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Biography
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- Description:
- Neola Ann Spackman reminisces about her family, her decision to go into nursing, and what motivated her to join the Army Nurse Corps during World War Two, after serving in the Red Cross Disaster Nursing Service. She talks about working in Minnesota, moving to California, and in April 1941, receiving a request to join the Nurse Corps, which she says was almost like being drafted. She describes life at Fort Ord, California, her duties, housing, racial discrimination, and how she spent social time. Spackman recalls almost being transferred to the Philippines just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, shipping out to England aboard a cramped troop ship in 1943 and eight months later transferring to a field hospital which followed the troops into France after D-Day. Spackman says that she joined a field hospital near the front in August 1944 and describes her twelve-hour surgery shifts, being evacuated from Luxembourg as the Battle of the Bulge raged, moving into Germany at Cologne and later witnessing the Russian-U.S. hook-up at the Elbe River. After the war, she says that she was assigned to the Fort Custer hospital in Michigan, was married, worked as a civilian nurse for 35 years and retired in 1982.
- Date Issued:
- 1985-06-02T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Marjorie Varner talks about her service in the Army Nurse Corps from 1949 to 1971 and serving in both the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Varner recalls her nurse's training, her assignments in surgery units, her uniforms, her quarters and assignments in Korea and Vietnam and a terrible battlefield incident in which she attempted to take a soldier's blood pressure only to find that he was a double amputee. She says that she earned a bachelor's degree during her enlistment, became a nursing supervisor at several hospitals, and retired as Chief Nurse at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Denver. She also describes some of her activities in retirement.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-06-17T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Part 1: Michigan Supreme Court Justice Thomas G. Kavanagh relates his family history and discusses his father's work with newspapers and the Democratic Party, his own early schooling, and his first jobs in law firms. He also discusses his judicial career, starting with the newly created Court of Appeals in 1964 and then running for the Michigan Supreme Court in 1968. He provides an insiders view of the Court during his tenure and discusses the various political and personal differences that arose among the justices. Part 2: Michigan Supreme Court Justice Thomas G. Kavanagh talks about the Justice John Swainson bribery case, his own involvement in the investigation and his view that Swainson was "framed". Kavanagh also discusses the turmoil on the Court in the mid-1970s and talks candidly about his colleagues, including Justices Mary Coleman, Charles Levin, John Fitzgerald, Thomas Brennan, Thomas M. Kavanagh, James Ryan, and Dorothy Comstock Riley. After 1976, Kavanagh says, the Court stabilzed and a new spirit of good will and collegiality was embraced by all of the justices. Kavanagh covers a wide range of general topics, including legislative apportionment, mandatory arbitration, the difficulty of campaigning for election, judicial conferences, the Michigan Supreme Court's involvement with the State Bar of Michigan and its disciplinary procedures, term limits for Chief Justices, and the selection process for Supreme Court Justices. He finishes by describing his speech to the Kalamazoo County Bar Association, which was titled, "Pot, Pornography, and Prostitution," by the program organizers.
- Date Created:
- 1990-11-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Interviews with Michigan State Supreme Court Justices
- Description:
- Part 1: Michigan Supreme Court Justice Thomas E. Brennan talks about his family history, his father and mother, attending Catholic school, and the University of Detroit Law School, opening his own law practice, being elected to the Common Pleas Court, being appointed to the Circuit Court by Governor Romney in 1963, being elected to the Michigan Supreme Court in 1966, and becoming Chief Justice in 1969. Brennan says that practicing law prepared him well for the rigors of being a judge. Justice Brennan also discusses what he calls "the myth of non-partisanship, the nature of democracy, the political nature of the selection of Chief Justice, the notion of representation in a democracy, the nature of leadership, the establishment of the State Appellate Defenders Office, the creation of the State Bar Grievance Board in 1969, the election process for judges in the Detroit area, the establishment of a Criminal division of the Detroit District Court, economic stability, civil disorder, and the 1967 race riots in Detroit. Part 2: Michigan Supreme Court Justice Thomas Brennan talks about judicial activism and the prospective vs. retrospective changing of Common Law, using humor in writing court opinions, and making decisions by law or by conscience in a judicial context and whether his Catholicism is an issue in performing his public duties. Brennan also discusses the controversy surrounding his founding of the Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing and the school's mission of offering practical scholarship to a broad and diverse study body. Part 3: Michigan Supreme Court Justice Thomas E. Brennan talks about a case concerning the apportionment of the Michigan Legislature in the 1970s, having his portrait presented to the Michigan Supreme Court in 1980, and his activities since leaving the court in 1973.
- Date Created:
- 1991-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Interviews with Michigan State Supreme Court Justices
- Description:
- Michigan Supreme Court Justice Charles L. Levin talks about his childhood and youth in Detroit, Michigan. Levin warmly remembers his parents, Judge Theodore Levin and Rhoda Katzin Levin, recounts his family's immigration from Eastern Europe and the hardships they overcame to establish themselves in America. Levin also talks about his Jewish upbringing in Detroit, his religious beliefs, his father's death, his mother's character, and his own marriage, children, and divorce.
- Date Created:
- 2002-11-04T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Interviews with Michigan State Supreme Court Justices
- Description:
- Michigan Supreme Court Justice Theodore Souris discusses his family history, living in Detroit and then Ann Arbor as a student, joining the Air Force in 1943, and finally returning to the University of Michigan in 1945 to finish his undergraduate degree and complete law school. Souris also talks about knowing Michigan legends G. Mennen Williams and Neil Staebler, practicing law after graduating, being involved in the election recounts of 1950 and 1952, and his unexpected appointment to the Michigan Supreme Court. Souris says that his first weeks on the Court were challenging, but that he worked quickly to initiate needed changes in such matters as the process of acquiring copies of briefs and creating "Window Reports." He also weighs in on the statistical analyses of the Court's work, court processes, writing opinions, the relationships of Justices during his tenure and the work of such colleagues as Justices Talbot Smith and George Edwards. The Michigan Supreme Court confronted many thorny legal issues during his time, Souris says and chief among these were Michigan court reform, the one-man grand jury law, government immunity, presumption of undue influence, summary judgment, and the right of discovery. Souris discusses each and how such cases and court decisions affect the creation and revision of laws.
- Date Created:
- 1990-11-05T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Interviews with Michigan State Supreme Court Justices
- Description:
- Part 1: Michigan Supreme Court Justice George C. Edwards discusses his family history, his father, his education at Southern Methodist University and Harvard, his early jobs, serving in the military, his involvement in the labor movement, and his appointment to the Probate Court bench. He also talks about various cases heard by the Michigan Supreme Court during his tenure, including Comstock versus General Motors, Scholle versus Hare, Baker versus Carr, West Versus Norther Tree. Edwards says that he eventually resigned from the Court to become Police Commissioner of Detroit and that he has always aspired to be a writer and is currently writing a book about his father. Edwards' wife Peg joins the interview in progress. Part 2: Michigan Supreme Court Justice George C. Edwards talks about various issues and cases, including judicial selection, partisanship, juvenile injury, election recounts and the abuse of paper ballots, the People's Savings Bank, and Certain-Teed Products. He also discusses his colleagues, most notably, Justices Eugene F. Black, Talbot Smith, Leland Carr, John Voelker, and Harry Kelly.
- Date Created:
- 1990-12-03T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Interviews with Michigan State Supreme Court Justices
- Description:
- Erwin Simon, one of the first Michigan Supreme Court law clerks, talks about his professional and personal relationship with Justice Henry Butzel, his youth in Lansing, Michigan, his time at the University of Michigan Law School and having a very difficult time finding a job in 1937, during the Great Depression. He also describes accepting an offer to clerk for Butzel, his duties in that position, his close personal relationship with the Justice and his family and finally marrying Butzel's daughter. Simon says that meeting Justice Butzel was the best thing that ever happened to him.
- Date Created:
- 2007-06-20T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Interviews with Michigan State Supreme Court Justices
- Description:
- Part 1: Mary S. Coleman, the first woman elected to the Michigan Supreme Court and the first to serve as its Chief Justice, talks about her early life in Texas, her family's move to Washington, D.C., her parents, her father's death, her high school years, meeting Oliver Wendall Holmes, dating, attending the University of Maryland and attending law school at George Washington University, where she was often the only female in her classes. She also talks about getting her law degree in 1939, marrying her husband a few days later, starting a job at the USDA, and later moving to her husband's hometown of Marshall, Michigan to support his bid for the Michigan Senate in 1948. Part 2: Mary S. Coleman, the first woman elected to the Michigan Supreme Court and the first to serve as its Chief Justice, talks about her husband Creighton's campaign for the Michigan Senate in 1948, his legal practice, her life as a homemaker, her husband's law firm, and pursuing her own legal career in Michigan. Coleman also discusses dealing with sexism in the judicial system, the respectful way she was treated by judges, her interest in children's issues, foster care, juvenile court and social work, and how she eventually become a court referee and later, in 1960, a Probate Court judge. Coleman calls herself a "conservative" and then describes her support for the Equal Rights Amendment and other women's rights initiatives. She concludes by describing the working environment within the Court, its terrible reputation, the hostility between the justices, the divisions over workers compensation cases, the influence of unions, the Swainson scandal and its impact on the Court and her own role in deciding key cases. Part 3: Mary S. Coleman, the first woman elected to the Michigan Supreme Court and the first to serve as its Chief Justice, concludes her reminisces of her time on the Court. Coleman describes efforts to reorganize the lower court system to bring efficiency and clarity to the system, working with unions, Coleman Young, and others to influence legislation restructuring the courts and breaking with old systems of patronage and favor. Coleman also discusses fighting to get better pay for her court employees while she was a Probate judge, attempts to bring fairness and equity to pay levels across the state, the battle over reapportionment following the 1980 census, her resignation from the Court so that Governor William Milliken could appoint her replacement, various colleagues on the Court and the support from her family which she says she has enjoyed throughout her career.
- Date Created:
- 1991-01-01T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Interviews with Michigan State Supreme Court Justices
- Description:
- Michigan Supreme Court Justice Otis M. Smith talks about growing up in Memphis, Tenn, his family history, working multiple jobs to pay for college, serving in the U.S. military during World War II, entering law school after the war, and his early professional jobs. Smith says that from a very early age he was filled with a burning desire to succeed in life and to make his mark. Smith also discusses the judicial selection process, his own appointment to the Michigan Supreme Court, the geographic makeup of the Court during his tenure, selection of a Chief Justice, and the interaction of the Justices. He then goes on to discuss his colleagues, including Justices Gene Black, Harry Kelly, John Dethmers, George Edwards, Theodore Souris, Thomas Kavanagh, Michael O'Hara and Paul Adams. Smith speaks eloquently of the serious nature of conducting Court business and discusses his own decision making style, and the issues he dealt with in cases such as Scholle versus Hare, the People versus Lochricco, and the Fenestra, Mallory, and Pittsfield Township cases.
- Date Created:
- 1990-10-23T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Interviews with Michigan State Supreme Court Justices