We are celebrating completion of our 30th year of publication by printing stories from our earliest issues to show what was happening in Belleville, Van Buren, and Sumpter.
In our Jan. 26, 1995 issue, there were the following stories:
• Antiques on Main doubled its space, expanding into the store next door so now it has twice as much space on Main Street.
• Powerhouse Gym owners opened their location on Belleville Road, saying their goal was more of a fitness gym than a body-building place.
• The Belleville Parks Commission is asking city residents to help name the new city park that will be a part of the new subdivision being built on Savage and Sheldon roads.
We didn’t have room in our Jan. 23, 2025 issue to publish all of the special stories in the Jan. 19, 1995 paper, so we are including those stories today.
• The Community Quilt Block of the Week described by Marilyn Greca Locke was the Robson House on Tyler Road built in 1852. This beautifully preserved home in 1964 was awarded a Centennial Farm designation by the Michigan Historical Commission in cooperation with the Detroit Edison Company. It was built in a wild setting and the homestead and farm was known as Bear Hollow because of the large number of bears in the area. In an ongoing series in the Independent, Locke is describing each block in the Community Quilt, which was on display at the Fred C. Fischer Library.
• Michael Beaudrie, a lifelong Sumpter Township resident, was announced as a new volunteer fire fighter. He lives in the southern part of the township and Fire Chief Les Powell said he has been trying to get fire fighters in that area. He is a qualified truck driver with no fire-fighting experience but he can be trained, Chief Powell said.
• Sumpter Police Chief Clinton Brown said his department is looking into an ordinance to penalize residents for false emergency calls, such as 911 or alarms. At the Jan. 10 township board meeting, Trustee Arness Cox said he was listening to his scanner recently and heard three out of four successvie 911 calls were made by children playing with the phone. Township Supervisor Marvin Banotai said, “We have to teach the children that 911 is there to help someone,” noting an officer can be injured responding to an emergency call.
• Three adults and two juveniles were arrested by Belleville Police in the Belmont Manor parking lot after one teen was stabbed in the back and slashed. Police Chief William Zsenyuk said the five were due to be arraigned at 34th District Court. He said the 18-year-old victim was admitted to St. Joseph Mercy Hospital for treatment. Chief Zsenyuk said 10 to 15 young people were in the parking lot when the stabbing occurred, which seems to indicate gang activity.
In our Feb. 9, 1995 issue, the following stories were covered:
• The carpenters at Empire Builders who voted unanimously not to join Carpenters Local #1234 AFL-CIO union say they are being harassed on the job site on Ellsworth Road, southwest of Ypsilanti. Their lives are being threatened, they say. Paul Thornsberry of Van Buren Township is the spokesman for the carpenters. They are building a 200-home subdivision and about 12 carpenters are from the Belleville area. Thornsberry said he called many officials for help, but State Rep. Deborah Whyman was the only one who came out.
• More than 100 people came to the Feb. 7, 1995 Van Buren Township Board of Trustees meeting to protest the Jan. 6, 1995 firing of their beloved senior director Jennifer Delano. After a nasty comment about her was made by John Herman, Delano got up to speak and said, “The evilness has got to stop. That was an ugly thing to say at a public meeting with my daughter here.” She said the board members should just admit they don’t like her and get on with it, “But don’t accuse me of doing things I didn’t do.” Herman said he may have been out of order and apologized. At the beginning of the meeting when the agenda was being approved, attorney Barbara Rogalle Miller asked the board to place on the agenda the Ad Hoc Committee to Reinstate Delano, but it wasn’t placed on the agenda. Miller said the ad hoc committee continued to meet after the Jan. 17 meeting when board members refused to reconsider the firing. Since it is obvious the board won’t change its mind, she asked to have a citizens’ committee help in the search for a new senior director. She got no reply.
• We published an interview with Terry Williams, 85, who used his expertise as a Detroit Police officer and organized the Sumpter police department in 1948, after he moved to Sumpter. He said he was head of the police department, yet he wasn’t. He got the top vote in the election for constable, but the township would not allow him to head the group, as the law allowed. He said there were very few black elected constables then. He remembered organizing a dance at the PNA Hall to earn money to buy uniforms for the police officers. Eventually, he served as constable (which was without a salary), and head of the police department and head of the water department, doing both jobs for the same salary. He told many tales of the Sumpter Roller Rink where he helped the owners in exchange for having part of the proceeds from Thursday nights, which he gave to the Sumpter Progressive Civic Club to help construct its building. Many black people came on Thursdays and Williams was sued by the NAACP for violating the Civil Rights of skaters. He was found guilty, but before he was sentenced to Jackson Prison, new evidence was presented and he was set free. Belleville’s Police Chief Harry Agge, who later became justice of the peace, was his friend and willed his gun and desk to Williams when he died.
• Part-time Van Buren Township Police Officer Ken Toney helped bring a baby into the world while out on patrol. He was flagged down by a highly agitated man with a van near the Marathon gas station at the I-94 North Service Drive and Belleville Road. The father pulled off I-94 on the way to a hospital because the baby was coming and they needed help. Latisha Terese Harris was born Feb. 5, 1995 weighing 7 pounds, 10 ounces. The mother was wrapped in a blanket Officer Toney got out of his patrol car.
We will publish more history from 30 years ago as space allows.