[Later this week, we’ll be moving my younger son Kyle into his first-year dorm at Michigan. So this week, through proud Dad tears, I’ll share a handful of UMichigan contexts, leading up to a special post on some of Kyle’s plans there!]
In
alphabetical order, here are five particularly notable entries among the
university’s countless famous
alumni:
1)
Clarence Darrow:
As that article notes, Darrow didn’t complete his degree from the law school,
as he was apparently already ready after just one year (1877-78) to pass the
bar and get to work. But even a one-year association with the early 20th
century’s most
famous and influential
lawyer is worth highlighting, I’d say.
2)
Gerald
Ford (class of 1934): Considering how many presidents attended
Ivy League institutions (spoiler: a whole lot of them), it’s pretty cool
for one of the nation’s oldest public universities to call a president an alum.
But it’s even cooler that he was also a football star there, named the team’s
MVP in his
senior season during which he started at the crucial position of center in
every game.
3)
Tom Hayden
(class of 1961): At the other end of the political spectrum in the 1960s and
70s was Tom
Hayden, who co-founded Students
for a Democratic Society (SDS) while a student at Michigan, authored the
hugely influential Port
Huron Statement that served as a manifesto for the student activist
movement around the country, and went on to marry
Jane Fonda (!) among many other achievements (yes, I called that an
achievement).
4)
Dorothy
McFadden Hoover: Like Darrow, Dorothy McFadden Hoover started but didn’t finish
a graduate degree program at Michigan (in her case, a PhD in Physics). But that
was because she was hired by the U.S. Weather Bureau for a hugely important position
in the groundbreaking Joint Numerical
Weather Prediction unit, one of countless striking moments the life and
career of a woman who was born the granddaughter of enslaved people and went on
to serve as one of NASA’s
“human computers” and to become the first Black woman to achieve the rank
of Aeronautical Research Scientist.
5)
Jesmyn Ward
(MFA class of 2005): I’ve written about
Jesmyn Ward, one of my couple favorite 21st
century American authors, multiple
times in this space, but I didn’t realize she was a Michigan alum (from its
graduate MFA program) until researching this post. We all know who my favorite
alum is always gonna be, but Ward definitely occupies the coveted #2 spot!
Last
MichiganStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think?
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