This past spring, BridgeDetroit reached out to residents across the city seeking examples of Detroiters who have made a difference in their communities. Selections were made based on those nominations. And Resilience in the D was born.
Here’s a look back on four Detroiters who deserve to be honored for their work. Come back in January for the fifth honoree.
This Detroiter built her career on ‘the art of giving’
Bettye Wright’s upbringing set the tone for her life’s mission.
The 86-year-old grew up surrounded by elders who helped her learn to care for herself and for each other. Most prominently, her late grandfather, Tobe McDaniel, who embraced people with decades of lived experience that he had not yet reached, she said.
“When I was growing up in a rural suburb of Kansas City, my grandfather was so helpful,” Wright told BridgeDetroit. “Most of the widows or single ladies that were getting older, he had keys to their home, he picked up their mail, and for one period of time he owned the grocery store, so he would deliver their groceries to them and I just saw what he did to take care of them.”
Wright took that reverence for elders with her when she moved to Detroit in the early 1950s.
That influence and Wright’s giving nature explain why she has spent nearly her entire life taking care of people. Whether as a mother, grandmother, or nurse, she’s dedicated to identifying what others need and going out of her way to help provide it.
Since 2017, she’s spent most of her time caring for senior citizens on the city’s southeast side at a nonprofit she founded with her grandfather’s namesake: the TobeMC Senior Daycare – or as Wright calls it, the TobeMC Center.
Barbara Brown, a friend of Wright’s since 1968, said she thinks of Wright as an artist and “giving is her art.”
“She uses the art of love, the art of looking to others and trying to meet some of their needs,” Brown said.
This retired firefighter battles Detroit’s home repair crisis
Gary Ringer, a retired firefighter, circled a one-story brick home decorated with neatly arranged pinwheels and a Thunderbird parked in the driveway.
The homeowner, an elder Detroiter, showed Ringer the old gutters and the broken roof, where a raccoon had begun clawing at the holes. Ringer took pictures on the muggy June afternoon, then went indoors to diagnose the damage further.
This is the latest chapter in Ringer’s life of public service. The 50-year-old has visited more than 100 Detroit homes like this in the past year alone, with an emphatic purpose: to keep those homes—and the people living in them—healthy and safe.
In this particular home, water had dripped through the holes in the roof, seeped into the walls and ate away at the plaster.
“At that point, I knew, this is a high-priority item,” Ringer later recalled. “[Water] can support mold. It can support termites. It can support the deterioration of the entire wall system.”
In an era of aging infrastructure, broken furnaces, pipes, wiring, porches or roofs can endanger residents and catalyze blight and financial hardship. The long-simmering issue in Detroit has reached crisis mode, costing billions of dollars to address.
Community agencies have fielded thousands of calls from residents searching for help. Thousands have idled on waitlists. Home repair programs have emerged to meet the colossal demand. But the aid ecosystem can be hard to navigate.
So, Ringer leads the way.
He is a contractor for community nonprofits, including the Cody Rouge Community Action Alliance and Redeem Detroit—two agencies that strive to create hope, possibility and opportunity across the city. With a strong work ethic and a passion for healthy communities, Ringer serves residents in need.
He shares resources that offer financial relief. He appraises homes for hazards that could threaten the integrity of a property or the health of a family. He passes down his skills to the next generation.
Detroiter builds purpose through film, advocacy for Deaf community
Although he couldn’t hear the words, a love for film and storytelling was cemented into Theodore “Teddy” Dorsette III from a young age.
Every Sunday, his father, Teddy Dorsette II, would take him and his siblings to the dollar theater to watch blockbusters on the big screen. Since Dorsette is deaf, he couldn’t hear the dialogue spoken between the characters, but could still feel the vibrations of the sounds and music.
“It was really fun going as a youth and spending time with family,” the Detroiter told BridgeDetroit through an interpreter. “That really captivated me, as well as seeing different stories. I could see the world through film, and I could create my vision through film.”
Now 39, Dorsette is a filmmaker and actor who has worked in various mediums, from short films and documentaries to music videos. And like many Detroiters, Dorsette is a hustler, founding or co-founding several companies: Def Lens Media, which offers marketing, creative design and video production services; media production company TeddyBoy Films and Entertainment; Metropolitan Interpreting Services and Dorsette Hair Designs VIP. In 2014, he established a nonprofit Reel Def Entertainment, which encourages deaf and hard of hearing youth to explore careers in the entertainment industry.
While Deaf representation in media has increased in recent years with films and shows like “CODA,” “A Quiet Place” and “The Last of Us,” there’s more that needs to be done, Dorsette said.
A 2022 report from global insights and strategy firm National Research Group showed that more than half of deaf consumers say they “rarely” or “never” see their identities represented in film and TV, and even greater numbers say the same about other media such as books, live theater, and video games.
“We’re seeing more deaf individuals in story lines and seeing that representation, but the only way that can happen is if deaf individuals and those who are disabled are doing those stories because others are not producing them and writing them like we are,” Dorsette said.
Dorsette is also known for his advocacy work in the disability community. He helped the Michigan Department of Civil Rights Division on Deaf, Deaf Blind and Hard of Hearing Department facilitate the development of the needs assessment survey that collects data from those communities. Dorsette served on two advisory councils: the Michigan Licensing and Regulatory Affairs Board of Interpreters and the State Independent Living Council and was a communications manager for Detroit Disability Power.
Most recently, Dorsette dabbled in politics, running unsuccessfully as a write-in, at-large candidate for Detroit City Council. He said his long-term goal is to continue to be an advocate for marginalized communities that may not be able to speak for themselves.
“I fight for equality for everyone,” Dorsette said. “I can be that individual who can speak up and say, ‘It’s time for people to have a seat at the table where all voices are heard, not just a select few.’”
Why this Detroiter takes her mobile salon to homeless shelters
On a Tuesday afternoon in early June, with tools and products at the ready, Niesha Lee primped and pampered women at her makeshift salon in the basement of a family shelter on Detroit’s west side.
She carefully combed and straightened their hair. She curled the ends and arched eyebrows and applied wispy lashes as a finishing touch.
Lee offered these services through Inspiring Hair LLC, her mobile salon that provides free hairstyles, makeup and grooming at Detroit homeless shelters to prepare residents for job interviews, court dates or to just help them feel good about themselves.
As Terri Motley, a resident of Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries Genesis House II shelter, left her chair with a silk press, fresh curls and a smile on her face, she embraced a teary-eyed Lee.
“I love it,” said Motley, 51, before she even saw the final results. She’d been staying at the Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries shelter after coming out of rehab.
For Lee, the work is personal.
The 39-year-old Detroiter and mom of five said she knows what it’s like to come face-to-face with homelessness, to be overlooked and left behind. She knows what it’s like to not be able to afford clean clothes or get her hair done.
“A lot of people who face homelessness are looked over because of their outer appearance and that’s my goal — to change that,” she said.
Lee has dealt with homelessness at various points throughout her life, starting at childhood. She battled substance abuse in her adulthood before she said she decided to turn her life around in 2018.
Now, she’s giving back to the Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries, a nonprofit providing food and housing to those facing homelessness and substance addiction. It’s the same organization that housed her.