Grand Rapids oral history collection

Grand Valley State College (GVSU) College of Arts and Sciences professor and local historian, Dr. John L. Tevebaugh, created the College of Arts and Sciences Oral History Project in 1974. With funding from the Dyer-Ives Foundation, the program was established to “develop a significant collection of oral resources that will supplement and complement the other primary and secondary materials for the history of Grand Rapids for the progressive era and the Ellis years, the depression decade and the Welsh years, and to accumulate oral resources pertaining to the history and development of Grand Valley State Colleges (GVSU).” The GVSU program continued the work of a Grand Rapids local oral history project begun in 1971 by John L. Hunting, director of the Dyer-Ives Foundation of interviews conducted by Robert Alt.

Between 1974 and 1977 John Tevebaugh, Lee Hutchins and others conducted interviews of Grand Rapids residents for the Grand Valley Oral History Project. Interviews of Grand Valley faculty, Lee J. Kaufman and William Baum were also conducted in 1974. The Oral History Project also transcribed tapes from the Dyer-Ives interviews.

As part of the preparations for the Sesquicentennial, the University of Michigan received a grant from the Michigan Council for the Arts to produce a radio series on WUOM/WVGR on Grand Rapids history. The series, entitled “Fitzgerald’s Prophecy,” was produced from segments of the Dyer-Ives and GVSU Oral History Project tapes and other supplementary materials created by the Fitzgerald project named for William Fitzgerald who in 1748 thought that Grand Rapids would become a home and city center to white settlers.