History

On the 21st Birthday Celebration, our League sponsored a contest for sixth graders in the local public and parochial schools. “What Freedom Means to Me” was the topic for the writing contest. Copies of the winning essays were sent to legislators in Washington, D.C. and Lansing, MI.

On the Fiftieth Anniversary of our League, we celebrated with a skit about how to adopt a study, and more serious matters, such as the history of our Waterfront and Water Quality since our town is on Lake Huron. We also reviewed our study of our nearby State Park-Negwegon.

Our League favors a park that is used for hiking and supports the development of nature trails. We have worked with others to continue to protect, preserve and promote the park. Our League had 34 members. Over the years, some of our most effective actions have been non-partisan voter education forums on local topics such as recycling, eradicating phragmites, encouraging candidates to run, and informing our community about issues related to our local schools, library and hospital.

In 2019 our Voters Service activities took up most of our time and energy. We registered voters in high schools and on the street, marched in parades, held voter forums, millage issue forums, and sent letters urging YES votes on state and local issues to our regional daily newspaper. We are considering expanding our League area to include several more counties.

Our active membership includes  50+ year members and student members. We have grown from the original 35 to our current membership of over 60 members. We are eager to enter the next year and decade.

In 2020 we changed our name to Northeast Michigan LWV. We will cover the counties of Alcona, Alpena, and Presque in all our activities. Our board has members from all 3 counties, and we covered all 3 counties in our Voter Service Activities. When the Covid 19 shutdown occurred, we moved to Zoom format for our Candidate Forums, informational meetings, and board meetings. Our 2021 Annual Meeting was an in-person meeting.  We are ready to start up some of our past activities that have been canceled because of the Covid 19 virus shutdown.