Going Home

11/17/08 02:31:49 am, by Erica McClain
Categories: Metro Detroit, River Rouge, Lincoln Park

Finding my grandfather in River Rouge

In honor of Veteran’s Day and my grandfather’s recent passing, I decided last week to investigate some of his past.

My grandfather, a veteran of World War II and the Korean War, was never a man who revealed the details of his life, and, accordingly, I didn’t know much about his youth. Grandpa was a great storyteller, but the problem was that he told two stories over and over. One was about how he was once a great baseball player, and the other was about his experience as a military policeman in Japan.

After some Veteran’s Day reflection on him and his service, I decided to see what other stories about him that I could discover.

Grandpa grew up in River Rouge, and according to his discharge papers, lived there until at least 1946. After that, he lived in Lincoln Park. After some digging through paperwork and old love letters my grandmother had sent him, I finally found his address and some photos of him during that era.

[More:]

On Tuesday, I set out to find his house on Frazier in River Rouge and his house on Charter in Lincoln Park. No one in my family thought that the River Rouge home would still be standing after all of these years. I didn’t know what to expect.

The house on Frazier Street, River Rouge

Driving through the subdivision, a part of me thought it would be an empty lot or boarded up like that of other houses I saw along the way. I had no real photos of the house itself, so I had no expectations.

Eventually, I reached Frazier, and to my surprise, there it was. I parked, and tried to imagine it as it was in 1946. What had changed? From the one photo I had that showed the street of Frazier I couldn’t notice any differences.

I looked up statistics and saw that most of the homes in River Rouge were built around that time. If anything, from the statistics and my lone picture, things have remained pretty similar here.

The house on Charter Street, Lincoln Park

From the photo I have of grandpa in front of Charter Street, it looks like farmland. With a house far off in the distance, and an expansive-looking field, you wouldn’t be able to place the area. I knew from what my mother had told me that the home was just around the corner from Outer Drive and I-75.

Armed with that knowledge and a Google map, I set out. On the way, I drove over railroad tracks and past factory buildings, and I wondered which did or did not exist back when.

As I reached the house, one thing became crystal clear; I-75 did not exist. The field and skyline in the background of my photo had been swallowed up by the massive freeway. Houses had bloomed around the neighborhood, and the surrounding area had become a subdivision just bordering the wall of the freeway.

Though I did not find out much more about my grandpa’s past, I did find out about the communities he lived in. Why is it that so much had changed in the one area, while the other seemed to me to be pretty much the same?

Comments, Pingbacks:

You must register and log in to add a comment.
Login... | Register... |