Below is a transcript of our conversation with CMU’s Clarke Historical Library Director Carrie Marsh and Public Services Librarian Bryan Whitledge:
David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University students and faculty.
Why are there no Grayling in Grayling? Grayling the city is up north. Grayling the fish used to be in cold water rivers like the Au Sable and Manistee. Enter the late Robert Kohrman, a CMU professor for nearly 40 years. To learn about him, his research, and love of fishing, I sat down with Carrie Marsh, Director, and Bryan Whitledge, Public Services Librarian, both from CMU's Clarke Historical Library…
Carrie Marsh:
And that led him to his profession as chemist, but it also led him to this lifelong, or nearly adulthood-long love for fishing in Michigan, fishing streams, the lakes, and then that led to, and his curiosity about that led to decades of collecting books and periodicals about it.
DN:
Brian, anything you'd add in terms of remembrance about?
Bryan Whitledge:
Yeah, I met him within probably about 3 weeks of working as well and worked with him for 14, the 14 1/2 years that I've been at the Clarke. And he was always willing to teach me new things about angling books. And as somebody who's not an angler, I never knew how much I would like learning about historic angling books and how much pride there is for the place that Michigan holds in the history of sports culture, sporting culture, and conservation in the history of the United States.
DN:
So, let's go there because yours truly is very much a born and raised city kid. So angling, I love the lakes, but This is out of my element when we get into the areas that lit the fire for Bob. And we now, CMU and the Clarke Library, home to one of Michigan's best fishing book collections. Was there a particular aspect of it or just all aspects of fishing that Bob got interested in and developed that passion for?
CM:
The way he told it to me was in the early 1970s, he was driving through Grayling, Michigan and thought to himself, I wonder why it's called Grayling. And that was quite literally the question that started everything. And it led him to buying a book called The Fishing Tourist by a man named Charles Halleck. And Halleck was a well-known writer. He had started sporting magazines and things like that right during and after the American Civil War. So, we're talking mid-1800s, 1870s. And he bought that book. And in it, it's a series of vignettes basically about fishing around, about Halleck’s fishing around North America, Canada. And there's a section on Michigan specifically where he talks about the Grayling, not the city of Grayling, the Grayling fish. And (and) describes to other sport fishing enthusiasts how to get there. And so, from that, once this book came out, or the article came out and then it was put into this book, they came by the droves on train from the Northeast to fish. And in 30 years, the grayling were extinct. It was fished out.
DN:
Mm, and has never been reintroduced in any way.
CM:
Well, that's the other interesting question for I think for Bob was that while he was interested in that story and trying and was interested in where in the literature is this discussed, which led him to purchase books and also the early sporting periodicals of that mid to late part of the 19th century where not only was he finding discussions about sport fishing and angling, but he was also finding conversations about taking care of the waterways, making sure that we maybe perhaps should limit the amount of fish we take out of the water. Well, what about the lakes? And that spurred other conversations about land management, waterway management, and stream management in those very early days. So, these are the various early conversations he could find in the printed literature about conserving our wild spaces. water and land and wildlife.
DN:
The conversation continues next week.
