The Governor By the Bay

Bill Milliken's love of the outdoors began as a boy

By Dave Dempsey

Among the first things you notice when you visit Helen and William Milliken are the floor-to-ceiling windows on the west side of their living room. Displaying the west arm of Grand Traverse Bay in its many moods, and the green ridge that rises above it on the far side, the view from the windows is a more impressive work of art than a Picasso, Rembrandt or Ansel Adams.

Is it any coincidence that Milliken, who served as Michigan's governor longer than any other person - almost 14 years from January 1969 to the end of 1982 - is also remembered justly as the governor who did the most to protect Michigan's natural beauty?

The Millikens have lived in this house for more than half a century. The World War II veteran and his wife built it in the 1950s on land provided by his parents. The aspiring young politician returned to it after fatiguing days knocking on doors in his first political campaign in 1960. The thrice-elected governor found refuge on the Bay during hundreds of weekends during his tenure. Milliken today still enjoys observing its changeable moods.

William Milliken's connection to the bay reaches back far beyond the 1950s, however. Born in Traverse City in 1922, he grew up playing on its shores, swimming and fishing in its waters, and admiring its majesty.

At the family's summer cottage a few miles east of town along Acme Creek, the governor-to-be began to appreciate the wonder of the natural world.

"I spent many wonderful summer days and nights there," he recalled. "You could paddle right up the stream in a canoe. We fished for trout, never with very much success. I learned every part of that shoreline."

But this seeming paradise was not untroubled. Two weeks after Milliken was born in March 1922, it was disclosed that the Traverse City drinking water supply was contaminated. A state sanitary engineer ordered the city to add four to five pounds of chlorine per million gallons to the supply to disinfect it - but the city's chlorine machine was malfunctioning. "Traverse City is faced by a certain epidemic if proper caution is not taken immediately, and by every man, woman and child who drinks city water," warned Acting Health Officer H. B. Kyselk. The next day, the Traverse City Record-Eagle editorialized, "We have known in the back of our heads for thirty years that such a situation would arise. We knew it was impossible and unreasonable to believe that we could pour a solid stream of sewage into the Grand Traverse Bay for several decades and then believe the water supply was pure for drinking purposes."

Milliken's father, James, served six years as mayor of Traverse City. (He would later serve as a state senator as well). One of the elder Milliken's priorities was construction of a sewage treatment plant to improve sanitation and help clean up Grand Traverse Bay. Voters sided with James Milliken's position, rejecting a proposal to let a private corporation operate the sewage plant by a margin of 1,699 to 212 and authorizing a bond issue to pay for a public plant.

The combination of a personal affection for the bay and a personal connection to James Milliken, a community leader who enjoyed trout fishing and advocated looking out for the purity of local waters, is likely only one of the reasons William Milliken is known as Michigan's greenest governor. But it may be the most important reason.

Milliken found solace in the woods and water

While governor, he led conservation fights that are still paying dividends for Michigan citizens. He took political risks to support a law giving all citizens standing to sue polluters, to advocate a successful ballot proposal to clean up litter on Michigan's roadsides with a bottle deposit, to cut down on harmful phosphorus fouling the Great Lakes with algae blooms, and to win passage of the nation's strongest state-level wetland protection act.

Milliken is a living reminder that Republican conservation leadership has deep roots. Theodore Roosevelt is still revered as the first Presidential proponent of conservation and the man who warned that America could no longer squander its natural resources in a short-sighted lust for wealth.  Roosevelt found solace in the vast open lands of the Dakotas; Milliken found solace, and made many of his most important career choices, in the woods at the tip of the Old Mission Peninsula, looking out to an open horizon.

Had Bill Milliken not been raised by the bay, Michigan today might well be a more polluted, more unhealthy, less scenic and less livable place. If we're going to have more public officials who do the right thing by the environment, we'll have to make sure they're raised close to nature - or that they learn to appreciate the value of place in adult years. Place is a big part of the Milliken story.

Dave Dempsey is the author of William G. Milliken: Michigan's Passionate Moderate published in 2006 by the University of Michigan Press.