The Michigan House of Representatives on Tuesday voted to rename a section of M-150 in Oakland County in honor of WWII veteran and former U.S. Rep. William Broomfield, who represented Michigan in Congress for 36 years.

The Royal Oak native served in the Army Air Corps during WWII. He later served in both chambers of the Michigan Legislature before he was elected to Congress in 1956, where he represented alternately Michigan’s 18^th and 19^th Congressional districts, neither of which exist anymore due to reapportionment as Michigan’s population size has shrunk relative to other states.

The bill was sponsored by state Rep. Mark Tisdel.

“Thirty-six years in Congress, 32 years as ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, he was part of the SALT talks under Reagan – Broomfield was an instrumental player,” said Tisdel, R-Rochester Hills. “If you look at those years he served in Congress, all of them were under Democratic control, but he still got stuff done. There’s that history in our district of working across the aisle that’s worth emulating.”

Broomfield was the longest actively serving Republican representative at the time of his retirement from Congress. He passed away in 2019 at the age of 96.

If Tisdel’s bill is approved by the Senate and signed into law, a portion of M-150 (also known as Rochester Road) will be renamed the “William S. Broomfield Memorial Highway.” The name change would cover the stretch running from the intersection with Tienken Road south to the intersection with M-59.

Tisdel said it was a fitting choice because the Van Hoosen Museum, off of Tienken Road, houses the archive for Broomfield’s documents.

“Something that struck me when putting this bill together is that at one point in his career, Broomfield represented Michigan’s 19^th congressional district, which no longer exists. Having 19 U.S. representatives was the high-water mark of our state’s strength in Congress. Today, we only have 13 members of Congress, which just shows a tremendous amount of stagnation relative to the population growth of other states,” Tisdel said.

“Our population has essentially remained static since 1980 at just about 10 million people,” Tisdel said. “Michigan has an uncompetitive average January temperature, so every other feature of life in the state has to be the best in the nation. Let’s work like Congressman Broomfield would have toward that goal.”

House Bill 4705 now goes to the Senate.