The Milkman in Willow Run, 1947

These two notes suggest that Willow Run had at least one milkman servicing the complex. Note how polite the yellow note is! You can't quite see it on the note, but it has four creases indicating it was at some point folded in half and then half again, perhaps to insert in the top of a milk bottle?

Mr. Milkman-- Jan. 25, 1947

Please leave our quart of sweet milk--and one quart of chocolate milk.
We're leaving a few extra pennies behind the bottles--in case chocolate milk is more than 20 cents a quart.
In the bottle here is 19 cents qt. sweet milk 20 cents qt. chocolate [total] 39 cents
Thanks a lot!

Click for larger image.

Construction of Willow Run Bomber Plant, Spring 1941

A photographer perched on the catwalk on top of a nearby train overlooks the groundbreaking of the bomber plant. Click twice for full size image.

Growing up in 1960s Willow Run

Dusty D had the privilege of hearing about one man's childhood growing up in 1960s Ypsilanti. He gave me his permission to write it up so long as I specified his name as "Dave P." I was enthralled by his recollections and I loved getting a peek at Willow Run in the background and its sometimes troubled evolution through the 40s, 50s, and 60s. At any rate, the Citizen was kind to publish the resultant story; thanks to them as always. Here's the story.

Yet Another Willow Run-Themed Book, But One That Isn't a "Piece of..." er, Junk

Dusty D is contributing another Ypsi-themed book to the "Ypsilanti" collection of books, this one from my own "local history" bookshelf. It is "Willow Run: A Study of Industrialization and Cultural Inadequacy," by U-M sociology professor Lowell Julliard Carr and Detroit Institute of Technology sociology professor James Edson Stermer.

This stunning sociological study focuses on the culture within the housing projects surrounding the bomber plant.

Readers will find an account of a family overwintering in a tent--and--giving birth to a baby in said tent, who, when visited by indefatigable Ypsilanti social worker Inez Graves, was wrapped in newspaper.

The book offers a gripping portrait of the day-to-day life of the Ypsituckians (I use that word with pride) in the shoddy Willow Run housing projects, and how they were regarded by "respectable" Ypsilantians who watched, with horror, as the population of the bomber workers ballooned to 42,331 in 1943.

Descriptions of the seedy private trailer camps that sprang up, the inadequacy of hygienic facilities, and the scrappy efforts of the Willow Village/Willow Lodge residents to maintain a decent life rivet the reader.

Dusty D strongly recommends this fascinating book, an invaluable and unvarnished portrait of the lives of the bomber plant workers. It's available on Amazon!