get used to it.   Getting used to it did not even take a day.  I got used to it very quickly. Going from being wary of it to actually liking it happened at the same rate.

The most impressive part of the new operating system is that is cleaner and simpler.  The design, in my view, is top notch.  The evolution to cleaner and simpler is nothing new.

I remember when computers first went from monochrome screens to color.  Everyone took advantage of color and customized their settings in rainbow bursts of colors.  I did the same. Over time, designers moved back in the direction of monochrome with white pages and black text.  As screen resolution improved, the letters became less robust and crisper at the same time.  All of this made the displays easier to read.  I did the same with my screen settings.  After "personalizing" my settings with a variety of color schemes, I went back to the simpler and cleaner black text on a white background.  Come to think of it, do any two colors provide better contrast?

The same thing happened with websites.  Early on they were very busy.  There were all kinds of colorful rotating .gifs simply because the technology was there and everyone wants to employ these innovations.  Over time, again, website designs became cleaner and less cluttered and while still in color they are closer to black and white. 

The same has happened with iOS.  It is a good thing.

A meander: I drive twice a week into Chicago to teach a statistics course at North Park University.  The class begins at 8 am but I like to leave by 6:15 to be there by 7.  I do that for two reasons.  The first is to have to time to prepare for class. More importantly, I like to beat the traffic.  I take US 41 south that merges with I-94 which is the main North - South expressway through the city.  It is often congested and at rush hour... forget about it.  If I leave any later, I may not get to campus until 7:30 or later.

Earlier this month, i was about to turn right from Half Day Road onto US 41 going south.   Just before the light turned green, I noticed a police car, which was coming in the other direction, turned left in front of me.  i noticed the policeman but did not give it another thought. 

Well before the 94 merge, traffic came to a standstill at the next traffic light which is Clavey Rd.  We were backed up at least a quarter of mile before the light.  Sitting in the right lane, I was just hoping this slow down was a local aberration and not the beginning of a back-up several miles in length.  I noticed a person more nervous than me pass me on the shoulder.  I thought the driver was most likely going to turn right on Clavey Rd and thus thought this was a perfectly valid thing to do.  I disagreed and just shook my head.  People always believe they are special when they do things like this.

I had forgotten about the policeman who was about five cars ahead of me.  As soon as the car on the shoulder passed the police officer, the officer turned the flashers on and pulled the car over.

I smiled as I passed the driver who was going to get a ticket. I realized this is the first time that a police officer was actually there when I was thinking "where is a police officer when you need one."

A Second Muse:  I spent a fair amount of time driving on September 26.  I tend to listen to NPR when in the car and there were many stories this day that I could muse and meander over. One that perked my attention was about the Scholastic Aptitude Test more commonly known as the SATs.  It seems the scores have been trending down the past few years. 

There were two major theories for this.  The first theory was that K-12 education in this country is not doing its job.  The second was that the SAT is a test that favors students of privilege compared to the ACT which is now more popular than the SATs and, per this theory, less biased across socio-economic classes.

While both theories were valid, the first resonated more with me simply because it is something that I am dealing with every Monday and Wednesday evenings this semester.  I am teaching Math 106 - Intermediated Algebra at the College of Lake County (CLC).  It is one of four or five remedial or developmental course offered by CLC.  What that basically means is that these courses cover material that should have been learned in high school.  The students have to pay the full four or five credit hours based on the course but actually get no college credit for the class.  The students who have to take these courses, and they have to take one to three of them depending on their placement scores, before they are ready to take the college level course or courses that is required of their major.

I have taught this kind of course before.  The number of students that do not pass or drop-out of the course is high... way too high.  This sad statistic is for all professors.  It is just hard for the students.  They have not taken math for too long.  They do not know how to study for math.  They have math phobias.  They do not easily see the underlying sameness and structure in similar classes of problems.  All of these, in various combinations prevent many students from being able to grasp the material. Furthermore, at the college level, these courses cover the the material at twice the rate of a similar high school class i.e.  We cover in one sixteen week semester what they take a full year to cover in high school. 

I have always told the students in these courses how fast the material will be covered.  I advise them to tell anyone they know, brothers, sisters, cousins, or friends still in high school to take and master the material there.  It is flat out much easier. 

This semester I have taken another point of view.  I told them that their being in my remedial class is not their fault.  The education system let them down.  How?  Over the years we have become lax in the high schools.  We have drastically cut back on the math requirements and the students take advantage of that.  Students love that.  I have heard young people say, "Thank God I am done with math."  There is a large class of students that are simply delighted when they real take their last of the minimally required courses in high school.  Students take the least amount needed to get through high school and they are happy.  They are happy until a few years later when confronted with the math they need to take to realize their college major and career goals.  By this time the students are rusty, reluctant, and a bit scared.  As a result, the college courses are hard for them.  It is no surprise that the fail and drop-out raise is so high.

I tell my students these courses are like language courses.  What we cover today, we assume the students will know the next time the course meets.  Doing lots of problems will certainly help.  Doing lots of problems with increasing frequency of doing them right is better.  There will be moments of pain.  They have to fight through that and break through to a new level of mathematical vision and clarity. 

As a society and culture we have to do much better at preparing our young people for college and careers.  That, to me, means increasing the level of math knowledge coming out of high school.

Meandering some more:  For the third or fourth time the past few years, we find ourselves as a country at the brink of shutting down the federal government.  It is simply because of partisan politics in the congress.  The word cooperation is long out the window as is compromise.  Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats seem concerned for the greater good or actually making democracy work.

This time around the Republicans are holding raising the debt ceiling hostage to delay or repeal Obama care.  Obama care was passed by duly elected congressmen like it or not.  Some hate it, others are looking forward to it.  If those who hate it have the votes, then they should delay or repeal it.  They do not.  Holding another important piece of legislation hostage just does not make any sense even if it is legal. 

I do believe the Republicans are looking like they do not want to get along here.  This does not bode well for the next election. Younger people who do not have insurance and are already down on the Republicans are going to get an even sourer taste for the Grand Old Party.  Losing the young, women, and minority vote is not a sound strategy for the party.  They are being held hostage by the hard-line conservatives in the party.  That rhetoric is not resonating any longer with the voting public.

The same thing happened to the Democrats years ago. The party was led by extreme die-hard liberals.  That rhetoric wore thin on voters back then and the Republicans, at that time, offered a more centrist and sane alternative.  With Ronald Reagan and the two Bushes, the party had the White House and often a majority one or both houses of Congress.  With that leadership, the party drifted more and more to the right.  I want to say that most of that was under the influence of VP Dick Cheney during the George W presidency.

They people want government that can steer a steady central course and balance all the various issues we face.  The Republicans seem to be losing ground to Democrats in this regard.  Instead of finding a better way to build a platform that moves things in that general direction by appealing to voters, they seem to entrench more in the hard line conservative dogma.  As a result, the party is losing ground and at the same time stagnating the legislature. 

Many will take exception with my cursory analysis.  But, this is the way I see it.  I am tired of partisan politics without compromise.  We have serious issues like:

• The economy that has not recovered for everyone
• A fully functioning and funded government without taxing us all to death
• Fixing health care... a topic for a letter all in itself.
• Deciding if we should continue being policeman to the world
• Fixing education as mused about in this letter
• Immigration, minimum wage, and so many other issues.

We will not make any meaningful progress without a legislature that wants to work together to get meaningful and reasonable actions that will have an impact.  That requires a dedicated and cooperative legislature that understands compromise for the greater good.  We do not have that today.

I have mused and meandered enough...

September 2012: The City of Detroit

The 1958 Statue known as the Spirit of Detroit

      I am in Detroit… well not actually in Detroit.  I am in Livonia, suburb of Detroit, which is the town my parents moved us to from Detroit in the height of what was then called White Flight.  Back then the City of Detroit was in the top ten largest cities in the United States.  At its peak, Detroit was the fourth largest city in the United States between 1920 and the mid 1950s.  Detroit's population peaked at about 2 million people.  

The current population, as reported in 2011, of the city is 706,585.  Detroit is now ranked as the 18^th largest city in the United States.  In the last census, it was reported that the city lost a whopping 25% of its population.  It is simply incredible.  As a metropolitan area, Detroit is ranked 13th but even this population has dropped 24% meaning people have simply left the region. 

It breaks my heart.  Almost anything I read about Detroit is depressing. The number of abandoned and empty homes is negatively impressive.  The number of homes that have been razed is equally depressing.  There is something like forty square miles of the city that is vacant.  That is an astronomical number.  There are stories of packs of feral dogs roaming some areas and people raising chickens and farming in some parts of the city.  There is a March 20, 2012 Rolling Stone article about an estimated 50,000 stray dogs in the city. 

A few years ago, I was a Wayne State University Alumni event in Skokie, IL.  I won one of the many door prizes.  My prize was a book about the architecture of Detroit.  It is a gem of a book and I am happy to have it.  In reading it, there was a very depressing aspect to it.  Many of the buildings featured and photographed in the book were noted to be either torn down or abandoned.  The entire urban renewal movement seems to have bypassed Detroit.

The only time I am ever in the city these days is when I drive from my parents’ home in Livonia to either of the two Armenian churches in Metro Detroit.  St. Sarkis church is in Dearborn.  I drive through Detroit to get there albeit all on expressways or major streets.  When I go down the Southfield Expressway, see burned out apartment buildings and closed business.  When I go to St. John’s, I go east on 8 Mile Rd. which is the northern border of Detroit.  That stretch of 8 Mile doesn’t look so bad by comparison.

I have not really explored the city since I moved away in 1990.  I have not been to the neighborhoods were I grew up.  The most I have looked at one of my childhood homes on Google Maps. 

I should probably make a tour of the city.  I should probably go and see for myself what is happening there.  I have had this notion for several years and have not done it for two reasons.  First, my trips to Detroit are usually weekend trips and often overnighters.  I go to visit family and as often or not for a specific purpose.  Thus my schedule is pretty busy and there is not a lot of free time to do something like this.  Secondly, I am a bit tentative about doing it.  Yes, that means a little afraid.  I am a victim of the negative things I have read about the city.  Is it safe to visit my old neighborhood and see what kind of shape my old schools and other haunts look like?  One solution I have come up with is to make such a tour at dawn on some summer day.  That is the hour when I have no obligations and when a majority of people are sleeping.  It should be safe then and it would not interfere with my other obligations.  It is probably safe at other times and I am just showing my age and demographic. 

My sister Nancy does go into the city regularly.  She enjoys the Techno Music scene which our late sister Laura helped pioneer.  She is downtown often and is encouraged by what she sees people trying to do.  She would probably volunteer to go with me on this tour. 

Not everything I read is negative.  There are a cadre of folks who are trying to make a go of things.  You read and hear about them in the media.  My sister Nancy speaks of some of the positive things.  Mayor Dave Bing seems to be trying very hard to move the city in the right direction but the challenges are incredible.  There has to be a revolution and renaissance of homesteaders and entrepreneurs willing to start up in what are incredibly low real estate costs in the city.  I look to the generation of young people I teach, those that have just graduated and are underemployed. They are the ones that can take a risk and move into the city and renew the abandoned shells of buildings, warehouses, factories and even homes.  The new businesses we read about in Detroit are bars, restaurants, cafes, bakeries, coffee houses, and bakeries are fine and very visible.  I am not sure of the numbers.  Detroit needs more than this.  Detroit needs businesses that create a new industry and a wave of jobs. 

I am a product of the Detroit Public Schools... at least through tenth grade.  I went to Robert Burns Elementary, Cadillac Junior High School, and then Cass Technical High School for half a year.  I finished up my last two and a half years in Livonia.  I would have like to have graduated from Cass Tech which was a renowned magnet school in the City of Detroit for many years.  I was proud to have gotten admitted.  I used to take the bus down to Cass.  I was excited to do so.  I was getting into the city on a different level.   Sadly, it was only for a semester. 

The last time I spent any real time in Detroit was when I was a graduate student at Wayne State University in the 1980s.   I enjoyed being downtown part of that great urban university.  Universities are insular and I really did not get a great feel for the city.

I believe there is a defining point that began the long downward spiral of the city.  It was the 1967 riots.  Many cities experienced riots in the second half of the 1960s.  The riots were in poor black neighborhoods.  The riots usually involved the destruction of property and the looting of stores.  I suppose the stores, in those days, were owned by white folk who no longer lived in the neighborhood.  The riots in Detroit were particularly brutal.  They were perhaps the worst of the hundreds of riots that tore through America's urban landscapes in those tumultuous years. There was, from my perspective, a feeling of uneasiness that hung over the city from that point on.  If the riots did not trigger the white flight from Detroit, it certainly escalated it.  That much cannot be denied.

Jerome Cavanaugh was the mayor of the city during the riots. He was elected as a young John Kennedy kind of leader in 1962.  The riots, however, were his undoing.  He was criticized as being slow to react and things got out of hand.  43 people were killed.  5,000 or so became homeless.  The riots were only quelled when a large number of federal troops were called in.  It was ugly and had a lasting impact on the city.

Cavanaugh did not run for re-election in 1970.  Roman Gribbs became the next mayor.  Gribbs ran again Richard Austin a black man and won.  Gribbs was mayor for only one term and from what I can remember basically treaded water.  He declined to run for another term.  In 1974, Detroit elected their first black mayor, Coleman Young.  Coleman Young was truly polarizing.  Blacks loved him and most whites did not care for him at all.  He was mayor for five terms.  In that time, the city lost half of its population and had a soaring crime rate.  Was the decline of Detroit inevitable or was Coleman Young a catalyst of it.  Probably it was a fair measure of both.

During this same time, the auto industry went from its post war monopoly to having to compete with the Japanese imports on quality, price, and fuel economy.  The industry that was the lifeblood of the Motor City was losing market share and trying to redefine itself just when the city needed it most.  The solution in the auto industry was not favorable to Detroit or the state of Michigan.  The industry needed new plants and those plants were not built in Michigan but rather in other parts of the country and in Mexico.

As a result of the changes in the city and the auto industry, jobs and the tax base left the city in droves.  Coleman Young, to his credit, tried to re-vitalize downtown with building projects designed to bring business and consumers into the heart of the city.  Under his administration, the Renaissance Center, Joe Louis Arena, a People Mover, and the General Motors Poletown plant.  These were good ambitious projects that were just not enough to turn the tide.

I know I should not generalize, but I do not think I am making a wild conjecture when I say that black folk in large part supported Coleman Young and white folk in general did not.  Detroiter's support for Coleman Young was clear from the length of time he served as mayor:  1974-1993.  He was elected the same week that Maynard Jackson was elected mayor of Atlanta.  They were both the first black mayors of their cities.  The cities could not have taken more opposite paths.  This lead credence to the argument that it was more socio-economic trends than Young's regime that contributed to the decline of a great American city.

In the early, 1970s, I spent a summer or two working with my Uncle Ozzie.  He had left General Motors where he was a machine repair specialist to open his own home repair and modernization business.  This was around the time when people began to abandon their homes in the city in greater numbers.  Most of these homes had Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) mortgages.  As these homes were abandoned, HUD took ownership of them.  The homes were being abandoned faster than they could be sold.  So, HUD had them boarded up.  My Uncle was lucky to get a contract boarding up these homes.  It was a pretty good business for him and grew to dominate his business. 

I helped him.  We cleaned out the houses of trash and whatever else was left behind.  Full refrigerators were the worst!  We winterized the plumbing by pouring anti-freeze in each drain.  Then we boarded up the windows and doors making the house an eyesore in the neighborhood.  We padlocked the front door.  My uncle got to where we could do one house in less than a day.  He used to cut the plywood on-site but later moved to taking measurements, cutting the boards in his shop, and thus minimizing the time on site.

The houses could be broken into but one would need more than a crow bar to do it.  The plywood on the outside was braced by 2x4s on the insides for the windows.  The houses we boarded were quite secure.  They would be relatively intact until HUD got around to cleaning them up and selling them.  

It was a great experience working with my Uncle.  I will never forget those times.  Back then, I thought we were doing a good thing.  It was bad that houses were being abandoned and that we had to board them up.  But, I really believed it was a temporary thing.  It was not.  The number of boarded up houses grew out of control.

These homes were eventually vandalized, some were burned down in the fires Detroit became infamous for, and the great majorities of them have been or are being bulldozed.  This accounts for the amount of open land in the city.  It is a sad bit of history that I had a small role in.

Detroit and Pittsburgh define the American cities that drove the industrial growth of the country.  Pittsburgh was the steel capital of the country.  Their football team is named the Steelers.  Their team logo is based on the Steelmark logo of the American Iron and Steel institute and was created by US Steel Corporation.  Detroit was the car capital of the US if not the world.  Detroit's basketball team is named the Pistons.  The hockey team is the Red Wings whose logo is spoke wheel with a wing.  Both were gritty and tough towns, a reflection of their primary industries. 

Both cities suffered in the 1970s and 80s.  Steel left Pittsburgh and surrounding areas.  I used to travel there in those days.  The company I worked for had a plant in Newcastle half way between Pittsburgh and Youngstown.  I witnessed old factory after old factory being shut down and left to decay.  To me, there is nothing uglier than a shut down factory. 

I used to believe that the decline was pretty fast for Pittsburgh and the decline in Detroit took longer.  I was right and wrong.  I just read that Pittsburgh lost 100,000 jobs from 1978 to 1982.  I witnessed the tail end of this era.  What I did not know was that the city had lost 100,000 jobs from 1945 to 1978.  It was more likely an exponential decay.  It started slow and then accelerated rapidly.  I would say the same kind of thing happened in Detroit. 

The jobs both cities lost were the high paying blue collar job that defined the status and strength the lower middle blue collar workers enjoyed from the end of World War II until 1980 or so.  These folk worked hard but were compensated well.  They owned houses.  It was not surprising to see people have boats and summer cottages "up north" in the working class neighborhood in Detroit where I grew up.  That is all gone:  the jobs and the lifestyle. 

I have an old friend that I know of who still lives in the City proper.  He is a reader of this letter.  His commitment is greater than that of anyone I know.  He will not move.  His political views have changed with time.  He was a liberal back in the day when we worked together and saw each other almost every day.  Over the years, he has become more conservative in direct proportion to the intensity of his Christian faith.  His love for the city and what it can be is unwavering.  Perhaps the first stop on the tour ought to be to visit him.  He would also be a great tour guide.