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But when it comes to the biggest area news ever reported in these pages, there’s no beating this Big Three:
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The Sit-Down Strike of • The Beecher tornado of 1953. • The intertwined stories of William C. “Billy” Durant and the establishment of the auto industry and General Motors in the early years of the 20th century. That’s the consensus of Journal news and features staffers who ranked the biggest local stories of our 125-year history. The top three were winners by huge margins. Recent top stories include the killing of first-grader Kayla Rolland by a classmate in 2000, GM layoffs and hard times in the 1980s, the 1989 movie “Roger & Me” and its lasting impact on Flint’s image and the double whammy from Buick in 1999: the loss of division headquarters to Detroit and the closure of the Buick City Assembly Center. The final picks came from a list that spanned everything from the end of the lumber era and rise of carriage-making to the “Blizzard of 2000” in December. Of course, not everyone agrees with the results. David White, a Flint native and curator of collections at the Sloan Museum, said “Roger & Me” would not have made his list, but one of the city’s worst natural disasters would have.
“The flood (of 1947) would probably stick out in a lot of people’s minds,” he said. That year, an ice-choked Flint River, fed by snows and rains, jumped its banks and split downtown Flint in two, covering roads and bridges, flooding and wrecking buildings and stranding residents. Memories of that flood and others helped spur the flood control effort that developed into Riverbank Park in the 1970s. Journal front pages from the flood are common would-be donations to the museum, White said, second only to papers covering the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. The flood ranked 18th on The Journal’s list. As for Michael Moore’s harsh cinematic look at Flint and GM, White said: “I believe there is overreaction to that movie in the community.” White also said Journal voters might have overemphasized recent events. News from the late 1800s, he said, would have included the rise of the carriage industry, the end of the lumber era and the creation of the city park system championed by carriage maker J. Dallas Dort. “Those were big news-of-the-day articles. If there were anyone around who remembered them, they’d be on your list for sure.” The Sit-Down Strike rates as important Journal history for more than one reason. Objectively, it was a huge story and a turning point for labor. But “objectively” is not the way we treated it at the time.
“There was a lot of animosity between the union and the paper at that time,” recalls sit-down striker Bob Keith of Grand Blanc. Keith, 93, remembers workers reading the paper inside Fisher Body No. 1, where he spent 44 days, but few could have expected to see their union cause treated fairly. When previous strikes in the ’30s had been broken by state police, “of course, the paper supported that, too,” Keith said. “Most newspapers was anti-union in those days; The Journal wasn’t the only one,” he said. “Business people had influence with those papers, and labor didn’t.” The slant showed in items such as this lead paragraph from a story Jan. 14, 1937, two weeks into the strike: “Reflecting the sentiment of the people of Flint and other cities where strike conditions have thrown thousands of workers into idleness, the wave of protests voiced by workers opposed to minority rule reached a climax today.” What followed was a list of anti-strike protests in city after city, with not a word from the strikers’ side. A similarly one-sided Jan. 25 story told of a Chevrolet worker group’s telegram to strike leader John L. Lewis, calling him “un-American” and a “menace to the United States and its people.” But after the strike won the UAW the right to bargain with GM, Keith said he saw The Journal’s stance change along with society’s. He said the presidency of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was a turning point. “They didn’t publish as much anti-union after that.” While Sit-Down Strike coverage stretched for weeks, an earlier top story took years to unfold. From A.B.C. Hardy’s Flint Roadster (the first car manufactured in Flint) in 1901 to the birth of Buick in 1903 to Billy Durant’s incorporation of General Motors (he filed the papers in New Jersey) in 1908, the automobile’s climb to domination of the local economy was told one step at a time: • “NEW INDUSTRY FOR FLINT” headlined a 1903 story about “a splendid new manufacturing industry” called the Buick Motor Co. • “BIG FACTORY FOR FLINT” announced the Weston-Mott axle firm’s move to Flint from New York in 1905, and said the development “will bring many skilled mechanics and their families here.” • “WILLIAM C. DURANT IS FEASTED BY FRIENDS AS FLINT’S ‘WIZARD’ ” went on to call Durant the “man who put Vehicle City on the map of the world.” • “FLINT GETS CHEVROLET” led the front page Aug. 9, 1912, as did word that Durant had regained his lost title as president of GM in 1916. The second-place story in The Journal’s poll likely ranks first for area natives in their 50s or older. As with the news of JFK’s death, people who were here can tell you where they were and what they were doing June 8, 1953, when the Beecher tornado struck.
There had been nothing like it in area history — a killer storm with a roar “like 20 freight trains,” one witness said, and a path of devastation that wiped hundreds of buildings off the earth. The human toll: 116 dead, 900 injured. The dead were laid out in rows at a National Guard armory; there was no morgue large enough. For The Journal, it meant a frantic night of perhaps its greatest coverage effort ever, with a cobbled-together staff scrabbling for details, getting their stories and photos to the office in an era with no cellphones, pagers, e-mail or instant digital photography. Photographer Russ Scott happened on the scene purely by accident as he drove home from Saginaw. His photos, and those of photographer Dante Levi made the “extra” edition just hours later, on pages laid out by a sports staffer. Sportswriter Len Hoyes spent 16 hours reporting from the armory. The list of great and terrible moments and stories goes on: • In 1967, Floyd J. McCree, chosen Flint’s first black mayor, stood at the center of furious debate over an open housing ordinance in legal segregation’s dying days and told Flint and the world, “I’m not going to sit up here any longer and live an equal-opportunity lie.” A year later, Flint became the first city in the nation to uphold open housing in a public vote. James A. Sharp Jr. became the city’s first popularly elected black mayor in 1983. Woodrow Stanley is the first mayor to be elected to three terms in the modern era. • The riches of an auto baron went to public good in 1926, when Charles Stewart Mott set up a foundation to promote a just, equitable and sustainable society. “It seems to me that every person, always, is in a kind of informal partnership with his community,” he would later write. The foundation’s endowment passed the $2-billion mark in 1998. • Kayla Rolland’s death — one 6-year-old shot by another — still had the power to shock and sadden after years of anxious reporting about young “superpredators,” school violence and the never-ending debate over guns in America. • Community education opened school buildings and ballfields to the larger community after hours. The concept might seem obvious and universal today — even with reduced rosters of arts and education programs at many schools — but once, in the ’30s, it was all new and all Flint. C.S. Mott helped finance the dream of physical education director Frank J. Manley, and the likes of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt sang its praises in her nationally syndicated column. • In 1999, just four years before a centennial celebration would have been in order, Buick moved its divisional headquarters from Flint to Detroit as part of a GM consolidation. Production of LeSabres — our last Buick model — stopped in Flint. References to “the Buick City” were suddenly anachronistic. And the proud Buick City expressway billboards at each end of town came down.
Some notable stories never even made the top 20 — creative features such as the Class of 2000 series that followed students throughout their K-12 years, and a Journal visit to Flint sister city Togliatti, Russia (then the Soviet Union) in 1991; development reports about new, lifestyle-changing freeways and shopping malls; shocking news about the horrific contamination and costly cleanup at the Berlin & Farro toxic waste dump in Gaines Township; even undercover investigations such as a probe of GM workers “buying” sick leaves and infiltrations of white supremacist groups, both in the early 1980s. Some overlooked stories were big, but only for specific communities. Among them: • The 1980 burning and eventual rebuilding of the Flushing depot — or the triple slayings at a convenience store there in 1978 that were the city’s first murders in decades or perhaps ever. • In Chesaning, the Showboat’s success and the Peet Packing debacle. • City status for Burton, and failed cityhood for Flint Township. • A 1903 collision of two circus trains in rail hub Durand that killed 22 people — and generated three Journal extras. • The 1976 opening of Crossroads Village in Genesee. • The accidental creation of Deer Park in Grand Blanc when two deer jumped into a fenced area owned by GM. • Owosso’s Tom Dewey loses the 1948 presidential race to Harry S. Truman — except in a famously incorrect headline. • In 1881, a small fire that began in North Branch evolved into a days-long firestorm that killed nearly 300 people, damaged 3,400 buildings and left 1,500 people homeless as it consumed much of the Thumb area. And lest we leave out any other obvious biggies, among other runners up on The Journal’s list were: • AutoWorld, 1984: The failed automotive theme park came to typify the troubled 1980s in Flint. • Timothy J. McVeigh, Terry L. Nichols and the Oklahoma City bombing, 1995: The worst terrorist bombing ever in the United States killed 168 people and turned out to have local connections. Nichols grew up in Lapeer, and McVeigh spent time in the Thumb community of Decker. • Crack and crime in the 1980s: Along with the crumbling economy came a crushing addiction to the form of smokable cocaine called crack. Drug gang turf wars became the rule in some parts of the city, and addiction- and trafficking-related crime — robberies and burglaries, prostitution, child abuse and neglect, shootings and slayings — became epidemic, culminating in the execution of six people in a Russell Street house where drug activity ruled — the city’s worst-ever mass murder. Homicide totals hit record highs. • Creation of the Cultural Center in the 1950s-60s. • World War II’s “Arsenal of Democracy”: military production that ruled the area economy, galvanized the community and set the stage for a postwar boom.
Sunday Editor Jeff Johnston is coordinator of the 125th anniversary section. He started at The Journal in 1994. Johnston can be reached at (810) 766-6337 or jjohnston@ flintjournal.com. 
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