It’s a crisp autumn Friday night in Michigan. Children jostle at a ticket booth, waiting impatiently for the chance to claim a spot in the bleachers. A father buys a hot dog, while a mother carries a stadium blanket and a camera. A high school marching band finishes its pre-game show and high-steps off the […]
Success
Each day, Michigan is made a better place to live through the efforts — large and small — of private citizens and public servants. Bridge will feature those inspiring stories.
Posted inSuccess
Walkerville's success is stuff of movies
If this were football, they’d make a movie. Then again, tiny Walkerville doesn’t have a football team. Pulling perhaps the biggest upset in Bridge Magazine’s Academic State Championships, Walkerville Public Schools, with 314 students and one of the highest rates of poverty among Michigan school districts, is the State Champion of 8th Grade Math. Not […]
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Haslett builds readers, 20 minutes at a time
Twenty minutes a night. That number is drilled into Haslett kids in this mid-Michigan suburb by teachers in classrooms and parents at kitchen tables. Read for 20 minutes a night. Read Tolstoy. Read a comic book. Read the New York Times. Read the back of a cereal box, if you have to. “It’s like sports,” […]
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Michigan produce found on local plates, global trade routes
Lori Lennard is a third-generation Michigan potato grower whose family farm this year will harvest more than 100 million pounds of tubers destined for the potato-chip fryer and other uses. Lennard Agriculture Co. – which has supplied Detroit-based Better Made Snack Foods with its main raw ingredient for nearly half a century – has burgeoned […]
Posted inSuccess
Michiganians find paths to success
Many Michigan entrepreneurs found ways to fly out of the ashes of the state’s lost decade. Bridge presents three such stories, drawn from the list of 50 Companies to Watch compiled the Edward Lowe Foundation: Higher Grounds of Traverse City ground out a new niche in the crowded coffee market. NOVO Motor Acoustic Systems in […]
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A new effort to 'Bridge' Michigan's gaps
An informed public is the iron core of our democratic system. But these days the iron is getting a bit rusty. The old media that served the country well for decades – national network TV news shows like Walter Cronkite’s and daily and weekly newspapers – are sadly in decline. When I started in the […]
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Flint enjoys 'Diplomat'-ic initiative
Flint is home to the largest privately held specialty pharmacy in the United States. Didn’t think you would ever read that sentence, did you? But Flint is indeed home to Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy, a firm with more than 500 employees that is winning national business growth awards as well as the adoration of the Flint […]
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Coffee is million-dollar enterprise
Pricey coffees were among the first casualties of the Great Recession as people cut $4 lattes from their strained household budgets. Even mighty Starbucks was humbled, closing hundreds of stores across the country as the economy tanked. But one small Traverse City gourmet coffee company prospered during Michigan’s “lost decade” by adhering to an ideal: […]
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Couple bets all on Michigan start-up; beats odds
Manufacturing appeared to be dying during the past decade in Michigan. Critics of Michigan’s taxes and regulations said the state was a terrible place to start a business. But Justin Ayers and his wife, Tracy, thought it was a great time to open a manufacturing company. And into being came Lakeshore Cutting Solutions Inc., an […]
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Warren auto supplier navigates industry turmoil
Tim Droege and a team of managers at German auto parts supplier Woco Automotive in Warren decided in 2008 to purchase the company — just as the state and national economies were imploding. “It was a crazy time to buy an automotive company,” said Droege, who completed the deal in January 2009 and changed the […]
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