Vision Tri-Counties Leadership Graduation Celebration
- June 7, 2007
- Eric R. Gilbertson, President
- Saginaw Valley State University
President Gilbertson delivered the graduation address to the inaugural class to complete the Vision Tri-County leadership program. Comprised of a group of prominent community leaders, the class completed a series of classes and workshops designed to enhance leadership skills and carefully examine the needs of the Saginaw-Bay City-Midland region.
A Tale of Three Cities
I can’t help but note that the speaker for the first Vision Tri-Counties event last year was the Honorable Rudy Guiliani. This might just prompt some of you to observe that this fledgling organization is ... shall we say ... moving “down the food chain” in terms of speakers with national prominence. Actually, you’re in something of a free fall in that regard.
But I implore you to look at it this way: as of tonight, the average speaker’s fee for this event has been reduced by fully fifty-percent. I’m pleased and honored to be at the forefront of the VTC’s frugality movement.
* * *
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . .” Everyone who has passed tenth grade English – or even passed through tenth grade English – remembers those portentous lines from Charles Dickens. But few bothered to read the rest of that first paragraph from “A Tale of Two Cities” – much less the rest of the book. (And abbreviated study guides don’t count.)
Listen to the rest of his fascinating juxtaposition of apparent contradictions:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of Hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of the noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
Dickens wrote that in 1859, about the year 1775; but it resonates across centuries and oceans to describe other parlous times in other unsettled places – whether in late 18th century London and Paris or in early 21st century “MBS.”
* * *
Dickens went on to describe those two cities at that moment in their histories. But what about ours, now?
So . . . is Midland a thriving community with minor league baseball and a rich cultural life and widely applauded schools, or a fragile small city that is captured in a perilous dependance as a “company town”? Is Bay City a vibrant and fun-loving gateway to Michigan’s recreational North with spirited community festivals and upscale river-front condos, or is it a moribund blue-collar burg that is mired in class warfare politics? Is Saginaw a dying rustbelt town that is merely the northernmost extension of Detroit’s urban woes, or is it a city on the rebound with vital cultural venues and institutions and handsome tree-lined neighborhoods?
And is the Mid-Michigan Region an economic “basket case,” or is it a richly diverse and eclectic cluster of communities with strong assets – quality educational institutions, progressive major corporations and promising small-to-medium sized businesses, enviable natural resources, proximity to both urban amenities and recreational treasures – a Region which is preparing for a resurgence?
Our communities are, of course, all of these things – and none of them, just. We have a relatively high unemployment rate, but at the same time 93% of our fellow citizens do have jobs; too many of our young people are failing in school or dropping out, but so many are being educated very well and succeeding splendidly in colleges and careers; some “old economy” jobs are disappearing, but other businesses are creating opportunities for employees to make good lives for themselves and their families; we don’t have many exotic entertainments here, but many of us have found wonderful recreational and cultural satisfactions in our chosen home town.
I wouldn’t be so pollyannaish as to say that it’s all about how you choose to look at things; but ... well ... how you choose to look at things does matter.
Modesty is a pleasant virtue in an individual; for a whole community, modesty – especially excessive modesty – is a near lethal liability. I once proposed (facetiously) a self-deprecating motto for one of our communities that might also be said for the whole Region: “The Tri-Cities: It’s not as bad as you might think.”
Sane and sensible people have chosen to make this their home – including all of us – and for good reasons. But our collective “funk” and failure of self-confidence get in the way of appreciating what we do have; and they also get in the way of our acting more boldly to become – to borrow my institution’s tag line – something more, something better.
* * *
This organization is aptly called “Vision Tri-Counties” – and clearly vision is essential, but it is not sufficient. Vision is only a starting point. What is needed are concrete ideas, steps that we can take together to move towards that greater commonwealth of communities we aspire to become.
We still can and should be, to borrow from Longfellow, “architects of fate,” not just its helpless victims.
Where noble and inspired efforts like Vision Tri-Counties have failed in the past is precisely at this point. Everyone reached sweet and harmonious agreement on the abstract notion that “regionalism” was a good and necessary thing. But about all we did after that was keep talking and keep planning to talk some more and on and on. We never quite figured out what to do beyond that. You have your own ideas – individually and collectively – for moving ahead. So do I. But I happen to have the microphone right now, so here are mine.
* * *
Forging a stronger regional identity would help . . . at least as a starting point.
If you ask a New Yorker where he or she is from they will first mention Queens, the Upper East Side, The Village or Soho or Harlem or Brooklyn Heights or even a suburb on Long Island. But they’re also New Yorkers. They cheer for the same teams; they jeer at the same politicians; they use the same slang; they complain about enduring the same urban annoyances; and they project the same arrogance of belonging to what they think is a greater metropolis.
Shouldn’t we create and promote an identity that does not eclipse our pride in neighborhood or county or township but still encompasses a larger whole? We are all part of this “Three Rivers Region,” a commonwealth of fiercely independent and diverse communities which draw their image and identity from the Shiawassee, Tittabawassee, and Saginaw Rivers that flow through our landscape and connect us.
* * *
Beyond an identity, a “brand,” there are also substantive things to be done, issues to be confronted. The most obvious is and will always be economic development.
I was recently re-reading a history of my University and was reminded that at the time of its founding, 1963, leaders from our Region referred to this area as the “Golden Triangle.” It was, at the time, one of the most prosperous places in the midst of the most prosperous society in all of human history.
This may not be the same “Golden Triangle” today, though recently there have been promising developments – notably, the palpable commitment of Dow Chemical to the Region, the announcement of the Hemlock Semiconductor investment, and important successes by a variety of smaller firms. And there may soon be more.
Our Region developed as it did not because of wishful thinking by community leaders or the wisdom or efficiency of government. This is not to say government is unimportant – providing successful schools and safe streets would be an excellent help – but the cruel truth is government has been largely a spectator, and occasionally an obstruction, to much if not most of what has come to pass around us. What has shaped and affected our Region in the past – and will in the future – are unsentimental social and economic forces: competition (including more recently global competition), comparative advantages, and the development and attraction of talent and ideas.
We can and should continue to invest in professional economic development efforts – not because they can somehow produce economic magic, but because they bring people and resources together and they help keep government from discouraging or obstructing business creation or expansion.
But there are still those damn market forces out there. So how do we capitalize on our comparative advantages and improve our capacity to develop and attract talent and ideas?
Historically, our comparative advantages were white pine forest, brine deposits, waterways and proximity to other economic development. What are they now – and what can we make of them?
And we know that talented people and good ideas, like money and capital, can move fluidly from place to place. So what can we do to attract and retain talented people with creative ideas?
Those are the big questions. And all of the answers are of necessity untidy and uncertain.
There are, however, essential things that are within our capacity to effect if not control: We can protect and aggressively promote our existing assets; and we can protect and promote the qualities of our culture and environment that make this a place people will want to call home.
* * *
Previous generations have created shared assets for us and generations to follow – notably our institutions of higher education and this airport. None of these would have been possible had any of our individual communities acted alone. We are now the stewards of those shared assets.
I hesitate to say too much about higher education – not out of any particular modesty, but to avoid the obvious promotion of self-interest. But developed talent and good ideas are utterly indispensable to any future success we might wish to have; and higher education is likely to be the primary source of that talent and those ideas.
There simply is no vital or successful community in this country – nor can there be – without strong colleges and universities at its center.
Our predecessors also created for us a transportation hub. This airport is the “front door” to our Region, and it now brands us as a third rate place. Any of you who bring visitors here shudder at the thought.
And make no mistake about it, MBS is at some peril – it is engaged in an unforgiving competition with airports in other parts of our region, our State and Nation.
We should applaud the initiatives of the Airport Commission – supported by Vision Tri-Counties – to build a new terminal, at long last. We can only wish for a greater sense of urgency in that regard. But this should only be a start.
What other airport of this size sits alone in the middle of farmlands with virtually no hint of economic development around it? How can we develop this shared asset above and beyond what was bequeathed to us by an earlier generation of Tri-County leaders?
* * *
We should also think carefully about the other assets upon which we, as a Region, can build. The most obvious geographical asset we have is, of course, water. And water might just be to the next century what white pine forests and brine deposits were at other points in our history.
A while back some of us were pondering a name for our Region’s baseball team. Sports teams have a geographic identifier and a mascot – the Chicago Bears, or the Los Angeles Dodgers, or whatever. We needed a mascot that would amuse small children, not frighten them – the Loon works in that regard. And we needed a geographic identifier that would encompass the entire Region, not just any single community. If you look at a map it all makes sense: we are at the geographic center of the greatest freshwater reservoir in the World, the Great Lakes.
Our Three Rivers Commonwealth of Communities is the largest metropolitan center located on Lake Huron, the 4th largest body of freshwater in the World. But what gain do we take from that great fortune? In some ways our principal point of access to Lake Huron – Saginaw Bay – is more of an embarrassment than an asset.
Think about that: what should be one of our greatest assets is one of our greatest embarrassments.
How this happened and who is to blame is almost irrelevant at this point – water quality is not just a cause for environmental zealots. What is vitally important is what we do about it now. And we need and deserve help in this regard.
I respectfully urge that we make the remediation and improvement of Saginaw Bay and its watershed our Region’s second highest priority for political support. (SVSU is, of course, our first.) Our elected representatives at both the federal and state levels would serve us better if only we made this priority known to them – and reinforced it to them again and again.
There may be no greater bequest we can make to our Region’s future than the reparation and improvement of Saginaw Bay.
* * *
Then there is the matter of what some commonly call “quality of life.” I have always wondered whether a strong economy lifted the quality of life or if a rich and vital quality of life contributed to the development of a strong economy. It’s really a “chicken or egg” question; the two must go hand-in-hand.
Most of us either came here or stayed here because of both professional opportunities and the social and cultural and recreational opportunities that have enriched our lives and those of our families. And the specially talented people who we need to build our Region will come or stay for the same reasons.
There has been recent progress in restoring and sustaining and strengthening our cultural institutions, and in creating new recreational events (the “Spirit” and the “Loons” come to mind, but also the concerts and fireworks and festivals).
Yet often we describe our communities in terms of what they are not, rather than what they are – or what they could be. We do not have the glitz of a Las Vegas; and neither the Colorado Rockies nor oceanside resorts are outside our doors. But when I recruit people I tell them they can find an incredible array of choices here – from the quaint charms of Frankenmuth to the open fields just to the East, from the urban downtowns of Westside Saginaw or the Bay City Riverfront to the tree-lined streets of Midland or Saginaw Township, from suburban subdivisions to . . . well, you get the idea. The choices are remarkable.
But I also think we’re missing yet another opportunity.
Many of the most talented and accomplished people who have come to and contributed to our Region have come from distant lands. Our Region, like our Nation, has become an importer of critical talent; we need and rely upon that talent – especially in the medical and scientific professions.
The “internationalization” of our Region has happened almost without our recognizing it – though some of our largest employers, Dow Chemical and Dow Corning and the hospitals and SVSU, in particular, have long worked hard to attract talent from abroad to fill critical needs in our organizations. And as a result this has become a very cosmopolitan place – a collection if not a blending of different cultures and customs and clubs. We have a Chinese/American Association, an Indian Association, a Mexican American Council, and an Indo-Pac organization. There is a club dedicated to the study of Persian poetry here in our home community, and the list could go on and on.
Nothing could be more American than this; and our Region is, in short, a very American place.
So . . . how do we take advantage of the richness of our cultures? And how do we make this a more welcoming place for these talented people? We have hidden strength right here among us. And we need to capitalize better on the richness and variety of our culture and the talents of our friends and neighbors.
* * *
None of these ideas are especially brilliant or even freshly original. These are the things several of us have said to one another from time-to-time, usually in idle conversations. But the time has come to move beyond idle conversations.
Your graduation, as the first of these classes, signals a very good time to start.
* * *
It was eighteen years ago that I first looked for Saginaw, Bay City and Midland on a map. I had only heard of Saginaw from a Simon and Garfunkle song, and imagined it to be a place of untold delights. I had no idea that I would stay this long, much less that I would likely draw my last breaths in this place, some day. But I am among those who did indeed consciously and carefully decide to come, and to stay, and to make this place my home.
I have never regretted that decision. As for many of you, this Region has provided me with an extraordinary professional opportunity, an agreeable lifestyle and good friends.
The job of leadership now, in our moment in time and in this small arena in which we play out our lives, is to prepare for the resurgence of this “Golden Triangle.” It is, after all, our home. Joseph Conrad, in his novel, “Lord Jim,” wrote that “Each blade of grass has its spot on Earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is each man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life.”
This is our home.
* * *
So . . . is it the best or the worst of times? Is it a time of wisdom or folly, belief or disbelief, hope or despair? Do we have everything before us – or nothing?
None of us expects our triangle to become exactly what it once was – it may be smaller, it may be less prosperous, but it can be better than it is, as good for others as it is for the most fortunate, which includes all of us.
It is not some whimsical flight of fancy to imagine this. We just need the audacity to make it so.
Kippling’s poem, “Cities and Thrones and Powers,” may speak to us tonight:
Cities and thrones and powers,
Stand in time’s eye,
Almost as long as flowers,
Which daily die;
But, as new buds put forth
To glad new men,
Out of the spent and unconsidered earth
The cities shall rise again.
The cities shall rise again. Thank you.