What happened to Twain is all the more reason to fight for Monteith. Everyone bemoans the lack of education, street violence and youth vagrancy in Detroit

Last I looked at the eastside as a whole and where I reside, the community centers are shuttered, the rec centers shuttered, the schools shuttered & the the libraries shuttered. Hey, let's build more prisons for the youth we ignore.

Here is an exerpt from a letter my wife wrote on behalf of keeping Monteith open, to the library commissioners:


To library Commisioners regarding the Monteith library closure:

This letter comes as a show of strong support from The Village of Fairview Historical Society, a registered 501c3 organization dedicated to preserving our physical heritage and history of our eastside.

The Village of Fairview existed from 1903 to 1907. It encompassed the area of Bewick to Cadieux, the Detroit River to Mack. In 1907, the city of Detroit annexed 1/2 of Fairview under suspicious circumstances. Specifically, Bewick to Alter with the remainder becoming the Village of Grosse Pointe Park, later to become a city.

Residents hostile to this annexation continued to list in church and other registers that they lived in Fairview as late as 1936. Consequently we hold Monteith Library, built 1926, as part of our Fairview saga.

In the past many years, we have held sold out bus tours, lectures in widely varied venues. Our president was the keynote speaker for GPP's 100 yr centennial. We consider Ewald library and Monteith to be sister libraries and had hoped Monteith would be able to host the debut of our soon to be published history of our area.

On a personal note, my parents grew up on the Eastside, born 1918 & 1920 respectively. Monteith Library was the hub of the neighborhood for the depression years providing education, elegance, peace and tranquility during that terrible time.

Today, mirrors the tradgedy of those times. Monteith is a beacon of light and an important pulse in this community. Many who find haven there, never take out a book or video. To take a body count while considering its fate would be a great injustice. It is structurally, educationally and emotionally very significant to our community.

As a founding member of an east area historical society and area resident, Islandview Village, and a patron of the library, I cannot express strongly enough the importance of this hub of culture as a historical structure and educational institution in a community that has suffered so much loss.