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KAL-HAVEN TACTICS: 1984-85
A Speech before the Kal-Haven Annual Membership Meeting

by Mike Jayne
April 30, 1991

I am delighted to be able to share with you today my version of events during the crucial 18-month period between 1984-85 when the Kal-Haven Trail was established, more or less, as a state park. I will not be able to provide an official account of events, since there is much that I don't know first-hand, so my intentions are to restrict myself to my own personal experience. For a full official account, I'm told, Ron Baylor should be consulted, since he has gathered most of the records. However, I can share with you some of information I am acquainted with that might not be in Baylor's records--fascinating details that give some additional flesh and blood to the history.

I only know second-hand the earlier history of the Kal-Haven project the DNR's original proposal in 1973-74, the unsuccessful 1979 campaign by the South Haven Chamber of Commerce, led by Judy Downing, and the unsuccessful 1981 campaign led by Royce Downey and others. Al Cassada can probably tell us what happened at the time. I can say, however, that by 1983 the Kal-Haven Project was generally considered a bone-yard for fuzzy-headed activists dedicated to lost causes. Anybody excited about prospects for a Kal-Haven trail was the laughing stock of those in the know, especially in towns along the trail.

Likewise, I only know second-hand of the original steps in the fourth and final effort to establish the Kal-Haven Trail--as it turns out, the one that succeeded. These original steps included:

(a) Rick Oberle's appointment as the Planning & Economic Development Director of Van Buren County in mid-December, 1983 (retrospectively, I'm mystified how that ever happened, given the fierce antipathy of many Van Buren County residents to Rick over the next few months).

(b) a pre-organizational meeting Rick held the same month with Royce Downey, Lou Batts of the Kalamazoo Nature Center, Doug Schroeder of South Haven, and a few others with the intention of mounting an entirely new movement to establish the Kal-Haven Trail.

(c) the first organizational meeting on February 10, 1984, when Rick, Royce Downey, and perhaps fifty others, when it was agreed by the entire group to try again, and to organize another such public meeting to elect a board of directors.

and (d) at Rick's instigation, the Van Buren County Board of Supervisors declared its support of the Kal-Haven Trail.

My first direct experience with the Kal-Haven project was at the second organizational meeting--I believe in April, 1984--when perhaps seventy people gathered at a Gobles church--I forget the denomination, but Paul Angstrom was its minister--to discuss tactics and to elect a board of directors. I myself knew nothing whatsoever about the Kal-Haven project, but Bea Ritchie brought me to the meeting because she thought I might be useful, perhaps because she knew of my earlier experience as a political activist during the sixties and during the abortive Gary Hart primary campaign preceding the primary election the previous fall, when a very small group of us--maybe five in all--stole Kalamazoo from the Mondale juggernaut. After losing Illinois to Hart, the Mondale campaign needed Michigan, and, with the help of labor, they got it except for Ann Arbor and Kalamazoo, so we were basking in our glory.

I can recall Bea having had trouble finding the church, and having stopped and asked for directions from a couple of policemen in a police car, who actually laughed and told us, still laughing, that we must be going to the Kal-Haven organization meeting. It was my sense that if they hadn't considered us entirely harmless, they would have treated us as enemies.

I can also recall a wide variety of people at the meeting, especially a group of snowmobile roustabouts at the back of the room, probably including Ron Stolk, now a venerable figure in the history of our success as a project. Sitting up front, I made a variety of procedural and tactical suggestions and after the meeting told Rick I would be glad to help write a pamphlet for the trail. Though I wasn't elected to the Board of Directors, he invited me to its first meeting a week or two later.

A few days later Rick came by my house suffering from a terrible cold, and we worked up a leaflet based on his knowledge of the project and my own stylistic demands as an English professor. The leaflet was well received by everybody, but, to be perfectly honest, its style--my responsibility, not Rick's--somewhat embarrasses me today. I am much more impressed by the excellent leaflet later written up by Al Cassada with the help of others.

Then came the first meeting of the Board of Directors elected at the last public meeting. With your patience, I would like to break down the group as individuals, emphasizing their contribution to the project over the next eighteen months.

1.First and foremost was Rick Oberle, who was unanimously elected president of the Kal-Haven Trail Association. He was a graduate student in Public Administration at WMU, and was still an employee with excellent connections in the Van Buren County government. He seemed tireless with his what-me-worry smile and tactical optimism sometimes verging on larceny. Rick, of course, had his giant problems, but everybody connected with the trail project at that stage gladly concedes, I think, his indispensible service to the cause. Without Rick, the trail would not have been possible.

2.Al Cassada, the proprietor of the Bee Hive Farm, located across the road from the trail outside Kendall. Al was quiet but ubiquitous--everywhere that anything happened, he was there. Even more, perhaps, than Rick, he had his feet in two buckets, local organizing and keeping up connections in Lansing. As far as I can recall, he also served as the first treasurer of the organization.

3.Ron Stolk, who turned out to be not so much of a monster-snowmobiler, after all. Early on, Ron's spontaneous effort to gather signatures on a petition in support of the trail along its perimeter--a couple hundred, as far as I can recall--was of enormous significance in influencing the DNR and state legislature to accept the trail despite the opposition it had provoked.

4.Donita Keeley, who was probably the most sensitive of the group to the opposition to the trail among farmers and local inhabitants along its perimeter. She knew who the opponents were (distant cousins and ex-fiancees of distant cousins), and she knew what offended them the most. She was also probably the most effective in promoting an organization that would keep Rick, myself, and others somewhat under control.

5.Bea Ritchie, whose contacts in Kalamazoo were as extensive as Donita's along the trail. Bea was also an indafatiguable worker, eagerly accepting all the dirty assignments, such as selling pins and soliciting membership at bicycle races and municipal holidays--a task which she sometimes foisted on me too. Like Bonita, she was also interested in establishing structures that would somewhat curtail the adventuristic excesses of Rick, myself, and others.

6.Bill McDonald, a very normal individual whom I didn't get to know very well. But normal people were needed in the organization, and of course it was Bill who later led Rick and his wife, Robin, into the biggest ambush of all, an opposition meeting along the trail at which Bill, Rick, & Robin were almost skinned alive.

7.Mary and Wayne Babcock (Mary having been elected to the steering committee), representing South Haven's interests on the board. They always had a lot to say, but, because of their business, weren't involved, as far as I can recall, in too much of the fighting in Lansing or along the trail.

8.Bob Gregerson, the Executive Director of the Kalamazoo County Parks Department, giving him even better official
ties with Kalamazoo County than Rick had with Van Buren County. Bob was very useful, but remained aloof from much of the in-fighting.

9.Fred Mortimer, a professor in the Public Administration Department at WMU--in fact, Rick's dissertation advisor. Fred had more experience relevant to organizing a park than anybody else on the steering committee, and was of great importance to the group before distancing himself from its operations.

10.Finally, Royce Downey, the mayor (or former mayor) of Bangor, who attended only the first meeting. Although nobody else at the meeting probably remembers, Royce tried to devise structures and procedures to shut me up and exclude me from future such meetings. Everybody else seemed constructive--I was obviously hyper-ventilating.

In retrospect, I think two basic attitudes, or personalities, emerged in the group, respectively of the COWBOYS and the PROCEDURALISTS. Cowboys were eager to jump in and take whatever steps they thought would be effective at the time, while PROCEDURALISTS tried to impose structures that would slow down the cowboys and force them to deliberate with the steering committee before jumping the gun in what they did. Everybody mixed the two tendencies to a certain extent, but Rick Oberle and I emphasized Cowboy possibilities, while Donita Keeley and Bea Ritchie emphasized proceduralist obligation. Al Cassada and Ron Stolk split the difference, sometimes cowboys and sometimes proceduralists.

A third group may also be identified as having been the RESPECTABLE SPONSORS --individuals such as Lou Batts, Penny McDougal, Fred Mortimer, and Royce Downey, all of whom played important background roles. But they didn't get into any of the infighting, either within the group or between the group and its opponents, state officials, and/or state legislators.

The most important piece of business at our first steering committee meeting was our discovery on the spot (Gregerson made the phone call to confirm it was true) that the Kalamazoo County Board of Supervisors was meeting the next evening and had already--without consulting us--put on its agenda its decision whether to go along with the Van Buren County Board of Supervisors in declaring its support for the Kal Haven Trail. Smelling a counter-strategy on the part of trail opponents--to pick up a quickie endorsement from Kalamazoo County, thus splitting the two counties on the issue--we mobilized our resources for a potentially lively meeting. Our eager commitment to the fray was both cowboyish and legalistic, since all of us were involved--there was consensus to shoot it out. What else could we do?

We weren't disappointed. The opposition came out in full force at the County Board of Supervisors meeting, but we matched them speech for speech, our contributors including, as far as I can recall, Rick, Al, and Fred Mortimer, the latter delivering a truly eloquent appeal in support of the trail. Because I didn't know much of anything about the trail, my own speech concentrated on my experience a few years earlier as a home owner in Amherst, Massachusetts, where I had been opposed to a public park set up on property across the road from my house, only to find my family using this park more than anybody else. The park had become an extension of my yard, and so my property values actually rose, I claimed, jabbing my finger at the opponents, as a result of the park. One of the opponents tried to refute me, but I jumped in again to defend myself, once again jabbing my finger at him. After the meeting, most of the opponents went after me alone, and we had a lively shouting match before they backed into an elevator still shouting at me--even shouting as the elevator shut in their faces. They only stopped when the elevator door had shut. The confrontation more or less established my presence as an unelected fixture on the board of directors.

Far more important, the Kalamazoo County Board of Commisioners actually voted in our favor. The trail opposition's counter-strategy had blown up in their faces, and our project actually had the official support of both the Van Buren and Kalamazoo county boards of supervisors before we had even begun to organize beyond the initial stages of our project.

Because I had dealt with Mary Brown once before Rick went along with my cowboyish suggestion that I seek her out right away to establish connections with the state legislature while we were in high gear. The only time I had spoken with Mary before was at the dampened Walter Mondale victory party the previous fall, but she had seemed pleasant enough, and I felt we could talk on the issue. So the two of us had breakfast together, when she asked in so many words just who it was that was once again pushing such a dead horse as the Kal-Haven project. The only names I could recall that she could identify were Bea Ritchie, Lou Batts, and Fred Mortimer. Mary decided to go along with us anyway and had breakfast with Rick, Fred, and me a week or so later. As it turns out, her support was absolutely crucial to the success of the Kal-Haven project.

Rick invited me to visit the DNR with him in Lansing in order to discuss their current attitude toward the Kal-Haven project. I didn't have the slightest idea what the DNR amounted to, but it sounded like a good idea. There we met Jim Haines, who also turned out to be indispensible to the project, in his case as a DNR insider able and willing to steer us through the labyrinth of ties and procedures necessary for establishing a DNR-sponsored park. It was at this meeting that Jim told us of the importance of encouraging trail supporters to write the DNR as many individualized letters as possible in support of the trail. These would all be added to the trail file kept by the DNR, offsetting a couple of letters opposed to the trail that were already in it. Thus began our letter writing campaign whose importance at the initial stages of our project cannot be underestimated.

Rick and I also took Jim Haines to lunch, and, just about when it was time to leave, I put the questions to Jim exactly what our chances were, and what he would do, if he were in our place, to maximize them. "Well," he said, he guessed maybe we had a 50% chance, unless, of course, we attended ALL the DNR meetings in which the Kal-Haven project was either on the agenda or could possibly be added to it. This bit of offhanded advice, offered as an afterthought, turns out to have been absolutely crucial to our subsequent strategy for establishing the Kal-Haven project. Rick claims it was his idea, and I that it was mine--and others on the steering committee probably recognized possibilities before either of us--but what emerged was a two-pronged strategy to hold our own in debating the opposition in local meetings along the trail while attending all the meetings we could and cultivating all the ties we could, with both the DNR and state legislature in Lansing. According to Rick after I first gave this speech, the strategy was actually three-pronged, based on the textbook obligation in public administration to establish strong connections with the DNR and state legislature as well as mounting an active local public relations campaign.

Also on our first trip to Lansing, Rick and I had time in the afternoon to visit two park specialists who teach at Michigan State University. Very impressively, these experts explained to us in detail how such a trail was economically feasible, costing between $38 and $55 thousand as far as they could estimate. I more or less summarized their arguments in a June 18 Viewpoint editorial published by the Kalamazoo Gazette. Soon afterwards, Arlene McKeon, a small-town editor along the trail, wrote a scathing reply, also a Gazette Viewpoint editorial, sometimes hitting her target (me), sometimes not. We later had a pleasant conversation about it over the telephone.

Like others on the steering committee, I participated in a couple of the trips to Lansing but the most faithful trippers were Rick and Al Cassada. I can recall when Rick, Al, and I visited Jack Butterfield, a DNR official in the chain of command, who tried to tell us why the Kal-Haven project wasn't acceptable. Right on the spot he was axing the project, or so he thought. We wouldn't let him. We spent perhaps two hours or more arguing him down. Later, both Rick and Al traveled without me to the potentially disastrous Higgins Lake meeting, when DNR bureaucrats opposed to the trail, led by Keith Wilson, intended to dump it from their list of potential additions to the state park system slated for the next year. Jim Haines told Rick and Al what to expect while driving them for four or five hours from Lansing up to Higgins Lake, and by the time they arrived they were able to salvage the trail. They dumped the dumpers, who were probably surprised to see that Kal-Haven supporters had made the trip. What better opportunity to terminate a project than a couple hundred miles away, but only if its proponents don't come. Rule Number One: the farther away a meeting takes place relevant to your project, the greater the necessity to attend.

Sometime in spring, 1984, Fred Mortimer informed me as a professional courtesy that the Kal Haven project had been devised at least in part as Rick's M.A. dissertation topic for studying group behavior under such circumstances, with Fred himself serving as Rick's advisor in the WMU Public Administration Department. Fred implied the project had been selected--on his part, at least--as a sure fire loser worthy of study, so it might be prudent for me to avoid so completely immersing myself in the effort that it might damage my professional reputation if and when it failed.

At a Board of Directors meeting we later debated the choice whether to submit a Kal-Haven project proposal to the DNR in 1984, or, more cautiously, to postpone submitting it until 1985. Fred strenuously argued for postponement, but I argued for going ahead with it while we still had the necessary momentum. It is my impression that Fred still didn't believe the project would be accepted and wanted to avoid the embarrassment of a failed full-court press in Lansing. To this day, I am convinced that such a postponement would have killed the project.

Not many weeks later, Mary Brown suddenly informed me by telephone late in the afternoon that the 1984 deadline for submitting potential DNR projects was on the following day. She offered to deliver it herself if we could give it to her at breakfast the next morning, before her trip to Lansing. Unable to find Rick, I frantically drafted a proposal with revisions by my wife Elaine as she ran back and forth to her word processor in the law office where she worked. Later in the evening, when we could get hold of him, Rick made some more additions. The next morning Rick and I give the final draft to Mary Brown at one of the Greek restaurants on Michigan Ave. It was four pages long instead of three pages, as she had asked, but she said an extra page was usually anticipated by legislators when college faculty were involved in drafting such proposals.

The proposal was accepted at a DNR meeting I didn't attend. Nor did I attend the meeting of the State Legislature which accepted the project among others in a rather large package. Mary's ordersto us at this point--and the word advice isn't strong enough to indicate her insistence on this point--was that we should come to all the meetings we could, but not to open our mouths, since, at this stage in our project, it could only throw a monkey wrench in the works. I recall having attended a Senate Appropriations Committee meeting presided by Harry Gast, a local state senator, in which none of us said a word. Gene Rector, the spiritual leader of the opposition (armed with punji stakes), rather timidly spoke up against the project, but he was totally hog-tied, and he knew it. His mouth was dry, and his adams apple bobbed restlessly. I actually felt sorry for him as Gast ignored his remarks and shifted the group's attention to entirely different matters relevant to the trail. Then Mary Brown made a grand entrance in one of her extraordinary dresses and spoke a few words in praise of the project, exuding total confidence that the entire legislative machinery was wrapped, tied, and delivered. We later visited the office of another local state legislator, who was supposedly opposed to the project, and he told us how effectively he had worked behind the scenes to prevent any snags in the earlier meeting that day--more evidence of Mary's influence in the matter.

I also recall having been told that Mary Brown had made a useful tradeoff with the DNR whereby their acceptance of the Kal-Haven Project in their annual package would be matched by her ending her long-standing pocket veto of gas tax legislation that would permit snowmobile gas tax funds to be spent on snowmobile trails. For Kal-Haven snowmobilers, it would be a double victory, providing both a trail they can use and gas-tax funding to help maintain it.

I also recall having been told that Mary Brown and Don Gilmer had so completely sewn up the state legislature in support of the Kal-Haven project that they can grant another local representative, ostensibly an enemy of the trail, ample time to present his case with the necessary eloquence to impress those of his constituents who opposed the trail with his steadfast opposition to it. As this representative spoke before the legislature, Brown and Gilmer actually moved up and down the aisles, reminding everybody of the arrangement permitting his remarks before the vote was taken in support of the bill. [COMMENT HERE ON MARY BROWN'S POWER IN LANSING--that she isn't the servant of Detroit's whims: if anything, Detroit's entire contingent of representatives are servants of hers!]

After the DNR bill was passed by the state legislature and signed into law by the governor, the entire Kal-Haven Board of Directors met with Governor Blanchard for a ceremonial signing session. We were herded into a room and waited perhaps fifteen minutes before the governor arrived. When he finally came, he joked a lot and seemed shiny and radiant, then signed and departed within a few minutes. I had the distinct impression that he wasn't exactly sure what he was signing and that he was been scheduled for signing ceremonies of one sort or another throughout the entire morning.

Among the public meetings held along the Kal-Haven trail, I can recall one at South Haven in which Glen Atkins and other trail opponents spoke in opposition to the trail but in an agenda we entirely dominated, and another in Portage in which I got in a head-to-head standoff with Vera Hinesman before others in the crowd broke up our argument. We were jabbing our fingers at each other with great animation. After the meeting we embraced, she crying on my shoulder, "I don't want the trail, I don't want the trail," and I replying--softly--words to the effect, "It's not so bad, it's not so bad." She also blurted out, "Rick Oberle--he's such a liar," to which I more or less replied, "Yes, I know, he does stretch the truth sometimes, but he means well."

I also recall the Kal-Haven Public Hearing in October, 1985, at KVCC, which was required by law before the official acceptance of the trail project. Many spoke both for and against the trail in an alternating sequence--for, then against, for, then against, etc. It was my good fortune to speak after an eccentric woman very colorfully warned of all the criminal elements in Van Buren County who would pose a genuine threat to trail users--rapists, muggers, vigilante gangs of hoodlums. She shared our conviction that rural folk didn't need to fear the city people who would be using the trail, but she took exactly the opposite stance (one that I myself had used on occasion with others on the steering committee), that the city people should be afraid of country hoodlums. Then it was my turn to speak, with every prospect of being anteclimactic to the Oscar-winning performance of the evening once the crowd's appreciative laughter had subsided. "What can I say after a presentation like that," I began, "except that it gives me great pride to share in a project that might finally help to bring law and order to Van Buren County." The rest of my speech was, relatively speaking, a bore. At least as important, in my opinion, was my strategy of sitting in front of the podium in my suit and tie and very generously leading the applause when the opponents of the trail finished speaking, no matter what they said--no matter how hostile they were or ignorant of the issues. I wanted to encourage their civilized behavior. When they figured out what they should be doing in their last-ditch effort to prevent the trail--making an enormous scene right there on the spot--it was too late for them to get rolling. The evening was over.

Once the Kal-Haven Trail had become law, I figured my role in helping to establish it had primarily been as a cowboy--a shoot-em-up type who wouldn't be of much use once law and order were established. In my opinion, what was needed on the committee once the trail was respectable was not cowboys, but nature lovers, fund raisers, and respectable types with good social and political standing. Also, I had a couple of other political adventures lined up for the following year, so I gracefully bowed out, eliminating myself from consideration for reelection. As I told Rick on more than one occasion, "Sooner or later, there's going to be somebody in a little green house reaching out a little window to be paid a $2 trail fee. You don't want to be that somebody!" For Rick, the alternative seemed obvious: a spot on the City Council, then perhaps a stint in legislature, followed by something in the federal government, and maybe--just maybe--the White House, where optimism verging on larceny may be recognized as a virtue. Unfortunately, Rick wasn't able to secure a local job that would let him run for City Council, so he left the Kal-Haven steering committee a couple of years later and relocated in Lansing, where, I'm told, he's doing very well. So if either of us is recruited to serve in the little green house, it'll be me. Which is fine--I need a sitting job.

But I do have this fantasy of someday, maybe in an afterlife, strolling down the Kal-Haven trail arm-in-arm with Vera Hinesman, swatting deer fly, admiring the blue birds and distant vistas, jesting about our silly debates of yesteryear. But suddenly Vera stiffens as she spots Rick Oberle chugging towards us on a three-wheeler with his typical what-me-worry grin. "Good God," Vera exclaims, "The trail I can accept, but does Rick have to come with it?" To which I reply, "Nothing less would have given us the trail--not to ignore what the rest of us did too." Much of which will have to be told by the rest.

Thank you very much.