How Lansing's trio of smokestacks came to be known as as Wynken, Blynken and Nod

Lansing State Journal

LANSING — As the trio of Lansing smokestacks enjoy renewed attention as the inspiration for the city's new logo, I was reminded of how they became known as "Wynken, Blynken and Nod."

Lansing State Journal readers picked the name in 1981.

The late Jim Hough, the LSJ’s popular columnist known as the Onlooker, told me the story a few months before he died in October 2017.

Hough offered up the name in a 1981 column in after the construction of the now-familiar towers, which replaced seven shorter stacks on the Lansing Board of Water & Light's Eckert Power Plant.

A high school journalism instructor, Jim Faulkner, told Hough that they should be named and suggested Quaker, Viking and Big Red after the city’s high school mascots.

“Good thinking, Jim, those stacks certainly are community landmarks,” Hough wrote in one of his folksy columns. “We might as well decorate them imaginatively. At the very least, we ought to paint big smiles on them, just to cheer up folks around here.”

Hough casually threw out the name Wynken, Blynken and Nod, taken from an old children's poem about sailing in a wooden shoe.

He added one other one that thankfully no one ran with: “How about painting them as the Three Musketeers?”

He invited readers to offer more suggestions.

Though he didn’t say it in print, Hough told me "Wynken, Blyken and Nod" was suggested by his late, beloved wife, Darl, who often helped him with the column. Hough was legally blind, and Darl would read letters from readers to him at home in the evenings.

Readers submitted 100 entries. Other suggestions were Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (from a Biblical story and a popular song); faith, hope and charity: Tom, Dick and Harry; Huey, Dewy and Louie and Tic, Tac, Toe.

Wynken, Blynken and Nod was by far the most popular name, Hough wrote.

“Many felt the flashing lights on the stack made the name appropriate,” he wrote in a column printed on Nov. 4, 1981.

He also dispelled the myth that the lights are Morse Code for “Eckert Tower, Lansing Michigan.”

Hough later in life was worried that the towers would be demolished. If that happened, he suggested the bricks be sold to support a charity.

It’s a good idea, but there are no plans to demolish them at this point. I think Hough would be happy about that.

Amy Adamy, spokeswoman for the Lansing Board of Water and Light, said Friday the coal-fired plant is scheduled to be decommissioned by the end of 2020. BWL will look to sell to a developer who wants to keep the towers.

“Those stacks are iconic in the city of Lansing," she said. "We don’t have any plans of removing them."

Ideas that have been floated include turning the 600-foot towers into commercial, restaurant and or residential space.

Hough also brokered one more controversy in 1985 about "Wynken, Blynken and Nod." Depending on your point of view, Wynken could be the east stack or the west stack and the same with Nod.

The Onlooker decided to settle it based on his office view from the north.

“Thus Wynken is on the east and Nod is on the west," he wrote. "There has never been a controversy about Blynken, so far as I know."

Judy Putnam is a columnist with the Lansing State Journal. Contact her at (517) 267-1304 or at jputnam@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @judyputnam.