I was raised in Shelby by Republicans. In the 1960s my father, Robert R. Wheeler, was the Republican chairman of Michigan’s Ninth Congressional District, stretching from Grand Haven to Traverse City up the shore of Lake Michigan. Republican activism ran in the family: my grandfather Neil Wheeler had been elected state representative in Lansing for one term (two years) in the 1930s.
This fall marks the 30th anniversary of what has been called “the most widely watched PBS series in the world.” According to one of the show’s co-writers, almost a billion people worldwide have watched “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage” and gained an understanding of humanity’s place in the universe, and the paths taken by early astronomers to achieve that knowledge. For 26 of those years, Norm Wheeler has shown all 13 television episodes of “Cosmos” to his high school science students at The Leelanau School in Glen Arbor.