Wasteland vs. Intellectual Ferment

Or, My Parents’ World vs. My World, High School Years

Flint Series, Chapter 4

William Sundwick

Flint Central High School was a new adventure. High school then comprised three years: grades ten, eleven, and twelve.

That meant one of my early high school experiences, in Spring 1963, was taking “Drivers’ Ed,”  which included behind-the-wheel time at a fancy new road course built on the grounds of Flint’s newest high school, Southwestern. Not satisfied with classroom content and a driver’s test at the local DMV, ours included “real” driving experience on streets with stop signs, traffic lights, and opposing traffic. And, the kicker, it was at the wheel of a choice of brand-new donated Buicks! Yes, this was Flint. Like everything in the city, if GM could figure out a way to encourage future customers, they would do it, including a high school drivers’ education program.

When I was fifteen, that was exciting.

The Resistance

However, I was now embedded with peers who were not so excited about cars and the auto industry. Their parents did not work for the “chrome colossus” of General Motors. They saw themselves as independent of the Flint mainstream; indeed, above it.

Dan, Nathan, Abe and his younger brother Sol (“Manny”), were all children of Holocaust survivors who somehow managed, separately, to find their way to Flint after spending early childhood in New York or Uruguay (in Nate’s case). They were all products of a strong Yiddish/Polish family culture. How did they come to live in Flint, these guys the same age as me?

I was a privileged transplant from Dearborn, whose paternal family were Scandinavians drifting down from the Upper Peninsula, and maternal family solid midwestern Scotch-Irish. My maternal grandfather was a Methodist preacher.

But my crowd was not my dad’s or Uncle Bob’s kind of people. None of my circle were cogs in GM’s wheel! Charles, my Ternstedt friend from earlier days, faded away after elementary school, perhaps due to his family being TOO close to my father’s work life (involving his dad’s performance evaluations from my dad?).

This group had parents who were shopkeepers, house-painters, and CPAs. But everybody in Flint was in some way beholden to General Motors, even if they did not work for “the man.” Success of their businesses indirectly depend upon him. When Flint’s population reached 200,000  in the sixties, that was about as big as a “company town” could get.

While in high school I was unaware of the glorious history of the sit-down strikes in the thirties, or the ultimate surrender of the UAW to corporatism in those post-war boom years. But, I was aware, even in my junior high years, of the acrid smell of stale cigarette smoke and half-emptied Manhattans in the living room on weekend mornings, left from the previous night’s corporate (Ternstedt plant, anyway) bridge parties. I thought to myself, “is this what I want to do for entertainment when I grow up?”

As my cultural affiliations solidified, the answer became clear -- no! And, it’s not because bridge isn’t a fascinating card game. But, I perceived a rot in the social fabric of those gatherings. It seemed a wasteland to me.

My friends had one thing in common. They were all uncommonly smart. Why they deigned to hang with me is still baffling, but I was flattered. We developed an understanding. None of us would come back to Flint once we escaped.

If anticipation of refugee status may have been natural for the Holocaust Children, it was not for me. They were well equipped for scraping by in jobs beneath their station – as their immigrant parents had done. I was too privileged to contemplate making huge sacrifices; instead, I hoped for lucky breaks.

The Academy

In addition to my social circle, there was also something about Flint Central’s location which had an important influence on my intellectual development. It would later be called the “East Village,” home not only to my high school, but the Flint College and Cultural Center. During my time at Central (1962-65), it included the shiny, modern steel and glass public library, a planetarium, art institute, concert hall, and the Flint Community College campus (now Mott College). Adjoining the East Village was the University of Michigan-Flint campus. The entire Cultural Center was developed primarily via the philanthropy of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. C.S. Mott, himself, also lived in his wooded estate, Applewood, adjoining the Center. Mott had been a co-founder of General Motors, and his foundation was primarily dedicated to improving the hometown of the corporation that created his wealth. It’s called “giving back.”

The land for the Cultural Center came from Applewood. But, Mott wasn’t the only notable who maintained a domicile in the East Village. Professors, including the first Dean of UM-Flint, lived there. I once went out with his daughter, my chemistry lab partner on that afternoon in November 1963 when the P.A. announcement told us that President Kennedy had been shot!

In fact, much of Flint’s “old money” lived in the neighborhood. I remember meeting a friend of a friend at his home there -- it had a butler’s pantry and dumbwaiter. He didn’t go to Flint Central, but to Georgetown Prep in Maryland!

So, there were the New York Jews, all of them left-wing intellectuals, the College and Cultural Center and East Village neighborhoods, and the C. S. Mott Foundation’s beneficence, all contributing to my evolving state of mind in high school. What else led to this ferment? 

The Actors

My mother. She was very proud of her hard-earned college degree from UM-Flint, after part-time studies as an adult, and a mom! She confidently marched into her high school English classroom in Flushing, a Flint suburb. At first, she felt she was reaching many of her students.

But, after a few years (by the time I was in high school), she had decided to call it quits. Her main complaint was the principal. She felt stifled by him, and generally devalued -- apparently a common experience for many teachers.

But, she did successfully tutor my cousin Bob (John’s older brother) in English when he returned to Flint from Tampa. He had a rough time in English. But, after her coaching, he was able to get into college, and from there to graduate school, and ultimately a professorship back in Florida.

Dad was there as well, but somehow didn’t contribute the same burning intellectual desire as Mom. He was an engineer, I would choose a different path.

Among my own teachers at Flint Central, four stand out: John Greenleaf Howe, Dale Kildee, Gayle Heyn, and James Graham Provan. Each played a significant role in shaping my future.

John G. Howe was my 10^th grade social studies teacher. Instead of world history, the traditional grade ten social studies curriculum, Flint called it “foreign relations” (probably to appease the local John Birch Society chapter – with their anti-communist agenda). He was a self-styled Republican politico, impressing me with the hard-nosed “realpolitik” behind his course’s topic.

He sponsored an after-school club, called the Reliques Society, which met in students’ homes, including mine. My socially conscious mom was slightly suspicious of the exact nature of this apparent “secret society” – but, she finally decided if it was endorsed by the Flint Community Schools, it must be okay.

Dale Kildee taught Latin. He also emphasized the political process, especially as practiced in the Roman Empire! A former Catholic seminarian, he left the order to teach in public schools.

After I graduated, he left teaching to pursue politics himself – becoming a 17-term Congressman before announcing his retirement in 2010, to be replaced by his younger nephew, Dan (who still represents Flint in Congress).

Gayle Heyn was my French teacher, who assured me that there was civilization beyond Flint – and it mostly spoke French! She became Gayle Kildee later, accompanying husband Dale to Lansing, then Washington.

Graham Provan was my U.S. history teacher. He taught me that American history wasn’t what I thought, by emphasizing its blemishes -- especially relevant in those days of civil rights struggles in the South.

Collectively, they showed me how politics equates with power.

The high school debate team (where I earned a varsity letter) can’t be ignored, either. It taught me about logic, argumentation, and research.

Yet, I pursued none of this after college. I lost something when I left Flint – where did it go?

Arrival and Insertion, 1953-62

The Flint Series, Chapter 3

William Sundwick

Flint grew rapidly in the early fifties. The 1950 Census pegged its population at about 163-thousand, but by 1960 it was 197-thousand. We all noticed it.

New neighborhoods, like our Ballenger Highway neighborhood, were adding single family houses, in ours mostly “ranch-style” (often called “ramblers” on the East Coast), at such a rate that services couldn’t keep up.

Schools needed to be expanded quickly. Since the nearest elementary school to us was over a mile away (no buses), four hastily erected prefab “primary units” for grades K-3 served as a stopgap.  These one room units, identical except for paint color, were in use until we moved out in 1965, when the new Anderson Elementary School finally opened in the neighborhood.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Elementary/Junior High School had been built on Chevrolet Avenue in 1928, only a few blocks north of the old “Chevy in the Hole” complex. This was the original dedicated Chevrolet and Buick assembly location, built in the teens. From 4^th grade on, I was deemed capable of walking safely the short mile from my house to the school.

It was a pleasant enough walk, except in winter when Flint became frozen tundra for four months.  I seldom had to walk alone, always accompanied by chums in my grade. It was a friendly neighborhood, with many kids my age.

We strolled down Winona Street four blocks to Mackin Road, then east on Mackin another five blocks. It was a big school compared to those one-room prefab primary units. There was a spacious playground, a gym, and a library.

My friends included Abe, who lived on Mackin Road – I stopped at his house each morning to pick him up, and we walked together. He was the elder son of Holocaust survivors who had somehow found themselves in Flint, moving from New York (Brooklyn?) a couple years earlier.

There was also Charles. He walked from his house on Begole Street a block away, and we would proceed from there. Some tensions arose later with Charles, as our world views took on shades of plant management. His dad was my father’s subordinate at Ternstedt.

My cousin John Sundwick, the youngest of my Uncle Bob’s three kids, was a year behind me in school, and lived only about four blocks away on Lavender Street; but, alas, our Elementary School paths never crossed, since school districts in Flint placed the boundary between Civic Park Elementary and Longfellow between us. Ballenger Highway was an insurmountable barrier to walking without crossing guards or lights, for kids our age. In Junior High, defined as grades 7-9, the “other Flint Sundwicks” lived in Florida, returning later to the Flint area.

In those frigid winter months, or on any rainy days, I remember rides proffered only by my own mother. Other moms didn’t seem to step up. Did they not have access to a car? In Flint? That’s possible, since there might not have been many two-car families in our predominantly working-class neighborhoods. Mom’s 1953 Chevy did yeoman’s service for seven years.

Michael Moore, in his memoir about growing up in Flint, “Here Comes Trouble” (2011), declared mid-century industrial Flint a relatively classless society. He wrote of living on the same block with doctors and lawyers, even though his own father was an hourly-rate assembly line worker at AC Spark Plug .  The same was true in my Ballenger Highway neighborhood – indeed, except for my own closest friends, I had no idea what people’s dads (and moms) did for a living. It was never a topic of conversation. And, even somebody as class-conscious as my mother, who put much effort into “social climbing” (allegedly for my dad’s career), would never say an unkind word about any of our neighbors, their income, education, or social status.

I learned later, in high school, that the Ternstedt people, except my friend Charles’ family, were ensconced in wealthier neighborhoods in town.

As the sixties arrived, our neighborhood was completed. The newest houses were somewhat larger and fancier than the originals like ours. Split levels appeared in the late fifties. And we learned that some people moving into them were part of a “professional” class, self-employed (especially doctors, tax accountants, funeral directors) – not necessarily reliant on General Motors for employment.

This change may have separated our neighborhood from the adjoining old Civic Park neighborhood, which was expressly built by GM for its workers in the teens and twenties. Despite the abandoned houses, vacant lots, and ghostly shell of an empty Haskell Community Center, a historical marker at Bassett Park, its former centerpiece, still stands to recognize this. Civic Park epitomizes the “old” Flint better than any other neighborhoods on the west side of town. It may symbolize the death of the city as well.

 I always noticed what kind of cars were in my neighbors’ driveways. Back then, people changed cars frequently, typically every two years. They all had a sense of loyalty to Mother GM, apparently reasoning they could secure their own paychecks by buying its cars. Almost always Buicks and Chevrolets, the specific model, equipment, etc. waxed large in my observation. But we were the only folks in the neighborhood with a new Cadillac every year, from 1954-1958, until Dad’s career flatlined after his first coronary. We immediately switched to Chevy.

We did have two cars still, and a garage for them. Did the neighbors talk, when my dad courageously switched to the lowest-priced “stripped down” Chevy in 1958? My mom was embarrassed, and she told us as much! I had grown fond of the Cadillacs, too, but looking back I now understand my dad’s rather powerful social statement. Why did we care, really, about the Caddies? Did it matter what the neighbors thought?

My world changed when I entered Flint Central High School for the 1962-63 school year. It was the Harvard of Flint public high schools, the oldest (1923), situated near the Flint College and Cultural Center. And, all I had to do to get there was live in its district, which included a narrow swath on the west side of town (perhaps drawn for racial gerrymandering or integration?). It also included the “East Village” neighborhood – home to Flint’s old money, and intellectual elite.

It was a new world, indeed. Eventually, it led to a strong desire to escape! 

 What We Drove, and Why

One Family’s Car Culture, GM Style – 1950-1970

(Sundwick Automotive Photo Library, Part IV)

William Sundwick

We were not a typical family, even for Dearborn or Flint. Dad was a committed General Motors “lifer” – a salaried engineer, destined by the end of his career to be at the top rungs of “plant-level” management. We were required to own GM products; it was a moral responsibility.

And, we had to change them frequently – advertising, of sorts. The family corporate discount on new cars probably didn’t exceed 20%. So, my dad took a bath when he traded every year. Surely, his salary wouldn’t compensate for that. He felt he had the civic obligation to visibly promote the General’s products.

My earliest car memory dates from the summer I turned three. I have a distinct image imprinted in

my deepest consciousness, unsupported by a family photograph, but reinforced by my father when I described the scene as an adult. It’s an image of a sunny day, me walking out the kitchen door to see a new shiny green 1950 Chevrolet in the driveway. I remember the detail of the chrome grille and bumpers, I remember that it was a trunk-back “Styleline” two-door sedan (as opposed to the “Fleetline” fastback body style). Yes!” exclaimed my dad, “that was our ’50 Chevy!” Why do I remember it? Mysteries of early cognitive development, I guess.

Perhaps the reason it was not recorded in the family photo album is because it was not a particularly remarkable event. It was just another new car – even then, when Dad was a relatively junior engineer at the Detroit Ternstedt plant (GM’s “hardware” division), he traded cars every year. Each was indelibly recorded in my mind’s eye, even as they were just routine for my parents.

I remember our upgrade from Chevrolet to Oldsmobile in 1952. The rationale was that we were planning an ambitious road trip to the Rocky Mountains that summer. Dad felt he needed V8 power to climb the mountains in Wyoming, where we had plans to stay at a “dude ranch” there (a popular tourist destination in those days). That ’52 Olds 88 was the least expensive V8 in the GM line, a two-door sedan like the previous Chevys (no sporty “hardtops,” or even white sidewalls, for my father’s spartan taste).

Moving from Dearborn to Flint in the Summer of 1953, shortly after the F5 Beecher tornado laid waste to a big swath of the latter, I found myself in alien territory. It felt like the “frontier.” Our new construction house was in a development on the edge of town, lacking sidewalks or even paved streets at first. We packed our belongings into another spartan two-door, a 1953 Chevy “210” series. It was two-tone brown, and would be my mother’s car for an unprecedented seven years. In Flint, we needed two cars for the first time. My mom needed to get out into our new community. We had relatives there – but, Mom had bigger plans. She was going to college! The local junior college (now called Mott College) expanded to become the Flint branch of the University of Michigan.  She would be in its first graduating class, 1960. As a part-time student she needed a car. That ’53 Chevy was it for the duration, nearly six years.

Dad meanwhile was assuming increased responsibility at the new Ternstedt plant on Coldwater Road. It would join many other GM manufacturing centers around the city. There were Buick “city” on the North side, and old “Chevrolet No. 1” on Chevrolet Avenue (dating back to the very first Chevys, in the teens). Fisher Body No. 1, almost as old, and scene of the famous 1936-37 sit-down strikes which gave birth to the UAW, and the halcyon days of the American labor movement. There was AC Spark Plug on the eastern edge of town, where my uncle worked in sales (also the workplace of Flintoid Michael Moore’s father).

 But, GM was engaged in massive expansion in fifties Flint – in addition to Ternstedt, there was the Van Slyke Chevrolet complex, which doubled or tripled Chevrolet capacity over old No. 1. It included the legendary “V8 engine plant” – hallowed ground for American car buffs.

Flint was rapidly becoming a “real city” – at first, the explosive population growth seemed to have no limits, but eventually dark clouds began to gather. By high school my entire cohort vowed never to return to Flint after college. We thought it a city without a soul.

Climbing the GM corporate ladder – even at the plant level – required symbols of authority, so my

father bought a succession of five Cadillacs in the mid-fifties. Their main purpose was to park in his reserved space in the plant’s lot – “Mr. Sundwick, Process Engng.”  But, they were also comfortable fun for our annual summer road trips. We traveled to Wisconsin (Mom’s family), New England, the Upper Peninsula (more Sundwick relatives); and ultimately, California in 1958, the last Cadillac.

To emphasize the utilitarian nature of these otherwise ostentatious rides, Dad selected entry level “62 Coupes” – they had whitewall tires by this time, but little else. There were roll-up windows, no A/C, no automatic headlight dimmers on the dash. The one exception was a 1956 Sedan de Ville, a four-door “hardtop” with power windows and power seat. Still no air (it was Michigan, after all).

At age 49, Dad suffered a serious heart attack, in the fall of 1956. His career path was truncated, since he was now a health risk for the corporation. He accepted the lowered aspirations by figuratively raising his middle finger – no more Cadillacs after 1958 (though he claimed reliability problems with that ’58 disenchanted him). Indeed, we sold that last Caddy, and replaced it before the end of the model year with the very lowest priced, “stripped down” Chevy one could buy – a back-to-basics 1958 Delray two-door. He drove it to work and parked in that same reserved space. What did people think? My mother registered embarrassment at neighbors’ inquiries. I was mortified, too. In 6^th grade, however, few classmates knew much of our family.

When we visited Washington, D.C. for our next summer road trip, we had already upgraded to a new ’59 Impala 4-door hardtop (called a “Sport Sedan”). And, it did have whitewalls! 

Frugality was becoming a theme in our family. College savings may have begun to weigh on my parents, despite Mom’s new job as a high school English teacher in Flint’s “suburbs.” We kept the ’59 Impala for another year, and a trip to New York. Finally, now that my mom was supplementing our income, we replaced her old ’53 Chevy -- with a funky little black Corvair sedan. This was a truly curious car. 1960 was the first year for Corvair, it had an air-cooled “pancake” rear engine like a VW! It did have white sidewalls. That low bar seems to have finally been crossed.

As I approached driver’s license age, both Mom and I wanted to recover some neighborhood social status. The result: my dad reluctantly agreed that our next car would be an Impala convertible – our only convertible ever! With my learner’s permit in the glovebox, it bothered me only slightly that it was my mom in the passenger seat when I tooled around the neighborhood with top down. The bright yellow ’61 had a white top, camel interior, and

not only whitewalls, but full wheel covers, rear antenna, and bumper guards! Yes, my dad was weakening. I even convinced him that power windows were a practical necessity with convertibles.

My dad drove the Corvair to work.

As the sixties progressed, we gradually moved up the GM product line again, but no more Cadillacs until my parents retired and moved to Florida following Dad’s second coronary. In 1962, it was another Olds, ten years after the previous example, then a Buick LeSabre, and a 1964 Pontiac Star Chief (our first car with air conditioning, despite summer road trip that year planned for Toronto and the New York World’s Fair). 

In 1965, we bought a truly sporty bright red Corvair Monza coupe with white vinyl interior (we were a two Corvair family for one year – Mom’s 1963 beige Monza was my high school choice for dates).

By the time I graduated from Flint Central High School in 1965, I had acquired a used 1956 Pontiac Chieftan 4-door hardtop, justified by my job as managing editor of “The Arrowhead,” the high school newspaper. I needed to zip around town during the day collecting advertising copy from local businesses. Mom needed her car for school in the “burbs.”

It was off to college in Kalamazoo the following fall. No car (not allowed for freshmen). My parents bought a pair of 1966 Buicks to celebrate my leaving. One for my dad (a stately Electra 225 sedan) and one for my mom (a midsize Skylark coupe). I enjoyed the Skylark when home on break – its

diminutive 300 cu. In. 2-bbl. V8 seemed surprisingly peppy (worth one speeding ticket).

That would be my final Flint fling, except I came back to visit Flint once as a college senior, with my girlfriend, in the graduation present from my parents -- a ’69 Opel Rallye Kadett (yellow with black bumblebee stripes and interior, flat black hood panels, husky 4-speed manual transmission, tachometer, and fairly potent 1.9- liter overhead cam four).

During their Florida retirement, the parents had drifted back to Cadillac. Coming full circle with a gold 1968 Coupe de Ville. It was huge. I drove it once or twice on errands. Giant 472 cu. In. V8, but I could hardly see the end of the hood in front of me when driving. I wondered if you could land aircraft on its deck!

For me, my parents’ life in Florida was increasingly remote. I moved to the Washington area in 1971 for grad school at College Park. I stayed here; they stayed there. Until I brought my mom up here, to a nursing home, when she was in the terminal stages of Parkinsons. She died here in 2007.

I have no recollection of driving any of their succession of Cadillacs and Buicks (there were several) after 1970. And, my choices in transportation were governed more by practicality than advertising or social status.