Editing Willow Run (section)

== Camp Willow Run ==
[[File:Inspecting of landing wheel of the transport planes at Willow Run.jpg|thumb|upright|Inspection of the landing gear of a transport plane at Willow Run]]
Willow Run takes its name from a small tributary of the [[Huron River (Michigan)|Huron River]] that meandered through pastureland fields and woodland along the Wayne–Washtenaw county line until the late 1930s. By the mid-1920s, a local family operating as Quirk Farms had bought the land in [[Van Buren Township, Wayne County, Michigan|Van Buren Township]] that became the airport. Quirk Farms was purchased by automobile pioneer [[Henry Ford]] in 1931.<ref name=Bryan-BeyondModelT116n8>{{cite book|last=Bryan|first=Ford Richardson|title=Beyond the Model T: The Other Ventures of Henry Ford|year=1997|publisher=Wayne State University Press |location=Detroit |isbn=081432682X |page=116, note 8|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_6IYAC2qfNwC&q=%22henry+ford%22+%22quirk+farms%22}}</ref> Ford, a keen exponent of the virtues of country living, used it as farmland for a "social engineering" experiment that brought inner-city boys to the Willow Run Camp to learn about farming, nature, and the rural way of life.

The residents of the Willow Run Camp planted, tended, and harvested field crops and collected maple syrup, selling their products at the farm market on the property. In the process, the boys were to learn self-discipline and the values of hard work, and benefit from the fresh air of the country.<ref name="WRhist">{{cite web |url=http://www.michiganaerospace.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20 |title=History of Willow Run Airport |work=Michigan Aerospace Foundation |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140221173243/http://www.michiganaerospace.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=20 |date=2014 |archive-date=February 21, 2014}}</ref>

Camp Willow Run was for boys age 17–19, mostly sons of dead or disabled [[WWI]] vets and those helping to support their families. According to the Benson Ford Research Center, the camp offered:

{{blockquote|text="...farm training, self-reliance, management, and salesmanship...the boys governed themselves, appointing a foreman and field foreman from their own ranks. They lived in tents, with a mess hall and a chapel on-site, and sold their produce from a roadside stand built by Ford. Boys...had time for recreation as well as work, each camp had a baseball diamond and the boys participated in a softball league, there was also volleyball and handball, movies were shown, and each camp also hosted harvest dances, inviting nearby high school students to join. It appears that Camp Willow Run shut down after the 1941 season with the coming of the bomber plant, many of the boys went to work at the Willow Run village industry plant, and others moved on to the apprentice and trade school."<ref>{{cite web |title=Do you have any information on Camp Legion and Camp Willow Run? – AskUs |url=http://askus.thehenryford.org/faq/166899 |date=September 21, 2017 |website=The Henry Ford Collections and Research |access-date=26 March 2020}}</ref> |multiline=yes}}

=== Chapel of Martha and Mary ===
[[Henry Ford|Henry]] and [[Clara Bryant Ford]] dedicated a series of churches, the chapels of [[Martha of Bethany|Martha]] and [[Saint Mary|Mary]] as a perpetual tribute to their mothers, Mary Ford and Martha Bryant. The Fords built seven of these: The first at [[Greenfield Village, Michigan]], was completed in 1929. The others, completed in the 1930s, were located in [[Dearborn, Michigan]] (site of the Fords' [[Fair Lane]] estate); [[Sudbury, Massachusetts]]; two in [[Richmond Hill, Georgia]] (the Fords' winter home); [[Macon, Michigan]]; and Willow Run.<ref name="BvillePresHistory">{{cite web|url=http://www.bellevillepresbyterian.com/history-of-our-church.html|title=The History of our Chapel|publisher=Belleville Presbyterian Church|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160418165122/http://www.bellevillepresbyterian.com/history-of-our-church.html|archive-date=April 18, 2016|url-status=dead|access-date=July 10, 2017}}</ref>

The Willow Run Chapel<ref>[https://quod.lib.umich.edu/y/yhsic1/x-347/YHS00347.TIF?lasttype=boolean;lastview=reslist;resnum=3;size=50;sort=yhsic1_st;start=1;subview=detail;view=entry;rgn1=yhsic1_st;select1=phrase;q1=Camp%2520Willow%2520Run The Willow Run Chapel]</ref> was the one originally built for Camp Willow Run, and became the place of worship for the Belleville Presbyterian Church in 1979 after a series of handoffs. After the war, Ford sold the chapel to Kaiser-Frazer, who in turn sold it to General Motors as part of the purchase of the Willow Run bomber plant. GM used the building to store files until an undetermined time, where it was sold to the Cherry Hill Baptist Church. When Cherry Hill outgrew the little chapel and decided to build a new church, it sold the chapel to the Belleville Presbyterian Church for one dollar in July 1978.<ref name=BvillePresHistory />

The Willow Run chapel of Martha and Mary now stands a few miles from where it was originally constructed, on property that used to be owned by Henry Ford's Quirk Farms. Of the seven chapels, this is the only one currently in use as a regular place of worship. It still has the original pews and other furnishings; the only other set in active use belongs to the Greenfield Village chapel.<ref name=BvillePresHistory />