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Clawson, Michigan is a small town—only 2.4 square miles. Once little more than two sawmills and a few farms, it was eventually captured by the urban sprawl of Detroit. In the years following WW-II the town rapidly grew as large numbers of homes were built for the blue collar workers needed to fuel the auto and manufacturing plants of the post-war boom.
There is, however, little remarkable in that. It’s the story of thousands of small towns—places from which you would expect very little. But that would be a mistake. Those two square miles wound up producing an extraordinary number of truly remarkable and gifted people.
In an area smaller than what would be needed for a few good sized urban shopping centers, it somehow managed to produce a host of professional athletes, innovative business people, writers, and major players in the arts and entertainment industries. This does not include the hundreds of doctors, lawyers and other professionals—nor the tens of thousands of simple, honest, hard-working people—who got their start there.
Clawson got the job done the way most small towns do—in a simple, off-hand, no nonsense, blue-collar kind of way. It represents a value system and a way of life that seems to be evaporating in our modern high-tech world. Yet, despite it all, the city remains as a symbol of everything that is right with America.
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