You know about James Earl Jones, Tom Brady and President Gerald Ford. You probably know about Gilda Radner, Lucy Liu and Mike Wallace, too.
But here are 10 people you didn’t know were University of Michigan alumni. For the record, an alumnus is anyone who attended a school, whether you graduated from there or not. Some of these people graduated from U-M and some didn’t, but they were all students in Ann Arbor at some point.
Meet the Wolverines You Never Knew Were Wolverines:
1. Marina Oswald
The Russian-born wife of Lee Harvey Oswald was only 22 years old when her husband assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. After first believing that her late husband was guilty – and testifying about it to the Warren Commission – she later came to think he was framed.
Following the assassination, she took a job as a drugstore clerk, but in January of 1965, she moved to Ann Arbor and enrolled at the University of Michigan to attend its acclaimed English Language Institute (ELI). She was barely fluent in English at the time and wanted to learn how to speak, write and read it better.
When word leaked out that she was enrolling at U-M, the school maintained that she was no different from the other 28,000 students at the school.
“We regard Mrs. Oswald as a typical institute student,” said ELI Director John C. Catford when her enrollment was announced. She was at the school less than two months, picking up her ELI diploma in late February.
She’s now 83 and lives in seclusion in Texas, one of the only living direct connections to the JFK assassination.
2. Ann B. Davis
Two decades before taking a job as the live-in housekeeper for Mike and Carol Brady and their six kids, Ann B. Davis was a theater major at the University of Michigan. She grew up in Pennsylvania and attended U-M, graduating in 1948 with a degree in drama and speech. She was in a bunch of plays during her time in Ann Arbor, playing a Supreme Court Justice in one of her more memorable performances.
It didn’t take her long to make her mark in the TV world. She landed a role as Schultzy in “The Bob Cummings Show” in 1955 and then landed her signature role as Alice Nelson in “The Brady Bunch” in 1968. She returned to campus many times before passing away in 2014.
3. Clarence Darrow
The most famous attorney in American history learned the law as a student at the University of Michigan Law School in 1877-78. He only attended the law school for a year, though; he was so confident he could pass the bar that he left school, took a job in a law office and then aced it on his first try.
He went on to become the most celebrated lawyer in history, making his mark in the Scopes “monkey trial,” the Ossian Sweet case and many others. The U-M Law School keeps his legacy alive today by awarding the Darrow Scholarship.
4. Michael Phelps
That’s right – America’s greatest lawyer AND America’s greatest Olympian both went to the University of Michigan. Phelps lived in Ann Arbor during the height of his Olympic swimming career, from 2004-2008, while his personal coach, Bob Bowman, was the coach of the U-M men’s swimming team. He trained at U-M and attended classes but didn’t receive a degree. Phelps also served as a volunteer assistant coach for the Michigan team.
The man who won 28 Olympic medals maintains a huge affection for Michigan and has attended numerous football games through the years. In 2022, Coach Jim Harbaugh invited Phelps to Ann Arbor to serve as the honorary captain for Michigan’s football game against Penn State.
5. Strother Martin
“What we’ve got here … is failure to communicate.” One of the most famous lines in cinematic history, from the classic “Cool Hand Luke,” was spoken by a University of Michigan graduate. Strother Martin was a star on the diving team at Michigan, earning a degree in speech and drama in 1947 (so yes, he was a classmate of Ann B. Davis).
He went on to have a long career in Hollywood, capped by his signature role as the sadistic prison warden in Cool Hand Luke in 1967. He also had a short but memorable turn in 1978 as the stoner’s father in “Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke.”
6-7. Leopold and Loeb
Speaking of Clarence Darrow, two of his most famous clients were Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the entitled rich kids who kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in a 1924 “thrill killing.” Their only motive was to prove they were so smart, they could get away with murder. (They did not.) Like their attorney, both Leopold and Loeb were U-M alumni.
Loeb had made news in 1923 when he graduated from U-M at the age of 17, the school’s youngest graduate ever. Leopold also attended U-M for two years before transferring to the University of Chicago. Along with the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, they’re among the most infamous U-M alumni. Unlike the other people on this list, the school obviously doesn’t brag about those three.
8. Derek Jeter
He’s a first-ballot Baseball Hall of Famer, a five-time World Series champion and one of the most famous shortstops in baseball history. And for a few months in the fall of 1992, he was a student at the University of Michigan.
Jeter, who grew up in Kalamazoo, had been recruited by Michigan Coach Bill Freehan to play baseball at the school, and enrolled in 1992 with full intentions of doing that. When the New York Yankees drafted him and offered a bunch of money, though, he decided to go the pro route instead. He left school in the spring of 1993 but he’s still been a maize-and-blue guy ever since. “I was a big University of Michigan fan and I still am today,” Jeter said in 2014.
9. Mark Metcalf
Before he was Douglas C. Niedermeyer at Faber College, he was Mark Metcalf at the University of Michigan. He enrolled at U-M as an engineering student in 1964, but when a roommate at Markley Hall talked him into trying out for a play, he got hooked on theater. He graduated in 1968 and a decade later he landed his signature role as the sadistic ROTC officer Niedermeyer in “Animal House.”
He’s kept busy in the decades since then and had another iconic role as the Maestro on “Seinfeld” in the 1990s.
10. Thomas E. Dewey
He’s most famous for an election he didn’t win (the 1948 upset loss to incumbent President Harry Truman), but Thomas E. Dewey was actually one of the most successful and celebrated politicians of the 20th century. He grew up in Owosso and came to U-M in 1919, earning his degree in 1923. Among other activities, he was an editor at the Michigan Daily and a member of the Men’s Glee Club during his time in Ann Arbor.
He later moved to New York and was elected governor in 1942. He was the Republican Party’s nominee for president in both 1944 and 1948. To this day, Dewey and Gerald Ford are the only U-M grads to be presidential nominees for one of the major parties.
Fun fact: Dewey also sort of shows up in the classic movie “The Godfather.” In the scene where Sonny Corleone (played by Michigan State University alum James Caan) is brutally beating his brother-in-law Carlo, you’ll see some “Dewey for Governor” posters on the wall.
