A cosmopolitan congregation cherishes its rural German roots

Once a small, all-German country church, Zion Lutheran at Rogers Corners in Freedom Township has become a large, modern, diverse congregation. The original 1867 historic church still sits on the northwest comer of Waters and Fletcher, across the street from the current church, built in 1974.

Zion was founded in 1865 by a group that broke off from St. Thomas, a German church that still stands at Ellsworth and Haab. Zion's bylaws mandated that services and religious teachings be conducted in German. The congregation, with thirty-four men as charter members, at first met in a nearby public school. In 1867 Zion finished building a neo-Gothic brick structure, similar to churches in Germany, and topped with a bell tower. The interior was used solely for worship space—religious instruction and meetings continued to be held at the schoolhouse until 1876, when members bought another unused school building and moved it to the church site.

Zion shared a minister with Bethel Church for two years and shared another with St. Thomas for six more. By 1873 it was large enough to support its own pastor and hired Johannes Baumann. The congregation occasionally had trouble paying the pastor's salary on time but always made sure he was at least well sheltered and fed. The church bought Frederick Emminger's house, north of the church on the east side of Fletcher, for a parsonage, and members maintained and improved it. They rented Emminger's fields to farmers, who gave the minister some of the crops. When parishioners slaughtered an animal or made sausage, they would give some of it to the pastor.

In 1889 the congregation built a new parsonage for pastor Heinrich Lemster in a vernacular Gothic Revival style that matched the church. It still stands at 2905 South Fletcher. One of the two front doors opened directly into the minister's study, allowing parishioners to visit him without bothering the family.

A group split from Zion in 1890 over the question of bread or wafers for communion. Zion had a new bread oven, but Lemster preferred wafers. The breakaway group founded St. John's Church nearby on Waters Road, now affiliated with the United Church of Christ.

In 1903 Zion built a new school. It was used mainly as a general meeting place for the congregation and for confirmation classes, held each fall and spring. "We'd raise Cain when the pastor went home for lunch," recalls Norman Wenk, a lifelong member of Zion, "tease the girls, chase them around the woodshed, that sort of thing."

In 1910 a new pastor from Germany, Ernst Thieme, and his wife, Sybial, moved into the parsonage. Wenk remembers Sybial as "a jokester" and "a happy-go-lucky lady"—with a stern husband. Wenk says he was "a strict disciplinarian, who didn't allow any whispering in church. I remember him pounding on the pulpit when kids were naughty."

In 1917 the church prepared to celebrate its golden anniversary, even buying a new organ for the occasion. But less than a month before the anniversary, on June 6, at 2 p.m., a tornado struck. "It was a sad sight to see our small church without a roof and tower, and the front wall only standing in part," Thieme wrote in the church history. "The back part of the church with the altar and the pulpit remained standing... The schoolhouse was torn off its foundation and scattered all over. On the parsonage, the roof was torn off and the building could not be occupied." Miraculously, the organ and the bell tower were spared.

Starting the very day of the tornado, parishioners began to rebuild the parsonage and school exactly as they had been but altered the church by moving the tower toward the front, giving it a more elegant look. They held their delayed anniversary celebration on September 16.

The response to the tornado was typical of the hands-on congregation. Members called special meetings to decide things like lighting for the church (in 1923 they bought a Delco generator) or putting a bathroom in the parsonage (in 1936). Wenk recalls they had work "bees" to collect firewood for the minister, and the minutes refer to cemetery bees to clean up the graveyard.

Although the congregation was fond of Thieme, his lack of English was a problem for younger members who wanted occasional English sermons. In 1926 he returned to Germany. His successor, Moritz Brueckner, was bilingual. Like many of his parishioners, Brueckner had been born in America to German parents. After his arrival the congregation changed the bylaws to allow children's religious classes to be taught in English. In 1930 Brueckner began preaching one English sermon a month. By the time he retired in 1954, the ratio had reversed, and he was down to just one German sermon a month.

Until 1931 men sat on the pulpit side of the church and women on the organ side. Martha and Harold Eiseman changed all that by sitting together the first Sunday after their honeymoon. "Three weeks later another couple sat together, then another. Soon they were all sitting together," Martha Eiseman recalls.

In 1940 Zion decided to build a parish hall, but World War II put the project on hold. As the congregation had done in World War I, members sent food and supplies to German civilians, including Jell-0 to the Thiemes. Ernst Thieme later wrote that he didn't know how he would have survived without this help.

After the war the church bought the Beuerle property on Waters Road directly across the street. The members finished the parish hall in 1949 and added a new parsonage in 1954. Brueckner stayed in the old parsonage until he retired in 1955; afterward the congregation gave him the old school, which he moved north of the parsonage and converted into a house, where he lived the rest of his life. The house still stands.

In 1974 the congregation built a new church next to the parish hall. Pastor Theodore Brueckner, son of Moritz Brueckner, was guest preacher at the last service in the old church. Zion still uses the old church for weddings and funerals and one service every summer. In 1979 it was entered on the State Register of Historic Places. A board that includes some people who are not Zion members, such as Angie and Jack Lewis, who live in the old parsonage, now oversees the old church.

Zion has grown to more than 400 members. Current pastor David Hendricks notes that the congregation now includes people of Scandinavian, Japanese, and Hispanic descent as well as a good number of Germans, and that members are coming from Chelsea, Manchester, Dexter, Ann Arbor, and Grass Lake. Instead of serving only local farming families, Zion now counts many professionals among its members. But the same closeness survives. Lifelong membership is common. It is not unusual at funerals for the pastor to cite the deceased's confirmation verse.

New members are attracted by this connectedness. Susan Wiley, the church secretary, recalls being impressed with the church's "feeling of history and ties to the community." Martha Eiseman, who joined in 1931 as a young bride, recently moved to the Chelsea Retirement Communities but still attends Zion. "My daughter comes and picks me up," she explains. "It's always nice. I see so many people I know."

—Grace Shackman

Photo Caption: The original Zion was destroyed by a tornado in 1917, shortly after the photo at right was taken. The rebuilt church has its steeple at the front.

Citizen passion helps libraries grow. In 1909 the women of Manchester defied their township government and started their own library. In other Washtenaw County towns, women also led volunteer efforts to build and stock local libraries. Long before the era of library boards and dedicated millages, these places became cherished sources of community pride. For more than a century, local libraries have exemplified the character of the towns they serve. To get them started or keep them going, citizens painted walls, built bookcases, and raised money with card tournaments, puppet shows, and other events. When libraries relocated to larger quarters, members of service groups, from Boy Scouts to Kiwanis clubs, moved the books. Townspeople also defended their libraries' independence. In the 1930s, Frances Hannum, head of the Ann Arbor library, tried to organize a countywide system but got a cool reception. In the 1960s, when the Washtenaw County Library was established to serve unmet needs, there was again talk of a combined system. But communities preferred to keep their own libraries, even if it meant staying in cramped quarters. Today, financed by property taxes and run by professionals, local libraries offer materials and services never dreamed of in the era of volunteers. With larger and more modern facilities, the challenge is to give residents access to global resources while preserving tradition and a hometown feel. In the nineteenth century, readers in western Washtenaw made do with tiny libraries in township halls, schools, or churches. Often these consisted of a single shelf of books. Some local merchants kept lending libraries, from which customers could borrow books for small fees. A drugstore in Dexter had one; so did a Chelsea jewelry store, which carried mostly western novels. As the twentieth century dawned, women started organizing real town libraries. They found space, collected books, ad raised money, often with the help of a benefactor, usually the wife of a prominent local businessman. That's what happened in Saline in 1900, when a group of civic-minded women formed the Saline Library Association, and the community rallied to help them. The village council provided space in its chambers, the Methodist church provided bookcases, and people donated books. The organizers raised money through lectures and lantern slide shows to operate the library, which originally was open only on Friday afternoons. By 1907 the Saline library had outgrown the council chambers, and Zilpha Davenport, wife of William Davenport, founder of the Citizens Bank, convinced her husband to house the library in a little building in back of the bank. In 1917, when the bank needed that space, the Davenports paid for construction of a new library at 105 North Ann Arbor Street (now the Drowsy Parrot). Ken Heininger, who grew up in Saline, recalls that it looked like "an English manor library," with tall bookshelves all the way up to high ceilings. Max Collins remembers the sliding ladder used to reach the higher shelves; he also remembers the mezzanine, where as a young child he would play while his grandmother did her volunteer stint. Neither Heininger nor Collins remembers ever taking out a book. "I don't think they had children's books," says Collins. As a high school student in the 1940s, Wayne Clements used the library, but he didn't find it a very welcoming place. The strict librarian monitored all activity from her desk in the middle of the room. "She ran a tight ship," Clements recalls. "There was no fooling around. You got the book and left." He doesn't remember there being any tables to sit at. The Saline library remained in the building until 1967. Manchester's library got an early start: organized in 1838, it was the state's first township-run library. It originally consisted of a row of books on a table in the township office. The township clerk received an extra $25 a year for serving as librarian during its hours of operation, 2 to 4 p.m. on Saturdays. Early in the twentieth century, the women of the community stepped in. According to a 1926 history written by then-librarian Florence Case, the books in the old library were deteriorating. In 1909 Manchester had four women's study clubs—the Shakespeare Club and the Twentieth Century Club (both of which still exist), the Academy of Forty, and the Saturday Club. Evelyn Spaford, president of the Saturday Club, called a meeting of these groups to form a library association. "They braved the silent disapproval of the township board and installed the library in a room of its own in the Conklin building," an anonymous historian wrote in the library's archives. The women went to work building shelves, gathering books, and raising money. In 1923 the library moved to upstairs quarters in the Mahrle Building on Adrian Street, opening to the public one evening a week. The late Glenn Lehr recalled in a 1998 interview that the library was in a long, narrow, fairly dark room heated by a potbellied stove. By the time he was fourteen, Lehr said, he had read every book in the collection. Women also launched the first libraries in Dexter and Chelsea. Dexter's opened in 1927, under the sponsorship of the Dexter Woman's Study Club. Club member Cornelia Copeland's brother, U.S. senator Royal Copeland, let them use a little building he had restored. He kept an office in the back to use when he was in town. Now housing the Cookie MOMster, the building, a former post office, had once been owned by village founder Samuel Dexter. At Senator Copeland's request, the library was named the Alice Frances House, after his mother. It was open mainly on weekends. The librarian, Flora Smith, wrote local history articles for the Dexter Leader and lived across the street in a yellow brick house, since torn down. Libby Davenport recalls that she and her sister Doris used to go to the library on Saturday afternoons after having cones at Connor's ice cream shop. "We had to show our hands when we came in to the library," she says. "No sticky hands were allowed." Chelsea's library started as a project of the Child Study Club (now the Woman's Club) in 1932, a few weeks after a speaker from the Michigan Child Study Association gave a talk on libraries. Winifred Palmer, wife of a local doctor, chaired the effort. A store donated a room, and club members dyed sheets maroon to hang as dividers. They painted donated bookcases and tables the same color and opened with twenty-two of their own books and 100 more on loan from the state library. Open three hours twice a week, the library was staffed by pairs of volunteers from the club. Its backers raised money from bake sales, card tournaments, and puppet shows. They also held "give-a-book weeks" to encourage donations. In the next two decades the library moved several times to various rented quarters. Manchester was the first of the four towns to have a dedicated library building. In 1934 library organizers bought the Lynch House at 202 West Main Street on the village square. The monthly payments to buy the house were lower than the rent for the room in the Mahrle Building. Once again, the move was a community-wide effort. Local churches put on a benefit play, and volunteers cleaned, painted, and built shelves. The Boy Scouts moved the books. At first the entire collection fit in the home's living room. The upstairs was converted to an apartment for the librarian, Jane Palmer, who planted flowers in the front (some of those plantings remain). Unlike Manchester's library, which had a history of township funding, the libraries in Saline, Chelsea, and Dexter ran entirely on voluntary contributions. During the Great Depression, though, gifts dwindled and citizens wanted government funding. In 1938, when Senator Copeland died and bequeathed the library building to Dexter, the village agreed to take over financial support. Saline's city government allocated some tax money for the library. In 1940 Chelsea villagers taxed themselves a half mill to support their library, raising the rate the next year to one mill, the legal limit at the time. The libraries also began to receive state aid, mainly from court fees, and sometimes surrounding townships made nominal contributions. By the 1950s the Chelsea library was looking for more space. Gertrude Daniels, wife of the owner of Chelsea Lumber and a library backer, asked Catherine McKune whether she would will her house to the library. Since 1870, McKune's family had lived at 221 South Main, in a house built in 1860 by Elisha Congdon, who with his brother James had founded Chelsea. McKune agreed, and upon her death in 1958 the library acquired the building. "There was a lot of overlooked maintenance," remembers Katherine Wagner, Catherine McKune's niece, but the citizens of Chelsea were up to the task. Wagner's bridge club painted the front room; it became the children's area. A caretaker lived in a small apartment upstairs, and another room was furnished by the Woman's Club for its meeting place. Eventually the library expanded to fill the entire house. In 1963 the Dexter library bought a house at 3173 Baker Road with voluntary contributions from surrounding townships. Katie McKillen ran the library for more than thirty years. "It was said that she knew every book and if it wasn't in, knew who had it out and when it was due back," says longtime board member Marti Davis. In 1967 the Saline library, having outgrown its 1917 building, moved to 201 South Ann Arbor Street. The building had been built as a church in 1904 and later was used as a private residence, a furniture store, and a hospital. State legislation passed in 1989 allowed two or more units of government, including a school district, to form a library. The new law was very timely. The libraries in Chelsea, Dexter, and Saline had built additions onto their converted buildings, but all three, as well as Manchester's library, were outgrowing their spaces. They needed bigger tax bases to finance their moves to new buildings. Saline was the first to take advantage of the law. In 1991 the city and school district asked for a joint millage—0.9 mills for operating expenses and 2.2 mills for a new building. Local architect Michael Pogliano designed a modern glass-filled, open-roomed library, at 555 North Maple Road; it was organized by Leslee Niethammer, the first Saline librarian to have a master's degree in library science. Niethammer also worked with the U-M School of Natural Resources and the Saline Eagle Scouts to create a woodland trail on eleven acres surrounding the library. In 1994 voters in the Dexter school district approved a half-mill levy for library services. The library hired its first master's-degreed librarian, Paul McCann. Using proceeds from the sales of its Baker Road house, the board bought the former Methodist Church Education Building at 8040 Fourth. With more space and a larger budget, McCann expanded the library's holdings and programming. Circulation rose from about 20,000 books a year in the old building to 20,000 books a month today. Dexter now has the smallest building and the smallest millage of the four western Washtenaw libraries, but it's very busy. McCann says, "You would be hard pressed to find a library with our circulation with our budget." Chelsea organized its district library in 1997. In 1999 voters in the school district approved 1.75 mills to run a larger library but rejected a building millage. "They turned it down because there were too many uncertainties," says librarian Metta Lansdale. Most folks wanted the library to stay in McKune House, but the library needed space for parking and expansion. Getting it proved complicated. First, Gloria and George Mitchell agreed to relocate their business, the Staffan-Mitchell Funeral Home, which was across the street from the library. That building was then torn down for a parking lot. Next, a house on Orchard Street was moved so that Frank and Kathryn Staffan could move their house, directly behind the library, onto the Orchard Street lot, giving the library room to expand to the rear. While this was all being negotiated, the library had to leave the McKune House because it was not handicapped accessible. It relocated to the media center at the old high school on Washington Street. Biding her time, Lansdale used the operating money to prepare for a bigger library, adding books, training new staff, buying more computers, and organizing programming. In May 2004 voters agreed on a millage that will provide $8.2 million to build an addition behind the McKune House. Ground was broken April 17, and the library plans to move by September 2006. Manchester was the last of the four towns to form a library district, in 2000. Its service area includes portions of the school district in Manchester, Freedom, and Bridgewater townships. The old library was centrally located but very crowded—every time it bought a new book, it had to get rid of an old one. The former home also was not handicapped accessible. So when Manchester's village government acquired the old Ford factory on the east side of town in 2000, it agreed to rent space to the library. A 1941 Art Moderne building overlooking the Raisin River, it was originally one of Henry Ford's mills. The library has large windows with light pouring in and beautiful river views. Voters recently renewed the millage for another ten years, and Freedom Township, which was considering leaving the district, voted to stay. Many residents of each town had mixed feelings about trading in their cozy small-town quarters for more modern facilities. "It's louder, busier - there's more energy, more milling about," says McCann, the Dexter librarian. The four librarians try to keep things personal; all have their desks near the fronts of their libraries. And all offer full schedules of programs. The libraries share resources and information. Heather Sturm, who started as Manchester librarian this year, uses a planning consultant suggested by the other librarians and a survey form created by Paul McCann. The Washtenaw County Library serves the blind and handicapped of all the districts, and county librarian Mary Udoji holds seminars to acquaint area librarians with county services. Manchester, Dexter, and Chelsea belong to a library co-op that allows them to borrow from about seventy libraries in southeastern Michigan. Patrons usually have to wait only a few days for the materials they request to be delivered. A feeling of community ownership remains a key ingredient in the libraries' successes. In 2002, Dexter voters turned down a millage to build a new library on Parker Road because it was too far from town; the board is now suggesting building downtown behind the fire station. In Manchester there is no room to expand. "We may someday need to move to bigger quarters, but I'm not worrying about it now," says Sturm. Saline already is outgrowing its building and will probably go to the voters for an expansion millage in 2006. Growth and change continue, but every library is striving to maintain a strong tie to its community and its long history. Photo Captions: When Saline's Drowsy Parrot was the town library, Max Collins used to play on the mezzanine while his grandmother volunteered. After making do with rented or donated quarters in other buildings, libraries found their own homes: the McKune House in Chelsea, the Lynch House in Manchester, and in Saline (center) a library constructed in 1917 (now the Drowsy Parrot). Dexter's Paul McCann and Saline's Leslee Niethammer are the first master's-degreed librarians to serve their towns.

How Avalon Housing helps people out of the shelter and onto the road to a normal life.

In English legend, Avalon is the island paradise to which King Arthur was borne after his death. In Ann Arbor, Avalon is something almost equally miraculous: a non-profit organization that in just five years has developed eighty-one rooms and apartments for low-income people, most of whom were previously homeless.

Avalon Housing's hundred-plus residents may not think they are in heaven, but they are certainly much happier than they were on the streets or in temporary shelters. They are free to develop their skills, pursue career interests, and lead more normal lives. Because of Avalon, Larry Morris has time to read the Constitution and the Book of Mormon, Ron Yarrington to entertain friends in his home, "Sandra" to write and go back to school, and Ron Brumbaugh to play his guitar and go swimming at the Y.

Morris, forty, dressed in maroon sweats, sits on the front steps of an Avalon house on South Division and recalls his troubles over more than a decade in Ann Arbor. "I came from Detroit in 1984 to go to school, Washtenaw Community College to study liberal arts, but ended up at Ypsi State with schizophrenia. I had the symptoms before, but they were unidentified. When I got out I worked at restaurant jobs—Wendy's, Kroger's. I would lose apartments because of code violations. In between [apartments], I was in and out of the shelter."

Morris heard about Avalon at Full Circle, an Ypsilanti clubhouse for mental health consumers. He signed up, and after a year's wait, moved into his new apartment. With a place to live, Morris began to work, first as a volunteer at the VA Hospital, then in a paid job in the hospital's mail room as part of a transitional employment (TE) program sponsored by Trailblazers, the Ann Arbor clubhouse. He plans to work in several more TE placements and then hopes to return to college.

Like Morris, many Avalon residents have never before had permanent housing. Yet his is just one of Avalon's many success stories. The group's achievement is even more remarkable considering that Avalon is housing a population that has baffled housing experts around the county.

Avalon, which started as an offshoot of the Homeless Shelter of Washtenaw County, now houses people at eleven sites around Ann Arbor. Its staff of six works out of a three-room office at 404 West Washington, in front of the Performance Network. It is filled with odds and ends of furniture, bright posters, ringing telephones, and a hubbub of activity. The day I visit, tenant Ron Brumbaugh drops in and excitedly tells site manager Maggie Camacho that he has a new job doing maintenance at the Y. Camacho, formerly of Ozone House, is the staff member who works most directly with Avalon tenants, and her popularity, with a group accustomed to seeing landlords as the enemy, is legendary.

In the next room, Michael Appel, formerly of the U-M housing reform project and a member of the original Avalon board, arranges the complicated funding for future projects. His zeal prompts fellow staffers to ask him to slow down so that he won't acquire new property faster than they can manage it.

Executive director Carol McCabe leads me into her office in the back in a futile attempt to find a quiet spot. McCabe directed Avalon as part of the shelter until they separated. Her conversation is filled with words like "challenge" and "struggle," but there are rewards, too, in seeing the improvements Avalon can make in the lives of its tenants.

McCabe organized Avalon with the backing and advice of former shelter director Jean Summerfield. Summerfield, who now works in Chicago, says, "The best thing I did when I was in Ann Arbor was letting Carol do Avalon."

Avalon was born in 1991 when the city offered to give away a house on William Street that was in the path of a proposed parking structure behind Kline's. The house, occupied by squatters, had become a focal point for housing activists. "The town was talking about housing, but no one stepped in," McCabe recalls. "[Summerfield] was willing to move the shelter that way."

"We got into it because nobody was doing housing development for these folks," Summerfield recalls. "Nationally, most of the low-income, special needs housing did a lot of screening out. We wanted to focus on screening in."

The shelter had experimented with transitional housing and group homes, but the temporary nature of the former and the lack of staff oversight of the latter prevented either option from becoming a permanent solution. McCabe, at the time director of WIT House, the shelter's transitional home for women, saw firsthand the need for permanent low-income housing. Without it, "the women could get sober, could get their kids back, could get the right medication, could leave an abusive relationship—and still have no place to go."

The problem of finding rooms and apartments affordable for people with minimum-wage jobs or on public assistance was nothing new to shelter employees. And even when a place was found for them, shelter residents often weren't together enough to live on their own; like Morris, they kept coming back. "Some ran through every landlord in town," says McCabe.

While the Kline's lot house was being moved to 201 West William and rehabbed, Avalon's founding group worked on strategy. Says McCabe, "There had not been a lot of managing. We felt, because of the target population, this was the reason most hadn't been successful in rental housing. We developed 'enhanced management,' where we put human needs first. We use eviction only as a last resort."

Avalon's founders wanted to make mental health and other support services available to its residents. But, McCabe stresses, "we're not a residential [treatment] program, but permanent housing." Those Avalon tenants who need help with day-to-day problems beyond what their mental health case workers are able to provide can get it through CHIL, the Cooperative Housing and Independent Living Initiative. Staffed by Synod Residential Services and funded by Washtenaw County Community Mental Health (CMH), CHIL is part of an ongoing effort to treat CMH clients in the least restrictive setting—in this case, by allowing clients who would once have been housed in group homes a wider choice of housing.

Avalon works to avoid evicting clients by negotiating individual contracts with them beforehand to anticipate known problems. With mental health consumers, CHIL and the caseworkers are also involved. Most tenants are on month-to-month leases, which gives Avalon leverage in enforcing the contracts. Avalon staffers meet weekly with tenants' caseworkers and CHIL.

A condition of some of the leases is that the tenant must accept the help of a "representative payee," a person authorized to help manage their money, paying bills for them or doling out the money in small amounts, and teaching them money management. Says McCabe, "We negotiate this before they move in or if they bounce checks regularly." The representative payee helps people who have enough income to afford a room but can't keep their money long enough to pay rent.

Some of the returning shelter guests had been ousted from past apartments because of housekeeping problems (including spoiling, uncovered food), fire hazard-level hoarding, and plumbing problems. At Avalon, McCabe says, plumbing problems have included "putting food down the toilet and overflowing the bathtub or sink. Many wash a lot; one woman dyes her hair every day."

Avalon inspects regularly, both formally and informally, to catch hygiene problems before they get out of hand. CHIL helps by organizing cleanup days and educating tenants, while caseworkers refer people to clinics and work to get them on the best medications.

Another problem, according to McCabe, is that many of the Avalon tenants are fine on their own, but vulnerable to exploitation. "They'll bring in whole families or drug-using buddies or put up with abusive boyfriends."

One tenant was in danger of being evicted because her drug-using ex-husband would come and make a fuss at her place late at night. Finally, after nine months of discussion, she was persuaded by CHIL to let Legal Aid obtain a restraining order against him. In another case, a person on probation was bothering an Avalon tenant. McCabe went to the probation department and managed to have the person barred from Avalon property.

Drug users account for most of Avalon's failures. Working closely with CHIL, they have persuaded some tenants to go into treatment or into more structured settings. In half a dozen cases, however, Avalon has evicted tenants, McCabe says, "when we couldn't work anything out" to resolve substance abuse by tenants or their friends.

Tenant Mary Beth Matthews witnessed one such case. "There were three crack heads in the house. They had guys in their room. Avalon got them out, slowly, giving them every chance to mend their ways."

"We've learned our limitations," says McCabe. "We're currently screening out 'dually diagnosed'—people with both mental illness and chemical dependency. They're the hardest to treat; there are very few treatment alternatives." Avalon also refuses to house people known to be violent. But unwilling to completely admit failure, McCabe says, "We would always consider rehousing people, other than those with major violence, if they came back after x number of months of being clean."

Just as Avalon has been learning as it goes how to deal with the problems of its target population, the group also has been discovering what kinds of housing work best. After finishing the William Street house in the fall of 1992, they purchased two older houses on North Main (532 and 618), one of them previously run by the shelter. Both were suitable for single room occupancy (SRO), with private bedrooms and shared bathrooms and kitchens. Next they bought three houses of the same vintage on South Division (518, 520, 522), setting a pattern they would follow with future purchases: involving the city and the county, both of which have given direct grants, in-kind assistance, and help in finding other sources of revenue—HUD through the city and human services through the county.

Avalon concentrated on SRO's initially because they were the cheapest units. But they soon discovered that people preferred the privacy of an apartment. There were also fewer interpersonal problems when tenants didn't have to share bathrooms and kitchens. So when a fourteen-unit apartment complex at 211 Davis came onto the market, Avalon bought it. Next was an apartment complex on Stimson, near South Industrial, which had larger apartments suitable for families. The most recent purchases are a house at 610 West Summit with six apartments, and two duplexes on Allen Street for single mothers, a joint endeavor with Safe House.

None of these projects proceeds until funding is arranged that allows rents affordable to the people Avalon is trying to serve. Most of its tenants have incomes of around $450 a month. SSI (Social Security benefits for people on disability) is about $450 a month; a single mother with one child gets $401 from AFDC; while minimum-wage jobs bring in about $680. Avalon rents range from $204 for an SRO room to $375 for a two-bedroom apartment. To keep its units affordable, McCabe explains, "we do the opposite of for-profit groups. They decide on rent based on their costs. We decide on the highest rent we can charge and still make the project worth doing and then work backward." To get money to fill the gaps, they appeal to multiple agencies, private and public, for grants and low-interest loans. At the opening ceremonies for the Stimson Street property last spring, there were seven speakers, all representing agencies that had loaned or given money for the project.

When a project is being considered, McCabe visits with a delegation. Among the people she calls on are Larry Friedman and Glen Ziegler of the city's community development department; Mark Robey from CMH; Realtor Doug Smith; and Terry Alexander, an architect who volunteers as an advisor on project feasibility. Because of all the groups involved and all the steps needed, the projects often take a long time to complete; but once they have been decided on, Avalon sticks with them until they work out.

Despite the slow process, McCabe has found an increasing willingness among sellers to work with Avalon. Some come back with a second offering after selling them one project. "They're calling us more," says McCabe. "They know we always get our reports in on time, that they are accurate. We have earned their respect."

Once Avalon acquires a property, they rehab it to the highest level they can afford, often doing "twenty years of deferred maintenance," says McCabe. "We never will sell the properties, so we do as much as we can at first. We get a lot of scrutiny from neighbors. We improve the physical structure and grounds. We spend more than a landlord who will sell in a few years."

McCabe thinks this investment may be one reason Avalon has experienced so little opposition. "Neighbors are often our best supporters. They see the same tenants, but with more maintenance. They've offered to talk to new neighborhoods. When an unwanted friend broke a window [at one of the houses], the neighbors helped board it up." Avalon gives neighbors a twenty-four-hour beeper number and encourages them to call with any problems.

Bob Barackman is another reason the neighbors are so cooperative. As Avalon's director of maintenance and rehab, Barackman works hard to create good relations, doing things like shoveling neighbors' walks when doing an Avalon property. A retired Wayne County sheriff's deputy, Barackman finds the people skills he learned in nineteen years as a cop are handy in Avalon.

Gruff and sometimes inclined to tease the idealistic young Avalon staff, Barackman is as concerned about the residents as anyone. "I enjoy the job," he says. "It's not just the ordinary landlord-tenant relationship. Whatever the problem, we'll solve it. We juggle people around when we have tenants who don't get on."

On a warm fall day, Barackman drives me around in his truck, showing me the Avalon properties. At the home of "Susan," the woman who finally had the restraining order placed on her ex-husband, he becomes worried when she doesn't answer his knock. "She's truly a victim, but we've seen her turn around," he explains. "She divorced her husband, got her sponging daughter out. She lost her key, which had the address on it, so I made replacing the lock the first priority that day." Susan doesn't answer the door, but Barackman learns from another Avalon employee that she was up late the night before.

Barackman proudly shows me another Davis Street apartment he is working on that had been untouched for years before Avalon came in. "The previous landlord couldn't get [the tenant] to move. Finally he agreed to move down the hall while we fixed it up."

A corner unit at Davis Street is used for the CHIL offices. Soon after my morning with Barackman, I spent an afternoon there, talking to Peggy Plews, the CHIL coordinator. Plews, a slight blond woman with an impish grin who often wears bib overalls, is assisted by a young, enthusiastic staff of seven, two of them part-time. All have social service backgrounds.

Plews came to CHIL from Washtenaw Interventions, where she worked as a shelter outreach worker, matching people with services and housing. (She found that mentally ill people often resisted services until they had a place to live.) CHIL works with tenants to keep them in Avalon housing, responding to middle-of-the-night crises and mediating conflicts as well as taking people shopping or to appointments, helping with laundry or budgeting, reminding people to take their medicines, and organizing recreational activities.

The CHIL office still looks like an apartment, with a functioning kitchen and furnished dining room and living room. There's even a cat, Casey, whom the staff is watching until his owner feels ready to care for him. The day I visit, a CHIL employee is sitting at the dining room table talking to "Sandra." A little while later, another tenant comes by, wearing a wig and dressed in a pink evening gown, to borrow the vacuum cleaner.

CHIL began operating in January of 1994. Plews recalls, "Substance abuse was a big issue when we started. We had to do serious crisis intervention, kicking people out of hallways, working with the police, focusing on making it a safe place. We ultimately had to get rid of some [tenants], but not to just throw them back in the shelter. Those who didn't make it went into more supported housing or a treatment center."

After six months of working through the worst problems, CHIL could then turn to helping the rest of the mental health consumers. "Mental illness can be treated, but not cured," say Plews. "Needs change over time. There may be periods when they don't need a lot of support, but they know CHIL is here."

Beyond helping Avalon's mental health consumers deal with everyday life, CHIL tries to help them reach personal goals and to become integrated into the community. "We encourage them to do something as a community member rather than a mental health consumer, like go to the Top of the Park or play monopoly or chess at coffeehouses. But they're used to doing things like going to the movies or Dairy Queen with other consumers. When I first started and would say, 'What would you like to do?' clients would answer with things they've done before,... like 'Go to McDonald's.' It takes a long time to start to build a life outside; their lives have been defined by their illnesses."

Although the differences between Avalon, the landlord, and CHIL, the service provider, are easily defined on paper, they are often blurred in reality. Many tenancy issues are related to mental illness, and tenants talk to whomever they feel most comfortable with. CHIL and Avalon work closely together. "Maggie [Camacho] does this stuff as second nature," praises Plews. "She treats every tenant with kindness, she's not fazed by delusional behavior, hallucinations... Some think only professionals can manage with someone psychotic. But all you have to do is listen for the person behind the psychosis, because they're always there."

Tenant Mary Beth Matthews is just as grateful for CHIL, saying "I owe my life to CHIL." She is not exaggerating. Plews, finding Matthews ill, rushed her to the hospital, where she was found to have a life-threatening blood clot in her lungs. Without CHIL, she could easily have been one of the homeless people we read about in the newspaper who are found dead because no one noticed they needed help.

Originally from the Detroit area, Matthews came to Ann Arbor in the 1970's to take part in an obesity study and stayed on, working mainly in hotel housekeeping. She became homeless after she returned to Ann Arbor after living with her sister in Florida. "I thought I could get jobs like I did before, but I'd gained three hundred and fifty pounds and was using two canes to walk with," she recalls. "I was not in shape to work." She was also suffering from severe depression, although she didn't know it—"I thought it was just my philosophy of life."

Matthews ended up living at the shelter for five months, an experience she describes as "the hardest thing I ever did." The worst part of being homeless, she says, was that "there was no place to sit and be left alone. Most want you to drop dead and go away. You're as valuable as a piece of shit. I was tired all the time. They kick you out at seven in the morning and you can't come back until six. I wanted to be alone. The only place I could be alone was the police station. I would go up there and read books."

Finally the shelter found Matthews a place in a house on Ingalls, where she lived with a group of other mental health consumers. The main drawback of the place was that the shelter couldn't afford to provide the level of oversight needed. Matthews says the more capable tenants had to look after the others. Experience with this house was one reason the shelter decided they needed to set up something, like Avalon, with enhanced oversight. Today, most of the Ingalls residents live in Avalon housing.

Matthews now lives in a two-bedroom apartment, which she shares with a friend from Ingalls Street. In the downstairs of an older house, with a fireplace and original woodwork, the apartment has been furnished by Avalon with a comfortable old couch and other used furniture. Sitting on the couch, wearing a yellow housedress, Matthews apologizes that her apartment is not neater, although it looks good to me. She is recovering from her hospital stay; when she regains her strength, she hopes to do volunteer work with seniors and maybe go back to school. "At forty-nine, I'm an old person at the beginning of life."

"Sandra" is an Avalon tenant who heartily agrees with CHIL's philosophy that encourages integration into the community. Looking like the U-M student she once was, with her long hair and Indian-print dress, she meets me at Amer's for coffee.

"Getting where I am was a miraculous accomplishment," Sandra tells me. She suffers from auditory hallucinations, which means she hears voices. Though she cannot be cured, she is learning to live with it, "learning to make the best of the best times."

When her illness first manifested itself, Sandra left school to live nearer her parents. She returned to Ann Arbor as soon as soon as she thought she could manage it. When the money she had to tide her over until she found a job was stolen, she ended up in the shelter, an experience she describes as "terrible. There were a lot of streetwise people there. I didn't have the skill. It was frightening. When I was in Ann Arbor before, I was in school, working, and living on the west side. Now I was in the shelter. It was an emotional blow."

After five days at the shelter, a staff member moved her to Acute Services House, a CMH emergency treatment center in Ypsilanti. Once her condition was stabilized, she moved to the Y, then finally found her way to Avalon. "The first year I was filled with gratitude," she recalls. "I felt safe. It gave me time to recover, but now I want to get back in the community."

She hopes to return to school to finish her degree in anthropology and art, do more writing (poetry and articles about mental illness), and to make friendships beyond the circle of mental health consumers. She says, "I'm trying to create a different place to fulfill a different need, a different level of life, not just get off the street."

One-half to one-third of Avalon tenants are mental health consumers. The percentage varies because when Avalon buys a new property, the people already there are allowed to stay until their leases run out, or to stay permanently if they meet the income guidelines. Depending on the funding source, an individual's income must be under 30 percent or under 50 percent of the area's median income to qualify. Avalon tenants have no trouble meeting those requirements—their incomes are all under 30 percent of the area's median (the SRO tenants' are under 15 percent). Although a lot of the Avalon tenants are doing better financially, none so far has had income surpassing the limit that allows them to stay. Besides the mental health consumers, tenants include single mothers, disabled, and the working poor.

Ron Brumbaugh, brown-haired and energetic, the tenant who told Camacho that he had a job at the Y, is an example of the last group. Before Avalon, he was in and out of the shelter, although, as he explains, "I always had a job. I was never on welfare. I worked and worked; it's just that I couldn't afford rent of six or seven hundred plus electricity. There was not enough left for food."

Originally from Pennsylvania, Brumbaugh came to Ann Arbor ten years ago while hitchhiking to California. He liked it. "I like the diversity, the huge anti-racist stand. It's clean, and low crime, not like Detroit where you hear guns go off." And now, because of Avalon, he can afford to stay. "Thanks to Avalon, I have a normal life. I have a place to go when I get off work. I have food in the refrigerator, and I have a car, now that I can afford insurance."

Unlike Brumbaugh, Ron Yarrington, forty-seven, always had relatives who were willing to put him up. But like the other tenants interviewed, his story is also one of climbing his way back up to self- sufficiency. He's used a wheelchair since 1983, when, he says matter-of-factly, "I came home to find my roommate drunk. Ten minutes later he shot me. I didn't see him pull out the gun."

Yarrington had come to Ann Arbor from Louisiana to go to the U-M but, short of funds, left school to work in construction. That he was in good physical shape when he was injured helped him recover, although it still took three years of physical therapy for him to become mobile. He returned to school and earned a degree in architecture. Learning of Avalon in one of his classes, he signed up.

"It was a chance to live on my own," he explains. "I have privacy. I can have friends over." He now works part-time at the U-M in computer graphics, drives a car, and takes care of himself with a little help with housecleaning. A member of Avalon's board of directors, he helped Bob Barackman design a handicap-accessible unit at Davis Street. He tells young people, "Don't wait until what happened to me before you realize there's more to life than partying."

Dorothy Brown, the mother of two children ages thirteen and eighteen, came to Avalon from the rotating homeless shelter run by the Interfaith Hospitality Network, a coalition of churches and synagogues that put up families in their basements. Reluctant to talk about her marriage, Brown says simply, "I left home because it was not a good place to be; it was not working out." Although grateful to the hospitality network for giving her refuge, she says, "It was hard to go week to week, building to building, just living in a curtained-off square with everyone breathing on each other. It was particularly hard on the kids, to live a well-to-do life and then wake up one morning and find it all changed." Now happily settled in a two-bedroom Avalon apartment. Brown says, "I'm starting to enjoy life again."

In three years, Avalon has successfully found ways to house a wide range of people, learning as they go. But there are still challenges ahead. The waiting list was reopened briefly at the end of last year, but had to be closed again after it reached 200 names. As federal and state social service benefits are cut, the need for housing will continue to grow. To meet the demand, Avalon will need bricks-and-mortar money (HUD, its most consistent funder, is itself likely to be drastically cut by Congress) and operating money, which is even harder to find. Rents cover basic costs but not the labor-intensive enhanced management that makes Avalon so successful. Still, McCabe believes, "it is more cost-effective for the community to support Avalon than to keep people in the shelter."

At a recent retreat, Avalon's board discussed a number of fund-raising options. Assuming the group can continue to find the money it needs, the biggest challenge will be to continue its enhanced management, handling problems on a person-by-person basis, as the organization grows larger. Right now, Avalon has few enough tenants to deal with them individually, which is no doubt one reason for its success. The first tenant death came last year, that of an eighty-three-year-old alcoholic, who had few friends and died with very little known about him. Michael Appel, who found the man's body, has been researching his life in an effort to give his death some dignity.

Avalon tenants have become part of Ann Arbor. They work at Dominick's, the Y, the VA Hospital. They hang out at coffeehouses (where one of them beats all comers at chess), the Fleetwood, the Top of the Park, at poetry readings, and the Michigan Theater. Their lives attest to the fact that these people are more able to enjoy and contribute to the community when their living arrangements are not a constant worry.

"Maggie and Carol are like friends, not money-grubbing landlords," comments tenant Mary Bern Matthews. "Other landlords, when they hear you are mentally ill or homeless, say 'Forget it,' or 'We just rented it.' But people like us need to live somewhere."

Photo Captions:

Crucial to Avalon's success is its close collaboration with the county's Cooperative Housing and Independent Living Initiative (CHIL). Based in an Avalon unit, CHIL staffers provide whatever mental health and support services residents need to live independently.

Avalon head Carol McCabe saw the need for "enhanced management" to help people escape the shelter permanently.

Kurt Gardiner and Bob Barackman at work. "It's not just the ordinary landlord-tenant relationship," says Barackman, a retired Wayne County sheriff's deputy who oversees maintenance and rehab at all eleven Avalon properties. "Whatever the problem, we'll solve it."

Avalon site manager Maggie Camacho and resident Dorothy Brown. Before coming to Avalon, Brown and her two children had been moving from place to place in the rotating shelter run by the Interfaith Hospitality Network. Now, Brown says, "I'm starting to enjoy life again."

A local hangout for decades

Eighty years ago you couldn't buy a beer at the Village Tap—then known as Mary's Saloon—because of Prohibition. But in all other respects, the establishment was a bar and a village hangout. Customers would enter through a set of swinging doors, and after passing the candy, tobacco, and ice cream counters in front, they'd find a stand-up bar with a foot rail, surrounded by tables and chairs.

Mary's was named for its owner, Mary Singer. Customers "would sit around kibitzing, smoking a pipe, or chewing tobacco. They'd talk about farming or about old times," recalls Glenn Lehr, who worked there in the 1920s, when he was a teenager. He recalls interesting characters such as Dyke Lehman, who lived three doors north of the bar and hung out there most of the day, going home only to eat meals. Lehman used to tell of the gold rush (Lehr thinks it was probably the one in South Dakota), when he got rich by rolling drunks. "He'd help himself to any cash they had, gold nuggets or coins," says Lehr.

Customers entertained themselves with chugging contests, seeing who could swallow a near beer or a bottle of pop the fastest. (Lehr says he usually won because he had more practice.) They'd play euchre and other card games such as Five Hundred or Pedro. In the winter, people would come in after sledding or ice skating to warm up around the potbellied stove.

The saloon served two brands of near beer, a special brew allowed to ferment only to about 1.3 percent alcohol content; ginger ale, cream soda, and root beer; and soda pop in several flavors like lemon, strawberry, and cherry. Lehr recalls that orange, the most popular flavor, sold more than the rest put together.

Singer sold cheese sandwiches for a nickel and ham or pickled tongue for a dime. Lehr made the last himself, buying tongue from the butcher two doors up, mixing it with wine vinegar, sugar, and onions, and cooking it for four or five hours.

Kids came in after school to buy penny candy and ice cream. Since there were no freezers, the ice cream was delivered in ten-gallon steel containers packed in big wooden buckets filled with ice and salt. It came in three flavors: vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. Lehr made ice cream bars using skewers borrowed from the butcher. He'd stick a paper cap from a milk bottle on the skewer, add the ice cream, and dip it in chocolate.

Wednesday and Saturday nights, when the farmers came to town, were the busiest times. Lehr was supposed to close the saloon at nine o'clock but usually didn't lock up until closer to eleven. The farmers bought a lot of tobacco. "All the farmers chewed," recalls Lehr. "They would buy ten or more packages at a time. Beech Nut was the favorite." Mary's also sold snuff, sweet tobacco, cigarettes, cigars, and pipe tobacco.

The Village Tap has been owned by the Stein family for the last twenty-five years. Today, brothers Chris and Jack manage it while their mother, Jeanette, enjoys semiretirement. Chris grew up in the bar, learning pool and euchre from customers. He's been there long enough to see people who were brought in by their fathers bringing in their own kids.

The menu has expanded greatly since Mary Singer's day. It now includes a roster of daily specials: soups, goulash, knockwurst, and the burgers for which the place is famous. But just as it was eighty years ago, the Village Tap is a local hangout.

Chris Stein says people often come in after softball, bowling, or golf. Lately, he's been organizing special events, such as the recent Oktoberfest held in the parking lot. "Now that Manchester is a bedroom community, people like a chance to meet," he explains. "Times change, but people are the same."

—Grace Shackman

Photo Caption: Chris Stein and Glenn Lehr.

The Heritage Room recalls a time when the residents worked for their keep

The Chelsea Retirement Community is one of the oldest retirement centers in the state. It was founded by the Detroit Annual Council of Methodists as a home for "aged saints of the church" in 1906.

"They wanted a decent place for people who didn't have family to care for them," explains administrator Connie Amick. 'The only alternative was the poor farm."

The organizing committee looked at several sites in the Detroit area, but decided on Chelsea after Frank Glazier, a local banker and stove manufacturer, donated the land and a generous amount of money. When Glazier ran into financial troubles a few years later, the Old People's Home (as it was originally called) took in his mother, Emily Glazier. Today two of his granddaughters live there.

In 1907, after a year in a single-family home, the community moved into a new building large enough for thirty-six. There were only ten residents at the time of the move, and it took six years to fill the new building, because the idea of living in a retirement home was so new. Most residents could afford only low fees, so donations from churches and individuals supplemented the cost.

The first administrator. Rev. Seth Reed, had started his career as a Methodist circuit rider. Tall and of seemingly poor health, he was nicknamed "death on stilts" - a rubric he defied by living to be 100 years old. While Reed raised money for the home, his wife, Henrietta, handled day-to-day operation.

The way of life in the home's early years and the look of some of the rooms have been reconstructed by the organizers of the Heritage Room, a museum at the retirement home. Exhibits include a reconstruction of an early bedroom, with a water pitcher, washbowl, and bedpan; a dining room table set for a meal; and a fourteen-foot wagon once pulled by Fred, the home's sole horse. Fred did the heavy work during the years when the home's residents raised much of their own food.

Many of the items in the exhibit were donated by residents. Antiques appraiser Gary Kuehnle dated and authenticated the items, while Dana Buck of the U-M's Kelsey Museum created the design. "He broke up a narrow room to utilize the space," explains head docent Polly Monroe.

During the community's early years, residents helped with the chores if they were able: men in the gardens and on the farm, women in the kitchen and laundry. "All the help had to live in, and work for their room and board," recalled Lelah Knickerbocker in a 1996 interview with Kathy dark of the Chelsea Standard. Knickerbocker, who started working at the retirement home in 1923, recalled, "Each girl had a floor to live on and take care of. The home had one floating nurse who also lived in. When someone got sick, they stayed right in their own room. Sometimes when the nurse got awful tired and needed a rest, she'd call on me to sit up at night with the patients."

The biggest difference between the early years and today is "the attitude change," says Amick. "It used to be very paternalistic. Now the residents run it. We have a strong resident council." There is no longer any religious qualification, and the community has grown to include about 360 residents, with a 120-room addition planned for residents suffering from memory loss. The Heritage Room, which has won several prestigious awards, can be toured by appointment.

—Grace Shackman

The state's oldest Manchester has the oldest township library in continuous use in the state of Michigan. Established in 1838, just two years after the township was organized, it has been located for the last sixty-four years in an 1860s-era house on the village square. During the first years of the library, township clerk Marcus Carter Jr. kept the collection at his house. On Saturdays, from 2 to 4 p.m., people could borrow books stored in a case that sat on a black walnut table. (The library still has the table, now used as a computer stand.) The library continued under the care of succeeding township clerks for the rest of the century. Manchester thrived as a commercial center in the nineteenth century, assuring a living standard that gave women time to organize literary societies. By the turn of the century, they included the History, Saturday, Shakespeare, and 20th Century clubs. (The last two still meet.) The club ladies—whom Manchester historian Howard Parr describes as "a combo of high caliber, literary, educated-minded people"—decided Manchester should have an independent library with a trained librarian; they began organizing to make it happen. In 1906 the first librarian was hired: a Miss B. M. Brighton. In 1909 the library moved to the second floor of the Conklin building, near the comer of M-52 and Main Street. It later moved downstairs in the same building, and then to the Mahrle building (now the Whistle Stop restaurant), on Adrian Street. "I remember that library," recalls ninety-one-year-old Glenn Lehr. "I'd read every book in it by the time I was fourteen. It was a long building and dark inside. There was a pot-bellied stove in the back." When the rent on the Mahrle building was raised in 1934, the ladies of the literary societies decided it was time to buy permanent quarters. They bought the Lynch house, a handsome cube-style Italianate in a perfect location on the town square. It had been built around 1867 for James Lynch, doctor and druggist, by his father-in-law Junius Short. Descendants of the family sold the house for the reasonable price of $1,200 because they believed the library was a worthwhile project. The $15 monthly mortgage payments were less than the rent the library had been paying. The whole community pitched in to clean, paint, build shelves, and put in a chimney so central heat could be added. The federal Works Progress Administration paid for some of the materials and labor, the Boy Scouts moved the books to the new location, and local churches put on a benefit play. Shortly after the move, Jane Palmer, who had been librarian from 1909 to 1918, returned to her old job. She stayed on until she retired in 1958 at the age of seventy-eight. "She was gingham as well as satin," says Parr. "She was a farm woman, helped with the threshing, but was practical and erudite." Palmer converted the upstairs of the library into an apartment and moved in. Many of the perennial flowers she planted on the grounds still bloom today. When the library opened, only the west side of the downstairs was used. Today the whole building is filled with the library's 14,000 books, plus magazines and videos. Palmer's old kitchen upstairs is now the office of the library director, Dorothy Davies. "It's reached the point," says Davies, "that every time we get something new, we have to get rid of something." Eventually, citizens will have to decide whether to add onto the building or erect a new one.