John Donaldson Voelker (June 29, 1903 – March 18, 1991), also known by his pen name Robert Traver, was a noted lawyer, author and fly fisherman from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

The best-selling novel was turned into an Academy Award-nominated film of the same name—directed by Otto Preminger and starring James Stewart—released on July 1, 1959.

Other books by Voelker were based on other legal cases in the Upper Peninsula or his love of fly fishing for brook trout.

He authored over 100 opinions during his short tenure on the Michigan Supreme Court, the most famous of which was in a case called People v. Hildabridle involving a naturist community near Battle Creek.

[8] His grandparents were German immigrants who came to the mining towns of Ontonagon and Negaunee in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to establish breweries.

Young John, alongside his older brothers, learned from his father to fly fish for brook trout.

[7] His mother encouraged him to pursue his education; his father was content for Voelker to follow in his footsteps as a barkeeper.

The faculty at the University of Michigan asked him to withdraw from the school in 1927, but he cited a regulation allowing him to be reexamined.

Ultimately, he said that a prosecutor in a small town will build a majority in the population to vote against him, but only after he had prosecuted them or their friends and relatives.

[2] At the time, Governor G. Mennen Williams thought it was appropriate to revive a tradition of having a justice from the Upper Peninsula on the court.

[21] When asked why he wanted to serve, Voelker replied, "Because I have spent my life on fiction and fishing, and I need the money".

Chief Justice John R. Dethmers wrote the original majority opinion to uphold the convictions of the naturists.

[2] In the dissent, Voelker proclaimed "the entire search-and-arrest process 'indecent—indeed the one big indecency we find in this whole case ....

[2] In 1962, political scientist S. Sidney Ulmer noted that Voelker was the second-most influential member of the court.

[23] In 1959, after the success of his novel Anatomy of a Murder, Voelker retired from the court in order to write full-time and to fish at his beloved Frenchman's Pond.

His first published piece was a short story called "Iron" that appeared in the February 1934 issue of American Scene.

He wrote Anatomy of a Murder in three months and received an acceptance letter from a publisher in December 1956 just days before he was appointed to the Michigan Supreme Court.

[7] The book was the first to portray both the preparation and trial phases of a legal case, creating a new genre of fiction.

[7] In The New York Times, reviewer Orville Prescott called it "immensely readable and continuously entertaining" and noted Voelker's "unflagging invention and narrative pace".

[28] The book used quotations from actual testimony in the original 1952 trial,[31] and the movie did as well,[30] helping to bring an end to the strict censorship of motion pictures under the Hays Code.

[32] In addition to its on-location filming, Duke Ellington wrote part of the movie's score in Ishpeming.

[11] Several of his fishing books were anthologies of short stories he had written, some of which had already been printed in magazines like Field & Stream.

Striking up a friendship in the process, Voelker was profiled as a subject of an "On the Road" segment with Charles Kuralt on the CBS Evening News.

On March 18, 1991, Voelker died at age 87 of a heart attack while driving home from a fishing outing.

Voelker donated several signed editions of his books to the foundation, and Charles Kuralt once served as a board member.

These scholarships are funded through proceeds on special editions of Laughing Whitefish, a novel Voelker wrote about a case involving a Chippewa woman from the 19th century that reached the Michigan Supreme Court.

The collection is a part of the Central Upper Peninsula and Northern Michigan University Archives and includes unpublished manuscripts, case files from his days as a lawyer, some files related to his tenure on the Michigan Supreme Court and personal correspondence.

[11] In 1995, Voelker was posthumously inducted into the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame in Hayward, Wisconsin.

[45] The local visitors' association also offers pamphlets for a self-guided walking tour of Big Bay.