For more than 40 years, retired teacher Dave McMacken has been entertaining Gratiot residents with tales from the past.
McMacken, a county historian, continue his storytelling at 7 p.m. on June 26 at the St. Louis Historical Society Depot when he will speak on the ups and downs of Alma’s former Lobdell Emory Company.
Bringing of lawn chairs is encouraged. If rain occurs, the event will be held in the First Methodist Church.
“It’s an amazing story,” McMacken said. “Lobdell supplied 80 percent of all trucks and cars with wooden steering wheels.”
The company also made everything from broom handles to Spaulding baseball bats at various times. And it once employed the largest number of skilled wood workers in the country, he said.
At one time Lobdell employed up to 600 people. During the Great Depression, less than a handful worked there.
But Lobdell is only one of the county’s history lessons McMacken has shared with his audiences.
His first program was before the Alma Women’s Club in April 1975. He spoke on lumber baron Ammi Wright and the businesses and changes he brought to Alma.
“For me the most interesting fact about Wright was that he was the biggest farmer in Michigan,” he said. “He had 25 farms on 3,500 acres.”
The following year McMacken presented a program to the art club on some of the works of art found in the Alma cemetery.
In 1979, he spoke on the Alma Sanitarium to an “Evening in the Park” audience.
Throughout the decades, McMacken has also conducted walking - and bus riding - tours of the city.
In June 1987, he gave a program to the historical society called “Over Their Dead Bodies” about epitaphs found in the cemeteries.
McMacken has written 12 local history books and he’s also written a very popular, factionalized story of a little girl named Katie. He tells what Katie’s life was like growing up in the winter during the settler days.
He’s told that story several times to delighted children.
In the earliest days of the county, Alma was a pretty rough town, he said.
“It was like the Wild West,” he said. “There were so many rough people. It was a gambling community. This was before and after the Civil War.”
It was decided then that Alma needed some morality, some religion and churches.
So a Unitarian minister was found in the county and he taught Sunday school.
There weren’t any other professing Christians around but they could read the gospel and did so.
“By the 1870s, it started to calm down,” he said.
For many of McMacken’s followers, his program on the Civil War is a favorite.
From Fort Sumter to Appomattox, a Gratiot soldier was present and the stories they brought home are worth the re-telling; audiences remain fascinated.
“The Civil War is a story that tells itself of course,” McMacken said.
“Love and Romance in Early Gratiot County” is another favorite. “Tales from the Mausoleum” is as well.
McMacken hasn’t only spoken to Gratiot County residents. In addition to Shepherd and Mt. Pleasant, he’s travelled to Birmingham, Novi and Rochester to present his programs.