August 21, 2025: University of Michigan Studying: Famous Alums

[Laterthis week, we’ll be moving my youngerson Kyle into his first-year dorm at Michigan. So this week, through proudDad tears, I’ll share a handful of UMichigan contexts, leading up to a specialpost on some of Kyle’s plans there!]

Inalphabetical order, here are five particularly notable entries among theuniversity’s countless famousalumni:

1)     Clarence Darrow:As that article notes, Darrow didn’t complete his degree from the law school,as he was apparently already ready after just one year (1877-78) to pass thebar and get to work. But even a one-year association with the early 20thcentury’s mostfamous and influentiallawyer is worth highlighting, I’d say.

2)     GeraldFord (class of 1934): Considering how many presidents attendedIvy League institutions (spoiler: a whole lot of them), it’s pretty coolfor one of the nation’s oldest public universities to call a president an alum.But it’s even cooler that he was also a football star there, named the team’sMVP in hissenior season during which he started at the crucial position of center inevery game.

3)     Tom Hayden(class of 1961): At the other end of the political spectrum in the 1960s and70s was TomHayden, who co-founded Studentsfor a Democratic Society (SDS) while a student at Michigan, authored thehugely influential PortHuron Statement that served as a manifesto for the student activistmovement around the country, and went on to marryJane Fonda (!) among many other achievements (yes, I called that anachievement).

4)     DorothyMcFadden Hoover: Like Darrow, Dorothy McFadden Hoover started but didn’t finisha graduate degree program at Michigan (in her case, a PhD in Physics). But thatwas because she was hired by the U.S. Weather Bureau for a hugely important positionin the groundbreaking Joint NumericalWeather Prediction unit, one of countless striking moments the life andcareer of a woman who was born the granddaughter of enslaved people and went onto serve as one of NASA’s“human computers” and to become the first Black woman to achieve the rankof Aeronautical Research Scientist.

5)     Jesmyn Ward(MFA class of 2005): I’ve written aboutJesmyn Ward, one of my couple favorite 21stcentury American authors, multipletimes in this space, but I didn’t realize she was a Michigan alum (from itsgraduate MFA program) until researching this post. We all know who my favoritealum is always gonna be, but Ward definitely occupies the coveted #2 spot!

LastMichiganStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?