Mary Morgan and Dave Askins
“We didn’t get married because the Chinese government said we have to!” says Dave Askins indignantly. He and Mary Morgan–editor and publisher, respectively, of the late Ann Arbor Chronicle–tied the...
Read MoreProfiles
Scott Campbell
In 1998, Scott Campbell was working for Sprint PCS in Kansas City. The cell phone company had recently launched America’s first digital network, and Campbell was developing new services for it. While excited about the...
Read MoreBen Darragh
On a Monday afternoon, a group of middle-school boys is bowling at Bel-Mark Lanes. “Way to go, man!” one kid compliments another who’s just knocked down several pins. “Thanks!” the other boy replies...
Read MoreSharon McRill
Sharon McRill’s office is illuminated by a pair of vintage-style lamps, so pea green and oddly shaped that any vintage shop would be envious. But McRill, forty-eight, didn’t pay a dime for them–or for the...
Read MoreLife After Everest
Moni Mulepati, thirty-three, has shared her remarkable wedding story so often you sense she’s a little impatient with yet another retelling. But the Nepal native knows her headline-making marriage in 2005 helps promote the...
Read More
Ann Arborite Arie Lipsky
As the Ann Arbor Symphony rehearsed for a children’s concert, conductor Arie Lipsky was about to give the downbeat for the song “Puppy Love.” Mary Steffek Blaske, the symphony’s executive director, handed...
Read MoreA Fresh Look
“All the world’s a stage” is a fitting speech delivered amidst the greenery of Nichols Arboretum. As You Like It, the lighthearted love story being performed as part of the Shakespeare in the Arb series, now in...
Read MoreDave Lamkin
It’s a rainy June afternoon, and All Star Driver Education instructor Dave Lamkin is giving two high school sophomores their fifth driving lesson. The girls remind him that today they’ll practice parallel parking and...
Read MoreEle’s Place
The monogrammed necklace of her dad’s initials she wears, and the quilt made of his old T-shirts on her bed, are just two ways Oceana (Oh-SHE-anna) Bailey stays close to the memory of Richard Bailey—the father she adored...
Read MoreAnn Arborite Hiawatha Bailey
At the Blind Pig, Hiawatha Bailey says, “they know how to treat a rocker right.” When he’s not crooning behind the mic or listening to other acts in the bar’s main room, you may find him downstairs in the...
Read MoreGayle Hurn
On a sunny morning in early May, no one is in the water at Fuller Pool, but about two dozen city staffers and volunteers are milling around it, adults setting up lounge chairs and little kids bouncing a basketball or picking...
Read MoreLatania Fair
When there’s a late-night crisis at Alpha House, the local shelter for homeless families, shelter director Latania Fair gets the call. It may be a staff member wondering whether a client needs to go to the emergency room....
Read MoreMartin Contreras and Keith Orr
Over coffee one morning last October, Martin Contreras, fifty-four, and Keith Orr, fifty-six, discussed whether they should get married that day. “Let’s do it,” urged Contreras. They had been a couple for...
Read MoreAnn Arborite Josh Greenberg
Josh Greenberg has just landed in Uganda. It’s the summer after his sophomore year at Duke, where he founded a nonprofit called the Progressive Health Partnership. He’s raised the money to start a small medical...
Read MoreEvan Dayringer and Britten Stringwell
They’ve created a line of raw energy bars, established a small farm, and revived the “Yellow Barn” community arts venue. But Evan Dayringer, thirty-two, and Britten Stringwell, thirty, agree that their latest...
Read MoreFrom Fashionista to Businesswoman
“Believe it or not, I had already planned my life for the next twenty years once I hit eighteen,” Anistia Thomas says. The “plan” sounds like a combination of teenage pipe dreams: design fashion for...
Read MoreSusan Murphy
“What’s the game here?” U-M prof Susan Murphy asks as she projects strings of equations and approximations in a crowded classroom in the Dennison Building. Students in this advanced U-M statistics class write...
Read MoreRiver Hero
Standing on a footbridge next to Argo Dam, Laura Rubin likes what she sees: a group carries inner tubes toward the new Argo Cascades, bikers and runners whiz by, a couple of paddleboarders balance clumsily on the pond, a few...
Read MoreSports Shrink
Dan Saferstein knows how important sports are to a lot of Ann Arbor kids–and to their families. “In this city, parents have high expectations,” he says. “College [athletic] scholarships become kind of a...
Read More