How This Website Got Its Start *
Fall 2002
My cousin, Linda, who owns Embroidery & Much More in St. Clair Shores, forwarded an email to me entitled "You Know You're From Detroit If..."
It was a list of about a two-dozen, one-liner memories having to do with growing up in Detroit during the 50s, 60s and 70s. Reading through it,
I was amazed at how much I hadn't thought about in years -- and how it all made me smile. I think it was then that I realized how fortunate I was to have grown up in such a great city at a great time in its history.
Realizing that there were probably a lot of ol' Detroiters out there who would enjoy the List as much as me, I decided to turn it into a webpage.
Mid-March 2003
Once it was ready, I sent an email to everyone I knew from the Detroit area and asked them to send me their "You Know You're From Detroit If..." memories. Several days later, everyone had responded.
So I added the new items and sent a second email to the same group
(plus a few more folks who'd asked to be included). My only request was that they forward the webpage link to others who might enjoy it.
That's when things started picking up.
New visitors were encouraged to send me their memories and, boy, did they. The List grew and grew. And so did the number of visitors.
December 2003
6,586 visitors in nine months. Holy cow. Who knew? And there no one more surprised than me! And so it was that in November 2003, I started the Detroit Memories Discussion Group. If you've got questions, someone in this group probably has the answer.
February 21, 2005
4,600 visitors that day alone!
Fast forward....
2009
Detroit Memories averages 3,500 visitors a month!
It appears that the old adage, 'when someone finds something they really like, they'll tell 10 other people," is true. For a long time my only advertising was word-of-mouth and reciprocal links with other Detroit websites.
Let others know about the "You Know You're From Detroit If..."
Eileen
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* As I mentioned above, the original list was emailed to me by my
cousin. I didn't write it, but someone did.
Then comes this email:
January 5, 2004
I am the original author of a major portion of the "You Know You're
from Detroit If..." list.
Three years ago, I wrote a collection of my memories -- as well as
those of my friends and co-workers -- and e-mailed the compilation
to 20 friends both in and out of Michigan.
I was surprised to find the list still circulating when someone (who did
not know I was the author) sent it to me in September 2003.
Even more surprising was the re-wording of many of my statements
and the number of items missing from my original list, as evidenced
on this site. Sadly, references I made to Coleman Young and his
often-humorous quotes, the riots, the Detroit Police S.T.R.E.S.S.
unit, Cass Tech, the neighborhood bookmobiles and the swimobiles
are missing. Those subjects were very much a part of '60s and '70s
Detroit.
While I am happy to see that some Detroiters have added their own
memories, I wonder what motivated someone to alter the list by
removing all reference to the more recent "urban" memories.
Stephanie McHenry
Atlanta, GA
Cass Tech High School, 1983
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Eileen responds: I have no reason to doubt Stephanie. To date, no one else has come forward to claim it as theirs. Regretably, Stephanie could not provide a copy of what she'd originally written, nor had she copyrighted the material.
However, if Stephanie is the original author, we all owe her a HUGE debt
of gratitude. For me, she provided the inspiration for this website which has evolved into an unending repository of memories about Detroit in the '50s, '60s and '70s from the people who lived, worked, played and were educated there. But, best of all, she got us talking about all of the great things we remember about Detroit.
The omitted items she refers to had already been deleted from the List when I received the email; however, there are numerous versions of
"You Know You're From Detroit If..." on the Internet and I suspect that a few of them include the items from Stephanie's list.
