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Civil engineer, served as Michigan state highway commissioner, chairman of the Mackinac Straits Bridge Authority and president of Portland Cement Company. Papers primarily document work with highway commission and Mackinac Straits Bridge Authority.

The papers, 1928-1968, of G. Donald Kennedy document his career in civil engineering, his participation in professional organizations, his activities as a state official, and as a supporter of the Michigan Democratic Party. The collection Includes correspondence, speeches, minutes, reports, articles, clippings, and photographs. The files relate to his work as municipal engineer in Pontiac, Michigan, with the Mackinac Straits Bridge Authority, the American Association of State Highway Officials, the Automotive Safety Foundation, and the Huron-Clinton Metropolitan Authority. The collection also includes papers relating to highway and airport construction, to economic mobilization during World War II, the Willow Run Bomber Plant, state Democratic Party matters, particularly the campaign visits of President Roosevelt to Michigan in 1936.

Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Michigan; designer of the proposed Mackinac Bridge; and member of the Mackinac Straits Bridge Authority. Correspondence, newspaper clippings, blueprints and notes concerning the design and construction of the Mackinac Bridge in Michigan. Correspondents include: Mortimer E. Cooley and G. Donald Kennedy.

The James H. Cissel Papers, 1934-1943, contain approximately one linear ft. of materials and serve as an interesting account of the architecture and technology of bridge design in the 1930s and document a little known period in the history of the Mackinac Bridge. The papers are comprised of materials pertaining to Cissel's involvement with the design and construction of the proposed Mackinac Straits Bridge. The collection consists of correspondence, newspaper clippings, architectural and design studies, and blueprints. The original order of the collection has for the most part been maintained. Series in the collection include: Correspondence, Newspaper Clippings, Ferry Boat Data, Legislation, Mackinac Straits Bridge Project, Publications, and Blueprints.

Photographs (positive and negative), slides, and transparencies taken by the company's photographers to document company activities, products, services, employees at work and at leisure, company exhibits and commemorations, and the response of the company to natural disasters and civil disturbances.

In 1993, Michigan Bell as a corporate entity was subsumed within the Ameritech Corporation. As a by-product of this reorganization and the downsizing resulting from it, the company agreed to deposit with the Bentley Historical Library its extensive archive of photographic images. Totalling approximately one million images, the Michigan Bell Telephone Company photo archive consists of negatives, copy prints, and color transparencies taken in the period since World War II (the bulk beginning in 1949). The collection does not include photos taken since 1983; interspersed throughout, however, are numerous images from before 1949.

The collection has been maintained in the order received with two principal series: Positives and Negatives.

The content of the photographs in the two series varies considerably. Naturally the collection documents the products of the company (phones and other communication devices) and the services provided (e.g. employees at work or the company reacting to a specific customer need). These photos were taken both to inform the general public as accompaniment to press notices and advertising copy and as a communications vehicle within the company, informing employees through the company news publication, Tielines, of activities going on in other divisions of the company or among the various regional Bell offices.

More importantly perhaps, the collection has value for its documentation of events and activities that are common to all large companies. These include images relating to: 1. The activities of employees within the corporation at their work (office workers, repairmen, operators, various support personnel, managers, etc.); 2. The activities of employees outside their work routine as members of corporate social groups (i.e., the company baseball or ice hockey team), at home engaged in leisure time activities, or involved in company-sponsored charitable or public service functions; and 3. Commemorations of specific milestones or events (company parade floats, area office open houses, corporate displays at public events such as fairs, etc.).

In addition, the collection documents the extraordinary and unforeseen as the phone company reacts to events and emergencies not within its control (floods, tornadoes, fires, the 1967 Detroit riot, strikes, and the like) or as a participant in history-making events (the announcement in Ann Arbor of the success of the Salk polio vaccine or the preparation involved in the 1980 Republican National Convention that convened in Detroit).

The Penrod/Hiawatha Company collection is mainly comprised of postcards, although some supplemental photographic items directed toward tourists is also included. The postcards, numbering more than 5,000, primarily are of the Michigan landscape and its towns and cities, covering every region of the state. Typical postcard themes dominate, particularly natural scenery, outdoor recreation, and shopping districts. The postcards date from the 1950s through the opening decades of the twenty-first century, although very few display copyright dates. The collection is divided into the following series.

1. Non-Postcard Items (calendars, brochures, booklets): Box 1
2. Non-Penrod/Hiawatha Postcards: Box 2
3. Penrod/Hiawatha Postcards, 1970s-1990s: Boxes 2-5
4. Penrod/Hiawatha Postcards, mid- to late 1990s: Boxes 5-6
5. Penrod/Hiawatha Postcards, late 1990s-2000): Boxes 6-7
6. Penrod/Hiawatha Postcards, 2001-2004: Box 8
7. Penrod/Hiawatha Postcards, 2005-2014: Box 9
8. Oversize and miscellaneous: Box 10

As batches of postcards are received every years, it was decided to arrange the items in blocks of time according to the date of their accession. Thus for the researcher interested in a specific city, it will be necessary to examine the listing for each of the series.