The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century (Vintage) (92 page)

The Fords entertained infrequently at Fair Lane. Once in a while Clara would host a luncheon, and old friends visited occasionally for dinner. Nor did the Fords attend many social functions. They loved hosting the old-time dances at Lovett Hall and enjoyed attending the weddings of their friends' children. By the 1930s, the deaths of old friends around Dearborn necessitated their presence at many funerals. Various members of the Bryant clan visited Fair Lane, but not the Fords, who were never a close-knit family. When Henry and Clara socialized, they did so quietly with the Bryants, or with local couples such as the Harry Snows, the Stanley Ruddimans, and the Clarence Davises. The Louis Iveses were their oldest and dearest friends. The Iveses and Fords went out for dinner, traveled on several trips together, and hosted wedding-anniversary celebrations for each other.
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The Fords maintained a close, comfortable relationship with clearly
delineated roles into the late years of their marriage. Though never affectionate in the presence of others, they joked with each other and conversed easily. Clara dominated the domestic scene with determined efficiency. She campaigned so relentlessly for the installment of a watering system that her exasperated husband finally told Charles Voorhess, “Put in that damned lawn spray system. I don't want to hear any more about it.” Another time, Henry wanted a telephone on the sunporch and instructed Voorhess to install one. When he had started the job, however, Clara appeared and nixed it, saying they already had enough phones in the house. Over a period of several days, Henry insisted and Clara refused, round and round. The phone did not go in.
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In certain ways, the couple offered contrasting personalities. Neither displayed emotions easily, and both were even-tempered, with Henry given to shyness and Clara exhibiting a cool reserve. She had acquired a sense of social position with her husband's stupendous success, and though always polite and often kind, she would put people in their place if crossed. Once, a loud, pushy man approached her at a reception at the Dearborn Country Club and addressed her in a breezy fashion. “With a little bow of the head, she just passed it off as if she didn't see him,” according to Mrs. Ruddiman. More democratic and unself-conscious, Henry chatted with anyone who caught his interest. He often passed a friend and tapped him on the arm, something Clara would never dream of doing. Henry also dropped his genteel demeanor more easily, periodically indulging in a puckish sense of humor. At one of their rare dinner parties, Clara suggested that her guests have a glass of sherry after the meal. Henry, a notorious teetotaler, left the table in apparent disgust. He returned outlandishly a few minutes later, riding his bicycle into the dining room and carrying a bottle of champagne under his arm. Always the practical farm girl, Clara worried about the details and processes of daily life, whereas her more visionary husband was able to lay aside his worries and relax more easily.
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Their close relationship was based on respect and affection. Clara was fiercely proud of her husband and his accomplishments, and Henry treated his wife with a natural sweetness. He always left her with a kind word and touch. He knew she had an unreasonable fear of thunderstorms and lightning, and if absent from home when a storm hit, he always called to see if she was all right. He developed a particularly charming habit over the years that revealed his fondness for Clara as well as their shared interests. Upon returning to the house from work, he would whistle a special bird call as a signal to let his wife know he was about.
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With Henry tied less tightly to the daily operation of the company, the Fords enjoyed more recreational activities than they had in the past. In
1917, they had purchased a yacht, the
Sialia
(the ornithological name for the eastern bluebird), and taken several cruises, including one to Cuba. By the mid-1920s, they had bought two cargo ships and named them after their oldest grandchildren, the
Henry Ford II
and the
Benson Ford.
These freighters, outfitted with luxurious cabins, became their transportation of choice for regular trips on the Great Lakes. In 1935, Henry and Clara acquired a smaller, richly adorned yacht called the
Truant
for such jaunts. This craft transported them in leisurely fashion during the summer season to a special vacation spot. Each August, they visited the Huron Mountain Club, an exclusive resort some forty miles north of Marquette, Michigan. They owned a large cabin there, and spent several weeks deep in the woods, feeding the deer, relaxing in the wilderness, and taking an occasional excursion to Big Bay, a nearby village. Indeed, Henry so loved the little town that he bought it in the early 1940s and spent several million dollars restoring its lumber mill, fifty-two employee homes, and the local hotel.
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Travel throughout the Eastern United States became a hobby for the Fords in the late 1920s and the 1930s. They journeyed to New England, where they would visit the Wayside Inn, or Edsel's summer home on an island off the coast of Maine. Clara regularly traveled to New York City for shopping trips, occasionally accompanied by Henry but more often by small groups of her Dearborn friends. The Fords also headed southeast for winter vacations. Until 1931, they spent several weeks each winter in the “Mangoes,” their home in Fort Myers, Florida, which was adjacent to Thomas Edison's winter residence. After Edison's death in that year, Henry and Clara shifted their attention to a several-hundred-acre plantation near Ways Station, Georgia, on the Atlantic coast, and wintered there over the following decade. On most of these trips the Fords traveled in their private railcar, the
Fair Lane.
Built for Ford in 1921, this eighty-two-foot car was constructed entirely of steel and featured a rear observation platform. Its interior, richly finished in walnut with elegant window draperies, had sleeping quarters, a drawing room, kitchen, and small dining room. The
Fair Lane
could accommodate eight passengers as well as a cook and a porter. It allowed the couple to travel comfortably in a homelike atmosphere, in which they could read, converse, and sleep according to their usual schedule.
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In their mature years, however, Henry and Clara derived the greatest joy from their role as grandparents. Edsel and Eleanor Ford's four children—Henry II had been born in 1917, Benson in 1919, Josephine (Dodie) in 1923, and William in 1925—often visited Fair Lane on weekends, when a chauffeur would bring them from Grosse Pointe to Dearborn. The two older boys spent more time with their grandparents in the 1920s, before departing for Eastern prep schools. The two younger children visited often
in the 1930s and became particular favorites of their grandparents. Dodie was a bright, sweet girl; William, the very image of Edsel, allowed Henry and Clara to relive their son's childhood.
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The Fords provided their grandchildren with a wealth of activities. The youngsters swam in the pool, played raucous games in the bowling alley spiced by arguments over who would manually set up the pins, skated on the pond, and accompanied their grandfather to look for birds' nests in the fields and forest. Henry supervised the boys on overnight camping trips in the woods and joined them in riding bicycles all over the estate. Every spring he took them out to help drain maple sap and boil it down into syrup in a shack in the woods. He gave them impromptu driving lessons as they sat on his lap and helped steer the car. If the weather was bad, the children remained indoors and banged on the piano, played the wind-up Victrola, and explored the bays and towers of the big granite house. To the consternation of Edsel and Eleanor, Henry taught Billie how to shoot guns, and they would plunk away at tin cans with a .22 rifle. As part of the driving lessons, Henry took the boy out onto roads near Fair Lane, where they would drive “like a bat out of hell,” according to the grandson's recollection. Once, a police officer stopped them, asking first the boy and then his grandfather for a driver's license. Neither had one, so the officer called Clara, who promised to take the matter in hand. When the two miscreants arrived home, she was waiting. “Bill, you go up to your bedroom,” she said sternly. “And Henry, I want to talk to you.”
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Henry was especially eager to have his grandchildren engage in practical, useful activities. He had drawing tables set up and made sure they were supplied with adequate paper, pencils, and crayons. He arranged for the building of a playhouse in the form of a two-room farmhouse, complete with miniature icebox, parlor stove, furniture, and sewing machine. A tiny barn sat behind, along with small-scale farm machinery, such as a miniature steam-powered threshing machine called the HEBENJOBILL after the names of the four grandchildren. Ford taught the children how to operate the machines. He also furnished a small wagon (and a small sleigh in winter) pulled by two black Shetland ponies so they could learn to drive an old-fashioned vehicle.
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The grandparents, especially Henry, spoiled Edsel's children. Young Henry and Benson regularly smashed up the many toy cars at Fair Lane; Dodie tore pages out of her grandmother's books and drew on them. According to Charles Voorhess, the grandchildren “had unlimited freedom” and could do whatever they liked. “There was no limit to it,” he reported. Henry provided a screened-in sandbox and an elaborate tree house outfitted with Coleman lanterns, hardwood floors, stained walls,
screened windows, and a stairway. On many Saturday mornings, he would take the boys to the engineering laboratory, where they engaged in much mischief. Driving a car around the interior, they would see how close they could come to the supporting columns without hitting them. Or they would take the time cards out of the rack, shuffle them up, and then replace them randomly. When anyone criticized such behavior, Henry replied, “Let them alone. They run wild when they're with me because the rest of the time they're cooped up like caged lions. They are so penned in at home by bodyguards that when they are with me I want them to let loose.” The grandfather may have had a point. Several kidnapping scares, along with threats from extremists during the labor wars, had deeply worried Edsel and Eleanor. Their estate in Grosse Pointe had become an armed camp, with eighteen bodyguards working twenty-four hours a day on several shifts, armed with tear-gas canisters and machine guns for an emergency. If family members ventured out for even a brief walk on the estate, guards monitored them with binoculars.
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The Fords' love of children, however, extended beyond their family. Both went out of their way to forge close relationships with a variety of youngsters. Henry took Dearborn boys who wanted cars to the Rouge, where they were scrapping old Model T's for the metal. Each boy would choose one of the more promising relics, and Ford would have his workmen rebuild the engines and refurbish the chassis until they looked like new. Clara was very fond of several children in the Bryant clan, especially her niece Grace Brubaker, who often accompanied her to social and community functions. Frances Bryant, another of Clara's nieces, married Irving ImOberstag, and their family became close to the Fords. Living across the Rouge River from Fair Lane, the children visited easily by crossing on stepping stones near the dam. Clara often had the oldest daughter spend the day with her, and they would have tea parties together.
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Children seemed to bring out Henry's playful, boyish side even in his seventies. He would gather up Dearborn kids and take them to the old Ford family homestead, where they would jump out of the barn hayloft into piles of hay, run races around the place (with Ford joining in, and often winning), and sit around crunching on apples. He took them on tours of the old house; they would gather in the parlor and sing songs around the pump organ while their host applauded. In the mid-1930s, Otto Stout, a local boy, floated down the River Rouge with a friend on a “raft” constructed of an old water heater and several other contraptions. As they came around the bend into sight of Fair Lane, an older man hailed them from the shore. At first, the boys thought they were in trouble, but, surprisingly, he only wanted a ride. When they worked their way to the shore, he asked permission to
come aboard, and off they went. A short time later, the trio turned over the raft, however, and fell into the water. They made it safely to shore, soaking wet. But the elderly sailor, instead of “being angry, he just seemed excited to be a kid again,” Stout recalled. Only then did the boys learn that he was Henry Ford. He took them up to the house, where Mrs. Ford helped them get some dry clothes and hot food.
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Henry also developed a grandfatherly relationship with Ann Hood. He first met her as a girl enrolled in the Scotch Settlement School in Greenfield Village, and she also took old-fashioned dancing lessons. Her father was Carl Hood, former principal of Dearborn High School, who now worked for Ford as head of the Edison Institute schools. The Hoods lived across the street from the Lovetts, and she became friendly with the dance instructors. Then, in the early 1930s, this vivacious and intelligent girl became a reporter and photographer for the school newspaper. As part of a story, she submitted a questionnaire to Ford about his early life, interviewed him at length, and wrote a brief biographical manuscript entitled “The Boy Henry Ford.” He found her delightful. They struck up a friendship, talking and exchanging letters regularly even after she went off to college in the early 1940s. In 1934, Ford assisted Ann and her father on a trip to Europe, paying for cars, drivers, and lodging. This girl, like his own grandchildren and other youth in Dearborn, brought out many of Ford's most appealing char-acteristics—curiosity, high spirits, and generosity.
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