Roadtrip: Michigan: Part III, Dearborn.

We visited Diane's old neighborhood. I asked her if she would write about it. This is her post.


7510 Neckel Street, Dearborn, MI.When my parents divorced in 1965 we moved from the suburbs of Chicago to my grandfather’s house where my mother grew up in the 1940s. What I remember about growing up occurred mainly in the town of Dearborn Michigan. My 5 brothers and sisters and I lived with my Mom and Grandpa Marentette. We were enrolled in St. Alphonsus School where my mother graduated in 1939. I remember it as a great way to grow up. The town was mostly Roman Catholic Western Europeans of German, Polish, Italian, and French Canadian descent. From our backyard you could see the school and church; St. Alphonsus was a large part of our daily life. The neighborhood kids went to school and church together and played “lot baseball” together in the summer and had snowball fights in the winter.


Fast forward to 2009 when David and I visited my old neighborhood and adjacent St. Alphonsus church and school. My brother Greg cautioned me against going to visit our old house because it was being rented and was in disrepair. I rarely have opportunity to visit my past and with David’s support I felt good about going.

We arrived at 7510 Neckel Street to find an Arabic woman on my old front porch with the door wide open.
David took this picture (Direct TV) of the past and present worlds of Dearborn, Michigan. The old Dearborn of the 60s, 70s, and 80s Western European Americans has now been replaced by the largest Arabic community in the United States.

We met Eddie who was suspicious of our nosing around my old haunts. Once he found out we were friend and not foe we had a great chat. Eddie is Lebanese and came to Michigan in the early 70’s. He shared with us that the neighborhood had changed with Iraqis and Yemenis moving 3 or more families into the neighborhood houses.


My first job was at the Golden Boy Donut shop, which was in this building- now an Arabic Restaurant.

The Overhang at St. Alphonsus School.I saw the construction at St. Al's as hope for the future: they wouldn't bother to renovate the Church, if they were planning to close it. The sad thing for me is that the population of Dearborn has changed so much that my old high school closed in 2003, with the grade school closing in 2005. Old friends from the neighborhood tell me that these days the church, which could hold hundreds of people, has only about 50 or so people for Sunday Mass. One thing in life we can be sure of is change.