RIP, Leelanau legends Dean Robb, George Weeks, Bernie Rink
Veteran journalist and political columnist George Weeks, pictured here interviewing then Vice President George HW Bush in the White House in 1986, passed away on Nov. 30—the same day as the 41st President.
From staff reports
Over the course of one week late in 2018, Leelanau County lost some of its most impactful elders.
Wine pioneer Bernie Rink died on Thursday, Nov. 29, at age 92. In 1964, Rink ignited northern Michigan’s wine industry when he planted a test plot of grapevines on his 16-acre homestead in Lake Leelanau. This decision played a vital role in the advancement of the region’s wine industry.
Rink tested the varieties for seven years to determine which ones grew best in the region’s climate. In 1971, Rink selected varieties he believed were hardy enough to withstand the cold climate, were not susceptible to disease, ripened early and made good wine. He started the planting of a 25-acre vineyard with those varieties and opened the county’s first tasting room, Boskydel Vineyard.
“He was an absolute pioneer,” said Sam Simpson, winemaker and co-owner of Aurora Cellars and Good Harbor Vineyards. “He was the first one to say I think we’ve got potential up here, I think we can do this, and he did it.”
Rink paved the way for other aspiring winemakers. Soon after Boskydel opened, Mawby, Good Harbor Vineyards and Leelanau Cellars followed. Today, the peninsula boasts 25 wineries with another 15 in the surrounding area.
“Our industry, region and consumers owe much of what much of what we have and enjoy to Bernie,” said Matt Gregory, owner of Chateau de Leelanau in Suttons Bay and president of the Leelanau Peninsula Wine Trail. “His vision and success provided many area vintners with a blueprint that is still being followed to this day.”
George Weeks, a veteran journalist and political columnist who wrote many books about the Sleeping Bear Dunes and human history of this area, passed on Friday, Nov. 30, at age 86—the same day as the 41st U.S. President, George HW Bush.
Photo: George Weeks (second from right) interiews President Lyndon Johnson aboard Air Force One
“George was a very good journalist and a very brave man, one of the most courageous I know,” said newspaperman and fellow Glen Arborite Kurt Luedtke.
Weeks was an influential member of Michigan’s political scene as a former United Press International reporter, a close aide to Republican Michigan Gov. William Milliken for 14 years and a Detroit News columnist. He is a member of the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame.
One of the most profound memories of his career was covering the funeral of President John F. Kennedy.
“I’ll never forget standing in the roped-off press section at JFK’s gravesite, next to an assemblage of the world’s most titled leaders, seeing French President Charles de Gaulle, wearing a simple khaki uniform that recalled his service in two world wars, hold a firm salute,” Weeks wrote. “Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, wearing a dark uniform with a broad sash and big boards on his narrow shoulders, wiped a tear from his eye.”
Books written by Weeks include Sleeping Bear: Yesterday and Today, Sleeping Bear: Its Lore, Legends and First People and Mem-ka-weh: Dawning of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians.
Dean Robb, an iconic civil rights law yer and Suttons Bay resident, died on Sunday, Dec. 2, at age 94. Together with his son Matt, he wrote the 2010 book Dean Robb An Unlikely Radical.
Photo: Dean Robb (right) with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1963
Robb, who grew up on a farm in southern Illinois, helped coordinate legal support for civil rights demonstrators and activists in the early 1960s in the Deep South and met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., following the civil rights leader’s release in 1963 from Birmingham jail.
According to the Traverse City Record-Eagle, Robb was 37 years old in 1961 when he began helping a group called “Friends of the South” organize 25 civil rights attorneys, mostly from Detroit, to help get civil rights activists out of jail, challenge illegal arrests, and work with southern lawyers and civil rights organizations. In 1963, he organized an interracial conference of 10-12 southern lawyers in Atlanta where Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke shortly after he was released from a Birmingham jail.
“The door opened and in walked Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth,” Robb wrote in An Unlikely Radical. “The room erupted into applause and whistles. Suddenly, the somewhat nervous excitement of the conference had transformed into a celebration.”
Robb’s biggest civil rights case was a civil lawsuit against the FBI filed by the family of murdered Detroit freedom rider Viola Liuzzo. The Unitarian Universalist civil rights activist from Michigan was murdered by Ku Klux Klan members on the last night of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March in Alabama. She was the first and only white woman killed during the civil rights movement, according to Robb.
In the late ‘70s, Robb worked on behalf of battered women, including a landmark case in which he successfully defended a Gaylord woman accused of murdering her abusive husband. It received national publicity and helped to change the country’s attitudes on domestic violence. He has also been an advocate for the rights of gay and lesbian citizens. Robb was the founder of Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, a national organization that works pro bono on cases dealing with civil rights and liberties, consumer and victim’s rights, the rights of workers, environmental protection and safety, the rights of the poor, and the civil justice system.
Dean Robb moved to Leelanau County in 1971 because, he told the Leelanau Enterprise in 2011, “I had a mid-life crisis, and I wanted to leave the city and get in the country, so I left Detroit and came up here.”
