Thursday, January 22, 2015

The Fire at the Helin Mansion AND Throwback Thursday

When I was a kid, I used to love to go fishing.  Myself and a friend would get up at 5am and ride our bikes a few miles to Lake St. Clair, hop a fence and sit there for hours listening to a transistor radio and getting nothing.


I didn't want to use an alarm clock (too loud) so I would tie a string to my finger and a bolt on the other end of the string.  I hung the bold outside my 2nd floor window and John would wake me up by pulling the string.  I haven't thought about that in years until just now.  It's weird, the stuff you remember.

Maybe we'd catch a perch or a carp... maybe a sheephead.  Vile.

Oh look, girl caught a fish.

When we were bored we would walk around the cement break-wall around the lake and look at the beautiful mansions of Windmill Pointe Road.  Some of these houses put Beverly Hills to shame.

One day we met a guy who introduced himself to us as Randy Helin.  He made fishing lures.  He took us to a work room/gardner's shed (remember, this was when you could still trust people) and showed us a few things he was working on.  He treated us like humans, not like kids.  It's a great memory.

I learned later on that Randy was the son of Charles Helin, of the Helin Fishing Tackle Company.

 Charles Helin 



I found the black and white photographs of the Helin mansion on the Detroit Yes forum.


March 18, 1978, the Helin Mansion was torched by an arsonist.




Richard Tucker, a veteran firefighter, was killed as a result of the horrific fire.


I've always been obsessed with the horrible and tragic.  My pal Geoff and I took a bike ride up to the mansion to watch it being destroyed.   The ruins were spectacular.

 I brought along my Super 8 movie camera (silent) and shot this video.  Forgive the terrible quality.



The next day when I was delivering The Detroit News on my paper route, I opened the paper and saw the photo of the ruins.  Then I noticed the person in the center of the picture.   That's me.
My pal Geoff is to the right.


 I ran home to show my parents, leaving my bike behind.  It got ripped off. 

Ahh, Detroit.  We had a lot of laughs.




Charles Helin died in 1979.

1 comment:

  1. sad and always eery when a FD dies. my dad was one, and. yeah lots of stories. would have def been with you to exoplore a bunred down mansion. esp if deaht is involved (dont ask im morbid). btw was this another byproduct of detroit kids burning shit down because thats like the provincial pastime their? or something more sinister?

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