Monday, November 23, 2009
This morning I cleaned up a pile of broken window glass from in front of the Carlton.  Here's the e-mail I just sent out to the 48201 Google Group:

In my opinion, nothing says "don't move here," "don't invest here," "don't visit here," and "don't start a business here" like piles of broken auto glass. Today, I swept up a pile of glass (AKA "road bling," "Detroit diamonds") from in front of the Carlton on John R.  The window smash could have occurred during yesterday's Lions game.  I know that other residents of 48201 (and probably other areas) regularly clean up the road bling.

I'm developing an aggressive plan to counter these window smashes. My plan is to kick this response off before the Tigers' opening day in the spring.  In the meantime, I've started a spreadsheet to keep track of the window smashes.  So, here's what I'm asking of you:

If you see a pile of the bluish auto window glass on our streets, either drop me an e-mail, call me, or post it to this forum.  

Here's what I'm tracking:

Date discovered; time discovered; address or interesection; side of the street; who reported; who cleaned it up (if applicable); any other miscellaneous info, such as, "during a Tigers game"

I'm concentrating on Brush Park, but I'll log any that are reported.  

And don't forget that there's an old police saying:  "No report. No crime."  So please report these crimes to the DPD. 

Detroit Synergy: Stories from the City

My Three Short Stories

St. Clair highball

My father was a part-time TV serviceman who would make service house calls in the evenings and on weekends.  I often went with my father, and helped by lugging his tool box and tubes from the car to the customer’s home.  I was fascinated by the different neighborhoods, the people who spoke different languages, the strange street names, and the different architecture.  I was amazed that my father could navigate his way back home through the myriad neighborhoods of Detroit.  One hot Saturday afternoon, after we completed a service call in the Southwest part of town, we stopped at an old-fashioned beer and wine bar on Michigan near Livernois.  We sat at the bar and my dad ordered a Stroh’s.  The bartender looked at me – I was about 10 years old – and said, “How ‘bout a St. Clair highball for you?”  My dad nodded and I was served water on the rocks in a highball glass.  On the way home I asked my dad why the drink was called a “St. Clair highball,” and he told me it’s because the water comes from Lake St. Clair!  Even today, I refer to a glass of water as a “St. Clair highball.”

The Coolest Subway

A sudden winter storm rolled in from the west with such ferocity that airports from Chicago to Buffalo were totally shut down.  Many passengers who had intended to just catch a connecting flight through Metro Airport unexpectedly had a couple of days to spend in the city.  I was riding the standing room only Detroit People Mover when I heard the man standing next to me excitedly say to his wife, “Honey, look at these buildings!  This is the coolest subway I’ve ever seen.  You aren’t underground.  You can see things!” And then he exclaimed, “And look over there!  There’s Wrigley Field.”  I then pointed out to the obvious visitor that the ballpark he saw was Comerica Park, the home of the Detroit Tigers, and that he was in Detroit!  He gave me an astonished look, then laughed and told me that they were supposed to fly to Chicago after connecting in Detroit, but that their flight had been cancelled.  He assured me that they were having an unanticipated great time in Detroit.

“I’m very sorry.”

I was a young Detroit Police Department officer, assigned to the 16^th Precinct on Grand River.  One Sunday morning about 7AM I was dispatched to a single family home.  “Dead person” was the only information I was given.  It was fairly common to get these calls on Sunday mornings.  An elderly relative wouldn’t show up at church and concerned family members would go the home, only to find that the person had passed.  That’s what I was anticipating this call would be about.

I walked up to the door and was let in by a very solemn couple accompanied by a minister.  I respectfully asked the couple where the deceased person was, and they directed me to a closed bedroom.  I entered the bedroom, but at first didn’t see anyone.  I turned the light on and saw what looked like a pillow in the middle of the bed. The “pillow” was the six-month old infant son of the couple that had let me in.  I had heard about “SIDS,” or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, but had never actually encountered a case.  I conducted my investigation.  “I’m very sorry” were the only words I could think to say as I left.

TIME Magazine, November 23, 2009

What the Jesuits Taught Me

 I graduated from the University of Detroit Jesuit High School, the prep school you profiled, one month before the apocalyptic riots of 1967.  I am most proud of the fact that U of D chose to stay in the City of Detroit, and not abandon it as the other Catholic schools did.    My class continues to contribute to our namesake City in many ways.  We have purchased two bricks on the world-class Detroit Riverwalk walkway, the only school that has done so.

A few years ago, I moved to downtown Detroit after retiring from the Los Angeles Police Department.  I wanted to be part of the solution to Detroit's problems. There is no doubt that the Jesuits  inculcated in me a responsibility to serve as a "man for others."

Thomas E. Page, Detroit

In response to the TIME magazine article, I sent this letter to TIME Magazine:

November 3, 2009

I graduated from the University of Detroit Jesuit High School one month before the apocalyptic riots of 1967. I am most proud of the fact that U of D chose to stay in the City of Detroit, and not abandoned it as the other Catholic schools did. I would have disavowed U of D had it moved to the suburbs. My class of 1967 continues to contribute to our namesake City in many ways. For example, our class has purchased two bricks on the world-class Detroit Riverwalk walkway, the only school that has done so.

A few years ago, I moved to downtown Detroit after retiring from the Los Angeles Police Department. I wanted to be part of the solution to Detroit's problems. No doubt, the Jesuits of U of D inculcated in me a responsibility to serve as a "man for others."

TIME Magazine highlights my high school Alma Mater, the University of Detroit High School Here's the article.

Assignment Detroit
The University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy is the last Catholic college-prep school left in the city.
Jesuit Message Drives Detroit's Last Catholic School
By Amy Sullivan / Detroit Monday, Nov. 09, 2009
The University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy is the last Catholic college-prep school left in the city.
Corine Vermeulen for TIME

Lunch period at an inner-city all-boys school is an event associated with the sounds of chaos, not classical music. And yet there are definitely strains of Beethoven coming from the piano in the cafeteria at the University of Detroit Jesuit High School and Academy. Behind the pianist, another student waits patiently for his turn. Upstairs in the art room, a senior is using the lunch hour to apply more brushstrokes to a portrait. A few kids are playing pickup ball in the gym, but more are crowded in the library.

In a city where 47% of adults are functionally illiterate and only 25% of high school freshmen make it to graduation, U of D is the chute through which bright young men can get to college. The school boasts a near perfect graduation rate and sends 99% of its graduates on to higher education. (In 2009 the one student who didn't go to college turned down a scholarship from the University of Michigan to sign a seven-figure contract with the Detroit Tigers.) (See pictures of Detroit's beautiful, horrible decline.)

Catholic high schools have long provided a way out for high-achieving urban students. But in Detroit, most Catholic schools either closed down or left the city decades ago, after the race riots in 1967, when white Catholics fled to the suburbs and the city's population dropped by half. Only the Jesuits stayed, maintaining U of D's imposing stone structure on the corner of 7 Mile and Cherrylawn. The Catholic order is known for its education systems and its missionary work. In Detroit, they have become one and the same. (See more on TIME's Detroit blog.)

Detroit was once heavily Catholic, dotted with parochial schools in well over 100 parishes that served the Irish and East European immigrants who built the city. Of those, the oldest was the University of Detroit, founded as a Jesuit high school and college in 1877. Elmore Leonard wrote theology papers there before the detective novels that made him famous. The school produced Congressmen, state supreme court justices and a president of CBS.

Then came 1967 and the race riots that lasted five days, took 43 lives and changed the composition of Detroit almost overnight. The trickle of white ethnic Catholics to the suburbs that had started after World War II became a flood. Within seven years, the city's African-American residents had become a majority. But only 50,000 or so were Catholic, which meant the archdiocese could no longer support the same network of parishes and schools. (See the top 10 religion stories of 2008.)

The tectonic shifts threw U of D into crisis. In less than a decade, the school's rolls plummeted from a high of about 1,100 students to no more than 500. In 1976 the Jesuits found themselves beset by parents, alumni and faculty arguing that the school should follow the lead of Detroit's other marquee Catholic institution, Catholic Central, and relocate to the suburbs. An intense internal debate was followed by consultation with Rome and finally a decision: not only would the school remain in Detroit, but it would also start investing its resources in the city and increase the racial diversity of its student body.

Today approximately one-quarter of the school's 780 students are city residents, with the rest spread across the inner and outer suburbs. The school allocated $1.4 million in financial aid this year to students who could not afford the $9,990 tuition. "We will not turn away any student who is qualified to come here," says U of D principal Gary Marando.

Jesuits tend to roll their eyes at portrayals of their order's missionary zeal. (Jeremy Irons' action Jesuit in The Mission, says Father Patrick Peppard, one of the school's theology teachers, was "a bit romanticized.") Still, by any measure, U of D's service to the city of Detroit since the Jesuits decided to remain has been remarkable. During a period in the late 1970s and early '80s, the school's president, Father Malcolm Carron, was even made a Detroit police commissioner. (See pictures of the remains of Detroit.)

U of D's continued presence in Detroit offers inner-city boys a way out. But it also gives affluent suburban students a way into a city that has long been neglected by its neighbors. For them, an education at U of D doesn't involve just driving across city lines to attend classes. Seniors are required to spend every Wednesday morning on a service project in the city. And students in all grades (7 through 12) volunteer their time for no credit. Last year they spent more than 3,500 hours in activities from tutoring public-school kids to delivering food to disabled residents. "We made a commitment to stay in the city," says Holly Bennetts, the school's full-time service director. "We have a responsibility to make it better." (See pictures of a diverse group of American teens.)

Students are told hundreds of times during their education at U of D that they are training to become community leaders, what the Jesuits call "men for others." The phrase comes up in nearly every conversation with current and former students. "It's kinda corny," says Keith Ellison, class of 1981 and a Democratic Congressman from Minnesota, "but that motto really made me think about service. And it set a course for what I'm doing with my life now."

The Jesuit ideal can also be found in more recent graduates like Will Ahee and Tom Howe. Both grew up in tony communities — Grosse Pointe and Birmingham — that may be geographically close to Detroit but are worlds away culturally. Through U of D, they volunteered with Earthworks, an urban garden project that is reclaiming for sustainable agriculture some of the thousands of acres of abandoned lots in Detroit. When they graduated a few years ago, Ahee and Howe could have had their pick of universities. They chose to stay in Detroit and attend Wayne State University, where they study comprehensive food systems. How do these college kids spend their weekends? Working in a community garden they started near Elmwood Park, nine miles from U of D.