Mackinac Bridge Authority

API and UPI correspondants who covered opening of Mackinac Bridge in 1957 will take part in 50th anniversary ceremonies

LANSING—Two news service correspondents who were present when the Mackinac Bridge linking Michigan’s two peninsulas was opened to traffic on Nov. 1, 1957 will participate in ceremonies next Thursday (Nov. 1) commemorating the 50th anniversary of that event. Tom Shawver, then a correspondent for the Associated Press, and Tom Farrell, who covered the opening for United Press International, were within a few feet of the toll booth when Gov. G. Mennen Williams paid the first $3.25 toll collected on the $100-millian-dollar span at 1:59 P.M. that day. “It was indeed an historic event,” both Farrell and Shawver said. “Williams’ toll payment was meant to dramatize the fact that nobody, not even the Governor, would get free passage over the five-mile span linking Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas.” Farrell and Shawver, who now live in suburban Delta Township, were among nearly 300 newspaper reporters and editors and radio and TV correspondents from Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Ontario who covered the historic event 50 years ago. “Immediately after Williams and other members of the official party made their initial crossing, vehicles lined up for a mile on both sides of the Straits swarmed onto the new five-mile long span,” Farrell said. Shawver said the official opening was preceded by an inspection tour during which a motorcade of 300 dignitaries in 65 cars and four buses rolled out onto the bridge shortly before noon. “The visitors looked over the Straits of Mackinac under a warm sun which put temperatures near 60 degrees,” Shawver said. “The mid-day sun scattered an early patchwork of haze which shrouded the 552-foot main towers of the five-mile bridge.”
The motorcade stopped twice while crossing the span, first at the beginning of the north anchorage pier, the beginning of the 8,614-foot suspension span. The next stop was at the exact center of the bridge between the main towers. At both stops Williams, members of the Mackinac Bridge Authority and Ontario Highway Minister James Allan posed for pictures and expressed their pleasure in making the first official tour of the span. The only thing we’ll miss on this trip to St. Ignace will be taking the last ferry ride across the Straits,” Shawver said. “My ride on the car ferry in 1957 was both my first and last Both Shawver and Farrell are history buffs. Farrell is a member of the Michigan Historical Commission and Shawver is on the Board of the Friends of Michigan History. While in St. Ignace they are looking forward to visiting with Lawrence A. (Larry) Rubin who served as Executive Director of the Mackinac Bridge Authority from the time it was created in 1950 until he retired in 1984. Rubin, who will be 95 on Dec. 7, also was Public Information Officer for the State Highway Department from 1937 until the day after Pearl Harbor when he enlisted in the Army. Shawver worked for AP in Chicago, Lansing and Detroit. He left the news service in 1963 to become a political writer for the Detroit Free Press. Farrell worked in UPI’s Detroit, Lansing and Grand Rapids Bureaus during his 10 years with the news service. He left UPI two years after the Mackinac Bridge opened to join the State Highway Department as Public Information Officer. When Farrell left the Highway Department in 1978 the State Highway Commission hired Shawver to replace him as Public Information Director, a position he held until 1992 when he retired. After leaving the Highway Commission Farrell worked for the Michigan Catholic Conference, State Commerce Department, State Board of Education and Michigan Supreme Court before retiring in 1993.