Local Heroes
Clarence “Kelly” Johnson
“My earliest memories of my birthplace are of how beautiful it was.”
– Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, Kelly: More Than My Share of It All
Clarence “Kelly” Johnson was born in Ishpeming, MI on February 27th, 1910. Like fellow local hero Glenn Seaborg, Johnson was of Swedish descent. His father emigrated to the United States in 1882 and settled his family in Ishpeming where Kelly loved school and frequented the Ishpeming Carnegie Public Library as a child. Kelly and his family moved below the bridge to Flint in 1923. He grew up there and went on to study as an engineer at the University of Michigan.
Kelly moved to Burbank, California when he secured a job as a tool designer at Lockheed, eventually being promoted to engineer. Kelly hadn’t worked there long when he identified a major flaw in one of their new aircraft designs, boldly pointed it out to the chief engineer, and provided modifications that would eventually ensure the success of the model. That was just the beginning of his career at Lockheed.
Kelly Johnson worked with historic aviators like Wiley Post and Amelia Earhart. He helped in the design of Lockheed’s Electra, the same craft Earhart flew around the world in her tragic expedition. In addition to working with such famed aviators, Kelly aided in the design of over 40 aircraft models in his career. He also led the way in Lockheed’s secret division, christened “Skunk Works”, where he and his team developed the first spy plane called the U-2. Kelly received countless awards for his work as well, including the Medal of Freedom in 1964 and a spot in the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1974.
Clarence “Kelly” Johnson’s path to great accomplishment and contribution in aviation history, we are grateful to say, started here in Ishpeming. Kelly’s work will be remembered by aviation enthusiasts near and far for generations to come.
Glenn T. Seaborg
“And indeed Ishpeming was an isolated world of its own. Its unpaved streets were tinged red from iron ore.”
– Glenn T. Seaborg, Adventures in the Atomic Age
Glenn T. Seaborg was born in Ishpeming, MI on April 19, 1912. Seaborg was of Swedish descent; he and Clarence “Kelly” Johnson had that in common. His roots were in the Upper Peninsula where, he reflects in his memoir Adventures in the Atomic Age, “our family led a comfortable existence in a modest house, and my memories of Ishpeming are pleasant ones”.
After 10 years in the U.P., Seaborg and his family moved out west to seek more opportunity. The Seaborg family settled in the Los Angeles area where Glenn eventually graduated from high school. Seaborg attended UCLA as an undergraduate and went on to receive his PhD. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley. His long and illustrious career unfolded at Berkeley, where he stayed after he received his doctorate. He eventually became a professor of chemistry and then served as chancellor from 1958-1961.
Seaborg’s accomplishments are impossible to enumerate. He discovered or co-discovered 10 elements in his lifetime, including seaborgium, which was named in his honor. He and Ed McMillan were awarded the 1951 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their discoveries in the chemistry of transuranium elements. He served on the Manhattan Project working with plutonium, one of the elements he discovered only a few years earlier. Seaborg also advised several U.S. Presidents in nuclear policy.
Glenn Seaborg’s talents took him all over the country and the globe, but he mainly resided with his wife, Helen Griggs, in California where they raised their seven children. Seaborg’s contributions to science reach far and wide, and we are lucky that such a trajectory started here in Ishpeming.
John D. Voelker (a.k.a Robert Traver)
John D. Voelker was born in Ishpeming, Michigan on June 29th in 1903. Voelker was a man of many defining talents: lawyer, judge, writer, fisherman.
Voelker was the youngest of six and the only one in his family who went to college. He began his studies at what would later become Northern Michigan University in Marquette. He eventually transferred and graduated from the University of Michigan Law School where he met his future wife Grace. Upon graduation, he practiced law in Marquette before moving to Chicago to be near Grace and work at a large law firm in the city.
Voelker and his new wife didn’t stay away for long, the Upper Peninsula luring the fresh young lawyer back from the big city. He ran and won the Marquette County Prosecuting Attorney election in 1934. He went on to serve on the Marquette County Bar Association, several committees, and also served as the city attorney for Ishpeming.
In 1950, Voelker returned to private practice after his defeat for reelection. During this time, he represented the defense in the People v. Coleman Peterson case – which would later inspire his novel Anatomy of a Murder. He returned to public service in 1956 when he was appointed to the Michigan Supreme Court.
Throughout his life, John Voelker maintained his two favorite pastimes – fly fishing and writing. Voelker, under the pen name Robert Traver, published his first book in 1943. After the success of the film adaptation of his fourth book Anatomy of a Murder in 1959, he retired from the court to write fulltime and fish for brook trout.
Voelker lived out the remainder of his life in Ishpeming where he died in 1992. His legal and literary legacy lives on in the region, drawing people from all over to experience the place he loved.