A Sense of Doubt blog post #3711 - Dean Margaret Hauck - The Michigan News - died - RIP
I learned this news before it hit the Internet because I had been friends with Dean Hauck for many years as well as a faithful customer of the Michigan News going back to childhood, before she took over ownership from her father.
Here's some things I know:
It would be wonderful if someone could buy the Michigan News and extend its legacy.
OBIT
Kalamazoo mourns loss of Michigan News Agency owner, community icon Dean Margaret Hauck
KALAMAZOO, Mich. — Anyone who has driven down Michigan Avenue through downtown Kalamazoo has probably noticed a sign that reads "Michigan News Agency."
Opening in 1947, Michigan News Agency is a longtime newsstand and bookstore business that has withstood decades of change in the city.
According to family members on social media, the owner and locally-known icon, Dean Margaret Hauck, died on Saturday.
Hauck was known for her love of reading and writing, and keeping the community connected through newspapers and magazines.
These values were reflected in the large sign at the front of the store that says "Eat Sleep Read Local."
Additionally, Hauck made sure the store maintained its reputation of being open seven days a week.
In 2019, she told News Channel 3 why the store would remain open even during a blizzard.
"You can't be closed, never. We're open everyday of the year," Hauck said. "Staff are sourced so that we are open because that's our reputation --and we live by it."
However, customers looking to shop at the store over the weekend noticed an unfamiliar sight: a closed sign on the door with no indication as to when it will reopen.
Hauck was so well-known in the community that State Rep. Julie Rogers took to Facebook Sunday to express her condolences.
(heart)Breaking News: Michigan News Agency’s Dean Hauck has died
The lioness of local literature purveyance and promotion, Dean Margaret Hauck, tended her shop with the tenacity that comes from spending her pre-school and kindergarten years in a Japanese internment camp and a life observing the changing world.
She passed away Saturday, February 8 of natural causes, according to her daughter, Margaret Hauck. She was “working on Friday. Went home Friday night … When she didn’t come in for a Saturday shift … her employees knew something had happened.”
It was her dedication to her stepfather’s business, the Michigan News Agency, 308 W. Michigan Ave., in downtown Kalamazoo, that kept the doors of an old-school newsstand open and a community properly informed in the digital age.
As of Sunday afternoon, the sign on the locked door said “Closed due to illness.” Windows tease the latest publications, their promotional posters, and fliers for local events and the latest works of local wordsmiths, as always. If you walked in most days, Dean was there, still working her shifts behind the counter with the selection of gum and tobacco. A step beyond that is a nook or two, and the shop’s three long aisles packed with thousands of newspapers, magazines, and books. If you browsed just long enough, you would hear a shout from Dean that she could order anything you want.
Dean and the Michigan News Agency were boosters of all things local. She found ways to squeeze author readings into the narrow walkways of wisdom and knowledge on offer, and a special section called the Creative Endeavor Project, where local authors set their price and receive every cent paid. “That’s how you make a community breathe. That’s how you help a community invest in itself and that’s what local support really means,” she said in a September 2023 interview with NowKalamazoo.
When she was outside taking care of the public sidewalk and greeting passersby, she’d shout through a car’s open window as it ignored the people using the crosswalk. When someone was walking in the road, intoxicated or in need of support, she’d talk them over to the side of the road and get them some help if they accepted it.
She had thoughts on everything, though she didn’t always share them. But when she did you had no doubt she meant it. She supported the conversion of Michigan Avenue to a two-way street, one of the city’s initiatives to slow traffic down that she thought would improve downtown business (she said business dropped by half when it went to the one-way in the 1960s). Actively supporting downtown businesses was part of her business. Dean was a member of the city’s advisory committee on downtown traffic and pedestrian improvements until she quit in frustration at what she called an already predetermined outcome. By trade, one of the biggest proponents of the First Amendment, Dean lamented a political class she viewed as weak in safeguarding it, and was dismayed at the latent signs of consolidation of power away from the hands of the people into the hands of a person.
Born in 1939 in the Philippines to an American family, they were interred in a prison camp for more than three years when the Japanese took it in 1942, where she was starved for food but had plenty of books to learn to love to read. Her father died fighting to free the Philippines. After it was liberated she found her way to Kalamazoo with her mother, who married Vincent Malmstrom, the founder of the Michigan News Agency in 1947. She worked there until she left Kalamazoo in 1957, returning to run the business in 1988.
“She put her whole heart into building the collections and building the connections with the people in Kalamazoo and the writing and reading community up there,” said Margaret Hauck, who lives in New Orleans. “We’re talking about generations, including people who knew her dad, who knew her, including World War II vets involved in rescuing her from the prison camp (in the Philippines*, where she lived for a time as a small child). And then generations of Kalamazoo residents who came there as kids and brought their kids there and grand kids there.”
The shop is closed “for the time being,” said Margaret Hauck. An in-person memorial will be held in the spring but that didn’t stop the memorials online:
“Kalamazoo has lost a local treasure.”
“A Kalamazoo legend has passed.”
“Thank you for everything, Dean.”
“Already telling God which books are worth His time, I’m sure of it.”
For someone who ran a shop that was strictly for news one could hold and fold, Dean was prolific on Facebook, both her personal account and for the Michigan News Agency.
Nearly every week, she posted her schedule for her customers – the days that coming week she would be working the entire day or just a particular shift. “I am 7am to 5pm on Tuesday and Thursday. I open on Monday and Sunday. I close on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday,” a recent post reads. “I would love to see you.”
Editor’s Note: An update to this story adding details about Dean’s life incorrectly stated that she lived in Japan. She lived in the Philippines, including in a Japanese internment camp there. The story has since been updated.
Extra! Extra! Michigan News, area's oldest 'newsstand,' still standing amid changing times
Dean Hauck has seen a lot of Kalamazoo change over the decades from behind her register at Michigan News Agency.
She's been at the store from 1949 when she was a child helping her "Pop," to now —- with a break for raising children and other life adventures from 1957 to 1988.
As noon arrived on a typical 2023 summer day, customers started coming into the shop, forming a scene that could've been from the middle of the last century.
A parent enters with their daughter. The girl announces, "Girl Scout cookies!"
Meanwhile, Lia Gaggino, a pediatrician retired from Bronson, was looking for The New Yorker, while talking about how she's "going to New York on a whim." Then she spots Mingle, a magazine devoted to party planning, "my favorite splurge."
I browse the titles of the many magazines and mutter into my recorder the many subjects. Bicycles and guns. A row of mags paying tribute to the passing of Queen Elizabeth and the coronation of King Charles. Life and Star Wars. Music, motorcycles, finance, crosswords, art, and literary journals. Fashion. Home and Outside.
"Beekeeper!" Hauck points out. "It's just ongoing. Because people want other people to be a part of their community. That's what magazines do, they connect us all. And newspapers."
Gaggino says, "We love Dean! We love independent bookstores, and she has the New York Times. What's not to love?"
"I love her computer system!" Gaggino says. She points to the worn cardboard drawers that hold Hauck's catalog system, with cards for every title in the shop.
"And you can still get Playboy here, so, hey," she jokes.
"No, you can't! All you can get is Hustler, Penthouse Letters, and Penthouse because they don't actually publish Playboy in print anymore," Hauck says.
Hauck's history
So it's not quite like it was in 1953 when the Michigan News Agency was the first shop between Detroit and Chicago to sell the first issue of Playboy magazine, with photos of Marilyn Monroe wearing nothing but a smile.
Playboy, and many other adult titles, have gone to the web. As well as many other magazines. Other titles went under, unable to survive the changes the internet unleashed.
The News' newspaper selection has shrunk considerably, too. People still complain to Hauck that the Kalamazoo Gazette, the city's only major newspaper, shrank in size and coverage, and doesn't publish Mondays and Wednesdays.
The Michigan News Agency's history is of another time — vividly highlighted by Hauck's own history.
She was born to an American family in Baguio, Philippines in 1939. When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, they also invaded the Philippines. In January 1942 Japanese forces turned the Santo Tomas University into an internment camp for the many Americans who were on the island.
Hauck remembers being two-and-a-half, marching with her mother and sister into the camp. "We were there for three years and two months. That is where I taught myself how to read."
She remembers her first job, "to hold food tickets in a food line." She saw everyone in line reading books. "And I'm bored."
So she found the university library. Through the magic of books, "I see the Eiffel Tower! Big travel books, oh my gosh, they were gorgeous."
With books, "I was able to escape my life in a prison camp. The last year there was no food for any of us, we all starved. We were rescued by MacArthur and the First Battalion who got to us an hour before they were supposed to, or I wouldn't be here.
The family landed in California, and after the war, arrived in Kalamazoo. Local newsstand owner Vincent Malmstrom invited them into his shop. "He brought us in here to impress (Hauck's mother), and I said 'Oh, we have to marry Mr. Vince! This is a great place!"
A newspaper stand surviving decades of changes
It was around 1949-1950 when Hauk started helping out. "I stuffed newspapers and swept floors." Her work continued when she was a high school student at Kalamazoo Central.
She graduated in 1957, went to the University of Michigan, earned a master's at the University of Illinois, and then taught high-school English in Seattle, Washington. She also married and had two daughters.
One-way to two-way
When she left Kalamazoo in 1957, the newsstand was a busy hub of Downtown. Travelers by train and bus could walk from the station on Kalamazoo Ave., then Michigan Ave. out front was also two-way, making it easier to stop and shop Downtown.
"It was wonderful because we wouldn't have to maintain Michigan Avenue anymore, save all this money," she says he told her.
She says she told him, "That's wrong! What you've done is given away your street. That means that people are going to cruise by, not stop at your store, and you're not going to be here because you will not have the community that's living, working around you, supporting you," Hauck says.
"If you look at our (accounting) books for that period, you can see that we dropped half of our customers. Actually half. It was hundreds of dollars a week that we lost because people were no longer driving two-way, coming down, stopping in downtown."
In 1988, with Pops ready to retire, she returned to the shop to take charge. She found it running in the red. "Kids were stealing cartons of cigarettes, money, a variety of different things," she says.
Eventually, Hauck became a member of the Complete Streets Advisory Committee. She made it known to the City that her customers were having a hard time getting to her shop. People driving to the News often call her for help navigating the one-way streets, and those walking put their lives in danger on the crosswalk over the expanse of Michigan's lanes at Church.
Hauck is just beginning to see the changes for which she's advocated. At the mention of the two streets dominating Downtown, Hauck says "'24 for Kalamazoo, '26 for Michigan Avenue." Next year Kalamazoo Avenue will go back to being two-way, and Michigan (Ave.) in 2026.
Michigan Avenue is undergoing a traffic-slowing reconfiguration this summer, she points out. And she now has "my flasher" — a sign at the Church crosswalk, when turned on, that flashes yellow, indicating that drivers are to stop for the pedestrians attempting to cross.
She's not the only business wanting Downtown to be a community where people can safely shop, she says. "The reason we're going back to two-way is partly because all the businesses downtown have figured out they don't want to be whizzed past. They'd like to have the community shopping in their stores.
"We want a community of people who are living down here and shopping down here," she says. "We're here because you're here."
On the other big change coming, the new arena, Hauck has questions.
"I'm waiting to see," she says. "I'm hopeful that it doesn't just pull people away from downtown." She worries that people will park there, eat there, attend events all in the arena, and not walk to other businesses.
"We're going to get it right on the arena, as a matter of fact," she adds. "The people who are working with the roads, and designing all of that, are listening to all of us."
Overall, she thinks Kalamazoo is improving compared to what it was like in the late '80s. "And I think things will go on improving. I think that we are gaining people who are understanding how to make this community work.
"I look at this community as a vibrant, educated, caring, intelligent community. And the way they show that is by coming in the doors of Michigan News."
"Virtual Presentation"
For perspective, know that when Hauck arrived at the News in 1949, TVs were still a rarity in people's homes. WKZO-TV (now WWMT) became the first station in the area to be on-air in 1950.
"What we were in 1949 is a cigarette, tobacco shop," Hauck says. Cigarettes, cigars, candy, a few books, many magazines, and "many more newspapers," than what they have now.
Up into this century, "We were getting a huge number more newspapers." They carried national and international papers, plus many from around our region.
"The newspaper part of our business has been dramatically cut. Which is why newsstands are disappearing. They are disappearing all over the United States."
When the Kalamazoo Gazette, under MLive, cut its coverage, size, and print rate, "We immediately started to sell less copies of the paper... People would come in, and complain to me, there are no kids' sports pictures." The decline in community coverage, like coverage of youth sports or other local non-hard-news stories, seemed to be the most upsetting for her customers.
"I'd have to explain to them that they were having troubles financially," she says. "I think a lot of people regret the fact that the Gazette has changed so much. They complain about it to me regularly. I recommend that they actually try to communicate with the Gazette... They say, yes, but the Gazette doesn't answer its phone," she says.
"It's an ongoing disappointment about the local newspaper. But you know that's happening all over the United States."
With the advent of the internet, print news has suffered, and undergone some painful transitions as it tried to find its place on the web, on social media, and on one's smartphone.
She mentions the New York Times. "You know when they began (publishing on the web) they weren't charging?" She laughs. "About a month in they figured out they had to charge.
"I think it's too bad that so much stuff can be read without having the paper copy. I still believe in the paper copy," she says. "I really think that we have a culture that would like to have the printed word so that they can carry it with them."
Is it that web-only publication feels ephemeral (Disclosure: Southwest Michigan Second Wave is web-only)? Hauck thinks so."And I think that's a pity. If you have the printed copy, and then you can think about it and respond to it, then you know that you're dealing with the original idea. And I really honor that."
Print on paper requires a larger financial investment, a distribution system, businesses willing to sell the product, and many more gatekeepers than print on the internet. Publications on the internet could be like Second Wave, with investors, funding, and dedicated paid staff, or it could be a source of questionable info funded by shadowy bad-faith interests, or it could be one person's fact-free post.
"Print on the internet can be manipulated, and is manipulative," she says. "What this means is that we're losing -- if nothing else, getting less smart because it's so easy to find anything, and then go and send it on to somebody else."
Books are 40%
"We never found a decline" in business as publications went digital, Hauck says.
She thanks her customers. "Kalamazoo and Southwest Michigan understand that, if we don't make it, then they've lost their heart."
"I'm the person that figured out that if you sell newspapers and you only make 6% (profit off the cover price), then you must have a huge collection of magazines."
The News had over 7,000 magazine titles, before the era of what she calls "virtual presentation." Around 6,000 titles are now in her racks.
"You make 30% on magazines, but the real kicker is, you make 40% on books. That's why bookstores are going to survive, and newsstands — we're one of the last newsstands in the United States."
Now, the newsstand is mainly a bookstore. "I increased our collection to half a million copies" of paperbacks. Hauck takes customer requests and will order hardcovers for customers. "On Amazon, they'd get it lots cheaper," she says. "They buy them here because as they put it, they want me to be here, right here."
Book sales for her have gone up "tremendously" over the past few years, she says.
"Books at 40% means if people will walk in that door and buy their books from us, I'll be here forever."
Old-school
During the interview, employee Alex George was walking along the racks, a customer behind him, one of Hauck's cards from her "computer" in his hand.
"What are we looking for, Alex?"
"Robb Report," George says. Hauck points to it in the rack.
"I've been coming in here since 1985," the customer, Scott Taylor, says. "I'm still hands-on, gotta see it, gotta read it, gotta touch it. And the selection, sadly, I think it's gone down."
"We've lost a thousand titles because of the internet," Hauck says. "All the Chevy magazines went to the internet. 'Virtual presentation?' Good lord!"
Still, Taylor drives from his home in South Haven, just for the News, because of "the selection, and you!" he says to Hauck. "I don't know you personally, but I've seen you here for this many years. Your dedication and all that. I just love the place. It's old-school."
He says, "I'm also a small-town guy, and this is a small-town feel. I'd rather give to a local business than a Barnes and Noble or anything like that... A lot of times I'll come out of here with $100 out of my wallet because I've bought all the magazines I've been missing."
"Interesting, the concept of 'old-school,'" she says after Taylor left.
For her, it's about being hands-on with print, face-to-face with customers, and very involved in the community.
Since 1988 she's made an effort to connect with the community. She supports the Kalamazoo Public Library and its author readings. Hauck has racks of books from local authors and generously pays self-published local authors 100% of their cover price for every book sold (Disclosure: Mark Wedel's "Mule Skinner Blues" is somewhere among the half-million books).
During COVID, 2020, the business was deemed essential because it sold newspapers. Hauck found herself running books, papers, and magazines out to cars waiting in the street. She would keep the store open after closing time for individual customers who felt safest shopping alone.
She chats with everyone and hears about their struggles.
Like a good bartender?
More like a bartender/librarian. "I can actually turn to a publication, or recommend a book, and tell them if they would like, if it's in the store, you can read it right now and decide if you want to buy it," she says.
Hauck gets up every morning at 5 AM, opens at 7 AM, and "works every day until five at night because I believe in all of us."
Does she ever think about retiring?
"Nope. I think I have ten or 15 more years, and then I'll have to figure out what to do with it. Pass it on to somebody else."
When that subject comes up, she says she thinks of something Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander, said, "Find something you love to do, and do it until the wheels fall off."
KALAMAZOO
Newsstand owner remembered as one of the city’s ‘greatest treasures’
Dean Margaret Hauck, who had owned Michigan News Agency since 1988, has died.
Members of the Kalamazoo community have been taking to social media to mourn the death of Dean Hauck, longtime owner of the Michigan News Agency.
Hauck, 85, took over ownership of the newsstand/bookstore at 308 W. Michigan Ave. in 1988, assuming control from her stepfather, Vincent Malmstrom. Her stepfather founded the business in 1947.
Hauck “passed away peacefully” Feb. 8, according to a social media post from one of her daughters, Margaret Hauck.
Margaret Hauck wrote that she and her sister, Sarah Smith, were ultimately happy because their mother came to her end living life exactly as she wanted.
A memorial will be held for Hauck in the spring, Margaret Hauck wrote.
The business is now closed, she said.
BRINGING THE WORLD TO THE CUSTOMER
Dean Hauck first set foot in the Michigan News Agency at age 10, she told the Gazette in 2010.
Accompanied by her future stepfather, she immediately fell in love with the downtown Kalamazoo business.
“It was tiny — there were about 100 magazines, 20 books and 10 or 15 different newspapers,” she told the Gazette. “But it was just marvelous; there was a candy rack, a popcorn machine and an ice cream freezer.”
Hauck, who took over for the man she affectionately called “Pop” when he retired in 1988, grew up sweeping the newsstand floors. In high school, she worked the cash register.
She got 50 cents an hour for her efforts but received perks much more valuable than a paycheck, she said.
“I had reading privileges, too,” Hauck said. “I could take home any book I wanted, but I was very careful with each one so it didn’t look like it was used. No dog-eared pages or bent bindings.”
The store was open 365 days a year, and Hauck spent countless hours there.
In a March 2020 interview, Hauck talked about her decision to remain open during the pandemic.
The newsstand had been open every day from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. for 26,280 days running, and a viral outbreak was not going to change that, Hauck told the Gazette at the time.
“The most important thing in my world is you get to make choices based on research, information, perception (and) wisdom,” she said.
Hauck was someone who read six newspapers each day, considering it “a treat.”
She saw it as her duty to provide Kalamazoo residents with a breadth of information, but refused to talk about her opinions with customers.
The newsstand is a service, not a water cooler, and certainly not a debate stage, she said.
“We have so many divergent, different points of view from our customers that we as a newsstand have to bring the world to you,” Hauck said. “But we can’t then tell you what to think.”
While she kept her opinions to herself, she was always adamant about setting the tone in her store and fostering relationships with customers, new and old.
“This place begins and ends with people,” Hauck said.
EARLY YEARS
Hauck was born in 1939 to American parents who were living in the Philippines at the time.
When the U.S. and Japan began fighting in the Philippines during World War II, Hauck, her sister and mother were interred for over three years at a camp in Manila, the nation’s capital.
Her father became a leader of a guerrilla force unit that would eventually be captured by the Japanese Army. While being transported by ship to Japan in 1943, he and other American prisoners were killed by friendly fire when Americans bombed the ship.
Once the war ended, a 6-year-old Hauck moved to San Francisco with her mother and sister. Two years later, they moved to Kalamazoo.
After graduating from Kalamazoo Central High School, she attended the University of Michigan. She returned to Kalamazoo three decades later to run the newsstand.
‘A LOCAL LEGEND’
Hauck was a fervent supporter of other downtown businesses and was highly regarded.
“Kalamazoo has lost one of our greatest treasures,” Victorian Bakery Owner Maria Brennan said in a Facebook tribute. “Dean Margaret Hauck was always a champion for small businesses.
“We both lived in the same house on Stuart Avenue during different years. We were both held as hostages during wars and often talked about those shared experiences as one can only talk with someone who has been through the same situation. I will always treasure those conversations.”
Other tributes online used words such as “humble,” “iconic” and “legend.”
Many referred to her fandom of the Detroit Tigers.
People credited Hauck for their love of journalism and thanked her for her love of Kalamazoo.
“Dean gave me the best job a college kid could ask for,” wrote Matthew Cowell. “She taught me about the Sunday New York Times when it was still printed on the wide pages. She loved great books, cigars, show tunes, whiskey sours, the Detroit Tigers, hard work and Kalamazoo.
“A local legend. There’ll never be another one like her.”
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2504.16 - 10:10
- Days ago: MOM = 3576 days ago & DAD = 231 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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