Swift Lathers

Lathers was born 12 January 1889 near Detroit, Michigan, in Nankin Township.[1] His parents were William Lathers and Sarah Elizabeth (Swift) Lathers.[2] Lathers grew up and spent his childhood in and around the Dearborn area.[2]

Lathers graduated from Dearborn High School in 1905 at age sixteen. He graduated and received a Life Certificate from Michigan State Normal College, now known as Eastern Michigan University at Ypsilanti, where he attended from 1906 to 1908 to become a teacher. He attended University of Michigan Law School in 1909, earning a Bachelor of Law degree, but never took the bar exam to become a licensed attorney.[1][2]

Lathers was an entrepreneur, school teacher, handyman and landlord.[3] He was the city editor of The Dearborn Independent from 1904 to 1907.[2] He wrote for this newspaper in lieu of his high school English class.[1] He was a teacher at a one-room school as one of his first jobs in Oceana County, Michigan. He taught now and then at the first Mears school.[1] He was also acting postmaster in Mears from 1933 to 1935.[2] He was mostly, however, identified as an eccentric militant newspaper publisher.[4][5]

Lathers founded The Mears News in 1914 at the age of twenty-five. He was chief and only editor of The Mears Newz (as it was more commonly identified). It was known as "The Smallest Newspaper in the World." [4] He reported news about West Michigan and Northern Michigan, mostly pertaining to the town of Mears, Golden Township and Oceana County. Lathers handset the type himself for each of the newspapers he printed.[6] He was a one-man newspaper publisher and likely the last of these in Michigan.[7] Time magazine rated the newspaper as one of the six outstanding rural weeklies in the nation.[8] Lathers, as the journalist of The Mears Newz, was entered into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame.[8] Time ranked Lathers as one of six outstanding weekly newspaper editors.[1]

Lathers wrote his own editorials and social notes. He steadfastly defended human rights, even to the point of his own personal detriment.[7] For example, he defended the rights of migrant workers and attacked proposed school tax increases.[7] For years he actively opposed school consolidations.[1] He was known as "a fighter for freedom, champion of independence and ally of the underdog."[7] He was also an ardent defender of the freedom of the press.[2] He even won a case in the Michigan Supreme Court involving freedom of the press.[2]

Lathers owned several summer cabins at the resort village of Silver Lake near Hart, Michigan.[9] He called the group of cabins Dunes Forest Village and had one of the last homesteads in lower Michigan with this property.[1][9] He carried the lumber for construction on foot across the dunes that he started building in 1939.[8] He wrote a book in 1942 on his family's life at the hamlet, Village in the Dunes.[10] He had a vision of an older, simple lifestyle. The village consisted not only of cabins but also a church, a school, and some stores. He worked on the last building in 1957. Nothing remains of the village today.[8]

Swift Lathers' personal library

Lathers held over one thousand books in his personal library at his home.[1] He wrote and published five books, three of which were volumes of poetry.[2]

• The Yearning Years (1920)
• The Gardener of the Dunes (1929)
• The Little Green House (1932)

He spent three years living on the sand dunes near Little Sable Point Light as he wrote The Gardener of the Dunes.[2]

Circa 1960

Lathers married Celia Vern Spooner on 25 November 1923 in Spring Lake, Michigan, when he was thirty-four years old.[2] The couple raised six children from their home in Mears. Their names were Thelma Celine, William Rush, Forest Glen, Nathan Quick, Sylvan Dale and Fleet Birch, showing Lathers' love of nature.[11] They all helped in the family newspaper business, producing and distributing The Mears Newz.[1]

Celia, Lathers' wife, sold crocheted garments for the people of Oceana County. She cooked meals for her family on a wood-burning stove, where she also baked cakes and pies. She died in 1965 at the age of 59.[12]

Lathers most of his adult life wore green pants, a blue shirt with a white detachable collar and a red tie.[13]

Lathers was a member and the secretary for several years of the Mears Civic Association.[2] He was a Baptist and associated himself with the Democratic political party.[2] He was also a member of the Oceana County Historical Society and the Eastern Michigan University Alumni Association.[1]

• Oceana County Historical & Genealogical Society

• Swift Lathers at Find a Grave