Doug McInnis, a Leelanau County resident living in Northport, has made his mark on the county as one of the founders of Leelanau Energy, a community action agency advocating for clean energy like solar and wind power.
Although Doug and his wife Ann have been living in the county since 2006, Doug grew up downstate in the Royal Oak area, and lived in the Detroit Zoo for a time — not as an exhibit, but because his father was zoo director.
“My father was a landscape architect for the city of Detroit. Eventually, he got involved in the development of the Detroit Zoo in Royal Oak and Huntington Woods,” McInnis said. “Later on, he became the director of the Detroit Zoo when I was 10 years old. At that time, he said, ‘Well, with my new job, I have a choice: either I live in the city of Detroit, or I live in the zoo.’ And so, the family — my sister and I, and my mother – all agreed: let’s live in the zoo.”
The McInnis clan lived together on the zoo grounds as Doug attended school and he eventually enrolled in the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he studied aeronautical engineering, the science of designing aircraft and other flying machines.
He met his wife, Ann, in college, and the two married soon after graduating. They married just in time to move to California together, as McInnis was assigned to Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara County as part of his participation in the U.S. Air Force’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program.
McInnis enrolled in the Air Force ROTC because of his interest in aviation, and the program gave him an opportunity to take to the skies early on in life. However, he quickly learned that he literally didn’t have the stomach for flying after a pilot attempted some rolls, dives, and other aerial maneuvers on a test flight with him in the back seat.
This, combined with his need for vision-correcting glasses, led McInnis towards on-theground functions at the Air Force base. His degree in aeronautical engineering made him well-suited to help test solid propellant and multi-stage rockets produced for the military at the California base, which would lead him across the country and eventually back to Michigan.
After three years serving at the California Air Force base, the McInnises decided they wanted to live in an environment more like Michigan. They decided on Virginia, where Doug got a job with a company that designed rockets – but these flying projectiles were for non-military use.
“I joined a company in Virginia that made solid propellant rockets and multi-stage rockets mostly for firing up in the sky to gather weather data. The payload would come down on a parachute that would measure the wind velocities and also the temperature and other aerospace-type information,” McInnis explained.
Around this time, however, the aeronautical field was in decline. Knowing that he would need to find another job soon, McInnis found a job posting by the IRS, where they were looking to hire an engineer. McInnis said that IRS sometimes audits large aviation companies, and it relies on engineers like him to review their listings and verify that the assets and numbers are properly reported, something that most accountants lack the background to determine on their own.
This job with the tax administration agency brought McInnis – with his wife and four children in tow – back to Michigan in 1971. He worked out of the IRS’s Detroit office for 25 years before he retired. They eventually purchased a seasonal home in the Leelanau Peninsula, which became their full-time residence by 2006. He said it was “an easy decision” to move here, citing the area’s natural beauty.
Doug and Ann McInnis have always been passionate about the environment, taking their children on canoeing and camping trips in the U.S. and Canada, and getting involved with land conservation including the Leelanau Conservancy. Doug had not retired for very long before he became involved with a group of like-minds, who formed the Northport Energy Action Task Force — now known as Leelanau Energy — in 2008.
To McInnis, Leelanau Energy represents an opportunity to work together with people in the community towards a positive goal –— sourcing energy in ways that are less harmful to the environment, and therefore preserve it for future generations.
“People up here are really quite amazing. The founders (of Leelanau Energy) all have different backgrounds and interests, but when we got together to form the Northport Energy Action Task Force, which was our first name, we had all this talent that could come together and work, and not be distracted from other things, it was — and still is — marvelous because of the talent we have,” McInnis said.
