My old high school in Flint is being closed (as part of downsizing the city in general). It was the oldest existing high in Flint, I think, arch-rival Flint Northern having been closed and moved to a more modern facility while I was attending high school. Here are some pictures of the farewell from its many decades of alumni. I remember playing french horn in the orchestra on that auditorium stage.
And Gordon Young (not an alumnus — he attended the Catholic school) did something that I never did (though I did wander a lot in the steam tunnels) — he climbed the tower, and took some great photos. That blue dome you see in the distance is the planetarium in the arts and cultural center, a large campus of which Central was just a part. It also contains the main branch of the public library, an arts institute and museum where I used to take art lessons as a kid, Mott Community College (where I attended my first two years before transferring to Ann Arbor) and the former home of the University of Michigan – Flint, before it moved downtown back in the eighties. The trees over to the right of the planetarium are on the estate of Charles Stewart Mott, the General Motors philanthropist who made Flint one of the great places to live in the country when I was growing up, before it all started to fall apart, about the time I graduated from Central, in the early seventies recession.
I haven’t lived there since 1977, but I would have liked to attend this farewell.
Looks like the Obama administration is champing at the bit to help.
The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.
Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.