Category: Spending

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How Do You Feel About Paying For A Personal Monument to Walled Lake Resident Terry Hawke’s Grandpa, Daddy, Auntie, And Uncle?

I wouldn’t have been irritated enough to research and write this post except for the fact that Walled Lake resident Terry Hawke actually, really, and truly does want to build a “Pony Cycle” monument in the Depot Park playground to pay homage to his family. Even better – he has the nerve to ask Clarkston taxpayers to effing pay for it. That’s some serious chutzpah there, eh?

I would love to say I’m kidding, but I’m not. And based on their comments during the March 11, 2024, city council meeting, councilmembers Laura Rodgers, Amanda Forte, and Ted Quisenberry think this Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument would be a tremendous use of your tax dollars. And yes, that would be the same Ted Quisenberry who seems to be developing an unfortunate pattern of wanting to spend money on crap we don’t need, like $90,000 worth of water filters every year.  (Gosh, Ted, it would be really super awesome if you would shift your focus to fixing roads and sidewalks and spend your own money on things that tickle your fancy. Thanks!)

Before being asked for my money, I had no idea what a Pony Cycle was, and I would be surprised if many people who live here had a clue what it is either. And if you’re like me, I’ll bet you could have gone on to live a fulfilling life without that knowledge. But let’s have some fun. Can you guess which Pony Cycle the council might want to spend your tax dollars on from the pictures below? I know it will be a hard choice because a few of our council members really don’t seem to care how our tax dollars are spent and have come out in favor of some crazy things. OK, let’s play.

How about this one?

No, not this one. I found this photo as part of an advertisement on the PonyCycle company’s website where they say the PonyCycle rides like a real pony. It also comes with many cool accessories. You should check it out and buy one for the kids. It looks like fun.

How about this one?

No, it’s not this one either, though this Pony-Cycle combines all the health benefits of rowing and riding and was advertised in The Pensecola Journal on Thursday, June 3, 1965. I wonder if Gayfer’s is still selling them, because I think they would probably be better for you, health-wise. 🤔

No, actually, this is what city council is considering spending your hard-earned money on:

These photos were taken from the March 11, 2024, city council packet and presented by Terry Hawke to support his request to spend tax dollars on his proposed Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument. He didn’t call it that, but as I’ll show you, that’s exactly what it is. Isn’t it lovely? It would also be removable for maintenance (but not by vandals 🙄).

You’d think Terry would have used a picture of the restored Pony Cycle the Clarkston Community Historical Society (CCHS) currently has on display at the Clarkston Independence District Library, but that probably would have been too much of an in-your-face “coincidence” that would connect this BS idea to city manager Jonathan Smith. As you know, Smith is president and treasurer of the CCHS, and his wife is the paid CCHS director who manages the exhibits in the library museum. Rather than adding Terry’s request for a taxpayer-funded Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument to the March 11, 2024, city council agenda as a discussion item, which would be the typical way something like this would be presented, Smith personally prepared a resolution for the council’s consideration.

What’s the difference between a discussion item and a resolution? A discussion item is just that – something for the council to consider and discuss but not make a decision on. A resolution, if approved, would have immediately authorized the city to send a check to Terry to build and install his Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument in the Depot Park playground without passing Go or collecting $200. Well, in this case it would be $3,500 taxpayer dollars ($3,000 to “compensate” Terry and his friends for undisclosed necessary materials and $500 to install a cement pad using Clarkston Department of Public Works labor, which I guess is “free”). Oh, and Smith admitted he had no clue where the totally awesome Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument would go or if there was even room for it to be placed in our playground using national playground safety standards for allowable distances between playground features, but he set the wheels in motion for the city council to write a check to Terry anyway.

Why on earth should Terry be given any tax dollars to allow him and his very important and famous friends to refurbish a junker Pony Cycle and install it as a Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument in the Depot Park playground? Because can’t you see? It’s about our local history, gosh darn it! Or at least that’s what Terry apparently managed to convince Quisenberry, Rodgers, Forte, and many people in the audience of, suggesting that the Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument is so super important to us that we’re supposed to pay for it. Terry said if we didn’t want to pay for this wonderful piece of, er, history, he could get it running and sell this ostensibly sought-after collectible for the princely sum of “over $5,000” – and no, there are no missing zeros in that figure. (Hmm. I wonder if he could sell it “as is,” right now, for $3,000. Something to ponder. 🤔)

No one seemed to care that Terry didn’t take his Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument idea to the Friends of Depot Park (FODP) first, and there were FODP group members present at the March 11th city council meeting who confirmed they’d never heard this idea before. And oddly, no one asked why Smith didn’t direct him there. But if Smith had done so, that might have interfered with Terry’s grand dedication plans for his Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument in Depot Park. (More on that later.)

The FODP is a hard-working group of volunteers who are allocated a very small budget for materials, but their biggest investment in Depot Park is the sweat equity they expend in volunteer labor to do repairs to ensure the park stays beautiful for the rest of us. They also make suggestions to the city council for improvements to the park. Ignoring their contributions, Quisenberry thought it would be perfectly fine to “reallocate” more than half their budget and just hand it over to Terry. After all, why should this very important Hawke family member be forced to talk to the FODP about a park addition? That’s just for average people, you know, like little girls who want to give back to the community by installing a duck food dispenser so people will stop feeding bread to the ducks because bread is harmful to them. (FYI, the little girls were turned down.)

Are you curious about this very important Hawke family history that you’ve never heard about before and why you should be forced to pay for a Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument yet? Well, let me share what I found with you.

A long, long time ago, 20 West Washington and the surrounding area was the site of several mills. By 1917, the mills were gone, and the property was vacant. In 1942, Henry Ford used the property to build a small, new factory as part of his “Village Industries Program.” These small factories were intended to supply Ford’s larger factories. The Clarkston Ford factory made “seat covers, drill bushings, and other material.” In 1945, a mere three years later, Ford closed the Clarkston plant. Clarkston government had the opportunity to purchase the property, but the city council voted “no” to obtaining a bond to finance the purchase. After Ford left, the property remained vacant for five years, and then Hawk Tool & Engineering, Inc. moved in. (You can find my source material here and here.)

So, other than occupying the same space at different points in time, there is no connection between Hawk Tool and Henry Ford.

Allen E. Hawke owned Hawk Tool & Engineering, Inc. (Note that the family dropped the “e” from the company name.) His obituary notes that he had two sons, Allen W. and Earl G. Allen W.’s 65th wedding anniversary announcement states he had three children, including Terry C. Hawke – and that would be the guy who wants you to pay for the Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument. Why have I been referring to it as a Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument? Because Terry said he wanted the Pony Cycle to include a plaque that honors his grandfather (Allen E.), daddy (Allen W.), his auntie and uncle (Earl G.), and the very important people who plan to work on this very important Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument. Well, of course he wants recognition! It wouldn’t be a family monument without the plaque, would it? In fact, Terry told us he already has a little something prepared for that purpose.

I suspect Terry is the person who runs the Pony Cycle Facebook page, though he doesn’t identify himself as the page owner. This fan club, as it were, is followed by a whopping 104 people. That page contains a post, apparently written by former mayor Eric Haven (if the attribution is to be believed), that counts the Hawke family as a Clarkston “pioneering giant,” equivalent to the likes of Butler Holcomb, the Clark Brothers, and Henry Ford! 😂 (Yes, it actually says that, and you can see it for yourself here.) The post also includes a photo of Terry, a Pony Cycle logo, a picture of what I’m guessing was the Clarkston Hawk Tool facility, along with more pictures of Pony Cycles. Yay!

The Pony Cycle Facebook page states these little scooters were manufactured by Hawk Tool for only a short period of time (between 1953 and 1958) during the 23 years the facility was open. According to the Facebook post ostensibly written by Haven and cited with approval by the Pony Cycle Facebook page owner, the Hawkes didn’t even invent the Pony Cycle. They bought the patent, manufactured them for a few years, and then stopped. Otherwise, the company stuck to its main business which apparently included a lot of government manufacturing contracts. (See here, here, here, and here for various contract award announcements.)

I searched the Clarkston News archives through the Clarkston Independence District Library, the Clarkston News’s current website, as well as in the newspapers available through my newspapers.com subscription to find more information regarding Hawk Tool. Normally, when a business does wonderful things for Clarkston residents, you’ll at least find a mention of it in the Clarkston News. As we all know, the old Clarkston News was truly a community newspaper and kept up with all local events. Even if the business itself didn’t crow about its good deeds, there were always people who would write a thank you note for publication as a Letter to the Editor and the word got out that way.

Unfortunately, I didn’t locate much of anything that suggests Hawk Tool engaged in any philanthropic activity to give back to Clarkston and the surrounding area. The only thing I was able to find that connected Hawk Tool to a local charity was a March 19, 1964, Clarkston News article referencing a Clarkston Area Jaycees charity event. If I’m understanding this correctly, the Jaycees sold tickets to people asking them to guess the exact time a junker car would fall through the ice on the Mill Pond (with the car to be removed in the spring), and the person with the closest guess won a cash prize. What was Hawk Tool’s generous contribution to the event? They allowed a car to be sunk in the Mill Pond. The article notes that Hawk Tool employees (and Michigan Bell’s Clarkston office) determined the sinking time. (You can read about the event here.)

Well, OK, so they didn’t give anything back to the community, but certainly they were nice to their employees, right? Well, aside from the fact that there was apparently a ladies bowling league that regularly reported its scores to the local paper, I didn’t find any evidence they were. In fact, one might think not only was the opposite true but also that the employees didn’t much care for Hawk Tool, especially at the end:

    • January 1971 (as reported in a January 3, 1996, Clarkston News 25-year lookback) – Allen Hawke claims Clarkston employees were “asked” to work on December 28th-30th but didn’t show up. The company’s response was to send then all a telegram telling them they’d “lost their seniority.” When the employees reported to work after the holidays on January 4, 1971, they found that the company had locked the doors of the Clarkston facility, and they were not allowed to return. Allen Hawke claimed he hoped federal mediation scheduled for January 6, 1971, was successful.
    • March 25, 1971, Clarkston News – the strike was in its twelfth week. The employees had been working without a contract since September 1970, but the current dispute was over holiday pay. Allen Hawke said the company was in the process of “phasing out” and the article reported that someone had punctured three office employees’ tires and “paint was thrown” on the front of the office. A 25-year lookback in the March 27, 1996, Clarkston News stated there had been vandalism at the Clarkston facility and two other facilities. Salaried employees experienced slashed tires at home, at the Clarkston facility, and in a bowling alley parking lot. The article alleged there were 100 broken plant windows at the Clarkston facility, a truck was vandalized, and company buildings had been smeared with paint. A $1,000 reward was offered for the arrest and conviction of the people responsible for the vandalism.
    • April 6, 1972, Clarkston News – the company was still closed, affecting 28-30 workers who lived in Clarkston and the surrounding area. Allen Hawke anticipated the company would completely close in the summer of 1972 at the expiration of its government contracts. The Clarkston News reported employees went on strike on December 23, 1970 (but a later article claimed the strike began on December 12, 1970).

Hmmm. Let’s review, shall we? The Clarkton employees had been working for months without a labor contract, since September 1970, yet the primary dispute was ostensibly about holiday pay. Can we reasonably infer that: Hawk Tool “asked” Clarkston employees to work during a holiday week, perhaps with no notice (since it’s not uncommon for a UAW plant to close during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day); perhaps the employees didn’t want to work on a paid holiday (or maybe many of them were out of town); the company used the employees’ failure to comply with their “ask” to report to work as an excuse to send telegrams essentially telling the employees they were fired (what do you think “you’ve lost your seniority” means?); they didn’t pay the employees for December 28th-30th, which would explain the assertion that the strike was about holiday pay; the company locked its doors in Clarkston and didn’t allow its Clarkston employees to return to work then (or ever, as it turned out); the lockout unsurprisingly instigated a strike; the company decided not to reopen the Clarkston facility and blamed the employees for the closure; and 28-30 Clarkston area employees were unexpectedly (to them) thrown out of work, depriving their families of income – right after Christmas.

Huh. A jaded person might think the company had already decided to close the Clarkston facility, moved its equipment from Clarkston to other facilities during the holiday break to continue production, and it was to Hawk Tool’s financial advantage to treat its Clarkston employees this way. Did firing its Clarkston employees working without a union contract allow Hawk Tool to avoid paying severance? I don’t know. Did firing Clarkston employees for not responding to the company’s “ask” to work on December 28th-30th, or instigating a reasonably anticipated strike, allow the company to contest paying unemployment benefits by claiming the employes refused to work, causing further financial harm to these employees and their families? Again, I don’t know. While there is absolutely, positively no excuse for vandalism, and I think it’s especially awful to take your anger out on the tires of your fellow employees because you’re PO’d they were still collecting a paycheck from the company as salaried employees, perhaps Hawk Tool’s treatment of these unionized Clarkston employees inspired a venomous hatred of the company and that may have had something to do with the vandalism? Again, I am absolutely not trying to minimize or excuse vandalism, but based on these facts, I’m more sympathetic to the feelings of the unionized employees than I am to the Hawke family. Hungry people do drastic things.

But I could have it all wrong. I moved to Clarkston long after this happened, and I’d never heard of Pony Cycles or Hawk Tool before Terry demanded money from me through the city council. It’s entirely possible the Hawk Tool Clarkston employees were all intractable, lazy jerks who didn’t want to work anyway. Or maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle. I’m sure Terry can fill us in on the details of this additional, important “local history” to give us some more context about his family’s business. Terry told the city council he didn’t leave Clarkston until 1972, so he should have first-hand knowledge about what happened. Or maybe some of those 28-30 former Clarkston area employees or their family members can come forward and help fill in the factual gap for the city council before they try to honor this company in any way. But until we know all the details about the Hawk Tool closure, I’m not sure why we should permit a Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument anywhere on Clarkston public property, let alone in our beautiful playground, whether or not any part of it is taxpayer funded.

And what exactly do we know about Terry? I knew nothing about him, but I was horrified that he started his presentation to the city council by bragging that he used to catch frogs in the wetlands area of what is now Depot Park and feed them to the blue racer snakes that he also used to catch. Tell us, Terry, did they scream? Some frogs do, you know. Personally, I think the fact that a boy would torture frogs is some evidence of bad home training, but when a boy becomes a man and publicly brags about it, I personally think that is some evidence of being a bad human. I suppose reasonable minds can differ on this, but I found this story to be disgusting.

I honestly don’t have any objection to someone who loves his family, wants to honor his family, and wants to share a bit of his personal family history with the world. I prefer companies that give back to the local community and treat their employees with respect, but some companies don’t care about anything but their balance sheet and there’s no legal obligation for them to do anything more. However, based on what I found in my newspaper search, I question whether this particular family deserves to be honored with a Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument at all. Without additional facts, the events surrounding the company lockout and eventual closure suggest that they do not.

And, rather than approaching the city with a demand for money, the appropriate mindset would have been for Terry to humbly offer this, er, totally awesome Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument as a gift to Clarkston with no strings attached and allow the city council to consider whether they wanted it. After all, if it’s such a great idea, Terry could certainly find enough people willing to donate $3,500 to bring his dream of self- and family-aggrandizement to fruition without asking the taxpayers for money. He bragged about owning his own business and knowing famous people who love those Pony Cycles, so he undoubtedly should be able to drum up enough donations to cover his purported expenses (or pay for them himself). And, if Terry is strapped for cash and can’t find anyone to fund his Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument, maybe he could hit up Smith and the CCHS for some of the money. They like putting plaque-y things up all over the city and their 2022 tax return (the most recent they’ve posted on their website), shows they have $131,111 in the bank. No doubt they have a lot more after their giant 2023 Art in the Village event.

Let’s give thanks where thanks are due – Quisenberry wanted to force a vote on the Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument on March 11th. There were five council members present, and Peg Roth and Sue Wylie said they absolutely would not be voting for this stupid proposal. Had Wylie given Quisenberry what he wanted and allowed a vote on the funding resolution – and I’m really sorry she didn’t – this asinine request would have died on the 11th. But she didn’t and it didn’t. The matter was tabled instead.

Terry was not very happy that his request for our money was tabled. He’s got him some grand plans for this Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument that he wants you to pay for. You see, Terry is organizing some sort of a Pony Cycle jubilee on the 4th of July, and he envisions that all the amazing Pony Cycles will ride to Depot Park for a picnic after the parade. Here is the notice from the Pony Cycle Facebook page:

After all, what picnic would be complete without a Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument that includes a little “dedication ceremony” where Terry would be the center of attention? Terry was very concerned that the city council (or anyone else at the city) might take too much time considering his very generous proposal to install the Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument at taxpayer expense – and cause him to miss the chance to receive all the anticipated accolades as a Hawke family member – because the very famous people helping him with this amazing project might not be available if we delay too long. 🙄

Again, I’d like to extend a special thanks to councilmembers Wylie and Roth for seeing through this nonsense and saying that they would not be voting for it. But they each have only one vote, and it was supposed to be brought back for the March 25, 2024, city council meeting. I don’t see it on the agenda that was just published, but that doesn’t mean they can’t add it at the beginning of the meeting. If you don’t want the city council to write a check to Terry for a Pony Cycle Hawke Family Monument, you should email them and let them know:

Sue Wylie (Mayor)
WylieS@VillageofClarkston.org

Laura Rodgers (Mayor Pro Tem)
RodgersL@VillageofClarkston.org

Gary Casey
CaseyG@VillageofClarkston.org

Amanda Forte
ForteA@VillageofClarkston.org

Mark Lamphier  
LamphierM@VillageofClarkston.org

Ted Quisenberry
QuisenberryT@VillageofClarkston.org

Peg Roth
RothP@VillageofClarkston.org