Here is the speech I gave Wednesday, May 21, 2008 to Friends of the Plymouth Library:
Pontiac has its Governor Moses Wisner house. Today, it’s the town’s museum.
Farmington has a governor’s house, too — it’s the old Fred Warner house. It’s also the city’s museum.
And in Plymouth, we have the historic Gov. John Swainson house.
Wait a minute. The what? Who was John Swainson? Who says his house is historic?
Those were the reactions I got from Plymouth historians two years ago when I reported in the Detroit Free Press that Gov. Swainson’s house, curiously situated on Gov. Bradford Street in Plymouth Township, was for sale.
I wasn’t the only one who raised eyebrows trying to assert the historical importance of this less than imposing ranch house in an otherwise nondescript, shady subdivision a block west of busy Sheldon Road. The owners of the house then were Joan and Bob Marquard. They’d tried to persuade their real estate agent that playing up their home’s historical significance might help sell the place. The agent wasn’t having it. I asked her why. She gave me what amounted to a telephonic shrug and said she’d never heard of John Swainson.
I got roughly the same message when I called the Plymouth museum. They’d never heard of Swainson and argued that his house, built in 1956, wasn’t old enough to be historic.
I don’t see it that way. History is not a subject where you can say, “Okay, this thing is 25 or 50 or 100 years old, therefore its age alone makes it important.” If you accept that history is whatever is past, then the very syllables I just uttered are historic. Except that they may not be very important. Every historic event occurred in the present and had its recent past. Some historic things are recognized as such right away. The British certainly knew they’d set Bonaparte back as soon as they heard news of the battle off Trafalgar. And Napoleon knew instantly that his big fleet had been pummeled. That battle was historic as soon as it was over. On the other hand, there may be factors that are hugely important that go unrecognized. Historic unknowns.
In Plymouth, John Swainson is a historic little-known, but he’s not forgotten and he’s not insignificant. The real estate agent’s response surprised me. Maybe she felt like the historical angle, which the Marquards pointed out to her, was a piece of luggage that might complicate the sale. After all, there is scandal in the Swainson story. Or maybe she was just lazy, like a dull student who simply didn’t want to learn the facts of history.
The reaction of the local historians did surprise me. Maybe it shouldn’t have. Years ago, when I was a graduate student studying history at the University of Michigan, my professor warned me that studying and writing about history can have political consequences in the present. His specialty was colonial Mexican history, and he told me he recommended his students focus on early history to avoid the political repercussions writers of modern history sometimes encounter.
I’m not sure the professor’s formula works. Last summer, I got in hot water with local historians on Grosse Ile when I criticized their recently published book of historic local photos for deliberately ignoring a topic the book’s authors knew about but found uncomfortable — namely, that the first white owner of Grosse Ile, William Macomb, owned more slaves at the time of his death in 1796 than any other Michigander, and he had slaves living and working on Grosse Ile. I’d offered the Grosse Ile historians use of my photos of entries in the posthumous inventory of Macomb’s worldly goods, which included the names of 26 human beings — slaves, along with their estimated values in New York currency. The island historians told me they’d determined there were no slaves on their island. After I disagreed in my review of their book, they promised that next time I come to Grosse Ile, they’ll be lobbing eggs and tomatoes my way.
History as contact sport. I’ll where a helmet when I go to Grosse Ile.
By omitting slavery from their book, the Grosse Ile historians probably think they’ve somehow protected the good name of their community from a blemish of history. I wouldn’t count on it. And they can’t win. The documents recounting slavery in and around Detroit are safe in the Burton Historical Collection of the Detroit Public Library. I was tipped to slavery on Grosse Ile by another historically-inclined reporter, Bill McGraw of the Detroit Free Press. Bill plans to write a book about slavery around Detroit. Time — history — is working against those historians-in-denial on the big island.
I don’t know why it is that so few people in Plymouth are aware that a governor once lived here. Is it because he was a Democrat and Plymouth was solidly Republican in those days? He had his house built on Gov. Bradford Street in 1956, the same year he was re-elected to the state Senate. Swainson was known as the “boy wonder” of Michigan politics, because he was the youngest senator ever elected. In 1958, campaigning from that house, he was elected lieutenant governor while G. Mennen “Soapy” Williams was still governor. In 1960, campaigning again from that modest ranch house, Swainson was elected the youngest governor in the 20th Century. He and his wife, Alice, continued living in that house while he was governor. In those years, it was the norm to see a state limousine with a state trooper body guard park in the drive of the house at 44525 Governor Bradford.
There was a barbershop on Ann Arbor Road where you could hear the governor loudly arguing politics while he got his hair cut.
In 1962, Swainson was defeated by George Romney. But he stayed in the Gov. Bradford house and was elected a judge on the Wayne County Circuit Court.
It may be that the local amnesia about Swainson stems from his indictment on bribery charges in 1975. Personally, I think the blackout was already in place. No doubt about it, though, the indictment by itself ruined Swainson politically. A jury acquitted him of bribery, but found him guilty of perjury — lying to a grand jury. As Swainson once told me, he was found guilty of lying to cover up a crime the jury found didn’t exist. But the fact remained that he had been convicted of a felony. He lost his license to practice law for three years. He was not only destroyed politically, but he was financially devastated.
I am convinced that from the historical perspective, the indictment, which amounted to political assassination of an up and coming national Democrat, will prove to be the most important part of Swainson’s life. It may not have seemed that way for a long time, but then in the past couple of years we’ve been learning about the seven fired U.S. attorneys. Why were they fired? For failing to aggressively prosecute Democrats. Meanwhile, obedient federal prosecutors were busily indicting Democrats.
John Swainson was the victim of hardball, below-the-belt politics. Before he was caught up and eventually forced to resign or himself be indicted, then President Richard Nixon used the grand jury to prosecute political opponents. In those days, Swainson was considered a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination to run for departing U.S. Senator Phil Hart’s seat. Under Attorney General John Mitchell, the allegations of bribery were first investigated and found without merit. It was on the watch of President Gerald Ford that a swashbuckling assistant U.S. attorney was sent to Detroit with instructions to get Swainson. It may have seemed more urgent then to derail Swainson before the 1976 election.
The link between Swainson’s case in the mid-1970s and the current case of the fired U.S. attorneys is a strong one and deserves to be explored by jurists and historians. That kind of original historical work could be based right here in Plymouth if there were recognition of his importance in local, state and national history.
The indictment by a grand jury in Detroit federal court was a low point in a life that had already seen a very low spot. It happened in France in 1944, when the 19-year-old Swainson, an infantryman, was struck by the blast of a German land mine. He lost both his legs below the knees. Yet when I spent time with him in 1985, I could easily have forgotten he was walking or driving with artificial legs. He spent time with injured people, particularly veterans, trying to buck up people, give them courage to go on. It was not uncommon for the boy wonder to drop his pants to show a wounded soldier his wooden legs. It was also not unusual for him to tap dance beside a limbless person’s bed.
Now, why do I care about John Swainson? I was in high school when he was elected governor in 1960. When he was defeated in 1962, he went off my radar screen. In 1976, I read an article in The Nation, “The Perverted Grand Juries,” by Sam Pizzigati, a former newspaper editor. Pizzigati described how the Nixon White House had subverted the grand jury, turning it into a tool for destroying political opponents. He wrote about Robert Ozer, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Swainson after giving a speech in which he described his methods as “investigation by terrorism.”
It seemed to me that Swainson had been seriously wronged. He was the victim of a political hatchet job. I wanted to know more about him, to tell his story.
In 1984, I was hired as a reporter at the Detroit Free Press. One of my beats was Washtenaw County. In those days, that county’s Road Commission wanted to cut down a huge bur oak tree near Manchester. Residents tried to stop the cutting. I discovered John Swainson living near Manchester. He was one of the people trying to save the tree. I wrote a story about the tree. The tree was not cut.
I wanted to learn more about Swainson. We spent hours talking, and I wrote a long story about the ups and downs of his life.
A few years later, I was working on a story about Red Squads — efforts of city, state and federal police to do surveillance on the political lives of law-abiding citizens like me and John Swainson. Yes, it turned out we both had Red Squad files. While interviewing him for that story, Swainson asked me if I still lived in Plymouth. I said yes, but I’d moved to the township. Where? he asked. On Priscilla Lane, I said.
Swainson told me about his house. I could see it from my place, he said. He had a bit of a tiff with township building officials because he wanted to use reclaimed brick. Eventually, they agreed. The house is unique, because it’s barrier-free — a new concept in 1956. Ramps in the garage and on the front and back porches allowed him to get in and out with a wheelchair. Extra wide hallways and doorways were passable for him on a wheelchair. Dressers were built in, too.
When I saw the “for sale” sign in front of the old Swainson house the summer of 2006, I decided to write a story. I wanted to see the place inside. Recently, I learned from the current owners, Lorrie and Richard Bruce, that our Free Press story made them aware of the house and excited them to want to own it. It worked like a real estate ad, and I’m glad.
It’s great that the house is owned by people who appreciate its history, because one concern expressed by Plymouth native and state historical preservationist Laura Ashlee was that a new owner might build a second story on it or even tear it down to build a bigfoot place.
But there’s even better news. Bob Christensen, who oversees applications for the National Historic Register in Lansing, told me the Swainson house could be on the register. A couple months ago, I sent preliminary application materials to the state and was waiting for Bob to make a determination.
“We certainly do feel that it’s eligible,” he told me a couple days ago. “I think the most interesting thing about it is it’s obviously the home of a governor, which plays into our considerations. He was probably the only governor of Michigan who’s also been in the judiciary and the Legislature. That’s pretty interesting. And the fact that the house was specifically designed and built for him with his special needs in mind. All those things kind of went into it. It’s certainly not as old as most things we would consider historic, but the only age requirement is that it be 50 years old and even that — if it has specialized significance — can be reduced a little. You look at the house and think, ‘This can’t be historic,’ but you look at who lived there and its historic merits certainly are strong enough that there’s no question in my mind we would be able to list it.”
So there you have it, and it’s not just coming from me. Straight from a state historian. John Swainson was an important figure in Michigan history and the house he built is a unique part of our collective past.
Next time you’re driving around, go have a look. Turn west off Sheldon onto Gov. Bradford and proceed slowly a bit more than a block. Look on your left for a house with different hues of bricks and ivy clinging from trees in the front yard. Picture a black limo out front with a state trooper lounging on the front seat and you’re looking at a mental picture of the house when the governor of Michigan lived there.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
