Thursday, July 28, 2005

Alan Warren / Associated Press A billboard on Whitmore Lake Road just north of Seven Mile in Northfield Township asks for help in boosting Michigan's business climate. Entrepreneur Lanny Johnson of Okemos is praying for better times in roadside billboards in Ann Arbor and Lansing.

Michigan urged to see the light

Okemos entrepreneur appeals to higher power to help the state change its business climate.

Associated Press

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ANN ARBOR -- The billboards retired orthopedic surgeon-turned-entrepreneur Lanny Johnson are hoisting in the state have a simple enough message.

"Dear Gracious Heavenly Father, Forgive us our sin of being dependent upon the Automobile Industry and not on You. Please restore invention, productivity and prosperity. In Jesus Name, A Michigan Citizen."

Johnson wrote the prayer because he's frustrated with what he sees as the state's backward business climate.

The 71-year-old Okemos man owns Prescription Putting, a company specializing in innovative golf putters and putting methods.

He recently asked a Chelsea company to make a new putter head and said it quoted him a price five times higher than he'd been charged by a California firm.

He's suggested to a Jackson company that it make a small change in its product that would open a new market, one for golfers, but the firm wasn't interested.

"Michigan's depressed. It has been dependent on the auto industry and is feeling it," Johnson said.

"I believe there are three human dimensions: mental, physical and spiritual," he said. "Michigan has exhausted the mental and physical. Maybe we should look at the spiritual."

The four billboards, which went up July 12 in Lansing and Ann Arbor, are expected to stay up for the next two months.

Jeannine Dodson of Adams Outdoor Advertising's Lansing office, said billboards often range between $2,000 and $5,000 a month.

Several employees of businesses near the Ann Arbor billboard said they hadn't noticed the sign or didn't understand it.

"It doesn't seem to say anything," said Norm Aronson, a utility employee working near the billboard.

"Automobiles are what we do here in Michigan," he said. "What are we supposed to do?"

Johnson's billboards are reminiscent of the "God Speaks" series that funded about 10,000 billboards across the country starting in 1999. The 18 slogans included messages such as, "Don't make me come down there. God."

Timothy K. Bel, a religion professor at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, said so-called roadside religion often features displays that are about nostalgia, pilgrimages and themes central to American religious life.