Sir Graves Ghastly's Rise and Fall

Lawson Deming was a graduate of Western Reserve University who studied speech, drama, and math. "Deming began performing professionally when he worked in vaudeville," said Sonny Eliot, Lawson's longtime friend.

A lifelong Cleveland, Ohio resident, Deming landed a radio job at WHK in 1932 where he met his wife Rita, who was a hostess of a women's talk show. "The greatest fun was radio," Deming said in a 1982 Detroit Free Press interview, "because we were creating something in somebody's mind with voices, dialogue, music, and sound effects. We created a whole world."

In 1949, Deming switched over to Cleveland television station WTAM where he met co-worker Bill Kennedy early in their television careers. They became good friends. Deming hosted a movie show called One O'Clock Playhouse. He also worked as a puppeteer on a program entitled Woodrow the Woodsman. Although his face never appeared on-screen, he supplied the voices for characters named Freddy Gezundheit, the alley crock; Tarkington Whom II, the owl; and Voracious, the elephant. His work on Woodrow the Woodman brought Deming to Detroit in 1966 when the show was moved to WJBK for taping.

Soon after arriving at WJBK, Deming was approached by program producer and director Jay Frommert about playing the character Ghoulardi and showing horror movies. But Ghoulardi was already being done in Cleveland by Ernie Anderson. Deming suggested he be allowed to create his own character. On Saturday, January 22, 1967, Sir Graves Ghastly rose from the grave on the premise that "Sir Graves was hanged 400 years ago by Queen Elizabeth, but like a bad vaccination, it didn't take."

The shadow-eyed, hair plastered down, goateed Sir Graves began his show by opening a creaky casket from within which was located on a graveyeard set. For the next two hours, the red-gloved, black-capped, comic vampire cracked bad jokes while riffing on the B-grade horror movies he showed between commercial breaks. To complete his Dracula parody, Sir Graves had an infectious laugh, "Nyeeea aaaa haa haaaaa" and he was prone to "hippyisms" in his speech.

Sir Graves and his alter-ego Lawson Deming

Weekly segments on Sir Graves program were the scrolling of children's names celebrating their birthdays, and the "Art Ghoulery" where kids sent in their drawings of Sir Graves, vampires, and werewolves, hoping Sir Graves would feature them on his show.

Deming created a cast of characters all portrayed by him and edited onto the master tape so Sir Graves could interact with them on camera. The cast included Reel McCoy, a character who digs up old B-movie horror films; Tilly Trollhouse, wildly off-key, blonde singer; the Glob, an extreme closeup of Deming's mouth videoed upside down, lip-syncing songs; Cool Ghoul, an over-the-hill motorcycle freak; and Walter, Sir Grave's prissy alter ego who keeps telling him, "You're sick, sick, sick!"

Unlike earlier WXYZ horror movie host Mr. X on Shock Theater, Sir Graves wasn't meant to scare anybody. Deming worked from a rough outline and adlibbed his way through the show, often spouting bad jokes sent in by viewers. The show was a mixture of cheesy horror movies and corny humor.

Viewers, half of whom were males over eighteen-years-old, were almost afraid to laugh at some of Sir Graves' groaners but couldn't help themselves like: "What did the Frankenstein monster say after he ate a six-cylinder engine?" What? "I could've had a V8."

Deming continued to live in Cleveland and took charter flights to Detroit twice a month on Wednesdays until January 1970. He missed his flight and the plane crashed through the Lake Erie ice killing all aboard. After that, Deming and his wife agreed that taking the three-hour, midnight bus ride was a safer option.

In true vampire fashion, he arrived at WJBK before the break of dawn and read fan mail before preparing for taping from 9 am until 11 am for the Saturday show. Then, he taped nine additional segments to be fitted into two movies between commercial breaks, before he took the 4:00 pm bus back to Cleveland. Deming worked two twelve hour days a month producing four programs.

The high point of Sir Graves' career may have been when he emceed Detroit's American Cancer Society benefit called "Black Cat Caper," a pre-halloween costume ball at Cobo Hall on Friday, October 13, 1972. Sir Graves made a grand entrance at 9:15 pm in a coffin carried by Detroit media pallbearers Bob Allison, J.P. McCarthy, Dick Purtan, Bob Talbert, Jac Le Goff, and John Kelly. Tickets cost $13.13. The grand prize for best costume was an eight-day trip to London for two, with a three-day stay at a 500-year-old, haunted abode in a village named Pluckley.

In April of 1983 after sixteen years of faithful service, Lawson Deming was handed his walking papers by WJBK's general manager Bill Flynn. "I never could figure out why he dumped me. We had the highest-rated Saturday show in our market, and it was a money-maker for them." But it was too late for Sir Graves. By this time, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, had run off with his male audience.

Deming retired in Cleveland and lived for another twenty-four years before he left this vale of tears on April 27, 2007, at the age of ninety-four. His spirit can rest easy knowing the joy he gave to his television audience. Many a Detroit Baby Boomer will shed a tear in memory of Lawson Deming's Sir Graves Ghastly character. David Deming's eulogy at his father's funeral service attributed the longevity of his father's career to "his warm spirit and genuine love of kids."

Sir Graves show intro 

Sir Graves characters 

Shock Theater WXYZ

Michigan Outdoors with Mort Neff

Mort Nell armed with a 16mm camera.

One of the most beloved programs in early Detroit television was Michigan Outdoors hosted and produced by Mort Neff. The original outdoor show debuted in 1951 specializing in hunting and fishing segments. It ran for twenty-three straight years and 1,196 shows before it was cancelled in 1977. Michigan Outdoors has the distinction of being the longest-running outdoor and sportsman show in American television history.

Mort Neff graduated from the University of Michigan with a double major in journalism and electrical engineering. Upon graduation in 1927, Neff began writing an outdoor sports column for a small newspaper in Detroit. In 1942, the Michigan Conservation Department asked Neff if he would be interested in doing a recorded radio show. At first, he did his recording from a small studio, but Neff drew upon his background in electronics to devise a battery pack to power a wire recorder for remote reporting from the fields and streams of lower Michigan.

In 1946, Neff learned to fly and used his single engine Piper Apache to cover outdoor stories all over Michigan including the Upper Penisula, which at that time was accessible only by slow-moving ferry boats that took hours of waiting in your car before boarding. Neff surprised ice fishermen by landing his plane on frozen lakes and interviewing the anglers with his battery-powered wire recorder.

Mort Neff and his Piper Tri-Pacer on Brighton Lake with ice fisherman.

 

By 1951, Neff ran an advertising agency specializing in outdoor films for the commercial and industrial market when he was approached to produce a show called Michigan Outdoors. Neff recalled, "Fran Congdon--ad manager for Altes Golden Ale Brewing Company--asked me to produce a TV show. Two weeks before the show debuted, the chosen host had a conflict of interest and was dropped from the program. Fran insisted I do it."

Neff's only experience was behind the camera. Of his early days in television, Neff said, "I was awful. Who had any idea how to do a television show? Nobody!" But despite his lack of experience as on-air talent, the show became an immediate Thursday night hit and one of the most popular programs on Detroit television. 

Mort Neff soon became a local television personality and a much sought-after luncheon and banquet speaker around Detroit. Michigan Outdoors brought out the ham in Neff. He enjoyed his new-found celebrity and soon sold his ad agency. Mort had discovered his life's work.

Neff and his various cohorts over the years filmed segments on sportsmanship, hunting, and fishing, as well as wildlife and habitat conservation. Michigan Outdoors prided itself on giving accurate, up-to-date information on current hunting and fishing conditions in Michigan. The Catch of the Week feature was one of the most popular segments of the show.

If Neff mentioned on his Thursday night show an area where hunting was good or a lake where the fish were biting, 200 to 300 Detroit area sportsmen could be expected for the weekend trek up north, which sometimes caused problems for local residents. Often county roads were not adequate to handle the onrush of city traffic. Getting "Neffed" was not always welcomed by county officials. After some negative publicity, the show developed a policy of not reporting specific hotspots in favor of regional locations.

When Mort worked for the Michigan Conservation Department decades earlier, he learned that the South American country of Chile imported rainbow trout eggs from them in 1918. The eggs were hatched and the fry released into the Chilean mountain river system. Neff always wondered what happened with that forty-year-old project. Now, he was in a position to find out. He organized a two-week expedition with a film crew and a few friends to report on the original project and catch some rainbow trout.

Mort and his cohorts discovered that Chilean rainbow trout grew larger and faster than their Michigan cousins. "On average," Neff said, "a two-pound rainbow would reach six pounds in Chile. When we cleaned our first catch, their bellies were full of crabs the size of half-dollars found only on the river beds of the Andres Mountains. My fishing friend Buck Newton from Traverse City caught a rainbow over 21 pounds. It sounds like a fish story, but we have film and the photos to prove it."

On the strength of his successful Chilean fishing trip, Neff was recruited as an outdoor correspondent for ABC's American Sportsman hosted by Curt Gowdy. ABC producers financed Neff and a film crew for several more South American fishing trips which were featured on the network show giving Neff national exposure.

In 1971, Michigan Outdoors moved from WWJ-TV (channel 4) to WXYZ-TV (channel 7). As the 1970s wore on, American attitudes about hunting changed. Sportsmanship and conservation were always central to Neff's outdoor narrative, but his audience was aging and younger viewers were not tuning in.

In response to this new trend, Neff told reporters, "I think the hysteria over ecology has been overdone. Sportsmen and conservationists were working on the environment long before it became fashionable. I do think it is good that more people are aware and interested in preserving our natural resources and protecting the environment." Michigan Outdoors continued to lose audience market share until it was cancelled on January 7, 1977.

Neff wasn't bitter. He told the Detroit Free Press that "My wife Maureen and I decided twenty-three years was long enough to support the tremendous burden of a weekly television program, and we're ready to move on. I've been lucky. I've had one of the most golden careers ever." The Neffs retired and built a beautiful summer home just north of Harbor Springs.

Mort Neff passed away from a stroke at the age of eighty-six on Wednesday, August 15, 1990 at Northern Michigan Hospital in Petosky. Ten years before he died, Mort selected the tree to make his coffin, had it sawed into planks, and asked his neighbor Bill Glass to build it. Bill kept telling Mort it wasn't time yet. Mort brought the subject up one last time two weeks before his death. Bill Glass began building the pine box on Thursday for Friday's private funeral service at Harbor Springs Presbyterian. Mort was laid to rest in the coffin lined with cedar boughs cut by his family members.

World Adventure Series hosted by George Pierrot 

Detroit's Speedboat Champion Gar Wood

Garfield "Gar" Wood

Speedboat champion Garfield "Gar" Arthur Wood was known as the "Grey Fox of Algonac" by many in the speedboat racing world. He was the first person to go over 100 mph on the water. Gar Wood won five straight powerboat Gold Cup races between 1917 and 1921. He won the British International Trophy for Motorboats known as the Harmsworth Trophy nine times and retired from speedboat racing in 1933 to concentrate on business concerns.

Gar Wood was born in Mapleton, Iowa on December 4, 1880. His father was a patriotic Civil War veteran and named Gar after the current president James A. Garfield and his vice-president Chester Arthur. Gar was the third of twelve children. As a growing boy, Gar assisted his father who was a ferryboat operator on Lake Osakia in Minnesota. It is here where he learned his love of boating and developed his mechanical skill for inventing devices to solve mechanical problems.

Without any formal engineering training, Gar Wood invented the hydraulic lift for the titling beds of coal trucks in 1911 at the age of thirty-one. In addition to the dump truck, his company developed the self-packing garbage truck familiar in every corner of this country. In all, Gar Wood held over thirty United States patents making him a multi-millionaire by the age of forty.

Gar Wood and his eight brothers established the Wood Hoist Company which soon became Garwood Industries. Alongside industrial giants like Ford, Dodge, and Chalmers, the family built an industrial empire around the hydraulic lift which enabled Gar to pursue his love of speedboat racing.

In 1916, Gar Wood purchased his first motorboat naming it Miss Detroit. The following year he put a Curtiss "12" airplane engine in a speedboat against the advice of everyone and won the 15th Annual Gold Cup Race on the Detroit River. Fours years later, he set a new water speed record of 74.87 mph. In the next twelve years, he and his racing team built ten Miss America's and broke the water speed record five more times raising the speed to 124.86 mph on the St. Clair River in 1932.

Miss America X was the last of Gar Wood's racing boats. The $600,000 speed boat was powered by four 1800 horsepower, twelve cylinder Packard engines run in tandem in a double-hulled boat. The boat's stringers were made of top quality spruce with the rest of the boat made of mahogany. This was the first boat to go over two miles a minute using 10 gallons of fuel per mile when full open. After Wood won the international Harmsworth Trophy in 1932 and 1933, he retired from racing leaving his son to carry on the family tradition. Gar Wood did more to develop the American speedboat sport than anybody.

In the 1930s, Garwood Industries built a new boat plant in Marysville, Michigan capable of producing 1,200 quality custom boats a year. Their two basic commercial models were a 28' runabout and a 22' runabout. In all, the factory produced 10,000 boats before the company converted over to the war effort during World War II. The company had extensive military contracts for military hoists, hydraulic units, dump trucks, tow trucks, and transport trucks. After the war, Garwood Industries quit boat production in 1947.

In his later years, Wood worked on a commercially feasible, battery-powered electric automobile. His electric car used eight 12-volt lead batteries connected in a series to power two specially designed 90-volt, 2 hp DC motors. The top speed was 52 mph and cost about twenty cents to recharge the batteries. The car was named the Gar Wood Super Electric Model A and was featured in the July 1967 issue of Popular Mechanics.

Garfield Arthur Wood died from stomach cancer at the age of ninety on June 19, 1971 and was buried in Algonac, Michigan. Upon his death, Detroit News reporter George Van wrote, "To the public, he was Tom Swift, Jules Verne, and Frank Merriwell with a little bit of Horatio Alger thrown in."

A short clip of Miss America X and Gar Wood in action winning the Harmsworth Trophy in 1932. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMlahrYMF74

Fornology Unexpectedly Takes Off

I reluctantly began my Fornology blog in January 2012 when my publicist Paula Margulies advised me to put together an "electronic platform" to support my writing efforts. I hired Paula thinking I would learn the secret handshake and the magic formula behind a successful writing career. I did--hard work.

One of the first comments I received about my blog format was that it was "too old-fashioned and looks like a Monopoly card!" That remark set me back a notch, but I persevered. The first month, my blog got 283 hits restoring my confidence enough to continue blogging.

Fourteen years later, the number of hits my blog received for the month of August 2026 was a record setting 156,254, over twice the amount of my next highest month. To date, I have 540 posts spread over my site with a grand total of over 2,750,000 hits since my blog's inception. Why my Fornology blog has spiked this past month is a mystery to me.

I checked my blog's analytics feature only to discover another question I cannot answer. A breakdown of the top ten countries my blog reaches reveals that the United States heads the list at 42,400 hits for the month. No surprise there. Here is the rest of my top ten list for August 2026:

                                 France = 36,300

                                 Syria = 7,200

                                 Singapore = 7,100

                                 French Guiana = 6,860

                                 Brazil = 6,490

                                 Germany = 4,560

                                 India = 1,790

                                 Vietnam = 1,770

                                 United Kingdom = 1,590

At the bottom of the complete tally of twenty countries is a category simply listed as "Unknown," which was my third highest number of hits for the month coming in at 21,400. I wonder if these hits came from the dark web? I have no way of knowing, but I will claim them.

Author card created by Rolf Christopherson.

Thank you to all the people who took the time to read my blog posts. It was a pleasure writing them. I have two collections of the best of these posts linked below and in the sidebars of this blog. 

Detroit Time Capsule

Michigan Time Capsule

Detroit’s Lindell AC - The Nation’s First Sports Bar

Johnny in front of the original Lindell Bar

In 1949, Greek immigrant Meleti Butsicaris with his sons—Johnny and Jimmy—leased the ground floor of the run-down Lindell Hotel and opened their bar on Cass and Bagley avenues. At first, they couldn’t afford to have a sign made with a different name, so they went with the hotel’s signage and called their tavern the Lindell Bar and the name stuck. The bar was near Briggs Stadium, where the Tigers and Lions played, and the Olympia arena, home of the Detroit Red Wings.

Legend has it that a young New York Yankee second baseman—Billy Martin—suggested to the brothers they change the drab atmosphere of the bar with an athletic theme. That would not be difficult. In addition to being co-owner of the bar, Johnny Butsicaris was also the official photographer for the Olympia. He had plenty of original sports photographs he could use. It was not long before sports memorabilia adorned the walls with autographed photos of Detroit sports stars, signed team jerseys, bats, and hockey sticks--even a jock strap belonging to Wayne Walker, a Detroit Lion linebacker. The new look helped define the bar’s clientele.

Jimmy with Andre the Giant.

The Lindell soon became a hangout for Detroit sports figures and players from visiting teams. It wasn’t long before local sports writers and celebrities performing in Detroit found a home at the Lindell. National celebrities like Milton Berle and Jayne Mansfield would stop in. Local celebrities like Detroit’s favorite weatherman Sonny Eliot and Detroit News sports columnist Doc Greene were regulars. Even the Beatles and their entourage went to the bar after their Olympia concert.

The most notorious event in the history of the original Lindell Bar was a publicity stunt for a wrestling match between Detroit Lion defensive tackle Alex Karras and wrestler Dick the Bruiser. Karras needed the cash since he was no longer drawing his NFL salary. The week before, Karras was suspended from the NFL for the 1963 season for admitting he bet on football games.

Karras and the Bruiser in publicity still.

Karras was a friend of Dick the Bruiser from Karras's one season as a pro-wrestler. The Bruiser wanted to help his friend in need. The original idea was born in the mind of Dick the Bruiser. He proposed a publicity stunt in the Lindell Bar to increase the gate at the Olympia match. What began as a publicity stunt became a full-blown bar brawl. In the process, the Bruiser wrecked the bar. The scheduled wrestling match the following Saturday night earned Karras $30,000. [See the link below for more information on that incident]

The Butsicaris brothers took Karras on as a business partner with his $30,000 from the wrestling match. After the bar brawl, the three partners moved the location of the bar to Michigan and Cass avenues. They had no choice. The Lindell Hotel was condemned and scheduled for demolition.

Detroit News sports reporter Doc Greene suggested adding AC (Athletic Club) after the new bar’s name as a sly reference to the Detroit Athletic Club, an exclusive members-only club. Only the city’s business elite and socialites were members. Even famous sports figures could not enter the club without a special guest invitation from a member.

Doc Greene got many of his exclusive sports stories sitting at the original Lindell Bar. He did not want his bosses to know how much time he spent there getting his exclusive stories. In his Detroit News sports articles, he would write he was interviewing this or that athlete at the Athletic Club. It became an inside joke at the bar. Greene would call his wife and say he would be home soon when he was finished at the Athletic Club. As a tribute to Doc Greene, the reincarnated Lindell Bar became the Lindell AC.

Johnny’s son Mel Butsicaris remembers working the night an elephant was brought into the sports bar.

Sonny Eliot behind the bar at the Lindell AC. Photo courtesy of Mel Butsicaris.

“The most talked about photograph in the bar was not of an athlete or celebrity. Back in the 1970s, Bell Telephone and the Yellow Pages had a slogan about an elephant never forgetting, but you have the Yellow Pages for help. They were making a commercial across the street with a baby elephant.

Sonny Eliot

"You don’t see an elephant in downtown Detroit too often, so my dad and I walked over to watch. My dad told the film crew to come over to the bar and he’d buy everyone a drink. As a joke, my dad said while petting the elephant, ‘Bring your friend along.’ About an hour later, the front door opened with this guy pushing this beast through the door. We still can’t believe it, but the elephant fit through. We worried if the floor could handle the weight. Everyone had a good laugh when Sonny Eliot started giving the elephant Coca-Cola to drink. Shortly after, the Coke acted as a laxative for the animal. We used snow shovels to clean up the mess.”

Alex Karras and Curtis Yates

In 1980, CBS filmed a made-for-television movie in the Lindell AC bar called Jimmy B. and Andres. It was based on the true story of Jimmy Butsicaris, who wanted to adopt an African-American boy. Alex Karras starred with his wife Susan Clark, and as the young boy, Curtis Yates. The bar was sanitized as a restaurant for the movie. The spin off became the ABC sitcom Webster with Emmanuel Lewis playing the child’s role.

Jimmy Butsicaris died in 1996, and his brother Johnny died in 2011. The Lindell AC sports bar, said to be the first in the nation, closed its doors in 2002. The building was scheduled for demolition to make way for the Rosa Parks Transit Center.

More information on the Alex Karras/Dick the Bruiser bar brawl:

http://fornology.blogspot.com/2017/02/alex-karras-and-dick-bruisers-detroit.html 

Lou Gordon "The People's Champion"

Lou Gordon--Detroit Crusader

Detroit political commentator Lou Gordon died in his sleep from a heart condition in his Bloomfield Hills home early Tuesday morning, May 24, 1977. Detroit Free Press columnist Billy Bowles described Gordon as a "feisty interviewer who was a power to be reckoned with by Michigan politicians."

Lou Gordon was born in Detroit on May 17, 1917, and was a product of Detroit public schools. He graduated in 1935 from Central High School on Tuxedo Street. Gordon attended one term at the University of Michigan, but this was during the Great Depression. He quit college to work as an insurance agent for United Life Accident Company. During World War II, Gordon became an air cadet and served for two years in the Army Air Corps.

After the war, Gordon returned to the University of Michigan on the G.I. Bill and earned a degree in journalism. He landed a job with the Booth Newspaper chain in Washington D.C. as a political reporter. There he met and became friends with famous liberal columnist Drew Pearson, who greatly influenced Gordon's development as a political pundit. Gordon was willing to take dangerous assignments dealing with organized crime figures and political corruption and soon began to make a name for himself.

When his father died in 1950, Lou returned home to Detroit to take care of his mother. To make a living, he became a district sales representative in Detroit for the White Stag sportswear line. He increased the firm's local business ten fold from $150,000/yr to $1.5 million/yr. 

Through commissions, bonuses, and shrewd investing, Lou became independently wealthy, but he missed the rush and excitement of his journalism career. Gordon told Detroit Free Press reporter Billy Bowles once in an interview, "My heart was never in the sales business. I longed for the old days of politics."

In 1957, Gordon was hired by local Detroit radio station WXYZ as a political commentator and soon began building a fan base. WXYZ management realized Gordon's ability to attract an audience. He had an engaging smile and cast a strong media image. Gordon wore impeccably tailored suits and never looked less than his best. The station manager offered Lou a fifteen minute spot (10:45 pm - 11:00 pm) every weeknight called Detroit Deadline. Lou would discuss a single issue and interview a guest, often a local politician or community leader. Gordon did this for seven years.

The show was so popular that rival Detroit start-up station WKBD-TV (Channel 50) lured Lou away with a better offer in 1966. The station offered Lou his own ninety-minute show to air at 10:00 pm over the weekend on Saturday and Sunday nights. The Saturday night show discussed local Metropolitan Detroit issues which rankled and alienated people from across the political spectrum. On Sunday nights, the program discussed national political issues with any politicians or journalists who were brave enough to be his guests.

The Lou Gordon Program debuted in September of 1966. The background music heard under the program's title card was the instrumental interlude from the popular song "MacArthur Park." Lou would appear onscreen and say, "Welcome to the program, where there are no cue cards, no teleprompters, no idiot boards, just ad-lib conversation where we tell it like it is."

From the program's onset, Lou Gordon vowed "to speak out against social injustice and become the champion and voice for the common man." Working-class and middle-class Detroiters, aged 35 and above soon became Lou's loyal audience, especially when he took on the local utility companies accusing them of ripping off the public.

Modern television viewers are accustomed to the blood sport that modern politics has become. But in 1966, there was nothing else like The Lou Gordon Program on weekend, late night TV. Lou enjoyed drawing his guests into a lively conversation and carefully watching them for weak spots in their arguments before pouncing. Then, he would spring a "gotcha" moment on them.

Lou Gordon and his staff read many newspapers and political magazines from around the country researching them daily. When confronted with evidence, some guests would simply deny the facts, but they did so at their peril. Lou was prepared, even over-prepared some said. Other guests became angry or simply walked off the set mid-interview, and some would attack Lou, his facts, and his methods. All of it was good television.

George Romney -- GOP hopeful.

What brought Lou and his program to national attention was an interview he did with former Michigan governor George Romney. Romney was a front runner in the Republican party to be their standard bearer for the presidency in 1968. During the interview, he came out against the war in Vietnam saying, "When I went on a fact-finding tour of Vietnam, the generals and the United States diplomatic corps tried to brainwash me."

Despite agreeing with Romney's position on the war, the newshound in Gordon recognized that Romney's careless use of the term "brainwash" was politically provocative and headline news. Because of the limited scope of WKBD's reach, Gordon called Detroit's New York Times bureau chief Jerry Flint and gave him the full transcript of the interview.

The Times ran the brainwashing remark as their headline and distributed the story on the news wire services. The national nightly news TV programs broadcast the story the next evening and most newspaper chains ran the story coast-to-coast in their morning editions. Shortly afterward, George Romney withdrew from the presidential race.

Lou Gordon's sudden national recognition prompted WKBD's owners to syndicate his show across all of their seven United States markets creating the first nationally recognized late night news discussion program. In 1971, the Lou Gordon Program could be seen in Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

With today's internet technology, once a program file is created, a single person can send it to as many places as necessary with a database and a single key stroke. But in the early 1970s, VHS video tapes were recorded, copied, and send to each media market separately via the United States Post Office. This was labor and time intensive. The syndication gamble paid off. Lou's program became especially popular with the Los Angeles Hollywood crowd which helped him book celebrity guests.

As if Lou was not busy enough producing his own show, he also wrote a twice weekly political column for The Detroit News. His obsession with politics seemed limitless. Lou was truly a workaholic who loved what he did for a living.

The Lou Gordon Program ran for twelve years. At the top of his game, Gordon died in his sleep at his Bloomfield Hills home on May 24, 1977. Lou succumbed to complications of an aortic valve replacement. He was only sixty years old. Gordon left behind his wife Jackie and their five children: Carol, Debbie, Jon, Ruth, and Scott.

Lou and Jackie Gordon. Jackie would read Lou questions early in the broadcast sent in by viewers.

On Friday, May 27, 1977, the Detroit Free Press reported on Lou Gordon's funeral service at the Ira Kaufman Chapel, attended by an overflowing crowd of nearly 700 people. Many statewide political people as well as local television celebrities like Bill Bonds, Bill Kennedy, and Sonny Eliot paid their final respects.

The oak casket had a sculpted Star of David carved into the lid. Jackie dressed in a white belted dress and dutifully greeted a long line of friends in a small, private reception room. Afterward, a black hearse took Lou Gordon to his final resting place, Clover Hill Park Cemetery in Royal Oak, followed by a gray limousine carrying Jackie and her family. 

Bill Bonds

Bob-Lo Island - Another Fondly Remembered Detroit Tradition

Bob-Lo Island was a family amusement park fondly remembered by Detroiters of a certain age. The park was located at the mouth of the Detroit River on Bois Blanc Island in Canadian waters off Amherstburg, Ontario. The name Bob-Lo is an American corruption of the French name for the island meaning White Woods. The Bob-Lo Island Amusement Park operated from 1902-1991.

The park's signature attractions were the Nightmare, the Falling Star, the Wild Mouse, the Sky Streak, and the Screamer. The park also had a Ferris wheel, a children's zoo, a train, and a carousel.  The island had its own marina.

In 1913, Henry Ford was said to have financed the Dance Pavilion designed by John Scott. The 35,000 square feet of dance floor was the second largest in the world, holding 5,000 dancers at full capacity. For many years early on, this was the park's biggest money maker, charging five cents a dance per couple. Dance police were stationed on the dance floor. "The Turkey Trot, Bunny Hop, and Bear Dances were against the rules. Two Steps, Waltzes, and the Society Walk (Fox Trot) were allowed. Doing the Rag would get you kicked out," wrote Patrick Livingston, author of Summer Dreams: The Story of Bob-Lo Island (Wayne State University Press.)

The dance hall boasted the world's largest mechanical organ called an orchestrion, made in Germany. The contraption with 419 pipes and an automated percussion section was fourteen feet wide and sixteen feet high. It ran on electricity and worked like a player piano. The orchestrion is pictured on the second floor balcony on the right side of the vintage postcard above.

Bob-Lo Boat Columbia - 1903

What longtime Detroiters remember most fondly about Bob-Lo was the boat ride up and down the Detroit River. Ninety-seven year old Helen Robinson remembered going to Bob-Lo Island as a kid with a church group. A sudden squall came up from nowhere and the boat's crew had to lower the canvas flaps and lash them to the railings. Helen said that they all knelt down and prayed. The boat made it to the island, the sun broke through the clouds, and they enjoyed the rest of their day at the park. Adults remember the moonlight cruises to the island.

The Bob-Lo Excursion Company expanded an existing park and operated two excursion steamers out of Detroit and Wyandotte, Michigan. These Bob-Lo Boats were designed by Frank E. Kirby and built by the Toledo Ship Building Company. The Columbia was built in 1901 and went into service in 1902, while the Ste. Claire was built and went into service in 1910. 

Excursion steamers were built primarily for day trips. They were propeller driven, powered by a triple expansion reciprocating steam engine. The boats were 190 feet (58m) long and 50 feet (15m) wide and were said to hold 2,500 passengers. The Columbia and the Ste. Claire are the last two steamers of their type still afloat. The Columbia ran the original Bob-Lo run for eighty-one years, a record of service on a single run unequaled in United States maritime history.

In 1945, Bob-Lo Island Excursion Company made history rather than family memories. Sarah Elizabeth Ray took part in a company sponsored trip to Bob-Lo Island with twelve other female workers involved with the war effort. Ray was removed because she wasn't white. The State of Michigan filed a racial discrimination law suit against the company and won. The case was taken to the Michigan Supreme court and upheld.

The company policy excluded "so called 'zoot-suiters' and 'colored' because they were deemed rowdyish, rough, and boisterous." Their position was that they were operating a private concern in another country not subject to United States jurisdiction. The case was taken to the United States Supreme Court in 1948 where it upheld Michigan's anti-discrimination provisions on the grounds that the company's policy was a violation of United States Commerce Department regulations.

Another company tried to run the park after the Bob-Lo Island Excursion Company sold out in 1991, but the park closed permanently on September 30, 1993 and sold off its rides in 1994. The Columbia and the Ste. Claire have been moth-balled at the U.S. Steel docks in Ecorse, Michigan since 1991.

The Columbia is being restored to the tune of about $15,000,000 with the goal of being completed by September of 2015, to resume active service as a sightseeing attraction trolling the Hudson River in New York City. The Bob-Lo Boat was unceremoniously towed to Toledo, Ohio on Tuesday morning, September 16th, 2014 for a year of restoration.

S.S. Columbia in dry dock awaiting restoration - September 2014

Related links:

Photographs of the Bob-Lo Island amusement rides. http://boblosteamers.com/amusement.html

YouTube video of Bob-Lo boats moored on Detroit River outside of U.S. Steel (the old Great Lakes Steel) docks on December 1, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HUpQZ8P9Ro

Bob-Lo Island update, now becoming an upscale residential development. http://www.freep.com/article/20140706/NEWS05/307060053/boblo-island-memories-boat-development

The Bob-Lo Island Dance Hall Orchestrion: http://www.freep.com/article/20120218/ENT04/202180393/Former-Boblo-Island-music-machine-may-draw-up-to-36-2-5-million-at-auction