My sister Kathy, my brother Gary and I all attended Mount Clemens High School (MCHS) just outside of Detroit, MI.
Kathy was salutatorian of her graduating class ('67), Gary played football for his graduating class ('69) and I was class president of mine (Freshman, Sophomore). Dad moved the family to California - and I graduated in '74 from a high school in S. Cal. The rest of my brothers and sisters were in elementary school during those Mt. Clemens years.
Yet the Wolverine blood ran thick in all seven siblings!
So, when the re-booted "Red Dawn" opened today, my sister Janet FB'ed me letting me know that the new film was filmed in part on the streets of our old town.
The town's international fame gained at the turn of the previous century (for mineral baths) wooed US Presidents and Kings to the sulfur waters of promised health. Babe Ruth and Henry Ford (among many other celebrities) came to Mt. Clemens to "take the waters".
When we lived there in the mid-60's the baths were still used (and WHOA could everybody in the town smell that sulfur when bath day happened!)
Our football team was/is called The Battling Bathers! (No kidding...)
I'm thinking that "Wolverines" may just be a suitable substitute for Bathers, once the success of this film reaches its own international stature.
I'm also thinking that the fond memories my siblings and I have of Mt. Clemens, Michigan will cause us to keep a sharp look-out for the locations used in the film - which was shot in 2009 and released over this Thanksgiving holiday.
And they'll be this little part in each of the Mansfield clan members that will WANT to shout out in the theaters across the land where each of us live, as we see the backdrop to our childhood unfold:
Wolverines!
Den
PS: Here's a mini-doc/trailer.
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