Lucille Ball Spent Part of Her Childhood Living in This Michigan City

An interesting sidenote in the life of Lucille Ball:
she spent part of her childhood in Michigan.

It was 1912 and Lucy was one year old when her family moved from her birthplace of Jamestown, New York to the city of Wyandotte, south of Detroit. Her father Henry was an electrician who moved the family to Michigan in order to work for the Bell Telephone Company. At five bucks a day, how could he turn down that much money?

The Balls ended up living in Montana, then New Jersey, and finally to Wyandotte. Once there, they rented the back apartment of a house (for $10 a month) located on Biddle Street. The address at the time was 126 but was changed in 1928 to - and is currently - 3738.

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It was while living in that house that Lucy acquired her fear of birds (which, I assume, probably made Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds her least favorite film). It seems a bird somehow got into the house and got trapped. Its frantic flying while trying to find a way out was unnerving to the young 2-year-old Lucy. This is the only memory of living in Wyandotte that she could recall.

When Lucy was three years old in 1915, her father passed away from typhoid fever at the age of 27. The consensus was he contracted it after eating contaminated ice cream, and at the time there hadn’t been a cure.

Sadly, once Henry had died, the neighbors shunned Lucy and her mother. It didn’t help when the Health Department tacked a huge notice on their door, warning others to “Keep out by order of Health Department.” This caused somewhat of a panic in the neighborhood, and neighbors were afraid to even walk past the house for fear of catching typhoid. All of a sudden, the other children were not allowed to play with Lucy anymore and she couldn’t understand why. This childhood rejection left its mark - and probably an impression harsh enough that swayed her into a career that would make people accept and love her.

Not able to afford remaining in Wyandotte, the family moved back to Lucy’s birthplace, Jamestown, when Lucy was 3 ½ years old.

There is only one recognized time that Lucy returned to Wyandotte during her adult life. In 1947, now having a successful movie career, she was in the area for a theater event. She visited with some of the (now grown) children she used to play with and the old homestead as well.

Sixteen years later, in 1963, the house was torn down and is now an empty lot.

Lucille Ball passed away in 1989.