WDET News
- History Haunts Detroit's Histroic Fort Wayne
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Jul 7, 2008General - Link to Audio
The Historic Fort Wayne Coalition hopes some supernatural attention will bring more human interest to its cause. WDET’s Rob St. Mary reports.
It’s a warm spring evening just after sundown. There’s not a cloud in the sky. In the distance, the Detroit River winds slowly along the shore. Walking down the trail towards Historic Fort Wayne is about 25 Detroit area ghost hunters. Some are dressed in jeans and a t-shirt while others are dressed like members of a SWAT team with miner’s lights, cameras and audio recorders. The supernatural hunters are hoping to see, touch and feel the unexplained inside the walls of Detroit’s Historic Fort.
The tour guide is retired US Army Colonel David Jamroz.
“I’d encourage you at some point during the evening to walk over to these walls and actually touch them. You know, so much of what we see comes from television and computers anymore sometimes to understand reality you actually have to touch it. So take a few minutes and actually touch those walls and realize that you are here in a fort that was built in 1843 and is still standing here today.”
From the Civil War through Vietnam, more American fighting men were inducted at Fort Wayne than any other place in the nation. During the Great Depression, the homeless lived at the Fort. During World War Two, it was responsible for providing large amounts of vehicles and parts to the frontlines. Following the 1967 uprising, families burned out of their homes found shelter within the Fort’s walls.
Fort Wayne’s fortunes began to turn for the worse when it was decommissioned by the federal government and most of the site was given to the City of Detroit in the 1969. Over the years Fort Wayne became a casualty of the struggle to balance the city budget. That lead to the historic site being shuttered several times… the longest stretch was for almost a decade beginning in 1992. The fort reopened briefly as part of Detroit’s Tri-Centennial celebration in 2001. A year later, two-civil war re-enactors stepped forward to revive Fort Wayne. One of them is Tom Berlucchi.
“She's actually on a comeback. It was shut down for 20 something years of deferred maintenance. And that’s what we see with the buildings in the way and the shapes that they are now.”
He says it took about two-years of discussion with various City of Detroit officials before the Historic Fort Wayne Coalition could open the gates again, at least part-time… on weekends with a staff of volunteers.
“It’s just a love of history and a love to keep this place sustained, alive and running and making the great historical site that it is.”
Berlucchi says since 2004, over $130,000 worth of donations and sweat equity has been poured into the Fort. Over 8,000 hours of clean-up work has been conducted to chop down overgrown vegetation and fix-up the buildings on the 80 plus acre site.
“We’ve turned the tide of the deferred maintenance here and what we’re doing now is we’ve got 288 members of the coalition. It started with two guys sitting on a riverbank saying we’re not going to take no from the city of Detroit or from the state of Michigan.”
And this evening, the hunt is on… tour guide Dave Jamroz spins the tale of photograph taken in the early 1900s of a ghostly soldier in civil war garb.
“A group of recruits were bringing a cannon back… they had been training in what was a field over there. And as they came to about this point the cannon began to slide on ice. The centur, instead of trying to dodge it, jumped behind one of those doors and just as he did…. over two-tons of iron and wood slammed into the door, slamming the door open and crushing the chest and skull of our centur. The photo that is in the book, we believe that is our century. And in fact people who are familiar with that who have family members who go back to that believe that’s our century… so, you may see him this evening.”
Behind the tour of strange happenings at Fort Wayne is Terri King of the group Detroit Ghosts. King says Fort Wayne is an amazing place because it’s a kind of a secret, tucked away in southwest Detroit.
“You tell them you’re going to Fort Wayne and they think you are going to Indiana. But this place is just amazing, it’s 80 acres, it’s this barracks building build in the 18-40s inside this star fort and all these other structures that house the officers and their families… you just walk in and can feel the energy of this place.”
Detroit Ghosts wanted to hunt at Fort Wayne about a year and a half before they started last fall. Historic Fort Wayne Coalition Chairman Tom Berlucchi says at first he was skeptical of the idea.
“To be honest I said across the table and was like “no, come on… you really think this is going to happen? That people would want to come here at night and spend from eight o clock at night until four o clock in the morning?” OK, if you guys really think you can do this than I am game to try.”
But since, Berlucchi says the Detroit Ghost partnership has been a great experience and lead to wider exposure allowing the coalition to reach more people with the message of preserving the historic site.
As the tour continues… guide Dave Jamroz and Detroit Ghosts organizer Terri King spin the next tale.
“If you learn anything as you go in the tunnel that was our former prison, please share as Tom would ask with Terri King or a member of her staff.” “A couple weeks ago we had a psychic here touring the place, she walked in here and she stopped and said I’m not going any further. She had heard a voice say this will be the end of your tour.”
Billy Miller of Ann Arbor is on the tour this evening. It’s his sixth time. He says he’s observed strange sounds and images at the fort. Miller says he believes those bumps in the night are caused by the energy of the people who used to work, live and died at the fort.
“The biggest thing is we’re here to support the fort, we’re here to support the coalition. We don’t want to see the fort go away we want it to stay because there is so much history here. Nightly at least something historical happens. The energies come out and at least show someone something. It might not happen to everyone at the same time but something generally does happen.”
As for Coalition Chairman Tom Berlucchi, he says his challenge is to get Michiganders and vacationers a like to hear Fort Wayne and not think of Indiana.
“Believe it or not… this wasn’t even listed in the state of Michigan’s places to come and see pamphlets. It’s not in the rest areas. Next year, it will be. It will be out in the magazines. We have partnered with the friends of Michigan History in Lansing. We’ve partnered with the city recreation department, the city chamber of commerce… we are working to put Fort Wayne back on the map.”
To do it, Berlucchi says money is a factor. A complete restoration of the 165 year old fort is estimated at about $100,000,000. Beyond that, he says there’s the question of the neighborhood outside the walls of Fort Wayne – the long suffering, industrial selection of Detroit known as Delray.
“We need to revitalize southwest Detroit. And as members of the advisory board, we are working at the different levels of city government and state to start that plan moving forward. We need to revitalize the entire area… and it’s going to happen, I’m confident of that. We’re going to win it.”
And it’s on a tale of winners and losers that Dave Jamroz ends the tour of Historic Fort Wayne on this evening. Montgomery Miggs, who built Detroit’s lasting military battlements also created Arlington National Cemetery on the land of his old friend… turned enemy – Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
“And he directed that 27 graves be moved from the Army morgues to Arlington and interred. Not only he want them interred in the land but he personally cited the first graves and put them right in Mrs. Lee’s rose garden, right next to the house. And when he said that he said a statement… that bears on what we are about tonight. He said if Robert E. Lee ever returns to his house in Arlington, I want him to live with the ghosts.”
And the ghosts of history come back to haunt Fort Wayne from time to time. In mid-July, a large civil war re-enactment will take place. According to organizers, it’s one of the only reenactments to take place where civil war soldiers were inducted and shipped out to the front.
But when the cannons fire again this summer the battle is beyond just remembering the war between the States. To make Historic Fort Wayne viable again is a struggle against not only the weathering elements of time but lack of remembrance and years of neglect.