alumni

Kalamazoo College will host world premiere of WWII documentary by K alumnus John Davies ’75

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Heroes on Deck: World War II on Lake Michigan, a one-hour documentary film written, executive produced, and directed by Kalamazoo College alumnus John Davies ’75, will have its world premiere Tuesday February 16, at 7:00 p.m., in Dalton Theatre, Light Fine Arts Building (1140 Academy St.), on the K campus.

The film is free and open to the public through a partnership between Kalamazoo College, the Kalamazoo Film Society (www.kalfilmsociety.net), and the Air Zoo (www.airzoo.org) in Kalamazoo.

Heroes on Deck tells the story of a little known chapter of United States involvement in World War II that took place on Lake Michigan, not far from Kalamazoo. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy was desperate for pilots who could take off from aircraft carriers, strike the enemy, navigate their way back to the ship, and land safely – no easy task in the vast Pacific. With only seven carriers left in the entire U.S. fleet, none could be spared for training. In order to train thousands of young aviators, two old passenger ships were stripped of their upper decks and converted to “flattops,” Navy slang for aircraft carriers.

ill Murphy plane handler aboard USS Wolverine
Heroes on Deck: World War II on Lake Michigan has it’s world premiere Tuesday Feb. 16, 7pm in Dalton Theatre, Light Fine Arts Building, on the K campus.
John Davies ’’75 is writer, director and executive producer of Heroes on Deck: World War II on Lake Michigan.
Filmmaker John Davies ’75 will meet with K students and show his new film, Heroes on Deck, before taking the film to premieres in London, Washington, New York and other cities.

Between 1942 and the end of the war more than 15,000 pilots, including 41st President of the United States George H.W. Bush, practiced landings and takeoffs on the pitching decks of these “freshwater carriers” as they steamed up and down Lake Michigan. Eight successful takeoffs and landings, usually completed in a single day, were enough to guarantee a young pilot a trip to the Pacific.

Crashes, navigational errors, and “water landings” often led to serious injuries and occasionally death. As a result, more than 100 classic WWII fighters and dive-bombers sank to the bottom of the lake. For more than 30 years, with the U.S. Navy’s blessing, a team of skilled professionals has been identifying and recovering these forgotten warbirds, using deep-water divers, side-scan sonar, and Remote Operating Vehicles. More than 40 aircraft have been brought to the surface and a few have been restored to flying condition. Most are on display in museums and airports under the supervision of the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida.

One of these airplanes – a Grumman Wildcat – has been fully restored and is on display at the Air Zoo in Kalamazoo, while another is currently undergoing restoration there. Artifacts from these planes will be on display at the February 16 film premiere at K. Filmmaker John Davies and Air Zoo restoration experts will be present to answer questions.

Narrated by legendary newsman Bill Kurtis, Heroes on Deck uses interviews with surviving pilots and crew members, declassified film and stills, underwater recovery footage, and computer generated recreations that bring to life this vital chapter of American history.

The Kalamazoo College premiere is the first of 10 special viewings that are planned before Memorial Day weekend in May when Heroes on Deck will premiere nationally on Public Television. After K, Davies takes the film to premieres in London (The Royal Aeronautical Society); Cardiff, Wales; Pensacola, Fla. (National Naval Aviation Museum); Chicago, Ill. (Navy Pier); Washington, D.C. (Navy Memorial); Palm Springs, Calif.; and New York City.

John Davies is an Emmy Award-winning Producer/Director who spent the first decade of his career at WTTW-PBS Chicago helping to create documentaries and national series (including Sneak Previews with renowned film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert). Moving to Los Angeles in the 1990s, John created series and specials for networks and cable channels including NBC, ABC, FOX, AMC, TRU-TV, VH-1, BRAVO, and Comedy Central. He’s also produced episodes of Biography for A&E, Intimate Portrait for LIFETIME and documentary specials for Showtime, COURT TV, and ESPN. His reality series, Run’s House, was an MTV hit and his feature length documentary, Phunny Business, (about Chicago’s first black owned comedy club) was hailed as “one of the best documentaries of 2012” by film critic Roger Ebert. John’s recent documentary, The 25,000 Mile Love Story, has won film festivals around the world and premiered on Public Television in fall 2015. He is currently developing Carson the Magnificent, a mini-series about the life of Johnny Carson.

Heroes on Deck spotlights a little known story of heroism performed on Lake Michigan off the coast of Chicago.
Heroes on Deck tells a little known story of heroism performed on Lake Michigan off the coast of Chicago during World War II.

This is the third time Davies has returned to campus in recent years to show one of his films and meet with K students and faculty in documentary film, media arts, and theater arts classes.

Organic Gypsy Cooks Award-Winning Potato

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Organic Gypsy truck
Hornet volleyball alumna Bridgett Blough’s Tom Pesto Melt, with the Organic Gypsy truck in the background

Bees and their honey have nothing over this Hornet and her spud.

Bridgett Blough ’08 grew up in a farming community in rural Coloma Township in Michigan eating potatoes with most every meal. Good locally-grown food was a staple on her mama’s table.

On January 12, Blough took her love of potatoes to the Spud Nation Throwdown at the Potato Expo 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada, where she won the prize for the best potato recipe by a food truck chef. Blough is the owner of The Organic Gypsy, a food truck and catering business in Kalamazoo and Portage. She also teaches yoga at K.

When Blough began her education at Kalamazoo College, she was drawn to a first-year seminar taught by Amelia Katanski, associate professor of English. The seminar was called “Commitments,” and it was there that she says she learned about the commitment farmers make to their land and to the people who eat their produce.

“That first-year seminar tied it all together for me,” Blough says.

In the Spud Nation Throwdown, Blough prepared her entry on stage with two other finalists—Heather Banter, chef at Circle City Spuds in Indianapolis, Indiana, and Daniel McCarthy, chef at Tato Heads in Columbus, Ohio. Each contestant prepared his or her most creative and flavorful potato recipe. For Blough, that was her Green Tahini Potato Soup. She used Southwest Michigan-grown organic potatoes, onions, and garlic.

“This is about our local food system and how people like me are working with farmers to create healthy food, improving the local economy with each meal and working toward eliminating food waste,” Blough says.

Blough first prepared her special soup recipe for members of her SOUPer Club last fall. The SOUPer Club is a CSA (community supported agriculture) offered through The Organic Gypsy to a membership that includes faculty and staff at Kalamazoo College. Members receive a quart of homemade organic soup each week for six weeks for $65.

“Princess, Prisoner, Queen” is Original Research by a Liberal Arts Agent

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Sara Stack on study abroad in Strasbourg, France
Sara Stack on study abroad in Strasbourg, France

This week Sara Stack ’15 will break from her study of insects (she is working on a master’s degree in entomology at Purdue University) to travel to San Francisco and present a classics paper at the 2016 annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA). From insects to classics!? Therein hangs a liberal arts tale, vintage Kalamazoo College.

Stack’s paper–“Princess, Prisoner, Queen: Searching for Identity and Agency in the Life of Kleopatra Selene”–is one of only four undergraduate research projects selected for presentation at the AIA meeting.

Selection was nation wide and very competitive,” said Senior Instructor in Classics Anne Haeckl. Stack wrote the paper for Professor Haeckl’s Junior Classics Seminar, which provided, said Stack, “an amazing opportunity to explore Selene’s life through the lens of intersectional feminism.”

Kleopatra Selene is one of history’s forgotten women, mentioned only marginally (if at all) in the history- and world-changing story of her famous parents, the Roman general Mark Antony and the last queen of Egypt, Kleopatra VII. Theirs was a story that crowded the stage of the entire Mediterranean world of their time, a story that has inspired countless historical and literary interpretations from Plutarch to Shakespeare to a recent bestseller biography by Stacy Schiff.

“I’ve always been very interested in history, particularly dynamic historical women,” said Stack, who majored in biology and religion.  “Kleopatra VII  has been a particular favorite of mine since childhood; my favorite book is a 1000-page novel called The Memoirs of Cleopatra. Because I’m so familiar with her mother, I’ve been aware of Selene for a long time, but I started to wonder about her as a historical figure in her own right.

“The most interesting part of my research was how strongly Selene’s political agenda and identity were influenced by the events of her childhood.”

After her parents’ defeat by Octavian (later the Roman emperor Augustus), Selene became Augustus’ prisoner and political pawn. He marched the 10-year-old girl in his Egyptian triumph through the streets of Rome as a symbol of her fallen dynasty and conquered nation. He gave her to his sister to raise and later arranged her marriage to Juba, king of Mauretania (today’s Algeria). “As the queen of Mauretania she very clearly identified herself as a Ptolemy (her mother’s royal house) and a Hellenized Egyptian queen,” said Stack. “She commissioned coins in her own right, not just in conjunction with her husband, and portrayed herself with the imagery and titles of her mother, Kleopatra VII. To me this indicates that she never forgot her heritage or her family, and used her power to maintain their legacy.”

Haeckl had equal praise for Stack’s research paper and for the liberal arts ethos from which it took wing. “At K we value the breadth and depth of academic course work and the Senior Individualized Project. It’s hard to find a more dynamic example of that than Sara, with her curiosity and hard work in biology, religion and classics.”

Stack’s biology SIP studied the effect of the emerald ash borer, an invasive beetle that kills ash trees, on the biodiversity of a family of beetles known as Carabidae. “I really enjoyed my SIP research, and it was ultimately what made me fall in love with entomology and got me into graduate school,” said Stack.

She obviously also enjoyed her classical research. “She unified and analyzed through a feminist lens the scattered corpus of ancient material culture and texts relating to Selene,” praised Haeckl, work that yielded a new and original understanding of Selene’s “increasingly empowered agency and self-identification as a North African queen.”

Haeckl also presented research at the AIA annual meeting. Her work posits a specific identity (the Emperor Caracella) of a painted limestone statuette depicting a falcon-headed human figure in the armor of a Roman imperator. Haeckl’s paper, “Caracalla as Birdman? Proposing an Imperial Identity for the British Museum’s ’Horus in Roman Military Costume,” explicates the iconography of the statue (Horus was the Egyptian falcon-god) in terms of both the public image Caracalla cultivated (as an ordinary Roman soldier and latter day Alexander the Great) and a specific visit Caracalla made to Alexandria in 215.

What is the Temple of Artemis?

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Alex Trebek and Theresa Tejada
Alex Trebek and Theresa Tejada

Theresa Tejada ’10 won the episode of the television show JEOPARDY! that aired on Tuesday, December 22. Her one-day winnings totaled $21,599. She defended her champion status, albeit unsuccessfully, the following day. Two episodes of Jeopardy seems a fitting tribute to a liberal arts education. On her championship day Theresa’s major in classics came in handy for the Final Jeopardy category: “The Ancient World.” The Final Jeopardy answer: “Dedicated to a female, it’s among the few of the seven ancient wonders whose ruins you can visit.” Theresa got the question: “What is the Temple of Artemis?” She even provided the location, Ephesus, the ancient Greek city that is today a part of Turkey. Perhaps Theresa’s study abroad in Athens came into play with that extra information. Theresa’s liberal arts breadth was on display and indispensable. In Double Jeopardy Theresa found the second Daily Double on the board in the category “Arts and Culture” under the $1,600 clue. At the time, she led the returning champion by $1,800. She bet $2,000 and won! The answer: “Because it has six units called iambs, the poetic line ’Thou art unseen but yet I hear thy shrill delight’ is in iambic this.” Theresa’s correct question: “What is hexameter?” Perhaps she had a literature class at K. Among other categories rewarding a liberal arts background on the day she won: Geographic Features, 8-Letter Words, Double Up On Your Countries, Oscar Nominations, and Christmas Songs and Singers.

Turns out Associate Professor of Classics Elizabeth Manwell managed to watch both shows. “Two really wonderful moments for me,” wrote Elizabeth. “Theresa won the game her first night on the show, in part by answering a final jeopardy question about the seven wonders of the ancient world—a topic she worked on for her Senior Individualized Project in the classics department. The other occurred the second night—-Theresa spoke of an influential Latin teacher, Steve Rosenquist, who taught her at Cranbrook, and who also taught for us for a couple of years. He died recently—-and hers was such a lovely tribute to him. She’s a super young woman!”

Alumnus Will Lead Effort to Solve Flint Water Crisis

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Kalamazoo College Alumnus Harvey Hollins IIIMichigan Governor Rick Snyder has chosen Harvey Hollins III ’87 to coordinate the state’s response to the Flint water crisis. Hollins directs the Office of Urban and Metropolitan Initiatives, which was formed in 2012.

The problem with the city of Flint’s water supply began when the city switched water sources to the Flint River in April 2014. The city was under state emergency management when that switch was made. After the switch complaints soon arose about the smell and taste of the water. The city and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality initially insisted the water was safe, but by September 2014, doctors had already detected a spike in the amount of lead seen in blood samples drawn from Flint children. Tests showed that water leaving Flint’s treatment plant was lead-free but picking up lead from aging pipes in the system. The city’s previous water supplier had corrected that problem by adding corrosion control chemicals, but the City of Flint wasn’t adding them.

The appointment of Hollins resulted from a task force recommendation that a single person lead the follow-up to the water crisis. Follow-up responses will come from several state departments, and Hollins will coordinate those and keep the task force up to date on progress. Responses include additional water and blood tests, expedited improvements to the city’s water system, increased education about lead and transparent reporting on goals, timelines and assignments. At K Hollins earned his bachelor’s degree in health sciences. He played basketball and football and in his senior year earned the Catherine A. Smith Award for Human Rights. He earned his master’s degree at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. He spent several years working as a fiscal analysts for the Michigan House of Representatives and then eight years as the Michigan government affairs representative for the AARP. In 2004 he was appointed vice president for government and community affairs at Wayne State University. He served in that post until Snyder tapped him to serve as director of urban initiatives.

Science and Fiction in the House of Magic

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Author Ginger Strand
Ginger Strand

Say Vonnegut and most everyone fills in the blank: Kurt. But there was another Vonnegut, and when Bernard built silver-iodide generators and seeded clouds to create rain, he was the brother the government began watching. If the military could control the weather, well, that could be the next super weapon.

In her new book, The Brothers Vonnegut: Science and Fiction in the House of Magic, author Ginger Strand ’87 explores the relationship between the two brothers and how each struggled with matters of morals and ethics involving their work.

Bernard Vonnegut was a leading scientist in a research lab at General Electric in mid-1950’s Schenectady, New York. His younger brother, Kurt, worked in GE’s public relations department, often writing press releases about the scientific discoveries Bernard had made in the lab. When one of Bernard’s discoveries had the potential to change weather, the military took notice. The Army oversaw Bernard’s work, calling it Project Cirrus, and the brothers shared perspectives on science being used to harm rather than benefit humankind. For Kurt, these were the themes that worked their way into his many novels.

“That, for me, was the interesting story that emerged in my research,” Strand says. “During their time working together at GE, they began to exchange ideas and talk about the ethical dilemmas Bernard as a scientist was facing. This was the era after the development of the nuclear bomb. There was a lot of talk about scientists and their responsibility for the use of their inventions.”

When Kurt Vonnegut wrote about what he saw going on at GE, his work was classified as science fiction. Strand says he found that baffling. To his understanding, he was writing social satire.

“During the day, Kurt would write peppy press releases about GE, but at night and on weekends, he would go home and write short stories,” Strand says.

Success, whether wanted or in some respects unwanted, came to Bernard for his work in the laboratory, but for Kurt, in literature, it did not come easily. He collected hundreds of rejection letters. He struggled to learn to write well. He often felt himself in the shadow of his brother’s genius, although neither brother let that get in the way of their close relationship. Eventually, he would produce 14 novels, three short story collections, five plays, five non-fiction books, and become known as a literary icon.

Ginger Strand is the author of three previous books, including Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate. She has written for a wide variety of publications, including Harper’s Magazine, This Land, The Believer, Tin House, The New York Times, and Orion, where she is a contributing editor. (Text by Zinta Aistars)

NAACP Cites Work of College, President

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Kalamazoo College President Eileen B. Wilson-OyelaranOn any given day you can find a Kalamazoo College student playing ping pong, shooting baskets or serving up a hot meal at the Douglass Community Association.

A center for social, recreational and community development activities in the city’s Northside neighborhood, the Douglass Community Association has served Kalamazoo residents for nearly 100 years.

“For decades, I’ve watched Kalamazoo College students come by the bus full to volunteer at the Douglass,” says Dr. Charles Warfield, president of the Metropolitan Kalamazoo branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). “As a more than 70-year resident of Kalamazoo, I have consistently seen Kalamazoo College support the efforts of the black community and be front runners in the area of social justice.”

Each week during the academic year, many of the more than 100 K students who work in the local community through service-learning courses or co-curricular programming coordinated by the College’s Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement head to Kalamazoo’s Northside Neighborhood, home to many members of the city’s black community. K students work with teachers and elementary age students at Woodward School and with families who are part of Community Advocates for Parents and Students (CAPS), a grassroots organization that provides tutoring services to children residing in the Interfaith Neighborhood Housing community. Since its founding in 2001, K’s Center for Civic Engagement, through service-learning courses and student-led programs, has engaged more than 6,500 K students in long-term, reciprocal partnerships to foster academic learning, critical problem-solving, and a lifetime of civic engagement while strengthening the Kalamazoo community.

This long-standing community partnership, in addition to the work of Kalamazoo College President Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran, Warfield says, contributed to the recognition of both the College and its president with the Vanguard Award at the NAACP’s 35th Annual Freedom Fund Banquet.

The Vanguard Award honors an organization or group of people whose forward thinking has significantly affected the lives of all people, and specifically people of color in Kalamazoo. Past recipients include the City of Kalamazoo, Sid Ellis and the Black Arts and Cultural Center, and the philanthropists of the Kalamazoo Promise.

“We have outstanding people in our midst who make it their business to make a difference in the lives of those in need,” Warfield says. “We need to honor organizations and people who invest so unselfishly in our community to make this a better place to live now and for the future.”

During President Wilson-Oyelaran’s 10 years at the College, she has worked tirelessly, Warfield asserts, in the name of social justice.

“Kalamazoo College has always been one of the bright lights of social justice,” he says. “Dr. Wilson-Oyelaran stepped in and didn’t miss a beat. I can’t think of anyone or anyplace more deserving of the Vanguard Award.”

During her tenure at the College, President Wilson-Oyelaran has helped the College make its campus and educational experience more diverse—increasing the number of first generation, low-income, international and domestic students of color who study here.

President Wilson-Oyelaran’s commitment to social justice and leadership development, however, may be most evident in the creation of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (ACSJL), a formal program that integrates the academic experience with social justice activism geared toward helping students make communities and the world more equitable for all.

The ACSJL, opened in 2009, supports initiatives proposed by students, staff and faculty; provides forward-thinking programming; offers fellowships for emerging and veteran social justice leaders; and hosts annual signature events with global reach.

“I am incredibly humbled and honored to receive the Vanguard Award and accept it on behalf of Kalamazoo College,” says President Wilson-Oyelaran. “It is really gratifying to have the community recognize the many years of investment in the Kalamazoo community by our faculty, staff and students and to take note of the College’s efforts to become a more diverse and inclusive community.”

The NAACP’s 35th Annual Freedom Fund Banquet was held November 7, 2015 at Western Michigan University’s Bernhard Center.

Article by Erin (Miller) Dominianni ’95; photo by Keith Mumma

Research Reveals Enzyme’s Role in Shifting-Eyed Fish

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Rina Fujiwara '14 and Leslie Nagy '09
Rina Fujiwara ’14 and Leslie Nagy ’09 in the Vanderbilt University laboratory of Dr. Fred Guengerich. As Leslie was completing her rotation in the laboratory Rina was just beginning hers, so Leslie helped train Rina. Both scientists did important research on a key enzyme in fish and humans.

Sometimes science uncovers a pretty interesting “what” long before researchers learn that particular “what’s” equally interesting “how.”

Two Kalamazoo College alumnae are among the authors of a recently published paper describing HOW certain fish change their eyes to see more effectively in different water environments. Such a shift in visual acuity is a pretty cool “what” that’s been known for a while. Even some of the “how” had been elucidated–like knowing the components of a room’s light switch for example. What had been unknown–until now–was the enzyme responsible for the change, or, in other words, the finger that flips the switch.

The two co-authors who share K science ancestry, so to speak, are Rina Fujiwara ’15 and Leslie Nagy ’09. Both did the research described in the paper while working in the laboratory of Fred Guengerich at Vanderbilt University. Guengerich happens to have been the thesis advisor of Laura Furge, the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Professor of Chemistry at Kalamazoo College, when Laura was earning her Ph.D. at Vanderbilt. Both Nagy and Fujiwara worked in the Furge Lab during their undergraduate years; talk about scientific ancestry! The paper–titled “Cyp27c1 Red-Shifts the Spectral Sensitivity of Photoreceptors by Converting Vitamin A1 into A2”–appeared this week in the high impact scientific journal Current Biology. The Atlantic also published an article on the research.

It was in the Furge Lab that Nagy and Fujiwara were introduced to the cytochrome P-450 family of enzymes. They are critical mediators of many human physiological processes. “Today we know there are 57 P-450s in humans,” said Furge. “Many were known and their functions elucidated, but with the sequencing of the human genome, scientists discovered 13 unknown P-450s, which were dubbed ’orphans,’” she added. “Because the family is so important to human health, we’d like to know what these orphans do.” Fish and human share kindred P-450s, including the orphan, Cyp27c1, that’s the subject of the Current Biology paper.

For a full appreciation of the paper’s findings, a very simplified “Vision 101” may help. That we see–and how we see–depends in part on chemicals called chromophores. These share a common chemical backbone: vitamin A. Chromophores differ depending on modifications of their vitamin A, modifications that change an eye’s sensitivity to certain colors. For example, the vitamin A of sea fish–known as vitamin A1–help them better perceive a different spectrum of color than do freshwater fish, whose vitamin A2 allow for clearer vision in the red-wavelength light characteristic of rivers and lakes. Some fish–like salmon, that live in both marine and freshwater environments–can change their eyes by converting their vitamin A’s, from 1 to 2, sort of like gaining night vision goggles according the article in the Atlantic.

Just how they accomplish this conversion is the discovery that resulted from the research described in the paper. A single enzyme member of the cytochrome P450 family (one of the so called orphans, it turns out) converts A1 to A2, thus changing the color tuning of the fish eyes when the fish enters different water environments. And the human analog of that eye-changing P450 orphan in fish, the Cyp27c1 of the paper’s title–has also been studied by Guengerich Lab at Vanderbilt. A second paper on that analog is expected to be published in 2016, and Nagy and Fujiwara will co-authors of that paper as well.

Furge noted the impact and importance of scientific mentoring across generations, citing the example of Guengerich, herself, and Fujiwara and Nagy, representing three generations of cytochrome P-450 research. “Another K [and Furge Lab] alumna, Thanh Phanh ’15, is currently a technician in the Guengerich lab,” said Furge. “She hasn’t contributed to eye project but I’m sure she’ll have her own project in the future.”

Alumnus to be Honored With Public Service Award

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Kalamazoo College Alumnus Gerald Rosen ’73The Honorable Gerald Rosen ’73, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan will receive the 11th Annual Dennis Archer Public Service Award on November 19. The Michigan Bar Association is honoring Rosen for his work mediating Detroit’s bankruptcy settlement, an effort that took months of difficult negotiation and resulted in a fund that shored up city pensions and protected artworks (from sale) at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit shed $7.3 billion of its $18 billion in debt, restructured $3.1 billion, reached five-year labor agreements with all its unions, and developed and implemented a multi-year $1.7 billion revitalization plan for city services and operations. A Detroit News article on Rosen (by David Shepardson) quoted Kevyn Orr. Detroit’s former emergency manager, who credited Rosen for the city’s quick exit from bankruptcy: “Judge Rosen’s steady leadership and practical judgment allowed the city and its creditors to achieve the impossible: they forged a consensual, comprehensive plan of adjustment in less than two years. [He created the deal that] streamlined key city operations, helped improve public safety, preserved the city’s world-class art museum in a perpetual public trust, and avoided drastic cuts to pension and related retiree benefits. It is no exaggeration to say that Judge Rosen was indispensable.” The award ceremony will take place at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Rosen was on the campus of his alma mater this past February, when he delivered the 2015 William Weber Lecture in Social Science, which was titled “Detroit Bankruptcy: Lessons Learned.”

Our “Miller’s Tale”

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Book cover of "De Zwaan: The True Story of America’s Authentic Dutch Windmill"Move over, Chaucer! Kalamazoo College has its own “Miller’s Tale,” that of Alisa Crawford ’91, who recently won the state history award from the Historical Society of Michigan for her book “De Zwaan: The True Story of America’s Authentic Dutch Windmill.” Alisa is the resident miller at the De Zwaan windmill, which is located in Holland, Michigan. Achieving qualifications for that job was no “run of the mill” effort; nor was piecing together the origins and history of the mill she operates and loves. After many years learning to speak Dutch, study, apprenticeship, and testing, Alisa became a Dutch-certified miller. Then after more testing, she was admitted to an elite Dutch guild of professional grain millers. Through that process, she came to know a number of mill historians in The Netherlands. Together they dug through dusty archives in The Netherlands, interviewed people connected to the mill, and crawled through the windmill searching for archaeological clues.

“At the time of its purchase,” notes Alisa, “authorities in The Netherlands thought it had been built in 1761 in the Zaan region in North Holland to make hemp rope, but then clues began trickling in that made that impossible.” Without giving away the end of the book, Alisa says of the mill that now stands on windmill Island in Holland: “De Zwaan began its career far from North Holland and does not have a ‘purebred pedigree’, as originally presumed.” She indicates that it was assembled from the parts of several mills much later than 1761. However, that lineage, she writes in the book, “is what makes De Zwaan unequivocally authentic. Windmills were and continue to be working machines. When they break, they are repaired. When they become outmoded, they are re-purposed. When the parts wear out, they are replaced.”

Alisa received the award at the State History conference held in Saginaw. In her acceptance speech she noted, “I like to say I’m a miller by trade, an historian by degree, and now an author by award, and I thank the Historical Society of Michigan for that honor.” Her book is available on Windmill Island in Holland, at local retailers and online at In-Depth Editions.