Famous Yoopers and Sorta Yoopers

Michigan's Upper Peninsula, currently with about 300,000 people spread over land making up one third of the state, may be small in population, but we can boast a few famous folks that have a connection with our area.  Here's a short list:

George "The Gipper" Gipp - first football All American for Notre Dame University and immortalized by Ronald Reagan in the movie "Knute Rockne: All American", was born in Laurium on the Keweenaw Peninsula.

John Voelker - a Marquette lawyer, judge and Michigan Supreme Court Justice wrote Anatomy of a Murder under the pen name Robert Traver.  The book was made into a movie of the same name starring Jimmy Stewart.

Tom Izzo - from Iron Mountain, is now Michigan State University's head basketball coach.

Steve Mariucci - also from Iron Mountain, starred as a quarterback at Northern University and later coached the San Francisco 49'ers and Detroit Lions.

Lloyd Carr - also played quarterback for NMU and later coached the University of Michigan's football team.

Earnest Hemingway - no, not really a Yooper.  He did spend a lot of time in the Yoop and based some of his famous short stories about fishing, etc. on U.P. locations.

Jim Harrison - no, this author is not a born Yooper either but he did have a place near Grand Marais for a while and, like Hemingway, wrote a lot of material in and about the U.P.

James Tolkan - (*Tolkan* not Tolkien!) This authentic Yooper is from Calumet.  You might recognize him as the bald high school principal from "Back to the Future" and the gritty navy officer in "Top Gun", as well as many other roles in movies and television.

Terry O'Quinn - Another bald actor - this one from Sault St. Marie - is best known as John Locke in the TV series "Lost".

Some other folks that may not be all that famous to the general public, but who have made impressive contributions:

Clarence Leonard "Kelly" Johnson - from Ishpeming.  First leader of the Lockheed Skunkworks team.  A major contributor to the design of famous aircraft: U2, SR-71 Blackbird, the P-38 and 37 other aircraft.

Glenn T. Seaborg - also from Ishpeming, was the only living person to have an element - seaborgium (Sg) named after him.

Spring? We've Heard of That...

"Spring" on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Upper Michigan is a matter of semantics.  "First Day of Spring" looks nice on the calendar.  However, those words are the only thing Spring-like the Keweenaw will see for a while.

As I sit typing this post here in exile near Saginaw, I can hear at least three different kinds of frog's singing to the moon in the nearby pond.  On the Keweenaw, I hear there is still about a four foot base of snow on the ground.  They've gotten about 280 inches of snow this season - most of it since New Year's.  While southeastern Lower Michigan is drowning in heavy rain this Spring, the Keweenaw has gotten 27 inches of new snow.  Holy Wah!

The well used joke is that the Upper Peninsula has just two seasons:  Winter and a few days of bad skiing in July.  Well, its not that extreme.  However, I *have* seen in snow in June on the Keweenaw.  That has it's good side because cold snap at that time of the year can help kill off those tiny demons called black flies.  Don't get me started on them.

Spring will come to the Keweenaw....eventually.  In late April or early May the Yooper snow factory will just stop.  All of a sudden, it will get really sunny and warm and the snow will melt.  And, melt it does.  *Fast!*  For a week or two any snow packed roads will turn into slushy, chunky battle zones that make quick travel impossible.  Water will be running everywhere - in the streets, in the streams, and yup, in basements.  The rivers will rise with all the former snow rushing down out of the hills.  Streams and ponds that don't exist the other fifty weeks of the year suddenly appear and then overflow.  The forests sing with running water, birds and frogs.

And then, its over.  It's Summer.  Right about the same time everyone else in the Midwest has summer.  Our Spring is somewhat late and very short.  It's Winter, two weeks of Spring and then Summer.

The frogs calling frantically outside my window here in mid-April, Mid-Michigan seem anxious to get going with life right now.  Their U.P. cousins are still slumbering beneath inches of snow and ice.  Things can be so different in the U.P. from the rest of Michigan.

A View of the Bay and Half the Pay

"A view of the Bay and half the pay".   That's one I first heard describing wages in the Traverse City, Michigan area.  It works for the Upper Peninsula, too.  It even fits well for the Keweenaw Peninsula, given its location with Keweenaw Bay on the east side.

Yes, it can be hard to make a living in the Upper Peninsula.  Jobs can be hard to find, especially lately.  Often, they don't pay as much as the same jobs downstate.  Partly because the economy might not support the same wages.  Partly, I believe, some employers seem to believe that just living in the U.P. is part of your compensation package.

And, in a way, it is.  To borrow from the old fishing saying, a bad day at work in the U.P. beats the best day at work anywhere else.  It's just plain better to work in the Yoop.  Many jobs are related to the great natural resources - tourism, logging, mining, etc.  Even jobs in K-12 and higher education have some sort of connection to the outdoors.  Even if you have a hard day at work in a cubicle, in the U.P. you can get in your vehicle after work and be out in the wilderness in minutes.

Workers in Upper Michigan do have to contend with the factor of distance from "the rest of the world".  It is a eleven hour drive from the western tip of the U.P. to Detroit if you drive through Michigan.  The closest "big city" to the western Yoop is Green Bay, Wisconsin.  Shipping of goods is challenge.  Networking with colleagues "down below" is more of a challenge.  Air travel is a true odyssey, starting out at small regional airports using feeder airline flights.  Often there are only a few flights in or out of your local airport.  If you even have a local airport with airline service.  If you do, you often only have one airline to choose from.

The curse of distance can also be a blessing for employers and employees alike.  We Yoopers can have one word response when people say: "Oh, you are so far away from everything".  We say "Exactly".  There is a majority of people in the U.P. who *want* to be far away from "everything".  You can have Detroit.  You can have New York City or L.A.  You can even have Saginaw, Grand Rapids, etc.  Too big for us.  Too many people, too much traffic, too much of just about everything.

Yoopers know how to work and have fun in the middle of nowhere.  Hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, skiing, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, climbing, four wheeling, mountain biking, kayaking, mineral collecting - the list goes on and on.  And some of us even get to do one or more of those things for a living.  Sweet.

True we may not make as much money as a Wall Street banker.  We may not have chic places to eat and party after work.  We may even have to work more than one job to make ends meet.  However, like I said, you can have those other things.  We do just fine up here in the Yoop.