Looking Back at St. Clair Shores is a series of historical articles featured most months in the St. Clair Shores Sentinel newspaper. Unless noted otherwise, the photographs used are part of the St. Clair Shores Historical Commision's Photograph Collection. These photographs, along with many others, are available to view through the Digital Media Archive.

Previous articles can be found by clicking on the year.

On June 18, 1933, 21-year-old Frederick Stearns II decided to take his biplane up for a spin. Literally. Stearns had decided to try spins in the craft he had owned for two years. Departing from Gratiot Airport, he piloted the plane up to 4,000 feet and put the plane into a spin. Unable to halt the spin, he bailed out of the plane at 1,000 feet. Stearns landed at Martin Road and Harper Avenue, with virtually no injuries.

The plane, shown in this photograph surrounded by curious passersby and at least one police officer, “spattered its wreckage in a field at Yale and Greater Mack” according to an article in the Detroit Free Press headlined “Stearns Leaps as Plane Spins”. The motor of the plane buried itself into the ground while other parts of the wreckage were scattered in an area of more than 100 square feet. At the time, there were few buildings in the area, so no person or property suffered injury or damage as a result of the plane’s crash.

Stearns, the son of Frederick S. Stearns, the owner of a Detroit pharmaceutical company, had learned to fly at age 16. The crash was his first mishap, but only the third time he had ever worn a parachute while flying. He later pursued a career in aviation in California.

This building was built in the late 1880s on the west side of Jefferson Avenue at Labadie Road (now 10 Mile Road) on the Labadie family farm. It was used as a sgrocery store, operated at various times by both the Bennett and Labadie families, until it became Driscoll’s Steak House in the 1940s, as shown here.

A local 1951 phone book lists the address of Driscoll Steak House as 24937 Jefferson. In the accompanying advertisement, the restaurant hours were listed as 4:30 PM to “midnite” but at that time, the steak house was not a year round business. It was open May 1 to January 1, while being closed for the winter months.

An undated Driscoll’s menu (estimated from the late 1960s or early 1970s) lists several appetizers, seafood dishes in the $7 to $11 range, and a lot of beef. A “New York Strip Sirloin Steak” was $8.50 as was the “Prime Steer Filet Mignon”. The “Roast Prime Rib of Beef au Jus” was $7.50. If a diner wanted a baked potato and sour cream instead of the included hash browns, there was a 60 cent additional charge.

Driscoll’s closed in the mid to late 1970s. By 1979 another restaurant was started in the building: Bobby Moore’s Blind Fish. The restaurant was re-named as a steak house in 1995. The building was destroyed by fire on September 14, 1997.

Originally designed for the US military, DUKW (pronounced “duck”) boats were a modification of a 2 ½ ton truck. These amphibious vehicles were created to aid US, and later Allied, forces in difficult, wet conditions. They saw their first combat use in Europe in 1943, as part of the Sicilian invasion. They were also used in the D-Day landings at Normandy, and in Guam and Saipan in the Pacific Theater. The vehicles top speed on roads was 50 miles per hour, and just over 3 mph in water.

General Motors built the DUKWs at plants in Pontiac, Michigan and in St. Louis. 21,147 of them were produced from 1942 to 1945. Meant to be used only in conflict zones, the boats were used again in the Korean War.

By the late 1950s, most of the DUKWs in the US were designated as military surplus, and were frequently re-purposed as rescue vehicles by fire departments or for use at Coast Guard Stations. This particular vehicle is pictured in front of one of the St. Clair Shores Fire Stations about 1958. Norm Goeschel is pictured in the vehicle, which required only one person to operate it.

And the acronym? D stands for: designed in 1942, U: utility, K: all-wheel drive, and W: dual-tandem rear axles, according to GM model nomenclature.

Reid’s Drugs was located at 25100 Harper Avenue in St. Clair Shores (at 10 Mile Road); this photo is from the 1950’s.

In an ad from the local phone book, the store said they provided “sick room and baby supplies” and was open from 9 AM to 11 PM. By 1957, the store was open 24 hours a day, and offered free delivery. Also by 1957, there were two additional Reid’s Drugs in St. Clair Shores: one at 22352 Nine Mile Road (near Greater Mack) and another at 27702 Harper Avenue (near 11 Mile Road).

Today, all three of the former Reid’s Drug locations currently have a drug store at the same (or almost the same) location.

Another storefront in this photo is the office of the St. Clair Shores Herald, at 25104 Harper Avenue. The Herald, a weekly publication, had previously been known as the Gratiot Herald, with offices on Mack Avenue. In 1953, the paper moved to 23710 Harper (near Pleasant Street) and then relocated again to the address shown in this photo at a later date. The Herald was published from at least 1949 to 1993.

There has been somewhat of a “beer tradition” at 25113 Jefferson Avenue in St. Clair Shores since the mid-1930s.

John and Helen Bennett opened Bennett’s Market at that location (north of 10 Mile Road) about 1934. Their original store had been opened about 1923, but less than a decade later, they moved to the 25113 Jefferson location. Their general store sold cigars, soft drinks, candy, meats, groceries, and yes, beer.

John F. Bennett was born in Thompsonville, Connecticut on March 29, 1895 to Morris and Margaret Bennett, both Irish immigrants. On John’s 1917 World War I draft card, his occupation was listed as “butcher”. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1917 to 1919. John married another Connecticut native, Helen McMonen, whose father also was an Irish immigrant, when they were both about 24. The young couple moved to Michigan soon thereafter.

The Bennett family (son John Jr. was born in 1919 in Detroit) lived next to their store on Jefferson Avenue for several years, but by 1940 had moved to a house on Bon Brae Street. The 1940 US Census lists John Bennett Sr. as “proprietor—retail grocery” who worked 70 hours per week. Mrs. Bennett did not work, according to census records.

Mr. Bennett died in 1979; Helen Bennett lived another six years, but Bennett’s Market was open until the mid-1990s. In 2015 the location was transformed into Baffin Brewing Company, but the outline of the original brick building is still readily recognizable to anyone who remembers Bennett’s Market, as seen in this photograph from the 1940s.

St. Lucy Roman Catholic Parish was established in 1954 by Edward Cardinal Mooney as a mission of another St. Clair Shores parish, St. Joan of Arc (which itself had been established in 1927). Ground was broken for both a church and an elementary school in March of 1954. St. Lucy Mission was elevated to parish status by Cardinal Mooney on January 26, 1956; the parish’s first pastor was Msgr. Hubert A. Maino.

The Catholic community of St. Clair Shores was expanding rapidly in the mid-1950s, since another parish was also established in the city in 1954: St. Isaac Jogues.

This photograph from 1963 shows an unidentified couple at the altar with their attendants during the marriage ceremony inside the Church, which is still located at 23401 Jefferson Avenue. The photography was done by Robert Stewart.