. . . October 1994
Like Brigadoon, Willow Run Village exists now only in memory, but after World War II, it was the University of Michigan's answer to the housing problem for married student veterans. During the War it provided apartments for workers at the Willow Run bomber plant, which later became the Kaiser-Frazer automobile plant, five miles away.
There were over 3,000 units, arranged 10 apartments to a long unpainted wooden structure, set out in "courts." Although still open to automobile workers, the Village housed 1,500 student families and some single students who lived in the West Lodge dormitories.
I learned child psychology and, more important, parent psychology to deal with the fact that no matter how advanced my child was or how dear, someone else's child had done the same thing much earlier and behaved better. And I had to learn to plan meals short on meat and sweets which were vitamin-rich on the limits of a meager grocery allowance. One-dish casseroles dominated the conversation at any neighborhood gathering.
These and others were more lessons than I had anticipated when we chose to come to this frozen north country from sunny New Mexico so that Dean could get his master's degree in chemical engineering.
In January 1947, when we first applied for living quarters, we were number 1,254 on the waiting list. We had heard of families sleeping in tents or cars if vacancies did not occur in the housing project by the beginning of a school term. On August 15, 1947, we received a telegram:
Relieved, we paid the $2.59 collect charges and wired the $30. Two sets of grandparents feared for the 3-month-old grandchild we were taking away, but we set out in our 1936 Plymouth, looking very much like Steinbeck's Joads with the mattress inside, not outside, the car.
After four days on the road we arrived at the Village's management office. If I had not expected luxury, I had definitely hoped for more than that apartment had. The kitchen was equipped with primitive essentials: table, two chairs, an ice box (for block ice delivered daily except Sundays), sink and a coal-burning cook stove.
Budgeting was a problem we had to master. By the last week in the month we were all cashing in empty soda bottles and stretching the meat dishes with more rice or macaroni. Entertainment rarely cost much, but not many people had the time to go out. In warm weather the courtyard became a green for community wiener roasts, and at any time there might be card games in one apartment or another. Students had passes for football games and hockey games, and everyone cooperated with babysitting, trading off children so that couples could go out when they would or could go.
The time came for final examinations before any of us could believe it. Gardening, ball-playing and bull sessions gave way to intensive study sessions. Mothers took the children to the park to leave the house quiet for scholars at work.
After graduation, three families in our court moved on to careers in other parts of the country. With new jobs and new homes, they were eager to leave. As one of the wives said when she came to say goodbye, "Later, when we look back on this place and what we went through, we'll probably think it was OK."
I did not have to wait till later. I knew it was OK then.
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My husband, Dean, was a Michigan graduate student, but I was getting the best of the education. With an income of $90 a month from the GI Bill, I had to learn the economics of a budget. I learned the diplomacy and discretion necessary in our cardboard-thin-walled units where we could hear neighbors on either side scrape the toast or rattle the bedsprings-and know they could hear us as well.
Willow Run Village was 10 miles from Ann Arbor. During the week, the University ran bus service between West Lodge and the campus, a necessity for classes, one of the wives called the others in for coffee, and we took turns bringing cinnamon toast or powdered donuts. Only one woman worked away from home. Betty went forth to her job in a ready-to-wear shop in Ann Arbor. Those of us who stayed behind, wearing our skimpy wartime skirts, both admired and envied Betty in her long New Look fullness.