Kelly James Clark (born March 3, 1956) is an American philosopher noted for his work in the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of science, and the cognitive science of religion. He is currently Senior Research Fellow at the Kaufman Interfaith Institute and a professor at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. (born Leslie Lynch King Jr.; July 14, 1913 – December 26, 2006) was the 38th president of the United States from 1974 to 1977. A member of the Republican Party, Ford assumed the presidency after the resignation of Richard Nixon, under whom he had served as the 40th vice president from 1973 to 1974 following the resignation of Spiro Agnew. Prior to that, he served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949 to 1973.
Ford was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He attended the University of Michigan, where he played for the university football team, before eventually attending Yale Law School. Afterward, he served in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1942 to 1946. Ford began his political career in 1949 as the U.S. representative from Michigan's 5th congressional district, serving in this capacity for nearly 25 years, the final nine of them as the House minority leader. In December 1973, two months after the resignation of Vice President Agnew, Ford became the first person appointed to the vice presidency under the terms of the 25th Amendment. After President Nixon resigned in August 1974, Ford immediately assumed the presidency.
Muskegon (/məˈskiːɡən/ mə-SKEE-gən) is a city in and the county seat of Muskegon County, Michigan, United States. Situated around a harbor of Lake Michigan, Muskegon is known for fishing, sailing regattas, and boating. It is the most populous city along Lake Michigan's eastern shore. At the 2020 census, the city's population was 38,318. The city is administratively autonomous from adjacent Muskegon Township, and several locations in Muskegon Township and other surrounding townships have Muskegon addresses.
Muskegon is the center of the Muskegon metropolitan statistical area, which is coextensive with Muskegon County and had a population of 175,824 as of the 2020 census. It is also part of the larger Grand Rapids-Kentwood-Muskegon-combined statistical area.
The Grand Rapids metropolitan area is a triangular shaped Metro Triplex, in West Michigan, which fans out westward from the primary hub city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, to the other two metro hubs of Muskegon and Holland. The metropolitan area had an estimated population of 1,159,616 in 2017. The region, noted in particular for its western edge abutting the Lake Michigan shoreline and its beaches, is a popular tourist and vacation destination during the summer. Noted popular metro area beach towns include Grand Haven, Holland, Muskegon, and Saugatuck.
The metropolitan area is home to many attractions. Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park is located in the outskirts of Grand Rapids. Michigan's Adventure theme park is just north of Muskegon, and the Grand Rapids Art Museum and the DeVos Place Convention Center are both in downtown Grand Rapids. The Grand River flows through the metropolitan area and is noted for its fishing, kayaking, and canoeing.
Muskegon County (/məˈskiːɡən/ mə-SKEE-gən) is a county in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of 2020, the population was 175,824. The county seat is Muskegon.
Muskegon County comprises the Muskegon, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is part of the larger Grand Rapids-Kentwood-Muskegon, MI Combined Statistical Area.
US Highway 131 (US 131) is a north–south United States Numbered Highway, of which all but 0.64 of its 269.96 miles (1.03 of 434.46 km) are within the state of Michigan. The highway starts in rural Indiana south of the state line as a state road connection to the Indiana Toll Road. As the road crosses into Michigan it becomes a state trunkline highway that connects to the metropolitan areas of Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids before continuing north to its terminus at Petoskey. US 131 runs as a freeway from south of Portage through to Manton in the north. Part of this freeway runs concurrently with Interstate 296 (I-296) as an unsigned designation through Grand Rapids. US 131 forms an important corridor along the western side of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, running through rural farm and forest lands as well as urban cityscapes. Various names have been applied to the roadway over the years. The oldest, the Mackinaw Trail, originated from an Indian trail in the area while other names honored politicians. An attempt to dedicate the highway to poet James Whitcomb Riley failed to gain official support in Michigan.
The first state highways along the US 131 corridor were designated as early as 1919. When the US Highway System was formed on November 11, 1926, US 131 was created along the route of M-13 in Michigan. Originally ending at Fife Lake on the north end, the highway was extended to Petoskey in the late 1930s. Further changes were made, starting in the 1950s, to convert segments of the road to a full freeway. The state started this conversion simultaneously at two locations: heading north from Three Rivers, and heading both north and south from a point in southern Kent County. A third segment was built south of Cadillac and over subsequent years Michigan filled the gaps in the freeway. Cadillac and Manton were bypassed in the early part of the 21st century, resulting in the current freeway configuration. Another large-scale construction project in 2000 rebuilt an unusual section of the freeway through Grand Rapids known as the S-Curve. Two bridges formerly used by US 131 have been labeled by the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) as historic structures; one of them has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).
M-6, or the Paul B. Henry Freeway, is a 19.7-mile-long (31.7 km) east–west freeway and state trunkline highway in the United States that serves portions of southern Kent and eastern Ottawa counties south of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Although the freeway is named for Paul B. Henry, local residents and the press continue to use the original name, South Beltline as well on occasion. The freeway connects Interstate 196 (I-196) on the west with I-96 on the east. M-6 also provides a connection to U.S. Highway 131 (US 131) in the middle of its corridor while running through several townships on the south side of the Grand Rapids metropolitan area in Western Michigan. Each end is in a rural area while the central section has suburban development along the trunkline.
The freeway was originally conceived in the 1960s. It took 32 years to approve, plan, finance, and build the freeway from the time that the state first authorized funding in 1972 to the time of the ribbon-cutting ceremony in 2004 that opened the South Beltline to traffic. The project cost around $700 million or around $35 million per mile (approximately $22 million per kilometer). Initial construction started in November 1997, with the first phase opened in November 2001. The full freeway was opened in November 2004. The first phase of construction was completed in asphalt, while the second and third phases were built in concrete. The project was built with two firsts: the first single-point urban interchange (SPUI; /ˈspuːiː/) in Michigan, and a new technique to apply the pavement markings, embedding them into the concrete to reduce the chance of a snowplow scraping them off. In advance of the opening of the freeway to traffic, the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) allowed the public to walk or bike the South Beltline in an open-house event called the "Southbelt Shuffle".
Cutlerville is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Kent County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 17,849 as of the 2020 census. The community is located mostly within Byron Township to the west with a smaller portion within Gaines Township to the east.
The community is part of the Grand Rapids metropolitan area and is about 3.0 miles (4.8 km) south of the city of Grand Rapids.
The Great Lakes megalopolis consists of a bi-national group of metropolitan areas in North America largely in the Great Lakes region. It extends from the Midwestern United States, and part of the Southern United States in the south and west to western Pennsylvania and Western New York in the Northeastern United States and northward through Southern Ontario into southwestern Quebec in Canada. It is the most populated and largest megalopolis in North America.
At its most inclusive, in the United States the region cuts a wide swath from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis–Saint Paul in Minnesota in the west, south to St. Louis and Louisville, Kentucky, and east to Rochester, New York; in Canada, it continues northeasterly to Quebec City. This broader region had an estimated population of 59,144,461 as of 2011 and is projected to reach a population of about 65 million by 2025. Within this broad region, there is a core area of more continual urban development that includes Chicago, Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, South Bend, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Detroit–Windsor, Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Toledo, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Rochester, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and the metropolitan areas between these.
On September 5, 1975, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a member of the Manson Family cult, attempted to assassinate United States president Gerald Ford in Sacramento, California. Fromme, who was standing a little more than an arm's length from Ford, pointed a M1911 pistol at him in the public grounds of the California State Capitol building and without chambering a round in the gun, unsuccessfully attempted to fire.
After the assassination attempt, Ford continued to walk to the California state house, where he met with Governor Jerry Brown.For her crime, Fromme spent 34 years in prison and was released on August 14, 2009—two years and seven months after Ford's death. The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan, later received the M1911 pistol used in the assassination attempt as a gift, and the gun was put on display.