Joe Hearns, a Retrospective

It was the tail end of a sizzling southeastern Michigan summer when Joseph Hearns burst into the world. He grew up, playing in the dirt, making mud pies out of real mud, and perhaps ingesting a bug or three. He had aspirations of paleontology. The sands of time flowed on, and he found himself in Chicago attending Loyola University. He continued to play with dirt in the basement of the chemistry building, sifting through pounds of dirt searching for the tiniest fragments of bone or burial artifacts. His neck hurt; his eyes hurt; he constantly had dirt under his fingernails; he was approaching heaven, dirty, achy heaven. However, he wanted more.

So, off come the shackles they call laboratory! He floods academia with his curriculum vitae (and a significant chunk of application fee money) in hopes of glimpsing this Land Beyond. In either a move of seer-like brilliance or a whim of lunacy, Western Michigan University extends to our brave hero a chance cross over into the Elysian field of archaeology. Brave Ulysses accepts.

A certain Dr. Michael Nassaney approaches the young man in a smoke-filled, dimly-lit room in Kalamazoo and says, "Hey kid, you ever hear about Fort St. Joseph..."

TO LEARN THE END OF THIS EPIC TALE, JOSEPH HEARNS WILL BE AT THE FORT ST. JOSEPH OPEN HOUSE IN NILES, MICHIGAN ON AUGUST 13-14 (10-4pm), OFF BOND STREET. YOU MAY ASK HIM QUESTIONS; HE WILL ANSWER. HE BEARS THE STANDARD OF THE BALTIMORE ORIOLES ON HIS SUN-BLEACHED BLACK CAP, A NOBLE MAN, INDEED.

Photo credits Cathrine Davis and Erica D'Elia