Above: Some members of Gratiot County Ku Klux Klan Realm No. 24 members appear at July 4, 1927 Klan gathering in Jackson, Michigan; a Klan publication that belonged to a Michigan KKK member in the 1920s; President Harry Crooks of Alma College became a KKK target when refused to let Alma College students attend Klan activities or become Klan members in Alma; an advertisement from the Alma Record sponsored by the Gratiot Klan – and which identified one of its members who later ran for mayor of Alma.
The Ku Klux Klan first appeared in Gratiot County just over 100 years ago. For a short period of time, the Klan flourished by conducting parades, recruiting members, holding meetings, harassing targets, and by trying to connect with county churches. The following is part one of a four part series about Realm No. 24 and its activities in Gratiot County – during a place and time that was fertile soil for the KKK.
One evening in January 1923, Detroiter A.G. Struble witnessed an unforgettable sight as he drove north along the old Alma Road, just inside the Gratiot County line. While taking his family to Mt. Pleasant to attend a funeral, Struble met five men on horseback fully dressed in Ku Klux Klan apparel, each with long spears and lights. Although called to stop, Struble kept driving.
The presence of the Klan in Gratiot County during the 1920s was part of a movement that swept across parts of the United States, spewing its anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant, and anti-Jewish message. Boasting its “100% American” agenda, the Ku Klux Klan supposedly stood for law and order, control of alcohol, support for public education, and, above all, white Protestantism. Nationally, the KKK claimed a membership between two to five million people, with its most substantial followings in the Midwest. Michigan had the nation’s eighth-largest membership, with 70,000 Klansmen.
Starting in 1923, Gratiot County became the home of Realm No.24; for three of those years, “Klan fever” attracted both followers and those curious about the Klan. In October 1923, the first attempt of the Klan to recruit members drew between 500 and 700 people and took place south of Alma. Later in December, the Klan burned its first cross on Christmas Eve in town.
The Klan was most active in 1924 as it tried to gain credibility with local churches by either holding services, gaining the support of pastors, having Klan members attend a church, or offering a public gift. If the Klan could obtain the support of a pastor or gain his membership, it would gain access to another audience. This connection between the Klan and church happened in Alma when the Christian Church held a Klan-sponsored revival meeting, and the pastor gave sermons in support of the Klan. If an announcement from a church stated that the preacher would provide “A Christian Interpretation of Klancraft,” it was a pro-KKK message.
I In Alma and at the Breckenridge Baptist Church, the Klan exhibited one of its 1920s trademarks: the use or donation of “the Illuminated Cross.” With the lighting of the new cross in the sanctuary, Klansmen would march down the aisles and sing “America.” Klansmen also knelt at the altar while playing “The Old Rugged Cross.” All occurred to impress the congregation and send a message that the Klan was in the community, supposedly in numbers large enough to warrant attention and support.
As the KKK began to take off in 1924, it started its first attacks upon local people and groups that it deemed to be its enemies. It first did this through an often-used weapon – the local KKK newspaper, The Nighthawk. When Alma College President Harold Crooks urged students not to listen to or attend Klan recruitment meetings, he then became a target.
Using The Knighthawk, the Klan falsely accused and slandered Crooks by accusing him of having pro-German sympathies during World War I. In response to the attack, approximately one hundred Alma College students marched two abreast from the college through downtown Alma to the Klan headquarters at 210 ½ East Superior Street. Upon arrival, the students purchased all available copies of The Nighthawk, formed a circle, and publicly burned them, shouting, “Yay, Prezi!” To commemorate the protest, the Alma College yearbook that year featured a picture regarding the burning and captioned it: “Kluck! Kluck! Kluck!”
Above from top: “The Alma Cat Lady,” Margaret Russell and two Alma citizens reunite with Patches, an Alma Post Office visitor; Patches waits for someone to claim him as he rests on a telephone book at the Northwood Research Center; Christopher Griffiths looks at the unexpected visitor to the Griffiths house in the fall of 1969.
It all started when a lost kitten found the “Alma Cat Lady.” In late September 1969, a young kitten (soon named Patches) wandered across Alma and ended up in the Alma Post Office. Although the kitten quickly became a favorite of the Alma postal staff, a call went out to Margaret Russell, who was unofficially known to many in the city as “Alma’s cat lady.” When a stray and needy cat or kitten in town turned up, people knew they should call Margaret Russell, who cared deeply about Alma’s homeless animals.
In the 1960s, animals, like puppies and young dogs in Gratiot County, had nowhere to go. Max Harrell, then the Gratiot County Dog Warden, kept the animals at his residence in Riverdale. If someone wanted to adopt an unwanted puppy, the cost in 1967 was $3.50. However, cats and kittens were another county problem.
By the late 1960s in Alma, Margaret Russell quietly became the defender and hero of lost and unwanted cats in town. Russell, a Canadian who came to Alma with her husband, an Alma College professor, worked as Executive Secretary for Northwood Institute and later at the McClure Oil Company. Russell once told the Alma Record that her house soon seemed to have an invisible mark over the door, indicating that any unwanted or lost animal would find a home there. People in the city called Russell frequently to help rescue and find a home for Alma’s unwanted cats and kittens. Many times, Russell privately paid for treatment, medicine, spaying, or neutering and then tried to find a home for the pet.
How did the kitten Patches find his way into the Alma Post Office that day in the fall of 1969? This stray was a bit of a mystery; some thought the kitten gained entry through the mail drop box. Upon discovery, the Post Office named the kitten and quickly called Margaret Russell for help. Soon, a picture of Patches on top of a phone book at the Northwood Research Center appeared in the Alma Daily Record Leader newspaper dated September 24, 1969. The picture and story helped Patches find his way back to the Gibbs family, who lived eight blocks north of the Post Office and promptly reclaimed him. The story about Patches also allowed Russell to voice her concern publicly that the unwanted animals of Gratiot County needed help, and they needed it now. Shortly after the Patches incident, Mike Cameron found a declawed Siamese cat wandering around his Alma home. After the story appeared in the newspaper, he adopted it after the cat went unclaimed. Two weeks later, the Griffiths family at 717 Gratiot Avenue discovered a kitten placed in a box and left it on the doorstep. While one child in the family wanted the kitten, there was a newborn at home, which meant the kitten could not stay. Who could help find a place for another unwanted pet in Alma? Again, the Griffiths family turned to Margaret Russell for help.
Through these three incidents in late 1969, Margaret Russell spoke about the need and vision for a Humane Society in Gratiot County. Others in Gratiot County quickly joined Russell at an exploratory meeting, which took place at 5801 Golfside Drive. On December 4, another meeting occurred at the Alma Arts and Crafts Center to formally announce the plans for a Humane Society in Gratiot County. Sixty people turned out to hear Douglas Culmer from the Michigan Federation of Humane Societies, who told the group that they would soon be involved in much-needed work in Gratiot County. Culmer also informed the group that having a humane society meant considering the needs of more than just small animals.
Officers who were elected that evening at the first meeting of the Gratiot County Humane Society included Margaret Russell (who served as president), William Budge, Dr. Wilmer Smith, Mike Cameron, and Sheryl Mastej – who were all Alma residents. Still, board members comprised people from across the county to demonstrate that the new society reflected the needs beyond just Alma. St. Louis members included Dr. Frank Hedges, Lucille Peckinpaugh, Bea Smith, Ed Jacomo, and Janet Clark. Ginny Wilson represented Ithaca; Jessie Mesik served from Breckenridge. Other board members included Doris Strong, Reverend M. Florean Stark, and Leo Washburn. Mary Brewer of St. Louis served as an alternate.
The group moved quickly to apply for a tax identification number. Dr. Wilmer Smith offered to serve as a liaison between the society and other veterinarians in Gratiot County. Becoming a member cost only $1-$25 annually, but anyone who gave more than $25 became a society patron. The group also moved to establish temporary shelters, and volunteers from St. Louis and Alma came forward to offer warm, heated places to house the animals who needed immediate help. The Gratiot County Humane Society also established its meeting date on the first Thursday of the month.
By the end of December 1969, this group of concerned citizens first established the Gratiot County Humane Society. The vision of a place for homeless and unwanted animals in Gratiot County started to take shape.
Tony’s Restaurant history from the top: A winter’s day with Tony’s chicken sign out front on West Washington Street (M-46); Mike Zwingman started working for the Lagalo brothers soon after Tony’s opened. He went on to manage and own Tony’s in St. Louis. Photo was taken 1989-1990; Business soon boomed after Tony’s opened, prompting the first remodel of the restaurant. in 1986. Within a short time an addition would be added to the north. Advertisement from January 1986.
Sometime in the mid-1980s, Joe and Pauline Nako decided to leave the restaurant business. As a result, a drive-in that had been in town for almost 30 years, the Dandy, closed. Finding a buyer took some time, but the Nakos eventually sold out to the Lagalo Brothers from Saginaw, and what had been known as the Dandy became Tony’s Restaurant.
The Lagalo brothers, Phil and Doug, did much searching before they purchased the Dandy. Both men looked around mid-Michigan and wanted a drive-in restaurant. Still, available drive-ins had become scarcer over the years. When they bought the Dandy in St. Louis (in addition to four others the brothers owned in the Saginaw area), it enabled the Lagalos to continue a philosophy that father Butch Lagalo started after he returned home from World War II. This philosophy was to “Give the people what they pay for,” a theme Butch’s father invented while operating grocery stores in Italy. The Lagalos also developed an Italian chef logo with assistance from a Saginaw News artist, which the Lagalos displayed on a sign outside the restaurant where drivers could see it while passing by. In a short time, Tony’s Restaurant became known as the place of giant steak sandwiches, spaghetti dinners, and giant ice cream sundaes, all because of their size and quality. When asked about Tony’s big helpings, Doug Lagallo replied, “We serve large portions. One of our fries, we’re told, is enough for three or four people.”
On May 8, 1985, 29 years after the Nakos opened the Dandy, the Lagalos opened Tony’s Restaurant in St. Louis. Once again, St. Louis had a drive-in restaurant. When Tony’s first opened, the drive-in tried to continue the old practice of having waitresses run to cars with trays. Still, it did not work out as the business inside was too busy. In fact, it was standing room only inside Tony’s for the first four months of business in 1985. The customers just started coming – and coming – and coming. Within a year, Tony’s was open seven days a week from 8:00 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays and until 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. The Lagalos ensured that the famous Dandy chicken remained out front, and they put the name “Dandy” beneath Tony’s neon sign. Some changes continued when the Lagalos added more booths. They built a wall between the cooks and diners (there had never been one before, and customers could see everything the cooks were doing firsthand). Not long before, an addition had to go on the back of Tony’s in the summer of 1990 to help deal with the growing business. Despite the changes, the Lagalos managed to keep an old, black-and-white original photograph of the Dandy on the wall inside, which the Nakos must have taken when they first opened in the 1950s. For the Lagalo brothers, St. Louis was turning out to be good for business.
The story of Tony’s Restaurant took another turn just after it started in 1985. Three days after opening, a former delivery man, Mike Zwingman, was hired, and he immediately learned how to run the grill. Zwingman first met the Lagalos while working as a ham salesman. Although he took the new job, Zwingman had to drive a distance from St. Charles to work. Over time, Mike became assistant manager, working there for about ten years until he bought Tony’s from the Lagalos. It was a big step, and Zwingman initially wondered if he made the right decision as he was concerned about the debt involved. However, numerous people encouraged him to operate Tony’s, and the customers and business kept growing.
Zwingman remodeled the relatively new north side of the restaurant, making it what some called “The Beatles Room,” a non-smoking area. It also contained almost all of Zwingman’s personal Beatles collection. The front of Tony’s became a smoking section and was known for its Three Stooges décor. Approximately eighty people could fit into Tony’s on a busy day or night. Customers quickly responded to ten-cent coffee and free refills. Far and away, the biggest draw was breakfast. Ice cream sales, Tony’s trademark, did not make money but drew in first-time customers. If you were naïve enough to order or receive an ice cream sundae, then heaven help you. Waitresses told you that the next one was paid for if you managed to eat the entire mountain of ice cream. I never saw anyone in my family or friends eat sundae as a whole – but everyone walked away awed by Tony’s. Mike Zwingman also put in a coin machine in the entryway, which was the only one of its kind in the area, and it took in several hundred dollars each month.
Another source of success for Mike Zwingman’s running of Tony’s concerns how he treated his workers. Five of his waitresses worked for him for thirty years each. The ladies joked that they would retire simultaneously; they enjoyed their work that much. Zwingman kept good waitresses because he paid more per hour than anyone around him, and other restaurants envied the fact that they had more turnover than Tony’s.
Some memorable times would be when business boomed under Zwingman’s ownership. Whenever the St. Louis Church of God Campmeeting was in session in August, it meant all hands on deck. Staff members could not take time off during those ten days as church campers swarmed to Tony’s. In May 1997, Gratiot County experienced hurricane-like winds during a severe spring storm that shut the county down for days. With power out almost everywhere, St. Louis offered Mike to use some of its generators if he would feed the city workers. Mike agreed, and within one week, Tony’s sold out of everything in stock as word got out that Tony’s had electricity and food and was open for business.
Another memorable business period at Tony’s occurred during the COVID pandemic. When Mike Zwingman reopened for business in June and July 2000, he and his staff saw the busiest and most remarkable period that Tony’s ever had, one that Zwingman still appreciates from the St. Louis community to this day.
As is sometimes true of good stories, they can end in tragedy. On August 20, 2020, Tony’s met a tragic ending when a fire broke out at night in the grill area. The fire, which took place in the grill area during the night after everyone went home, left Mike Zwingman without a business, his workers out of jobs, and St. Louis out of one of its landmarks. Many were shocked and saddened to go past Tony’s and see the chicken standing in front of a burned-out restaurant. Despite this setback, Zwingman considered rebuilding and reopening on March 8, 2021 – the Nakos anniversary of opening the Dandy – but it was not to be. The cost of a complete rebuild was too much. If he had been a younger owner, Zwingman thought he could try to reopen. However, after serious contemplation, Zwingman was forced to notify his workers that Tony’s was done for good. It was unbelievably hard to tell his workers and customers that Tony’s was a thing of the past, but Zwingman eventually demolished the lot, put it up for sale, and retired.
After decades of what started as a 1950s drive-in, which evolved into a sit-down restaurant, came to an end in St. Louis. Looking back, many people still remember the location in St. Louis at 518 West Washington for the giant chicken, king-size helpings of food, and good times.
From the top: The Dandy as it appeared in the 1960s, before acquiring its mascot; Joe Nako poses out front while Pauline appears in the window; the first Dandy advertisement – opening for business in 1957; the famous Dandy chicken, circa 1971.
For nearly thirty years, customers in St. Louis found tasty meals at the Dandy Drive-In. When it closed, many feared that the restaurant, a product of the 1950s drive-in experience, was gone forever. Although another well-known St. Louis landmark opened as Tony’s Restaurant, the spot was known as the Dandy to old-timers.
At one time, an old bicycle shop was said to be on the property, and several trees dotted the back of the lot. After a fire a few years ago, someone found the remains of an old foundation on the property, suggesting that the Dandy was not the first business at this location.
The Dandy officially opened for business on April 4, 1957, and owners Joe and Pauline Nako offered free root beer, ginger ale, and cokes to anyone who pulled in for curb service. The Nako’s full last name was Nakonieczny, and the couple first came to St. Louis to own and operate the Colony House in downtown St. Louis. The Colony House was a small restaurant on the north side of Washington Street (M-46) and sat between the Meteor Bar and two gas stations.
The Nakos were from Detroit. During World War II, Joe, born in 1917 in Detroit, served with Battery C, 420 CA (AA) in the Pacific and Aleutian Islands. Nako entered the service in October 1941 and was on active duty until May 1944. On August 17, 1945, Nako was discharged at Camp Sheridan. Pauline Nako was born in Detroit on April 8, 1915, and came from Lithuanian descent. Joe and Pauline married at Blessed Sacrament Church in Detroit in 1947 and soon came to St. Louis to start a business.
One of the complications in learning about the history of the Nakos and the Dandy was that they did not appear to have family members in the community. Also, the couple was notorious for keeping advertising at the Dandy to a minimum. Still, the Nakos started a tradition that continued even after the Dandy closed: word of mouth. This was the best source for reaching customers, and word of mouth in and around St. Louis worked well.
Joe and Pauline opened the Dandy on April 4, 1957, by offering customers free root beer, ginger ale, and cokes for whoever requested curb service. The Dandy closed on Mondays, but by the early 1960s, it had a tradition of being one of the few late-night places to eat and stayed open until midnight. The Dandy usually opened in March and closed at Christmas. The other three months were “off months” for the Nakos, and customers waited for the restaurant’s re-opening each spring.
Different decades leave different memories of what one could eat at the Dandy. The Nakos were known as family people, and many customers flocked there on Sundays for chicken dinners. The “Dandy Burger” was a giant hamburger with a special sauce that reminded some of today’s Big Mac. Pauline Nako soon had customers coming in to taste her wonderful pies. Several former employees remembered how Joe and Pauline operated the Dandy. While Joe maintained the kitchen, Pauline ran the front and was willing to train almost anyone to be a waitress. Joe had the reputation of being the fatherly owner who was known for having a listening ear to his workers. Pauline could be a bit stern at times. However, many knew Pauline also had a heart for her workers.
The Nakos created a well-known mascot in St. Louis when Joe purchased and placed “The Chicken” out front of the Dandy. The fiberglass chicken was a mainstay in St. Louis for decades – “Just look for the chicken” was the famous saying about how to find the Dandy. It is unclear where the Nakos got the chicken, but one story illustrates how well-known the bird was. In one instance, it was reported that a group of boys from a Saginaw high school made off with the fowl as a prank. Fortunately, Joe Nako was able to get the chicken back. This time, Joe cemented the chicken firmly into the ground so that it would never be able to fly away again.
Under the Nakos, the Dandy remained in business until the 1980s. Pauline Nako passed in 2001, and Joe did shortly after that. Both were buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in St. Louis. Before Joe sold the place to the Lagalos Brothers from Saginaw, stories indicate that the Dandy sat vacant for a few years until a new location to eat started with Tony’s Restaurant.
From top photo: The Klein Brothers from Ithaca went off to war to defend Gratiot County and the nation; headlines from May 17, 1945 as Major T.S. Nurnberger of St. Louis writes home about seeing Buchenwald; Tony Kuna of Alma was one of several Gratiot County liberators. Kuna was at Gunskirchen Lager in Austria; a shot taken in Ohrdruf, the first image to appear in Gratiot County which showed evidence of the Nazi genocide.
It is challenging to describe Gratiot County’s connection to the Holocaust in the 1930s and World War II. In a sense, it would be easy to say that most citizens in Gratiot County knew much about the persecution and murder of the Jews and other groups. However, Gratiot County did little to help. One can only imagine how perplexing it was for those Jewish families in the county to hear and learn about what was happening in European countries that Hitler and the Nazis overran during this time. As these citizens read, listened, and learned about the Holocaust, Gratiot County mainly watched, like too much of America during that time.
The Depression and the Start of War, 1934-1941
The Alma Record and Alma Journal first published a photograph of Adolf Hitler about his rise to power in Germany on July 5, 1934. This picture showed Hitler’s first meeting with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in Venice, Italy.
A few Gratiot residents had some contact with Nazi Germany during the decade leading up to Pearl Harbor. One of the first to meet Germans who were sympathetic to the new government in Germany was Howard A. Potter, his wife, and Barker Brown, all of whom were originally from Ithaca. The trio belonged to a group of Harvard students who partook in a German Christmas at Cambridge University. While attending the party in a church basement, a larger group of American students entered the festively decorated room and met the German Consul Von Tippelskirch. The Potters were shocked when the table they were assigned had a flag next to it that featured a large red swastika. Fortunately, the students were comforted when they saw an American flag on a nearby stand. During that visit, the Potters and Brown quickly became engaged in conversation to try out their English and German speaking skills, as did other students at the party. After socializing and eating, the students pushed back the tables, and many in the group danced to the music. Ultimately, the Potters and Brown were all impressed by the cordial German atmosphere at the Christmas party.
Almost one year before World War II started, Margaret Randels, originally from Alma, studied for one month in Freiburg, Germany. At the end of their journey, she and another student, Mae Nelson of St. Louis, came home from Europe aboard the SS Deutschland after spending part of their summer touring Holland. Neither Randels nor Brown commented in the newspaper regarding their thoughts about Nazi Germany after they came home.
By 1936, Hitler made plans and reoccupied the Rhineland, a direct violation of the Versailles Treaty, ending World War I. This action was Hitler’s first aggression leading to the start of the war. The front page of the March 19, 1936, Alma Record and Alma Journal issue showed photographs before Hitler prepared to occupy the Rhineland. As a result, discussions about the Nazis became more newsworthy in Gratiot County. As a result of Hitler’s actions, there was a new interest in what was happening with the Nazis. In October of that year, Dr. Theodore Schreiber, a German professor at Alma College, was called upon to share his knowledge of modern Germany with interested groups. In one case, Dr. Schreiber spoke to a meeting of 120 in a women’s group in Saginaw about what he knew regarding the history of Nazi Germany.
As the 1930s went on and the Nazis continued to take parts of Europe, the plight of refugees became an issue. The only evidence that Gratiot County did anything to help those escaping Germany and Europe occurred at the Union Thanksgiving Service in November 1936. The Alma Methodist Episcopal Church took up a Thanksgiving offering to help “those pitiful exiles (who), with many Jews, have been driven from Germany by Nazi laws against ‘non-Aryans.” The church went on to state that since Jewish people in America helped fellow Jews, then the offering should be used to help Gentiles “to assist their own similarly.” Although the offering helped Gentiles in need, this event was the only one on record showing evidence that Gratiot County did anything regarding those escaping the Nazis and the impending Holocaust.
In 1937, readers of county newspapers also learned about the growing menace of the German Bund, organized by Fritz Kuhn in New York City. Through his group of American Nazis, Kuhn claimed that he had over 100,000 Americans who pledged support to the Bund and, in turn, Adolf Hitler. International tensions continued to rise as Hitler took Austria during the Anschluss in March 1937 and with the Sudetan Crisis a year later. Hitler was slowly absorbing parts of Europe. Otakar Prodrobsky, an Alma College student from Czechoslovakia, was immediately flooded with requests to speak to Gratiot County groups shortly after he arrived in Alma in the fall of 1938. Prodrobsky was from Prague and reported what it was like for him to live under the Nazis.
In Gratiot County, it took Kristallnacht, the extensive Nazi pogrom of November 9-10, 1938, to jolt some Gratiot County residents into learning more about the Holocaust. The editor of the Alma Record, H. S. Babcock, started his column “Uncle Sam and Hitlerism” with the story of what he had just heard in public. Babcock had someone tell him, “We are not interested in the German matter at all. If Hitler wants to kill off the Jews and take their property, that is their funeral and no concern of ours.” After spending six long paragraphs belaboring how trade relations between America and Nazi Germany had been damaged, as well as international relations, Babcock included excerpts of other columnists and their reactions to the persecution of Jews due to Kristallnacht. The column concluded that “A madness has been visited upon Germany. The disease is an old one: hatred; the cause: war.” The column did not call out Hitler and Nazi Germany for their persecution of the Jews for what it was – the expansion and implementation of a long history of European antisemitism. About all that the column concluded was that in the end, “the fever of blind hate will run its course…and destroy the Germans themselves.” A month later, the Alma Record carried the story that 300,000 people awaited permission to leave Nazi Germany for the United States and that ninety percent of the group were Jews. It also stated that only 27,370 could be allowed into the country based on current immigration laws. That meant it would take eleven years to work through the list even if the United States agreed to let that many refugees in. As a result of Kristallnacht, American consulates in at least four places in Nazi Germany became flooded with long lines of applicants wanting to leave the country.
In the spring of 1940, St. Louis hosted a significant witness to the growing Nazi occupation of Europe when Vojta Benes, brother to the former president of Czechoslovakia, spoke to 200 people at the St Louis High School auditorium. Benes had been active in politics in his country and toured the United States in 1938; then, he tried to return home just before Hitler took the Sudetanland. Benes fled to Poland and then found his way back to the United States. Benes described his country as “a prison camp for ten million people” under the Nazi Protectorate. He did not discuss the situation as it pertained to Jews in his country.
In May 1940, the Gratiot County Red Cross took up collections in Alma for civilian relief in war-stricken Europe. The leading Gratiot County supporters of helping these refugees were members of the Newark Mennonite Church, which gave the most significant sum – $157.00 for refugees. Two other anonymous contributions of $25 each were also given – and that was it for Gratiot County.
Even before Pearl Harbor, Gratiot County, like the rest of the United States, became scared of “enemy aliens” in its midst. A nationwide program started (as one did before World War I) to identify “enemy aliens.” In late August 1940, the county post offices began registering and fingerprinting Gratiot County’s aliens who had four months to register, or they faced possible arrest, six months in jail, and a $1,000 fine. All were required to fill out a form and answer many questions. The first asked how long they had been in the United States and how they got to Gratiot County. By January 1941, 976 aliens registered in the county, with Ithaca leading the group with 415 aliens. Postmaster James O. Peet believed that the large numbers his office encountered in Ithaca existed because Ithaca was closest to Gratiot County’s sugar beet growing area.
The War, Service, and Encountering the Holocaust
Gratiot County readily sent its young men and women off to fight in Europe and the Pacific after the events at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The Second World War began, and Gratiot residents read about Japanese relocation camps when a picture of the new Manzanar camp appeared in the Alma Record and Alma Journal on April 2, 1942. The news of these camps for Japanese Americans did not appear to stir any other reactions from Gratiot readers.
As Gratiot County went to war, it was common for some Gratiot County households to see sons from large families empty and leave. A group of four, five, or more sons going off to war sometimes occurred. In one case, the Klein Family of Ithaca, who was Jewish, sent five sons to fight and two more to military service after World War II ended.
Edward and Rella (Spitz) Klein moved to Ithaca from Grand Ledge sometime before the start of the Great Depression. The Kleins quickly became involved in the county by operating Klein Brothers Shell Service in Ithaca and a North Star furniture store. Edward Klein originally came from Hungary and still had family members in that country during the Holocaust. Records indicate that he had at least one relative who perished in Auschwitz, and there were probably more.
However, when it came time to serve Gratiot County during the war, all of the Kleins did their part. Franklin went first, entering early in 1941, and served with the 888th Ordinance H.M., Company Q in the China-Burma-India Theatre for two years. He also did another three years here in the United States. Royal, the oldest son, became a bombardier in the Army Air Corps, where he was wounded in action. Louis was the first to enter the Navy and served four years there. He later operated Klein Wall Paper and Paint in downtown Alma from 1949-1971.
Robert was a radio operator for 3 ½ years in the China-Burma-India Theater. Harold also entered the Navy and served in the Pacific aboard the USS Yorktown. Only 17, when he enlisted, Harold became involved in real estate after the war. Sons Richard and Milton served their country after the war ended. Richard later was in Korea. It is not clear where Milton served. However, the family confirmed that he, too, served his country.
The cost of the Klein family’s service in World War II was an extended family separation. It would be late February 1947 before the entire family again sat together at a dinner table. Fortunately, the Klein sons served their country and came home safely. Like some other large families in Gratiot County, the Klein brothers’ service appeared in the Gratiot County Herald for the many sons they sent to defend Gratiot County and the nation. Still, after the war, the family remained humble and quiet, humble, and went about trying to restart their lives.
News of the Death Camps Reach Gratiot County
That Hitler was carrying out the murder and extermination of the Jews of Europe was not unknown to Gratiot County residents. While Gratiot County newspapers did not explicitly mention the death camps, there were other ways that residents learned about what was taking place. In the summer of 1944, the Ionia Sentinel reported on the existence of Auschwitz Birkenau and how these victims came from several European countries. Likewise, the Owosso Argus Press ran a headline that the Nazis had murdered 1.715 million Jews in just two years. The first actual picture of a “slave labor camp” in the Vosges Mountains in eastern France appeared in the St. Louis Leader at Christmas 1944. The image mentioned how the SS used crematoriums to dispose of the bodies.
As Allied armies penetrated the Third Reich in April 1945, they discovered more concentration camps, and soldiers took pictures. An image of bodies found at Ohrdruf, Germany, was the first image of the Nazi genocide in the Gratiot County Herald on April 12, 1945.
Written testimony from letters of Gratiot County liberators soon appeared in local newspapers after the fall of Nazi Germany. In a letter dated April 20, 1945, Major T. S. Nurnberger, Jr. of St. Louis, wrote about his experiences after entering Buchenwald in Weimar, Germany. It was nine days after Americans first liberated the camp. As Nurnberger stood at the entrance of the Buchenwald Camp, which was located on the edge of a mountain, he saw a sign that welcomed American liberators. Nurnberger learned that 51,000 people had already died in the camp. After visiting the crematorium, Nurnberger saw bodies stacked “like cordwood” and two badly beaten SS men whom prisoners had killed. He then could not believe the number of people crammed into the empty bunks inside some barracks. He wrote, “The stench was so strong despite recent cleaning that it almost made me sick.” The next place he saw was an old pit containing 1500 dead, which needed a bulldozer to cover them. Concluding his letter, Major Nurnberger added, “This is your Germany of culture. This is (the) why behind the unconditional surrender of the Third Reich. I have had a bad dream, you say! Ah yes, and I have the pictures to prove it taken with my own camera.”
Norval Biddinger of Middleton also saw Buchenwald and wrote home to his mother about what he witnessed. In a June 3, 1945, letter Biddinger began with his feelings about seeing the camp. He wrote, “I am mad all the way through and want to get this letter written while I still remember it.” He described seeing survivors who had “nothing left but skin and bones.” In one building, 1200 men were forced to live in barracks built for 100. Biddinger saw the crematoriums and recalled that prisoners killed 150 SS guards before the United States Army found them. Writing about its size, Biddinger said, “The whole camp covers an area no bigger than Middleton, and they crowded them in as many as 80,000 at one time.” Biddinger closed by saying that all his information was obtained firsthand from survivors still in the camp.
Other letters came to Gratiot County from men who witnessed the Nazi concentration camps. Private John D. Harnick of Ashley wrote about seeing furnaces and crematoriums but did not identify the camp. The same was true of Lloyd Peters of Ithaca, who was with General Patch’s Seventh Army.
Corporal Robert L. Brown of Ithaca saw the remains of murder at Gardelegen, where 800 prisoners were burned alive while trying to escape from a barn. Images from Gardelegen appeared in Life Magazine on May 7, 1945. The prisoners had been on a death march and were placed inside a 100 feet by 30 feet brick barn. A German Army sergeant saw the straw floor covered in oil, had the doors locked, and then set it on fire. Anyone trying to escape was shot by machine guns placed outside. After the fire, the Germans tried to bury some dead but could not cover the evidence before the Americans arrived. Only three people survived Gardelegen. Corporal Brown wrote about what he saw by stating, “I never witnessed anything so horrible in my life, and I hope I never shall. Ditches out in the back of the building were dug by these men before their cremation, I presume, but only a few were buried in them…” He closed, “Can you imagine such a thing? This doesn’t make for good reading. I know, but it is the truth…Perhaps you will read about it in the papers.”
Tony Kuna was probably one of Gratiot County’s longest-lived liberators. He later recalled and talked about what he saw. Kuna was in the 71st Infantry Division and attached to Patton’s Third Army as it penetrated Austria in early May 1945. Kuna was one of several liberators at Gunskirchen Lager, a subcamp of Mauthausen near Wels, Austria. Kuna’s division found a camp of 15,000 prisoners where approximately ten percent had perished. When Kuna entered one of the barracks, a prisoner begged for a cigarette. Kuna gave him one, thinking the prisoner wanted a smoke. Instead, the prisoner ate it, then suddenly died. Kuna recalled, “You don’t ever forget something like that. I was sent into the camp for guard duty and cried the whole time.” The Americans’ main problem with the survivors, as was in other liberated camps in 1945, was how to feed them. The se liberators met starving prisoners yet could not keep food down. At Gunskirchen, the best Army doctors could do was boil water and place bread in it to eat. In a twist, Tony Kuna’s experience with the Holocaust in Austria led to other lifelong connections. One survivor who later settled in Winsor, Ontario, Canada, once visited Kuna and brought a large meal to the Kuna home to remember this survivor’s liberation by the 71st Division at Gunskirchen Lager.
The Holocaust and Gratiot County After 1945
Although the war in Europe ended in May 1945, different parts of the Holocaust eventually came into contact with residents in Gratiot County. Coverage of the Nuremberg Trials started in November 1945. It ran for ten months as leaders of Nazi Germany went on trial for war crimes. In December, it was written that upward of 6 million Jews had been murdered in Hitler’s Holocaust. Sergeant Roy King, whose mother lived in Alma, was a member of the military police at Nuremberg and sat in the press gallery as an escort for General Powell. King wore earphones and heard the broadcast of the trial in front of him in five different languages.
Even before the trial concluded, the proceedings appeared in eight volumes for each Michigan county that wanted copies. Gratiot County Circuit Court Judge Paul R. Cash announced that the books would be purchased and placed in the county courthouse law library where anyone could read them beginning in early 1947.
There would be other reminders of the Holocaust in Gratiot County after the Nuremberg Trials ended. Smaller trials of other Nazi perpetrators took place for a few years afterward. However, by 1950 the so-called “trials” for other criminals ended, even though countless Nazi perpetrators evaded justice. When Nazi perpetrator Adolf Eichmann’s trial occurred in the early 1960s, news and references to the Holocaust briefly appeared in newspapers. Probably the biggest stirring of memory and discussion of the Holocaust came to Gratiot County, as did other places in the United States when the NBC miniseries “The Holocaust” appeared on television in the spring of 1978. The story of the Family Weiss confronted Americans about the Holocaust and brought it to the forefront of American memory. Another encounter with the memory of the Nazi genocide occurred in the early 1990s when the movie “Schindler’s List” was shown in movie theatres. In response to the film, Michigan legislators made it possible for students, including those in Gratiot County, to go and see “Schindler’s List” at the Alma Cinemas. There would also be other avenues that Gratiot County residents could use to learn about the Holocaust. The Zekelman Holocaust Center (first known as the Holocaust Memorial Center) in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, opened to the public as the first Holocaust Memorial in the United States in 1981. In 1994. the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum opened in Washington, D.C., in 1993, and students visited there on group or individual trips.
Gratiot County residents knew about the Holocaust. What we learned about and what we actually did about it (and often did not do about it) were two different things. What we did do aside from financial support from what two churches and service members did in Europe is – not much.
Above from left: Today’s home of the Alma News Stand (also to some as Superior News) on Superior Street; My copy of Amazing Spider-Man #66 originally purchased in the Rexall Drug Store in downtown St. Louis; John Romita, Sr., famed artist on the Amazing Spider-Man comic from the 1960s and 1970s.
Several weeks ago, an artist who affected my life growing up in Gratiot County died at 93.
John Romita, Sr., was most likely unknown to many Gratiot County residents except for some of us who were kids in the 1960s and 1970s. Romita, Sr. was a Marvel Comics artist who was the second to draw the Amazing Spider-Man starting in 1966 and running until the mid-1970s.
How could he be described? Romita drew the character as the young adult Peter Parker, who became a superhero a few years earlier due to a scientific spider’s bite. I was a comic book reader who followed Romita’s run on The Amazing Spider-Man beginning in 1968 when I first purchased an issue from inside the old Rexall Drug Store in downtown St. Louis. To this day, I can still see ASM #66 sitting on the metal rack and picking it up for a mere twelve cents. This issue had an iconic Mysterio cover and began a love affair with Spider-man and Marvel Comics that lasted about five years (on my first go-round). The comic rack at Rexall Drug was a favorite stopping place on a Friday night or Saturday morning when my father made his weekly trip to the old Commercial National Bank in St. Louis to cash his paycheck from Alma Products.
Somehow during this trip, I could squeeze a quarter out of my father, and I made regular trips into Rexall until it burned down. A fire took out the store on the northeast corner of Franklin and Mill Streets around 1970, which changed how I found my comic books. A St. Louis kid still had several choices at the intersection of those streets: Goods Package Shop, St. Louis Five & Dime, and Knapps Bakery. They were all exciting places for a baby boomer to visit with change in his hand. But, with the demise of Rexall Drug Store, I had to go elsewhere to find Spider-man. I do recall visiting Hanners Magazine Store in Ithaca (now the location of the Gratiot County Historical Museum) and seeing comics as they lined the shelves on one wall. Still, we didn’t stop in Ithaca as much as in Alma.
Fortunately for me, my father was an avid sports reader, and getting a copy of The Sporting News was something that he regularly did. To get his weekly paper, we traveled to Alma’s Superior Newsstand (or some of us called it “The News Stand”). While my father picked up his sports paper, I soon discovered that a large comic rack that spun to display comics on four or five levels was located around the corner from the entrance. It also faced Superior Street.
The stand made it easy for a kid to look in the window when a car went by or if he was walking by on the sidewalk. If the comic rack was full, you knew a new shipment of comics had just arrived. A bare or sparsely populated set of racks meant the comics had been picked over or the latest shipment had yet to make it to Superior News Stand (some called it the Alma News Stand). When I paid for my comics, I always gave Grandpa Naessens (we called him that, but I don’t believe that was his last name) my quarter, and he fished change out of a clean ashtray that he kept on the corner of the desk. Grandpa Naessens was also a memorable whistler, which he frequently did as he sat and looked out the window toward Superior Street.
And pick the comics I did. In the late 1960s, a Marvel comic (I was almost exclusively Marvel, although I respected and occasionally picked up a DC Superman or Batman) was only twelve cents. The price was neat as I could pick up two comics and pay the one-cent tax – all for a quarter. But quarters seemed hard to come by. I also remember that the time when turning in glass pop bottles only brought two cents each. It took some work to pick up a quarter, but something called “a weekly allowance” helped me with my comic book collecting.
A complication came in the summer of 1969 when Marvel and DC jumped the price of comics to fifteen cents. Within two years, books went to twenty cents each – which soon forced me to consider giving up comics and going to baseball cards.
But back to John Romita, Sr. He was considered the face and most important artist to draw Spider-Man, next to whom he succeeded an artist known as Steve Ditko. How do I describe the artwork? As a kid, the characters appeared lifelike, human, and easier to relate to. After all, Peter Parker had been a teenager. Sometimes during the “Romita Sr. run” from issues #66-102, readers also met other Marvel artists. Jim Mooney and Gil Kane shared duties with Romita during the time. Still, the best books to me were drawn by JR Sr. The books also became highly collectible in time, and based on their condition, some reached the hundreds – and even thousands of dollars depending on what issue a kid picked up. Still, by 1972, the price of comics and my interest in the Detroit Tigers meant that I had largely moved on to collecting baseball cards.
I picked up one of the last John Romita, Sr. issues I purchased at the St. Louis IGA in the fall of 1972. After that, I had outgrown the books. But I kept my copies, which were stored -and read through the years. There was a certain smell that printed books of the 1960s, and 1970s had that you couldn’t imagine today. No, it was not the smell of mildew – it was good old-fashioned paper comics. Today’s versions are slick, magazine-style, but not so in the 1960s and 1970s in Gratiot County.
In the early 1980s, I returned to Marvel Comics and quickly found The Amazing Spider-man a favorite. This time, Spider-man was being drawn by a new Romita – John Romita, Jr. This Romita would, over time, also leave a similar iconic imprint on the character -much like his father did a generation earlier.
Today in Gratiot County, one would need help finding a weekly place that sells comic books. Why is this so? By the end of the 1990s, stores no longer carried comics, forcing readers and collectors to deal almost exclusively with “the comic book store” in their locality. One or two stores tried to do this in the county, but none exist today. One’s best bet is to get a subscription service or visit the closest stores in Mt. Pleasant, Saginaw, or Lansing – all of which can be a distance to get a “comic fix.”
But, for a baby boomer growing up in the 1960s -1970s in Gratiot County, comic books were a form of popular entertainment for kids who had a quarter to spend. And now, time to return to reading the most recent issue of The Amazing Spider-Man.
An early artist’s sketch of the proposed Suburbanette in Pine River Plaza, circa late 1963. The Suburbanette was the vision of Bert Elsley of St. Louis, who owned the St. Louis IGA.
Mrs. Bert Elsley cuts the ribbon for the opening of the new Suburbanette in Pine River Plaza. The first three days brought in large crowds, and sold enough five cent hot dogs and Cokes to feed 5,000 customers.
The February 6, 1964 advertisement for a contest to name the new store. Who was the winner? St. Louis City Clerk-Treasurer Kenneth Barnum. He won $25 for the winning name.
As new entertainment flowed into Pine River Plaza in the early 1960s, a fourth building appeared. Bert Elsley had an idea. Elsely, the owner of Elsley’s IGA in St. Louis, decided to try to place a store next to Gratiot Lanes bowling alley and Leonard’s Outdoor gas station.
It was not a very big location for a store. The building, which Elsely leased, sat sixty feet off the road with a forty feet of store front. Inside, it had only 3,000 square feet of floor space. The Donald A. Wineland Company from Kawkawlin did the construction Still, Elsley said that the parking lot could hold at least 25 cars, and he envisioned having an outdoor summer market. When he first opened, when he needed more room because of all of the customers that came. Elsley’s store stayed open until 11:00 pm each evening, including Sundays. Soon, he operated from 7:30 am to 11:30 pm, seven days a week.
In February 1964, Elsely held a contest to name the location and the person with the best suggestion received $25. People in St. Louis laughed when Elsley announced that the winner was Kenneth Barnum, who was the city clerk and manager. Barnum’s proposal was to name the new store “The Suburbanette.”
When the official opening of the Surbanette took place, Mrs. Elsley cut the ribbon. To encourage business in the first three days, Elsley had 27 door prizes to give to the first customers, including a portable TV set. Customers also indulged in five cent hot dogs and Cokes – to the tune of 5,000 people, according to Elsley.
Unfortunately, Bert Elsley suffered serious health problems in the next year and he was forced to sell the Suburbanette. A couple from Lakeview, Fred and Kathryn Harkens, bought the store and had operating hours of 10:00 am to 10:00 pm daily.
In mid-December 1970, the business changed hands again. This time, Gordon and Audrey Mackenzie bought the store and took it over that month. At the grand opening, Gordon and other community leaders all wore Scottish kilts. Steve and Clark Mackenzie operated the store until February 2021 when Jameson and Sara Evitts bought Mackenzies.
Although the location that was known as the Suburbanette and later Mackenzies, it remains the second oldest operating business that originated in Pine River Plaza since the early 1960s. Not bad for the smallest store at the corner.
A late November 1967 drawing of the anticipated Travelodge in Alma. The hotel would sit on the northeast corner of Pine River Plaza.
The newly constructed Alma Travelodge as it appeared at its appeared in July 1968.
With new bowling alleys, an outdoor center, and new places to eat, the Pine River Plaza at M-46 and Luce Road only lacked one thing – a new motel. In November 1967, newspapers reported that a Travelodge Motel would be constructed east of the Big Boy restaurant.
At the time, this Travelodge was one of 350 motels of that franchise in the United States and Canada. The Pine River Motel Company, owners of the Travelodge, included President Donald Wakely, Secretary Roy Roach, and Treasurer Leon McNeill, Jr. Other board members included Al Fortino, Alfonso Fortino, and Doctors Sylvio and Mario Fortino.
The motel aimed for a summer 1968 opening and would long be recognized for its large A-Frame on the west end. Inside, it had 50 units, with conference rooms and a large banquet hall that could feed 150 people or hold 500 for a meeting. The Travelodge also had a health club and a large indoor year-round pool, along with rooms that had wheelchair units and both single and double rooms. Lila L. Baldwin became the new resident manager after previously owning a ten-unit motel in Holt, Michigan.
In June 1968, the Travelodge officially opened and quickly became a well-known location for swimming, banquets, and meetings. Events ranged from attending one of the first presentations in the area about how to operate a microwave oven or listening to Vice President Gerald Ford talk to members of the Gratiot County Republican Party via telephone conference.
As time passed, the Travelodge represented a place to stay on the southeast corner of the Pine River Plaza. Following the construction of two bowling alleys, a Michigan Outdoors Center, a Suburbanette, and a restaurant, the Travelodge was the last piece of the Pine River Plaza.
An early March 1964 advertisement for the opening of the Alma Big Boy Restaurant in Pine River Plaza.
Contractor Harold Carter of Greenville shows new manager Jack Robbins of Alma around the Big Boy building site. It was June 1963.
The Big Boy himself greeted travelers for decades at the Pine River Plaza. Here he gets a cleaning and repair in July 1979.
On January 3, 1963, news came that the Pine River Plaza would soon have a new restaurant at the corners. This Big Boy Restaurant, one of 45 Elias Brothers restaurants in the United States, was owned by private operators who hoped to open for business that spring.
Harold Carter of Greenville built the Big Boy, which was constructed of brick and stone and had 3,500 square feet. It seated 120 people and had a drive-in with up to 60 Teletype phones for ordering. In addition to the drive-in, a banquet room inside held 40 people.
The Big Boy officially debuted on August 23, 1963, to coincide with the opening of Leonard’s Service Station. Newspapers also announced that the owners planned a golf driving range and miniature golf course east of the restaurant.
The hours of operation (6 am-1 am Sunday through Thursday, 6 am-3 am Friday-Saturday) gave customers a wide range of times to eat. By 1971, the Big Boy stayed open 24 hours a day.
Sometimes unusual things happened, such as when high winds blew the Big Boy off his perch during a wind and snow storm. In another instance, someone stole the Big Boy from his stand.
However, the Alma Big Boy in Pine River Township was a frequent stop to eat for decades for items like the Big Boy sandwich and Hot Fudge Ice Cream cake.
Above: A shot of Leonard’s Michigan Outdoors Center in 1964. The center sat on the southeast corner of Pine River Plaza, north of what is today Mackenzie’s Party Store.
John Wood was the first manager of the Michigan Outdoors Center; Dick Shaver worked as the station manager.
Station attendant Doris Parks helps a driver in 1967. Drivers could stop at Michigan Outdoors Center for coffee, directions, maps and just a break.
Mort Neff was the host of the “Michigan Out Doors” television program that started in the 1950s. Leonard’s Refineries became the show’s leading sponsor in 1956 and Neff made several appearances in Gratiot County during the program’s run.
In the early 1960s, Leonard’s Refineries of Alma had plans for a “Michigan Outdoors” Sales and Service Station. This station was located on the Pine River Plaza’s southeast corner at the corner of Alger Road and M-46.
Leonard’s Michigan Outdoors station was constructed with a large paved parking lot and a display room that could be seen from the road. A gas station and car maintenance center sat next door. When drivers traveling along US-27 needed a break or directions, they could pull into the parking lot to be greeted by a hostess who offered free coffee, directions, and maps. John Wood became Leonard’s first manager, and the station opened on November 1, 1963.
The idea of a Michigan Outdoors station had roots in the 1950s. In 1956, Leonard’s Refineries initiated sponsorship of Mort Neff’s “Michigan Outdoors” television program. Mort Neff was one of Michigan’s leading ecologists and produced one of the largest outdoor shows in Michigan. Eight television stations carried the program on Thursday nights, encouraging Michigan outdoorsmen to think about the upcoming weekend, regardless of the season. One of the show’s highlights was a large Michigan map with a light on the back. If Neff told viewers, “The perch are biting off of the pier at Ludington,” the light would move across the state and rest on that location. The same could be said about hunting pheasants and other outdoor events in Michigan.
Mort Neff knew how to draw people, and it was said that when the map and light came on, another fifty fishermen or hunters from downstate Michigan would appear in the area to hunt or fish – all because of Mort Neff’s program.
When it came to Mid-Michigan, Neff loved to fly his plane into nearby Maple Rapids to hunt or fish. He was also the featured speaker at local high schools. He once appeared for a fundraiser for the Gratiot County Humane Society. Mort packed them in that night, and the fundraiser was a sellout.
Leonard’s gas station is long gone today, but there once was a Michigan Outdoors Center in Pine River Plaza.
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