A Secret Gift Read online

  The B. Virdot check that Christmas of 1933 had gone to buy shoes for Monnot’s two daughters, Barbara and Joan. That too must have touched Sam. He then had daughters of his own, the youngest named Barbara. But Monnot’s daughter Barbara never fully escaped the Depression mentality. She rarely spoke of it directly, but she also, like many who survived it, never complained and was exceedingly frugal. After she died in 1998, her son Tom Haas discovered drawers of old underwear and linens and a host of other things that his mother could not bring herself to throw away. She had become something of a packrat, unable to part with something she might conceivably need later. She lived on social security and never tapped into the investments that accrued from her husband’s pension—investments that totaled $400,000 when she died. From what the Monnot descendants call “the good times”—the days before the Great Depression—the Monnots were able to hold on to only a few baubles, passing from George and Alice to daughter Barbara and finally to grandson Tom. Among these were some fragile glass Christmas bulbs to decorate the tree.

  On a rainy day in early March 2009, I sat with Tom Haas in the dining room of the McKinley Grand Hotel. Through the window we looked out on where Monnot’s bike shop stood a hundred years before. Now it is an empty space dubbed “Bicentennial Park,” one of many parks and playgrounds that attempt to fill the void left by exiting merchants and residents. We mused at our being brought together by the B. Virdot gift. Monnot and my grandfather had to know each other, says Haas. They traveled in the same circles, had businesses virtually across the street from each other, dined at the same restaurant, and boated on the same small Portage County lake. And yet Monnot never knew the identity or proximity of his benefactor.

  Now here we were, the grandsons, poring over an old scrapbook—a photo of the South Shore Yacht Club, of three children in a canoe, of a sailboat—the only evidence of a lifestyle otherwise erased by the Depression. Over a cup of coffee, Tom Haas reads his grandfather’s letter for the first time and simply shakes his head. There is an unspoken bond between us, our grandfathers joined by Hard Times and common interests, our own link forged by a letter that surfaced a lifetime later.

  But the grandchildren too would find their way in the world. A granddaughter, Martha, got a master’s degree in education and married Herbert J. Lanese, who would become president of McDonnell Douglas Aerospace.

  The huge wooden chest of tools that George Monnot used, first to repair bicycles and later to assemble Ford Model Ts, is now with another grandson, Jeffrey Earl Haas. This grandson too had a modest childhood, having grown up in a third-floor apartment above a drugstore. But the real inheritance, Jeffrey says, was not the tool chest but the lessons his mother, Barbara, handed down to him from the Depression, lessons in how to manage one’s affairs. Barbara Monnot was something of a miser and her sons too were raised to believe in the value of saving, the dangers of excessive debt, and the importance of hard work. Today, at sixty-five, George Monnot’s grandson Jeffrey enjoys many of the material comforts that his grandfather had also once known. He divides his time between a home in America and one in England that is on the famous Wentworth golf course and near both Windsor Castle and Ascot Racecourse. A collector of ancient Greek coins and an avid scuba diver, the retired Procter & Gamble vice president owns a Mercedes and a Porsche. No Fords.

  Seventy-five years after George Monnot wrote his appeal to Mr. B. Virdot, he would still be able to recognize much of Canton, though not even his favorite restaurant, Bender’s (originally, Bender’s Hofbrau Haus), was immune to the Depression. In 1932 it closed its doors, but it reopened six months later under new ownership. In some ways, the Depression literally gave Bender’s a new lease on life. When the American Exchange Bank failed, its executives, John Raymond Jacob and his son, Wilbur Henry Jacob, decided to try the restaurant business and leased Bender’s from the founder’s widow. John Raymond Jacob was a formidable figure weighing some three hundred pounds. He’d made much of his money in the travel business helping to bring German immigrants to Canton. (My grandmother Minna Adolph’s first meal in Canton, getting off the train in 1912 as a five-year-old, was at Bender’s.) Its German murals, of which Jacob was so proud, were covered over in World War I when the United States was at war with that nation, but were restored after the armistice.

  Today, a dark round oak table indistinguishable from that at which Monnot and my grandfather, Sam Stone, lunched with other business leaders in the good days before the Depression is there still. But now it is the grandsons’ and granddaughters’ turn to gather around it beneath the old tin ceiling and talk of Canton’s future. The women are no longer required to use the “Ladies’ Entrance,” though what was their dining room is still referred to as the “LDR,” or “Ladies’ Dining Room,” a carryover from the days when the main dining room was largely off-limits to them, as was the bar that featured a row of brass spittoons.

  In 2002, Bender’s observed its one hundredth anniversary, still serving its famed turtle soup, Camp Cagle pickerel, and Bender’s fries. That the tavern still stands is a miracle. On January 1, 1988, it was engulfed in flames and nearly consumed, but the arsonist (never brought to justice) failed to bring the venerable restaurant down. Its sandstone façade is lit by antique gaslights and blackened by the fire and years of exposure to wind and soot. It has catered to the likes of Guy Lombardo, Eddie Cantor, Roy Rogers, Tiger Woods, the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, evangelist Billy Graham, baseball’s Early Wynn and Cy Young, überathlete Jim Thorpe, and, it is whispered, the mobster Baby Face Nelson. But it is generations of Canton’s own families—the Monnots, the Stones, and thousands of others—who, coming out of the cold, have placed their feet upon its sandstone lintel until it has been worn down into a bowl, like some ancient grindstone.

  The Depression left its mark on Bender’s as it did on everything else. Decades afterward, there was still an effort to conserve even the last trace of butter. The paper that wrapped the butter was subjected to heat, because the butter would surrender to the flame before it would to the wax. And when diners’ plates were gathered after their meals, the butter was scraped into a common cask and heated until it purified. When patrons dipped their lobster into drawn butter, they were unknowingly dipping not only into the leavings of an earlier diner but into the legacy of the Great Depression as well.

  Like much of Canton’s industrial prowess, the once formidable Hercules plant where Monnot and thousands of other citizens worked is now relegated to the past. Today, the plant, which between 1915 and 1999 produced more than two and a half million engines, is empty, the company gone. Abandoned but not forgotten, the site is on the National Register of Historic Places. Grand plans for developing the site ran headlong into the Great Recession.

  As for the vast building that once housed Monnot’s Ford dealership, it suffered a fire that destroyed its top floor in 1947, and underwent a host of transformations, first as home to Caxton Press, then Thurin’s furniture store, and then a Robert Hall department store. But since 1978, the huge showroom has been something that would surely have pleased George Monnot. It is a museum for classic cars. In the midst of it all is parked a gleaming Model T, and at night, with the lights low, one can imagine the ghost of Mr. Monnot proudly showing off this, his latest model.

  But as Christmas 2008 approached, George Monnot might also find the economic landscape of Canton eerily familiar. The American auto industry was in shambles. In 2008, the stock of his beloved Ford Motor Company plummeted to historic lows—one dollar a share. And in the deepening recession, hundreds of Ford dealerships across the country closed their doors. At Canton’s Downtown Ford Lincoln Mercury dealership, owner Brad Black says what George Monnot himself said: “I haven’t laid anybody off yet. I probably should have.” But what has kept Black’s head above water, he says, are the Depression-era lessons his parents passed on to him—not to spend everything he made, but to save, and not to take on excessive debt. Others, says Black, were less disciplined. “They were living on the edge wh
en times were good. One hiccup, and it took them down.” A black-and-white photo of the enormous Ford dealership that Monnot once owned now hangs in his waiting room.

  Just months later, Chrysler declared bankruptcy. Then, on June 1, 2009, General Motors filed for bankruptcy, saying it would cut some 21,000 more jobs, close 14 plants, and cut loose 2,000 of its 6,000 U.S. dealerships. Even George Monnot had not witnessed such calamity in his beloved auto industry.

  Blizzard

  There were many like my grandfather, Sam Stone, who had made their own way into that select circle of Canton’s leading businessmen. But some few were to the manor born, princes and heads of long-established family businesses, part of the city’s upper crust, which, generation after generation, enjoyed positions of privilege. They too were not safe from the Depression. Within a matter of years—for some, just months—they found themselves destitute, scratching for pennies and feeling as if they had let down their families, their employees, and their community. As Sam Stone himself learned more than once, the bright line that separated the favored class from those below them could dissolve almost overnight, exposing the fragile divide between the haves and have-nots.

  Among those who experienced such a precipitous fall was Frank J. Dick, a man seemingly marked for success from birth. He was the son of the founder of Joseph Dick Manufacturing Company, established in 1874. Dick was of pioneer stock. His family came from Alsace-Lorraine and settled in Stark County in 1837. The company his family founded was renamed Blizzard Manufacturing for its agricultural device that blew feed into silos. It served a global market and was the largest maker of agricultural machines in the state. Its plant took up an entire city block. Frank Dick’s father, Joseph, had been a major part of the Canton community and beyond, hobnobbing with the city’s power brokers and social elite. He received dozens of patents for his agricultural inventions, and his contributions to the community were well known. He was a member of the school board, a director of the Board of Trade, and vice president of the Canton Home Savings and Loan Company.

  “Progressive, enterprising and liberal, [Joseph Dick] has been largely instrumental in promoting the general welfare and industrial thrift of the city of Canton and is in every way worthy of the high place he holds in public esteem,” noted an 1892 profile. The family even gifted a fabulous altar to St. John’s Catholic Church.

  The mansion where Frank Dick lived until he was twenty-seven was an imposing Victorian edifice on Tuscarawas Street. It was built in 1890 of wood and stone, some of it imported from Europe. Boasting twenty-two huge rooms, it claimed eight fireplaces, five chimneys, an elevator finished in fine walnut, and, in the basement, a bin designed to hold as much coal as an entire railroad car. The dining table featured fine crystal, the chairs were carved ornately. City luminaries had been frequent guests in the home, recalls a great-grandson.

  It was in that home that Joseph and his wife, Rosanna, raised six children in an aura of privilege and refinement. Each child was taught to play at least one instrument, and they formed an orchestra and toured on vacations. Among the boys, Frank J. Dick was the quietest. Soft-spoken, gentle, and, above all, proper, he would become the company’s vice president and assistant manager, displaying a talent for both management and invention. Like George Monnot, he was a tinkerer. With his wire-rimmed glasses and somewhat starched personality, he was a formal man. He was never seen without a white shirt and tie. Like his father, he took pleasure in helping others—what he called “the good work.” A gifted photographer, he had more of an artist’s temperament than a businessman’s. His portraiture and landscape pictures all proudly displayed his initials, FJD.

  Raised in comfort, he and his wife, Harriet, and children became accustomed to the same. His daughter Florence, born in 1908, attended finishing school, was a young socialite who mingled with Canton’s elite, played tennis, and was said to have flown with the famed pioneer aviator Jimmy Doolittle.

  Frank Dick, like his father, was a man of influence and of civic involvement. He possessed sound business judgment—which mattered not a jot when the end came for the company. In an effort to resuscitate the firm, Frank Dick pledged everything he had—stock, his home, and all other assets—but to no avail. After more than half a century his business and all he had was gone. He was fifty-seven. In his December 18, 1933, appeal to Mr. B. Virdot, the pain of his circumstances can be heard to fuse with the formality of his upbringing.

  “Mr. B. Virdot,” he wrote. “The writer is forced by serious business reverses to accept temporary assistance if it is available. I do not of course know to whom I am directing my appeal, but shall immediately give you my identity. I am Frank Dick. Residence 1018 12th St. N.W.

  “Possibly you are familiar with the serious business reverses I have suffered but for your information I shall state briefly my position. For thirty-five years I have been a member of The Joseph Dick Mfg. Co. one of Canton’s oldest Manufacturing Companies. While with above company . . .” The top of the letter is too tattered to make out, but it picks up with these lines:I also owned stock in our company to the approximate value of Sixty-five thousand dollars. . . .

  Little did we know that the reverse conditions in agricultural would extend over so long a period.

  Nevertheless our company required additional finances to carry on the good work. Once at this point I personally endorsed the company’s paper and in so doing placed my home valued at approximately thirty-seven thousand dollars, in support of my endorsement.

  Agricultural conditions continued to grow worse and our company after weathering the storm for over fifty years ceased to be and I experienced the loss of all of my stock holdings, my home and everything of value I possessed together with thirty-five years of hard work and efforts, leaving me without a dollar to support my family. My dear friend, am sure you are in position to realize what this means. I am sure I would never wish it to befall anyone . . . Would very much appreciate an opportunity of meeting with you personally. I am sure I can give you sufficient evidence and references as to my character and ability, if given the opportunity.

  In the meantime I assure you that any assistance whatever will be gratefully received and I am sure that you will never have cause to regret any confidence placed in me.

  VERY SINCERELY,

  FRANK J. DICK

  1018—12TH ST. N.W.

  The letter was desperate, the signature elegant. Three days later he received a check for five dollars from Mr. B. Virdot and on December 22, 1933, penned this thank-you note: My dear friend,

  I wish to thank you kindly for the assistance you have given me and I assure you it is very greatly appreciated and I hope that I shall have the pleasure of meeting you personally, offering me the opportunity of expressing my gratitude for this act of friendship.

  Before I unfortunately met with business reverses, my greatest pleasure was found in assisting everyone about me in every possible way and I hope that I shall again be in position to carry on the good work.

  Wishing you a most enjoyable Christmas and continued success. I am

  VERY GRATEFULLY YOURS,

  FRANK. J. DICK

  What Frank Dick did not say in his letter to Mr. B. Virdot—what others in the Dick family also chose to keep to themselves—was their belief that the company had been the victim of embezzlement, and, worse yet, that the crime might have been perpetrated by a member of the family, though not Frank Dick himself, who was above suspicion. That theft, they said, pushed the firm over the edge. But the family apparently concluded that nothing could bring the company back, that the negative publicity of a criminal trial involving family would only further wound its reputation and its dwindling standing in the community. Even today, descendants speak guardedly of the incident. The idea that one family member would steal from another was something I later learned resonated all too painfully with my grandfather, who, like the Dicks, would decide that pursuing the matter in the courts would bring only more pain.

  Compounding the sho
ck of Frank Dick’s own losses was the knowledge that the company’s failure would profoundly affect the lives of its 150 employees, many of whom had been with the company for decades. Blue blood and blue collar, young and old alike, together found themselves walking Canton’s cold December streets looking for work and unable to find it. Among these was James A. Brownlee, who lived one block away from the First Presbyterian Church, where the Dickens tale had been read. He had worked for years as the Blizzard Company’s paint foreman. The same day his former boss reached out to B. Virdot, James Brownlee wrote his own appeal for help.

  “Mr. B. Virdot,” he wrote, “I am doing something I have never did befor, that’s ask for that I have not earned or rather inform you I am one who could use the gift you so kindly offer to share . . .”

  I am 73 years old, however I’m feeling not a day over 40. I want to say how I would rather have work to pay for my own way than any other thing. I have never wasted what I earned in fast living and feel proud to be able to say that I have registered for Road Work or bridge painting but so far have not been called. Why I am writing this to you is a mystery to me. Without there’s ⁅sic] in your printed (beautiful) offer, the Real Spirit as sung by the Angelic Host at the First Christmas in Bethleham of Judea.

  After receiving the five dollars from Mr. B. Virdot, James Brownwell wrote a note of thanks dated December 22, 1933: “Your fine and much appreciated Gift received this AM. And I hasten to thank you and say I am in hearty cooperation with your idea of lessoning the amount and reaching more needy ones. Accept my sincere thanks with my wishes for Many Blessings not only at the coming Christmas Season but throughout the year. Merry Christmas to you and yours. I am Thankfully Yours, J. A. Brownwell.” To this he added a stanza of verse from the popular poet Edgar A. Guest:He has not lived who gathers gold,