My parents moved to Grand Blanc in the fall of 1966. I was three years old and my brother was about 4 months old. Back then, Grand Blanc was a bedroom community to Flint Michigan where the main industry was General Motors and the manufacturing of cars. The American car companies dominated auto production world wide at the time and the success of GM meant that Flint, and it’s surrounding areas enjoyed the resources that success brought. In the late 1950s and early sixties the Flint Community Schools had a model Community Schools program, utilizing school buildings after school hours with programs for children and adults in each school community. In fact, each school had a Community School Director, who was the school administrator after hours, managing classes like cake decorating, sewing and swimming in the high schools. Frank Manley created and ran ran this program and school administrators from around the country to observe the success in Flint bringing communities together in the schools in the neighborhoods. When I talk to people who were a little older than me who grew up in the Flint area, they describe it as a very close community where people looked out for one another.
Back to Grand Blanc. About the time my parents moved from Flint where my Dad owned a restaurant with my Uncle David, farm land in Grand Blanc was being bought up by developers and new neighborhood were popping up so the schools grew. This boom in Genesee County drew very talented and qualified teachers, engineers and with the generous General Motors benefits, exceptional doctors and medial professions were attracted to the area and with all of this many people came not to mention the high pay General Motors offered, attracted workers from around the country who were enticed by a good wage and benefits for an average person without a college degree.
Genesee County and it’s surrounding areas grew and with it came new and growing churches, sports facilities, cultural centers, community/ junior colleges, shopping centers and thriving communities. Genesee County was was a very nice place to raise a family. If I had to sum up my growing up and school experience in the Grand Blanc Community Schools, I would say that it was pretty exceptional place to grow up and go to school. My husband, who also grew up in Grand Blanc, and I decided to come back to our hometown after college and raise our family here, that’s how fond we were of it. He worked with his family in Grand Blanc and I taught initially in the Flint Community Schools. Our three children graduated from Grand Blanc and they too had a very positive experience growing up and attending/graduating from Grand Blanc High School and now our two adult children who are married with children of their own are working and raising their children in Grand Blanc…
So here we are, in my little hometown there is a shooting and fire at a Church in very proximity to our home. These things don’t happen here. In the last month we have seen a Church School shooting in Minnesota, a young woman stabbed to death on a Charlotte, North Carolina train and just a couple of weeks ago or so, on September 10th, Charlie Kirk, Christian Evangelist was executed in public while speaking at a college in Utah. The closest our community has come to this type of tragedy was when a school shooter, a student shot and killed four students at Oxford High School about 35 minutes south of Grand Blanc…
What has happened to our communities and country since the late fifties and early sixties when we had a model thriving community in Genesee County? The same things that have happened across the country in other communities. (In Genesee County, more competition from foreign car companies during the seventies and eighties meant a shift in the American car companies with some Michigan/Flint area GM plants closing or condensing which resulted in a downturn in the economy at that time). A great deal has happened over the past fifty years or so. Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, segregation, Vietnam, Watergate, distrust of the government, a decrease in virtues, September 11, 2001, more distrust of the government, social media explosion, technology, increased drug use, Covid, cell phones and a drop in Church attendance, to name a few of my observations. As shocked as we are here in Grand Blanc and saddened, violence and evil have been around and in our midst since the beginning of time. Wars, man’s inhumanity to man, look at what the early Christian martyrs went through. We may have thought the violence was something you primarily see in the big cities; no, it’s now playing out in communities just like ours. We may ask, where did a community go wrong in not recognizing or noticing such hatred. People can hide it. We may hope authorities look back and can see where it originated, it may help future incidents but it won’t bring back those who perished and it won’t erase from those church members minds the horrors they saw while settling into their worship service yesterday morning. Some have said, “More gun control!” What about the fire and truck that drove into the building. Do we ban cars and gasoline? If one wants to do evil they will find a way, if they have no conscience or love in their heart, unfortunately. God has given each one of us free will. We can get up in the morning and choose to sow good or evil in our actions and words. It’s sad to think that a human could have such hatred in one’s heart that they could do such harm.
“Sticks and stones (and guns and knives) can break your bones but words will never hurt you” is the saying that most kids learn growing up. We added on to the saying when our kids were growing up,
“But words will hurt” and they can and do. We all have seen it on social media, news clips, even in the day of Charlie Kirk’s death, those opposing his view went to the stage of social media to select passages of his to highlight and say harmful words about a husband and father who devoted his life to evangelizing and educating young Americans about their faith and the history of their country.
It’s a sad, sick and cowardly person who takes a pot shot at someone who is unarmed, drives into a back of a church to harm parishioners or starts shooting from behind, innocent people. Any of us could find ourselves in this situation at a church, at a sporting event or at a public place when such evil is unleashed…
So what do we do? Do we cower in fear, change our way of life and let evil win? When these things happen, I keep hoping that the ‘the opposing sides’ will come together, like the families came together at the end of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, or like we saw in real life after September 11, 2001, for a while. Maybe we look at some of the the variables present back in the late fifties and early sixties that made our community a nice place to live, close communities, regular Church membership, knowing our neighbors and looking out for one another. Over the last few weeks, I have thought of the song, “The Man in the Mirror.” Starting with ourselves and see who we can look inward to see if we can make a difference in our actions, behavior or attitude. I will continue to pray for peace and be mindful of my surroundings. Our society didn’t get to this place overnight and it’s most likely not going to change over night, but by planting seeds of goodness, inspiring people to get closer to their faith, raising kids to know the difference between good and evil and living by the Golden Rule, “Do unto others and you would have them do unto you,” we have hope. And as long as there is hope, there’s a chance for greater days…God be with our Grand Blanc Community and surrounding areas.
