The first time I went to the Michigan State Fair was when I was about six, and I have vivid memories of eating pancakes with my father, watching newborn baby pigs, and seeing, for the first time, the governor.
Of course, I doubt I had any idea what a governor was. But I was fascinated because he was a tall, kind of goofy-looking guy with a green polka-dotted bow tie, and a funny name. It was Soapy Williams. I thought it was very funny that an adult man was named Soapy, and I think for some time I had him confused with Soupy Sales.
Soapy doesn’t show up any more, nor does my father. But the pancakes and the baby pigs will still be there. The Michigan State Fair has been giving generations of kids similar memories since 1849.
It started in Detroit, if you don’t count a failed effort in Ann Arbor ten years earlier. Though it moved around a lot in the early years, through Kalamazoo, Jackson, Battle Creek to Adrian, Saginaw, Lansing, and Grand Rapids, the fair has been on its present site at the Detroit fairgrounds on Woodward Avenue for the last century.
I don’t go to the fair every year, and at this point, don’t usually go unless I can grab small children to take with me.
But I like knowing the Michigan State Fair is there. And I think many of us like knowing that it will be back every summer. What we don’t realize is that we came close to losing it entirely, like Bob-Lo Island or the Belle Isle Aquarium or other icons of our past.
The fair was struggling in 1993, when Governor John Engler, a Republican, appointed John Hertel, a Democrat, to run it. The place had gotten a little tacky, rundown and a bit sad. The fair perpetually lost money, and the state was running out of patience. Had that been the case the last few years, with the state budget in perpetual crisis, it is easy to imagine the politicians deciding that we just couldn’t afford the fair anymore.
John Hertel seemed an odd choice for Engler at the time – a Republican governor appointing a Macomb County Democrat.
But it was a brilliant move. Hertel seems to be a rare creature – a politician who tends to accomplish more, not less, than he is usually given credit for. And he revitalized, and probably saved, the Michigan State Fair, by a combination of shrewd financial stewardship and intelligent planning. Add to that marketing savvy, an instinct for showmanship, and a real love of what is at the heart of the state fair – agriculture and animals. Hertel’s hobby is breeding draft horses.
One thing’s for sure; he will have a lot on his plate in his new job, which will be nothing less than to invent a regional transportation system. But if he is as successful there as with the state fair, we all may be taking some form of light rail to work pretty soon.
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