By Will Johnson
It began in the winter of 1981 at the Woodshed, now Cleary’s Pub, with biweekly breakfast meetings with Art Dils, Ray Van Meer and myself, Will Johnson.
Art owned Typographic Insight in Ann Arbor; he served on the Chelsea Schools Board of Trustees and the Chelsea Community Hospital Board of Trustees, later serving as chairman.
Ray was superintendent for the Chelsea School District and served on the Hospital’s Board of Trustees.
I served as president of Chelsea Community Hospital and was on its Board of Trustees.
Art, Ray, and I were impressed and humbled by the Chelsea Community’s support for the Hospital’s Care Campaign where the community came together to provide the hospital the resources to purchase its Ambulatory Surgery Center (first one in Michigan) from private investors.
The Care Campaign also provided resources to initiate an in house Pharmacy and to upgrade our kitchen and expand the Dining Room.
Art, Ray, and I began to consider how we might refocus the support for the hospital into a perpetual resource to serve the Chelsea community. We consulted with the Ann Arbor leadership, which had recently formed the Ann Arbor Community Foundation. Ann Arbor was blessed with locally based family foundations that supported numerous community initiatives.
The community foundation concept appealed to Art, Ray, and myself. We set out to seek input from Chelsea’s prominent families and the community’s largest employers. Feedback was encouraging. The decision to establish a foundation to focus on Chelsea’s needs was made.
Legal counsel, Bill Rademacher, was engaged to take those necessary steps to initiate Chelsea Community Foundation as an operational entity during 1982.
George Palmer agreed to serve as president. George owned Palmer Ford, the oldest, continuing operating Ford dealership in Michigan.
Art, Ray, and I proceeded to reach out to community leadership to identify board members to serve. It is interesting to note how many current board members are children of the initial board.
The foundation began to gather resources, and in time, made grants to local non-profit organizations. This process continues 40 years later.
I’d like to highlight three grants that have had a lasting impact on the Chelsea community. It began with an award to the Chelsea Center for the Arts to establish a summer program to focus on the arts and music, which would run one night per week in June and July.
Sights and Sounds enjoyed initial success and was well received by the Chelsea community. Sadly, the Chelsea Center for the Arts closed. The Chelsea DDA stepped up to take over the initiative, renaming it Sounds and Sights, focusing on music and greatly expanding the number of venues on its Thursday nights presentations. Turnout has increased annually, with thousands looking forward to an evening of music and fun in downtown Chelsea.
The Kaleidoscope Concert series at Silver Maples from September to May has been well received by Chelsea seniors for two decades.
A recent investment has been made to the Huron Waterloo Pathways Initiative, a bold commitment to connect communities for biking, hiking, walking, all wonderful things to support and improve the health and well being of our citizens.
1982-2022, forty years, the Chelsea Community Foundation continues to find ways to support ‘All Things Chelsea’.
In honor of Art Dils, Ray Van Meer, Bill Rademacher, George Palmer.
Respectfully,
Will Johnson, president emeritus, Chelsea Community Hospital.
