Helen Mickens, a member of Lansing Rotary since 1988, is from Kalamazoo. She has a BA from Kalamazoo College, a Masters from Michigan State University, and JD from WMU Thomas Cooley Law School. Helen was a professor and associate dean at Cooley Law School for 32 years. Since she retired she's made time to continue her community service, her family genealogy research, her gardening, and travel with her husband Charles.Helen feels grateful to have come "from a family of story-tellers." It was through that she knew a lot about her family's roots in Kansas. (Her grandfather was a mustanger and farmer out there. Her great uncle worked on the Panama Canal when he wasn't a grave digger and pool hall owner in Southern Kansas.) But a single document would open the door to the story of her third great grandfather Henry Work who, after his being freed from slavery in 1809, plied a trade and raised the resources to buy his wife and seven of their children out of slavery. Henry and his family made the treacherous 700 mile trip from North Carolina (before railroads or even good roads) to Michigan. Helen will share the story of Henry Work's life and her family's saga between the years 1809 and 1850.