Norma Jean Stevens

Norma Stevens was born in Indiana, but raised in Buchanan, Michigan. She attended Buchanan High School, where Earl Stevens kidded her about her lisp. She decided he was the most insufferable man she’d ever met. By graduation they were going steady, and early in WWII they were married (and at some point she overcame the speech impediment). After the War they settled on a farm west of town to raise kids, corn, and sheep.

When most of their four offspring were safely in high school, Norma took a job as reporter for the Berrien County Record. She also wrote a weekly column, called “Inklings,” in which she celebrated the foibles of small town life, the changing of the seasons, and small vestiges of local history. Her interest in the past led her to research McCoy’s Creek, the old mill, and the beginnings of Buchanan itself. The resulting book, The Real McCoy, was published in hard cover in 1975, typeset using the newspaper's lead-type system, for an initial run of 518 copies.

Norma passed away in 2008, but interest in her book remains. Our paperback edition is a photo reprint of the original lead type, featuring 39 historical illustrations from the newspaper's archives, with cover photography by Shelley Morgan and art by Toni Lacey-Verdon, contemporary local citizens who won that honor in a contest.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 . We hope that you will enjoy this reprint, and that it will, in some small way, become a foundation for future progress in the area she so loved. In fact, after her death many new developments in the preservation of Buchanan's heritage were fueled by the interest and pride her columns and her book stirred up among local residents.