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Gougeon Brothers windmill blade from the 1970s was made using epoxy now sold worldwide.

Bay City Type Entrepreneurs Needed to Revive State's Economy

Remembering Arthur Summerfield, the Sovereign Brothers, Warren Avis, etc.

August 21, 2005       Leave a Comment
By: Dave Rogers

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The health of the Michigan economy is on everybody's mind.

What's happening with the auto industry? Will Dow Chemical ever expand again in Michigan? Will Delphi survive?

Governor Jennifer Granholm is upbeat, claiming "our direct efforts helped us create or retain more than 43,000 jobs.

The governor is stressing entrepreneurship. When she comes here to keynote the Chamber's "Bay City On The Go" event Sept. 20 she will see a town built by entrepreneurship.

The Guv will be able to emerse herself and her staff in the kind of vitality that entrepreneurs like Bill Gregory, Paul Rowley, Jim Reid, Meade, Joel and Jan Gougeon, Tom, Jim and Bill Brennan, Scott Holman, Art Dore and others personify right here in Bay City. And hear of Bay City's glorious history of entrepreneurship that built a community.



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Oh, by the way, Governor, check out ourfabulous downtown and luxury condos and gentrified downtown that are bringing new residents from everywhere. Old industrial sites have been turned into upscale residential palaces of unequaled attractiveness. Everybody wants to move to Bay City these days.

The governor reports on state successes: "We attracted more than $2 billion in new automotive investment. Two major automotive product lines moved from Mexico back home to Michigan.

"We won the battle for a corporate headquarters when BorgWarner chose Michigan over Chicago for its home."

The state was rated #1 for corporate expansions and relocations this year, she asserted. Traverse City was named the #1 small town in the United States for new business, and, for the second year in a row, Michigan was named the #2 state in the country for its business climate.

All this is wonderful stuff, my friend Oscar the pessimistic accountant drawls from behind his computer. Oscar says Michigan is still dependenton the auto industry. We need diversification. Of course, he's right.

Oscar is a believer in Bay City and the people who built the town. You see, Oscar's father was one of the shakers and movers when Bay City was shaking and moving, back in the 1950s and 1960s.

He knows that Bay City survived the end of the lumbering era through entrepreneurship: free enterprise. When the timber ran out, Capt. Ben Boutell hauled logs from Canada in huge chain booms towed by tugs that kept our mills going for another decade.

Arthur Summerfield, born on a farm in Pinconning in 1899, left school at age 13, and went to work in a Flint auto plant. He soon quit and became one of the nation's leading auto dealers. An active Republican, Summerfield and Dwight Eisenhower were going to take a new Dow Chemical product called Saran Wrap nationwide, unless Ike got elected President in 1952. The rest, they say, is history, and the product was returned to Dow. Summerfield became Ike's Postmaster General. And, proving that what goes around comes around, Saran Wrap is now made by in Bay City by S.C. Johnson & Son Co.



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William Clements came to town, put in a gas light system and stayed to found the Industrial Works from a small struggling foundry at Columbus and Washington. He merged it with the Brown Hoisting Company of Cleveland in 1928, with the help of $1 million raised by theChamber of Commerce.

Otto and William Sovereign put a small ad in a national magazine in the early 1900s and built a ready-cut housing business that grossed a total of about $50 million and spawned a new industry.

Warren Avis was a salesman living on Garfield Avenue in Bay City when World War II broke out. He signed on, became an Army Air Corps pilot and traveled the world. Noticing that his crews were often stranded at airports, Avis revolutionized the fledgling car rental businessby putting outlets at airports. It took Hertz years to catch up. Avis sold out for $8 million in 1958 and went on to make new fortunes in condominiums and now runs one of the nation's most successful tech parks, Avis Farms, in Ann Arbor. He is 83 and still going strong.

George Sermon took a cast-off Dow Chemical Co. technology that may have been the key to the production of the atomic bomb and created a new industry in graphite purification. A successor and several spin-off firms still operatehere and in Saginaw and copycat firms dot the globe. (See "Atomic Energy Contract," MyBayCity.com Aug. 14, 2005).

The Brennan brothers bought a 50 foot lot on the river and started a marina and boat sales in the 1950s. Half a century later they had the state's largest boat sales and marina operation and sold out to Skipper Bud's, a Wisconsin company.

The Gougeon Brothers took an unused technology from the Dow Chemical Co., researched, developed and packaged it and sell it worldwide.It's called the WEST System, and it goes aloft with spacecraft and has revolutionized the use of wood worldwide. Just read their book: "The Gougeon Brothers on Boat Construction."

Scott Holman took a dormant Bay City foundry once the Bay City Shovels and turned it into a space-age producer called Bay Cast, sending products worldwide as well as to the moon. He was named the nation's No. 1 entrepreneur a few years ago.

How about the two young men who started in a garage on 41st Street about a decade ago and created a pace-setting firm in Internet communications? The company, Concentric Network, went public and now is part of a large international firm, XO Communications.

The governor is right on, dude. Entrepreneurship isthe answer to Michigan's job growth dilemma. Here are her words from a recent speech outlining her plans:

"The second step in growing our economy is to diversify and grab the attention of entrepreneurs," the Governor says. "People still say they are going to work at "Ford's" or "Chrysler's," even though the men who created these companies long ago passed away. But we often forget that little guys with big ideas, and the drive to make them happen, started those enormous enterprises. Today, we need to instill that entrepreneurial thinking - to get our residents and our young people imagining that they have the potential to be their own boss, the innovator, the producer of wealth and jobs, the next Peter Karmanos or Charles Stewart Mott.

"New ideas can create entire new industries almost overnight. But our best new ideas in Michigan can also die in the research lab or someone's garage or migrate elsewhere if entrepreneurs don't have access to capital here in our state. Tonight, Iam announcing that my Administration, through the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, is creating three new financial tools to help businesses take root in Michigan and grow new jobs at every stage of development.

"These new funds will leverage federal and private dollars to make more than half a billion dollars available for starting or expanding 21st Century businesses.

"The Emerging Business Fund will provide critical assistance to high tech firms trying to turn research conducted at Michigan universities into commercial products. Each matching state dollar we provide through the Fund will allow these companies to obtain eight dollars in federal Small Business Innovation and Research funding.

"The VentureMichigan Fund will give technology start-ups in our Technology Tri-Corridor access to the venture capital they need to become successful job producing businesses."And our Small Business Growth Fund will give our small and medium-sized firms - the engines of so much of Michigan's job growth - access to the capital they need to create new business and employment opportunities.

"Together these three funds send a half-a-billion dollar message to entrepreneurs and businesses - we will help you grow your business and new jobs here in Michigan."

Yup, Governor, you're right, but those entrepreneurs who are going to remake Michigan need models, something to emulate, to be successful. And Bay City has dozens of entrepreneurial models from which to choose. Just ask us!


Mill End store, an 1865 Shearer Brothers building, is already tagged "Wenona Park Place" for promotion of condominiums by developer Jim Reid and partners.


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Dave Rogers

Dave Rogers is a former editorial writer for the Bay City Times and a widely read,
respected journalist/writer in and around Bay City.
(Contact Dave Via Email at carraroe@aol.com)

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