Anne Stanton

Features Anne Stanton The Holy Childhood School of Jesus was demolished last fall, but former students say they’ll never forget their formative years at the Indian boarding school. This is the final story of a series that has focused on the school’s legacy.

The Holy Childhood School of Jesus was established by Catholic nuns with the mission of helping impoverished Indian children and raising them in the Roman Catholic faith. But it was just one of scores of boarding schools established by religious groups or the U.S. government that took in tens of thousands of Indian children in a misguided social experiment.
The Harbor Springs school, founded in 1829, was one of the earliest Indian boarding schools in the country. Like thousands of Indian children across the country, the students began boarding school life at the age of six or seven and returned home at the age of 14. Holy Childhood closed in 1983 due to low enrollment, money problems, and staff shortages.
The question is, why boarding schools?

Features Anne Stanton The name of Bill McKibben isn’t well known outside environmental circles, but he’s considered a planet prophet – one of the very first to alert the public to climate change.
McKibben will make a free appear-ance in Traverse City on September 7, compliments of the Michigan Land Use Institute (the nonprofit group that’s strenuously pushed the idea of eating locally with its Taste the Local Difference campaign).
McKibben’s got a lot to say even beyond climate change, but will arrive in town with a nurturing kind of message. He believes that scaling down can make people much happier.
Twenty years ago, McKibben warned of climate change in his book The End of Nature. It was the first such book for a general audience and arrived at a time when scientists were still arguing about the phenomenon. There’s now scientific consensus by the world’s leading scientific bodies that focus on climate change, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
McKibben’s latest effort is Deep Economy, which pushes the idea to “think globally, act neighborly” as one of his friends succinctly put it on a homemade bumper sticker. He warns that America’s hyper-individualism has left millions feeling alone, vulnerable and cut off from their communities.

Features Anne Stanton This is a true story.
I was bicycling down the Leelanau Trail last month when suddenly a dark truck turned onto the bike path and drove straight at my friend and me. We looked at our would-be killer. A pretty young blonde talking on her pink cell phone.
Cell phone girl slowed down as she saw us veering off the path to get out of her way. She realized what she’d done, and gave us a quick smile of apology. Then she rested her phone on the steering wheel, backed up her truck and maneuvered over to the real road a few yards down from the bike path.
Wow, it can end just that quickly.

Features Anne Stanton This is the third in a four-part series on Holy Childhood School of Jesus. The first two stories on the school in Harbor Springs focused on the sexual abuse of nine young male students at the hands of two Roman Catholic nuns.


On a bleak November day in 1885, a handful of nuns walked into Holy Childhood School of Jesus and began their mission of saving the poor Indian children of Northern Michigan.
So says a 1960 history of the Indian boarding school, which is titled in childlike handwriting on a blackboard: “the problem can be solved.”
The school was run by the School Sisters of Notre Dame, an international group of Catholic nuns that remains devoted to schooling underprivileged children. It ran on a shoestring budget and relied on local people and church members for money.
The school opened in 1829 as a small log cabin. It grew into a stately three-story building and closed in 1983 due to low enrollment. The building was demolished last fall, with a new parish building to rise in its stead.
With such a long history, there is no single way to characterize the boarding school. But if you are a middle-aged Native American and a former student, chances are good that you’ll never forget the Roman Catholic nuns of Holy Childhood School.

Features Anne Stanton Remember growing up and hearing your mother say, “You are blessed! You could be starving like the poor children in Africa!! Stop feeling sorry for yourself!”
Well, there’s a 46-year-old guy in Guantanamo by the name of Abdul al-Ghizzawi. He is the poster child of misery, although a recent Supreme Court ruling has given him hope. Compared to his story, you’ll never complain again. Yeah, right.
Candace Gorman, an Interlochen summer resident and civil rights attorney out of Chicago, has just returned from her 13th visit (all on her own dime) to meet with al-Ghizzawi. She spoke of his plight at the Friend’s House in Traverse City last week, her visit sponsored by several local peace and civil rights groups.

Features Anne Stanton You often hear the policy debates about the Iraq war, but ever wonder how the people of Iraq manage to shop, work and go to school with a war blasting down the street?
That’s the idea behind Baghdad High, a new documentary directed by Laura J. Winter. The movie will be shown Friday, August 2, at the Traverse City Film Festival.
Winter came up with the novel idea of giving four high school boys their own video camera to document one year of their life.
In an email interview from England where she now lives, Winter explained that she wanted to take a fresh perspective on Iraq. She found inspiration from a film titled The Women’s Story, which featured two Iraqi women who journeyed around their country and filmed what they saw.

Features Anne Stanton Elsie Boudreau can relate to the confusion suffered by “Jerry” who felt he loved and was loved by a Roman Catholic nun.
Jerry—not his real name—was one of nine Indian boys who said they were sexually molested by two nuns in the 1960s and 1970s while boarding at the Holy Childhood School of Jesus in Harbor Springs. (To read the article in its entirety, go to northernexpress.com).
Jerry believed the relationship was based in “love,” and he’s still coming to terms with its effects. Yet he’s been in and out of rehab nine times and remains a hardcore alcoholic. His two marriages were marred by a lack of fidelity—he has three out-of-wedlock children—and numerous stints in jail. He once aspired to become a state trooper and won entry into University of Michigan, but dropped out after a semester. Now 55, he feels confused and bitter by what happened.

Features Anne Stanton When the Holy Childhood Of Jesus School in Harbor Springs was demolished last fall, so too, perhaps, was some of the evidence of alleged sexual and physical abuse.
That’s the belief of Veronica Pasfield, a University of Michigan doctoral candidate and Bay Mills tribal member. Pasfield is documenting the school’s history, along with the Mount Pleasant Indian Boarding School.
Pasfield learned of the abuse at the school in interviews that she conducted with 36 elders and family members over the last 10 years, including more than 20 interviews for an oral history project for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians.
Pasfield said she finds it suspicious that the Roman Catholic church is demolishing boarding schools across the country and in Canada and wonders whether it’s to avert the kind of lawsuits that have swamped four Canadian churches to the point of bankruptcy.
“When these boarding schools are taken down, at the very least, what is lost is the daily visual reminder of their legacy,” she said. “By today’s standards, many of these schools are crime scenes. They are also sacred sites in a sense, in the way that a war camp or a battlefield is a sacred site. But until recently the dominant culture recognized the schools as none of that.”

Features Anne Stanton Some people would consider bicycling through knee-deep snow and dodging ice boulders just to get to work—well, they wouldn’t even consider it.
John Robert Williams, on the other hand, calls it an “adventure.”
Williams, a Traverse City native, is a slender, bespectacled commercial photographer known for co-founding the Traverse City Film Festival. Before that, he and his brother were greatly admired for their weird and huge “Williams Brothers” floats that featured marching queens and racy puns—the high point of the National Cherry Festival Royale parade.

Region Watch Anne Stanton A Manistee County judge ruled recently that a portion of a Vietnam veteran’s disability benefits can be considered when determining the amount of alimony paid to an ex-spouse.
Veteran Calvin Murphy had argued in court that his disability benefits should be off limits to his ex-wife, but 19th Circuit Judge James Batzer disagreed.
Murphy, 61, testified in the trial that he served a harrowing 5 1/2 months in Vietnam and mistakenly believed for decades that he had killed a fellow soldier during a North Vietnamese attack. He was wracked by guilt that his entire squadron had been ambushed, shot in the head, and found with cards in their mouths that said “Yankee go home.” He was not with his squadron at the time of the ambush.

Features Anne Stanton As in all things, the devil is in the details.
That’s the case with a wood-fired power plant proposed for an old potato field in Kalkaska County -- a rural area that has seen a big depletion of gas and oil production.
The plan, developed by a Traverse City company called Rapid River Renewable Energy, comes at a time when everyone is talking about the shortage of fuel.

Features Anne Stanton As fuel prices soar, you see folks responding in all kinds of ways. Some drive less, some buy a more fuel-efficient car, some drive off without paying for their gas.
Steve at the Speedway on Division and Front Streets in Traverse City said people at his station aren’t driving off -- at least on purpose, but they are venting about prices. “They don’t get mad at us. They know it isn’t our fault, but they’re definitely not happy.”
Beth Roskamp, who was filling up her Volkswagen Passat at the station, said she unpleasantly realized she should be using premium gas after reading a magazine article that said people were damaging their cars by unknowingly using the wrong fuel. Although more knowledgeable, she’s also carrying a lighter wallet. Premium is 20 cents more per gallon than the basic unleaded choice.
“I used to fill up for $20, with money left over for a snack,” she said. “Now it’s $46 -- over twice what I paid.”
Roskamp said it bothers her most that Michigan residents often pay the highest prices for gas in the country.
Norean Martin, a retiree who lives in Torch Lake, said she and her husband schedule their appointments in Traverse City on the same day to save gas. They’re not going to give up their SUV -- they need the space to haul stuff -- but they are looking at hybrids.

Features Anne Stanton Downstate Goliaths are increasingly swinging lawsuits at townships’ boards and planning commissions for trying to enforce local zoning laws.
So what’s a David to do?
State Representative Kevin Elsenheimer, a Republican out of Kewaydin, is showing some sympathy. He’s working on a bill that would allow a judge to fine a corporation found guilty of this expensive bullying, otherwise known as filing a SLAPP suit—short for “strategic suits against public participation.”
Elsenheimer announced the bill’s first draft six weeks ago, but now believes it didn’t go far enough. He expects a new version by early June.
Elsenheimer knows the territory well. His law firm has defended township governments against dozens of lawsuits brought by developers, although not a SLAPP suit, per se.

Features Anne Stanton People through the ages have asked, do dogs go to heaven when they die?
Here’s another question you might not have thought about: Where does your cat or dog go if and when they’re put to sleep?
Well, now that you ask… a downstate cremation company makes a weekly round of area veterinarians’ offices, picks up the animals, and cremates them. Ashes are returned a couple of weeks later to the owner. Some people and area veterinarians can also go to Oakwood Veterinary Hospital in Traverse City to have their animals cremated.

Features Anne Stanton Deb Samuel was the not-so-proud owner of four bikes —- three with flats and one with a missing pedal. They were moldering in her garage before she joined an all-volunteer group called Broke Spoke.
Now the bikes are fixed and she’s cycling 20 miles round-trip from her home in Holiday Hills to Cedar Ridge in Traverse City where she works as a nurse at Northwest Surgical Center.
Samuel knows how to fix a flat if she needs to, and always has a spare bike tube on hand. “It’s very empowering,” she says