At the end of WWII and the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, the world was forever changed ushering in the Cold War. You probably know that the Manhatten project’s mission was to create the first nuclear weapons. But you probably did not know that it started with a clandestine meeting on the beach at Otsego Lake State Park. Dr. Arthur H. Compton a Nobel Prize-winning physicist was placed in charge of the project. He met with theoretical physicist Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer on the beach to discuss if the project was even possible. Dr. Compton had a summer home on Otsego Lake and chose the state park for the meeting because he knew it was a secluded spot and would be away from enemy spies. After the men agreed that it could be done they continued moving forward with the government’s plans to create the first atomic bomb, and the world was never the same since then.

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On the eve of D-Day (June 6th 1944) general Eisenhower was talking to a group of paratroopers from the 101st Airborne, and an unknown army photographer captured this iconic image of the general talking with the Screaming Eagles.  It was not until 1984 that an employee at the war department saw the photo, and realized that the Lieutenant with the #23 was Wally Strobel from his hometown of Saginaw Michigan. ( My hometown too) When Mr. Strobel was asked about the photo, he said that the general asked him where he was from ” Michigan Sir” he replied, and Ike asked how the fishing was, “great sir” then the general said that Michigan was a beautiful state and reminisced about fishing in the state for a few minutes with the paratroopers. I guess now I know why “we like Ike”. You can read the full story in the Baltimore Sun HERE

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A few miles east of Cassopolis on M-60 is a small memorial with a futuristic-looking airplane pointing toward the heavens. Iven Carl “Kinch” Kincheloe Jr. was born in 1928 in Detroit, but he grew up in Cassopolis. After graduating from Purdue University with a bachelors degree in aeronautical engineering, he received his commission in the U.S. Air Force. He started out as a test pilot, but went on to serve in the Korean War. He flew over 100 missions and downed ten enemy Mig-15s, earning the Silver Star.

After the war, he went back to his duties as a test pilot working on the Bell X2 program. He flew the experimental aircraft over 2000 miles per hour at an altitude of over 126,000 feet. Piloting his plane at this high elevation earned him the nickname “America’s No. 1 Spaceman.” Tragically, He died in an F-104 plane crash on July 26, 1958.

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Near the Rasin River in downtown Monroe is a statue of a civil war general on a horse. It sits on a base with the word CUSTER carved into the side of it.  The U.S. military has had many famous generals, but it was George Armstrong Custer that became famous for his and his soldier’s deaths the Battle of Littel Big Horn.

Custer was raised in the town of Monroe. He graduated from West Point and served with great distinction in the Civil War. In 1910 This bronze statue created by Edward Clark Potter named “Sighting The Enemy” was erected in his honor.

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You may have walked past the stately Harbour View Inn on Mackinac Island but you probably don’t know the incredible story of the woman who originally built it as her home. Long before Michigan became a state and was known as the Northwest Territory fur trading was the primary means of business in the region.  Marguerite-Magdelaine Marcot was born in February 1781 at Fort St. Joseph, near present-day Niles, Michigan. She was the daughter of a French man by the name of Jean Baptiste Marcot and her mother was Marie Nekesh and Odawa Indian. Her father was killed two years after she was born and she was raised by the Odawa tribe of which her grandfather was the chief.

Marguerite became immersed in the Native American culture and fluent in the Odawa, French, English, and Ojibwe languages. In 1795 she married Joseph La Framboise and they worked together in the fur trade in western Michigan. They built a trading post near Fallasburg Michigan and would travel back and forth from Mackinac Island trading with the Native Americans. Marguerite worked alongside her husband and her ability to communicate with the Indians allowed their business to prosper.

Tragically, Joseph La Framboise was murdered in 1806, and Madeline La Framboise took over their fur trade. She continued to manage several trading posts, and expanded her business throughout the western and northern portions of Michigan’s lower peninsula. Known to many as Madamme La Framboise she was the region’s most successful fur trader. At the age of 40 in 1820, she sold her business to another fur trader Rix Robinson. He was another early pioneer and the first settler in Kent County. He went on to become a Senator.

After Selling her business she retired to Mackinac Island building her home on Huron Street. She donated the land next to her house for St. Anne Catholic Church with the stipulation she would be buried underneath it. After she died in 1846 she was laid to rest under the altar. Her Home, which still stands next to the church, is now the Harbour View Inn.

P.S. There is a lot more to her story but much more than I want to do in a post. I guess it will have to write more in one of my books.

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