AM READING about Dewey's Michigan years with great interest. I thought it was a long reach in time for President John Tyler's
children, since his first child was born in 1815 and his 14th child died in 1947. That's 131 years. But Dewey and I top that. He was born in 1859,
and I met him in 1951 in Honolulu when I was a rookie reporter for the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Now I'm retired and 79, and thus our
combined reach is an incredible 137 years.
I just looked up my story on microfilm, front page, Jan. 18, 1951. Dewey, wife and adopted children Adrienne and John Jr. arrived on
the liner President Wilson. In those days reporters took a tug from Honolulu Harbor to a spot off Diamond Head and boarded the liners from
the bobbing tug. Scary stuff. Then we pursued our prey by running around decks trying to find the VIPs before the ship docked downtown
and they disappeared in a taxi.
Found Dewey stretched out in a deck chair, very frail. He was 91 and obviously not in great shape. I tried to make conversation but
failed. He looked at the mountains, smiled, but did not seem to react to the many people buzzing around him, many asking questions.
My story said he first visited Hawaii in 1900, returned in 1921. The story reflected my need to fill space, to pad with facts about the
great philosopher since he literally had nothing to say. My story said he was rewriting his
An Introduction to Reconstruction in
Philosophy. I mentioned progressive education and his research at the University of Chicago Lab School, listed his many books and his years at
Michigan, Minnesota and Columbia. Just facts, no quotes.
My father had been involved a bit in PTA in Ann Arbor so that, as a kid, and long before that day in Honolulu Harbor, I knew something
of Dewey's pragmatism, reputation and influence in the education we all received in the first half of this century.
It was an honor to attempt an interview, but I uncovered no profound thoughts that day, not with boys diving for coins, the Royal
Hawaiian Band playing, hula girls, hotel touts yelling, lei sellers running around, confusion everywhere on that sunny morning.
HAVING GROWN up in Fenton, Michigan, once known as the whipsocket capital of the world, I read with interest the article on John
Dewey, whose wife Alice's Fenton roots are mentioned. Indeed, the early years of Fenton were filled with interesting people, as can be seen in the
book Born Strangers (written by Alice's niece, Helen Topping Miller), which chronicles in fictional form some of Alice Chipman Dewey's
ancestors, and in Ruth Ann Silbar's book A Time to
Remember. It would appear that the Dewey children were named after Alice's forbears:
Frederick and Evelina for her grandparents and Gordon and Lucy for her parents. I must say, however, that I have found no evidence that
Gordon Chipman was appointed postmaster at Fenton. Franklin Ellis, in his history of Genesee County, writes that Charles Turner was
postmaster from 1853 to 1861, and Ruth Ann Silbar gives the same dates. The 1900 census lists Alice Dewey's birth as Sept. 1858, and John
Dewey's as October 1859.
. . . Fall 1997
Michigan Today