Stevie Wonder, Serena Williams, and a Pulitzer poet: Saginaw's famous kids

For a mid-sized Michigan city, Saginaw has produced an almost unreasonable share of famous Americans. Stevie Wonder was born here in 1950 — Stevland Hardaway Judkins, who left for Detroit as a child and went on to win 25 Grammys. Serena Williams, arguably the greatest tennis player who ever lived, was born in Saginaw in 1981 before her family moved west. Draymond Green, the heart of the Golden State Warriors’ championship teams, was born here in 1990 and starred at Saginaw High before Michigan State.

And a generation earlier there was Theodore Roethke, born in Saginaw in 1908, who grew up working in his family’s commercial greenhouses and turned that world of roots, stems, and steamed glass into some of the great American poetry of the 20th century — winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1954. His childhood home on Gratiot Avenue is preserved as a museum. Not bad for one river town’s kids.