Among famous peop
le I have known, perhaps JoAnne Bier Beemon is the most striking in her being unique and uncompromising.
I knew her in my college days and young manhood as a true child of the ‘60s, a hippie, a tree hugger, an anti-war activist. She was the girlfriend of WLAV Radio deejay Ed Buchanan in the early 1970s, but they eventually split because Ed was just too conservative for her.
JoAnne joined in a lot of the trivia and hoopla we created as the anti-fraternity known as the Ogres. She even gave an impassioned speech at the convention to elect the Commissioner of Ogre baseball, a contest between Tom Poston and Marlin Perkins.
I lost touch with her after she split from Grand Rapids and moved up north. It wasn’t until the year 2000, about a quarter of a century later, that I spotted a front page story about her in the Grand Rapids Press.
JoAnne Bier Beemon was famous for being the first member of the Green Party ever to be elected to public office in Michigan. She had won the Charlevoix County Drain Commissioner’s seat in that year’s election.
Wikipedia, has reported on its site, “…on election day 2000 she received 5,349 votes (86%) to become Drain Commissioner in Charlevoix County.
“Beemon was credited with thwarting construction of a Wal-Mart store, by formulating storm water runoff regulations stricter than the county stormwater ordinance. She informed Wal-Mart of this on February 12, 2004. Two months later in a phone call to Beemon on April 6, 2004, Wal-Mart project manager Allen Oertel acknowledged that the company altered its plan based on information from Beemon that it did not previously know of. Wal-Mart later ended the project.[2]”
The GR Press story was all about how Beemon had frustrated and enraged local officials, who called her a hippie, a child of the ‘60s, a tree hugger and all those descriptions I used about her earlier in this column.
Beemon went against the local business tide by thwarting the aims of Wal-Mart.
Local officials made sure she was not elected to a second term. They had been asleep at the switch in 2000 by not putting a drain commissioner candidate on the ballot and she waltzed to an easy victory at the polls.
I tried to contact JoAnne, but failed because back then she did not have Internet. That problem was solved last month when she commented on a Facebook post I could see and we then became Facebook friends.
Her comment when I asked to be her friend was, “The night is young, and so is Dave.”
Since her brief brush with fame, she has been steadfast in her support for a clean environment. She is an official with and co-founder of “Don’t Frack Michigan,” a local pressure group, and she remains a staunch opponent of war.
She was quoted recently, “We’re not going to let the DEQ keep us trapped in their ‘There’s never been any contamination due to hydraulic fracturing in Michigan’ argument. Every time a well is fracked, millions of gallons of water are contaminated and then removed from the Great Lakes hydrological cycle — forever.”
Karen Fifelski, please note.
JoAnne Bier Beemon often was laughed at and marginalized in days gone by, but I am thrilled she was able to get something done in the public arena because of her continued commitment to the things she still believes. If you’re an unabashed environmentalist, you love her. If you’re not, well, not so much.
PHOTO: JoAnne Bier Beemon
Dave, you’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg! There should be a book written on the legendary accomplishments of JoAnne Beemon! She has stood against corporate giants, always championing the “Every Man”….every Friday, rain or shine, from noon to 1, she stands with “Women in Black,” a protest vigil inspired by 1 Palestinian and 1 Israli woman, to end the conflict in the Middle East. Jo worked tirelessly with an elderly landowner after a greedy developer built on HER land on environmentally-sensitive Stover Creek… while they didn’t win, they were able to halt further development. She worked single-handedly on procurement of all the property that is now the “Six-Mile Lake Natural Area” in Ellsworh, MI. She was instrumental in stopping St. Mary’s Cement from buying Fisherman’s Island State Park. She works continually to bring awareness to Flint’s poisoned water situation, the ancient Enron Pipeline under the Straits of Michigan, the Dakota Pipeline out west. She started the Charlevoix Conservancy to put pressure on the powerful Little Traverse Conservancy to protect more land…by creating competition, they took notice. There isn’t a young person in town who doesn’t know JoAnne… she taught church youth choir, substitute-taught at the schools, worked with scouting programs… my son’s Eagle project was re-building the only public dock allowed on the St. Clair River, which Jo supervised. She stood against nuclear power, long before it was acceptable; she works every day to support renewable, clean energy. She worked with other protesters to stop the building of a fireplace in Charlevoix’s East Park… it would have been a permanent eyesore and taxpayer liability forever. She spends time at the jail, talking with inmates there because of drug and alcohol abuse. Anyway, you get the picture…Jo is, by far, my most unforgettable character and profoundly influential on so many lives… if I had mad skills in writing (hint, hint), I would write her biography. She’s a wonder. ❤️????