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PHOTOS BY BRETT MOUNTAIN
Go Home
ADAM FINKEL CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Detroit Homecoming events
inspire former Detroiters
to aid their hometown.
ABOVE: Expat Detroiters and current residents
shmooze at the Jewish expat reception at the
Foundation Hotel during the Detroit Homecoming.
RIGHT: Jocelyn Benson, CEO of the Ross Initiative
in Sports for Equality, and Stephen Ross, who was
honored at the Jewish expat reception and spoke
on a panel earlier that evening with Dan Gilbert
and Draymond Green at the DIA.
C
an a community provide experiences engineered
to amaze?
Consider Detroit Homecoming. In three years,
it’s built a community of hundreds of prominent former
Detroiters, resulting in an annual three-day event each
fall that is tracking $300 million in economic impact.
The fourth Detroit Homecoming took place Sept.
13-15, with nearly 220 former Detroiters attending; some
traveling from London and Israel.
Perry Teicher of Brooklyn has been involved since the
inaugural event. “Detroit Homecoming
has grown from a gathering that
brought individuals with a connection
to Detroit back to showcase and high-
light opportunities and the change in
Detroit to an event that cultivates and
connects community … and allows for
multi-generational conversations with
the opportunity not just to learn from
Perry Teicher
each other, but also to act together.”
The opening dinner was held in the
Michigan Central Train Station, the
first public event there in nearly 30 years. The experience
included native Detroiter Lily Tomlin receiving the key to
the city from Mayor Mike Duggan.
“Detroit Homecoming 2017 provided an incredible
opportunity to think about the building blocks of my
heritage — Detroiter, Jew and Jewish Detroiter,” Matt
Nosanchuk said. For this former White
House liaison to the Jewish community,
the experience of being at the Michigan
Central Train Station brought back
memories of his own family’s past.
“I recalled my mother telling me how
she and her entire family went there
after WWII ended to welcome home a
cousin who had fought in Europe.”
Matt Nosanchuk
Nosanchuk also was moved by a visit
to Durfee Middle School, his mother’s
school in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
“It is a beautiful old building next to Central High School,
once the heart of Detroit’s Jewish community.”
Durfee is being rented to a nonprofit for $1 per year by
the Detroit Public Schools, and is being restored for com-
munity use and for entrepreneurs.
“As I walked the halls, I imagined what it must have
been like when my mother was a student there, how the
neighborhood has changed, and what can be done to give
the community that lives there today some of the same
educational and life opportunities my mother’s genera-
tion was so fortunate to receive.”
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September 28 • 2017
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