A Secret Gift Page 6

  Nor has he lived whose life is told

  In selfish Battles he has won,

  Or deed of skill he may have done,

  But he has lived who now and then

  Has helped along his fellowman.

  Such a note would have touched Sam Stone. It was the kind of poetry he admired, and Guest was among his favorites. There was nothing coy about it. Its meaning was clear and Sam embraced its sentiments. He had his own ready stock of verses whose homespun wisdom was just waiting for the right occasion. In reading Brownlee’s note my grandfather would surely have felt a special kinship.

  I suspect he would have found less in common with Frank Dick. When the Blizzard Company went under, Dick lost everything. For him, as with so many other leaders in Canton’s business community who now found themselves stripped of wealth, position, and influence, the drop was stunning. For a time Frank Dick hoped that he might convert his longtime hobby of toy making into a new career. Shortly after the failure of the family business Frank Dick incorporated a new company called “Dixtoy,” set up works in an empty plant, and spoke optimistically of building a factory of his own. For a time, his mechanical clowns and scooters and wagons were featured in the windows of the five-and-dime, W. T. Grant and Company, in downtown Canton. But launched in the depths of the Depression, when parents were far more concerned with feeding their children than giving them toys, the venture went nowhere.

  His grandson, James Vignos, son of Florence Dick—the socialite—said his grandfather never recovered. “He was poor the rest of his life.” Frank Dick, the man who had helped oversee a major company, was reduced to eking out a living in woodworking, making and selling children’s jigsaw puzzles, pictures burned into wood, and games. It was his only income. In later years, his wife lost her vision and he ended up a boarder in one of Canton’s seedier neighborhoods. He never complained. He never talked about what he had lost. But those who knew him could see the toll it had taken.

  He increasingly retreated into his woodworking and found escape in creating worlds unto themselves. One of these was an enormous electrified city in miniature, another an animated Christmas scene depicting a girl and her dreams of what Santa might bring. Finally, there was a four-by-three-foot farm scene of wood and metal, composed of 1,032 pieces, including many that moved and made sounds: the cow mooed, the chicken cackled, the train whistled; the people sawed logs, worked at a churn, drove the horses, and washed clothes. The windmill turned and the salesman knocked at the door. It was a universe protected under a glass dome and it was the only part of his world that Frank Dick had any control over.

  At ninety, a widower, he was to be found in a gloomy nursing home, sharing a room with three other poor, aging souls. His grandson Robert and his wife, Sally, would visit him weekly. What Sally remembers of those visits is that even in that crowded room with the three other men, Frank Dick invariably wore a shirt and tie—whether he was expecting visitors or not. In my grandfather’s words, he was the consummate “white-collar man.” But by then his clothes were as tired and old as he was. The knees of the pants had a sheen to them where the material had worn thin, and the collars and cuffs of his shirts were frayed.

  Both men lost it all when the company failed—the onetime executive Frank J. Dick and the painter James A. Brownlee. Both lived to be ninety-one. And neither ever recovered. James Brownlee died on August 17, 1951. On his death certificate he is listed as a retired paint foreman for the Blizzard Manufacturing Company, a position he had not held in decades.

  Frank Dick died on September 27, 1967. Even his obituary reflected a certain sense of disappointment, referencing only his family pedigree and the factory that had vanished so many years before. The service for him was held at St. John’s Church, beneath an ornate altar that his father had given to the church years earlier. Little was passed down from him. The ornate farm he had created, in dire need of repair, was sold to a stranger. Crystal champagne glasses that had been in the Dick family are now with Sally Dick, but are chipped from hitting the spout as a nearly sightless Harriet Dick washed them.

  The Dick mansion fared no better than Frank Dick himself. It passed into the hands of Rush D. Hiller, an undertaker, and later was converted into a furniture store. By 1940, appearing “doomed to slow death by deterioration,” as the Canton Repository put it, the house was turned into efficiency apartments. Later still, it was unceremoniously dismantled. Today, near where the opulent mansion once stood now stands the Canton Inn, which has its own inglorious history. In the late 1990s, police were called to the scene nearly four hundred times because of violence, drug dealing, and prostitution. In 2001, the city, threatening to shut it down, reached an agreement with the owner, who pledged to clean it up. The vast plant where the Dick family designed and produced agricultural equipment for the nation was also torn down. By the late fifties it was the site of a used-car lot.

  Like a blizzard, the alleged embezzlement together with the Depression had taken down a venerable company and a respected family. Nor was there a return to the cushy life for the descendants of Joseph Dick. Frank Dick’s son, Edward, would spend his days in a Timken steel mill helping to support his aging parents. One of Edward’s sons, Robert, would work for Goodyear, and the other, Thomas, for the public library. And in the Dick family tradition, Thomas would play an active role in the community, and later, in Canton’s chamber of commerce and the annual parade for the Football Hall of Fame.

  For Frank Dick’s once-pampered daughter, Florence, the loss of position and wealth was hard to accept. She married Henry Vignos on February 18, 1930, in the depths of the Depression. Though the Dick family had already suffered its grievous financial loss, they did what they could to provide her a stylish wedding, which was featured prominently in that day’s “Social Affairs” column of the Repository. The paper noted that the marriage “united two of Canton’s pioneer families.”

  “The bride,” the paper wrote, “was beautiful in a princess frock of pie crust crepe and she wore a baku straw hat in cocoa shade. Her bouquet was of bronze roses.” But the decline in status and wealth took its toll on Florence Dick. Her son, James Vignos, could see the difference between the photos taken of her during what she longingly referred to as “the good times” and those taken in the difficult years after. There was a loss of confidence, observed her son. “For her, the good times were wonderful, then all hell broke out. Friends of hers said she had been full of pep and vigor. I didn’t know her that way at all, so I think it probably did a job on her. It crushed her a little.”

  As a college student, Frank Dick’s grandson James corresponded with his grandfather, but he escaped the cycle of poverty. In some ways James Vignos’s career more closely resembles that of his great-grandfather, Joseph Dick. James went on to get a Ph.D. in physics from Yale University, and would teach at Dartmouth, later go into industry, and today enjoys retirement in a Boston suburb. Like his great-grandfather, he holds a number of patents.

  Hello Bill

  When George Monnot needed his showroom painted, when Frank Dick considered painting an office or factory, when my grandfather Sam Stone needed someone to paint his store, it’s likely they would have turned to Bill Gray. Most of Canton’s leading businessmen relied on Bill Gray. He was one of them, a success story in his own right. Only a few years before 1933, he had had the most prosperous painting business in Stark County. At the pinnacle of his career, “Gray the Painter,” as he was known, counted sixty employees. He painted virtually every major business. To ensure that his customers did not have to disrupt their businesses or close shop, he sent his teams of painters in to work all night. He also painted many of the town’s homes and even had a man whose specialty was doing the detail work in Canton’s churches. Likely he did the First Presbyterian Church, where the Dickens reading was held. In those prosperous days, Bill Gray would take two hundred dollars off the painting bill for stores that sold women’s clothes, and in exchange his wife and daughters would be allowed to go in and get
the season’s newest outfits.

  Bill Gray was a prominent figure in the community, active in its social life and its many clubs and societies. He was a bon vivant who counted his membership in such clubs among his most prized possessions, and his fellow members felt the same way about him. He drove an Essex hardtop, rented a lakeside cottage, and moved to Willowdale Lake, a private club where he won prizes for ballroom dancing. A 1927 article in the Canton Daily News featured his daughter Marjorie, then fifteen, who each day would swim a half mile from the cottage dock across Willowdale Lake to a bakery, and then a half mile back, returning with a perfectly dry loaf of bread to be toasted for breakfast. Bill Gray was a regular at Bender’s, and surely dined in easy sight of George Monnot and Sam Stone. He was tall and thin and jolly, and, busy though he was, his surviving daughter remembers him making time to tell his children stories.

  Business was so good that he let the paint companies he represented persuade him to expand into a second major store. That was on the eve of the crash of 1929. Five years later, he had next to nothing.

  His December 18, 1933, letter to Mr. B. Virdot chronicles his decline in excruciating detail—but also his resolve to climb back out of the economic crevasse into which he had fallen. That was exactly the sort of grit that would have instantly won over my grandfather. Gray was a workingman who had elevated himself to the ranks of the city’s business class, as Sam Stone had done. His six-page letter was written in ink on the very stationery—“Gray the Painter”—that had once been synonymous with entrepreneurialism, and was now reduced to carrying his appeal for help. Sam Stone’s offer forged an instant bond with such men, who saw in the words of Mr. B. Virdot a kinship and shared experience. In the wasteland of the Depression, when men rarely felt free to truly open up to one another and share their doubts, Sam Stone had created a rare comfort zone. Those who had long guarded their feelings could finally release them without fear of disappointing others or humiliating themselves. Such trust showed itself in the very first words of Bill Gray’s letter.

  “Dear Friend,” it began:Your word picture in tonights newspaper hit me squarely in the face, what a blessing it is for me just to tell someone of my painful experiences since July 25, 1931. Someone that will realize, when others cannot or will not.

  I’ll lay my cards on the table.

  Gray the Painter—2 stores The Save The Surface 212-3rd St N.W. and 1438 Tusc. St. W. Wholesale & Retail—Contracting Painting and Decorating. Gray the Painter no longer in the telephone book, not listed in Brad St & Dun. Bankruptcy July 25—1931. Store, fixtures, merchandise, ladders, equipment, business and all gone, after 18 profitable years in the Game. Saved the truck and Household Furniture, which was mortgaged by Loan Co. and is yet. So this is what I have. That which is mortgaged.

  I am now living in Summer Cottage at Willow Dale Lake, ½ mile north of McDonaldsville, O. address W. H. Gray. North Canton, O. R.D. #7.

  Four in family dependent (2 children going to Jackson Township School.) Thank God all in good health.

  Yes I drift back into Canton once or twice a week to look for work & view the once fertile field of endeavor. Once recognized as largest Painting Contractor in Stark Co. with pay rolls running from $1,600 to $2,200 per week for my men and office help & truck drivers. Now begging for painting to do at 40 cents per hour. Yes I am still a Mechanic. Friday of last week was turned down on a paint job because 40 cents per hr was too high, for the customer. I agreed to furnish drop cloth, ladder, brushes & labor for 40 cents per hr then agreed to take part out in tobacco & gasoline. This was at a Roadhouse-Gas Filling Station where in my good times I spent plenty. Well I am trudging home on foot overalls and brushes under my arm.

  Yes I have warm clothing. And am not uncomfortable for I have one suit of clothes left from the good old days & just one pair of shoes. No I don’t want to complain, because I’ll come back again and you’ll see it. After I lost my store business & all I rented a barn, rear 715 Cleveland Ave. N. W. No lights, no heat, no water, no toilets, I put in a telephone & got busy, done a little advertising but could not make it go. I was forced to vacate, I could not pay the rent $12.50 per mo. Yes I sacrificed my Club Lodge & all Social & Sport activities to stage a comeback. I’ve dropped $25,000 Life Insurance Policies, which I had been carrying & had paid for from 8 to 10 years.

  But I’ll get back and a going some day, and snap off some of those nice big jobs that I once used to call Mine. Today I stood in line at C.W.A. [Civil Work Administration] but that brought me nothing. Two hours later I got a break. A chance to work out my back dues in the Elks Lodge #68 Canton. Painting work to be done about the kitchen, refrigerator, & stock rooms, which will put me in good standing once again. Bros. Clayton Carver one of the officers of the Elks made me this proposition & you bet I took him up for I am an Elk & want to always be an Elk. Now if Lily Lodge #362 K of P and the (U.C.T.) United Commercial Travelers #41 of Canton would make a like proposition I would be in good standing again in the 3 Secret 7 Fraternal orders I once belonged & in some held office. Friend I am not complaining to you. You wanted to know my true condition. Here it is, all these facts above mentioned are true & real & you can check me up on same.

  You may read between the lines a few more things. My wife, family & myself had to forego aside from what I told you. No I don’t want charity, I want work, I want to get agoing again. My earnest desire is that I can retain my health & get jobs that I may fulfill my obligations to my children as a parent. Before I close I want to tell you something-You whoever you are, you are doing a most wonderful piece of good work & sympathy & charity to just that class that are most forgotten & the public refuses to consider. Whether the writer shares in your kind offer or not, you have made me feel good, and if more of the unfortunate Has Beens would write you & empty out their painful burdens to one that has taken such a unique plan of encouragement, the road would be easier to travel & this world a better place to live in. May God bless you & may the best men win. Your open letter is a tonic to a guy that can take [it] on the chin. Yours for a Happy Christmas and always a Brighter New Year Coming.

  Thanks for this priveledge

  AGAIN JUST BILL GRAY

  B. Virdot’s check for five dollars arrived four days later, on December 22, and on that day, Bill Gray wrote:Kind Friend

  Mr. B. Virdot

  Merry Christmas to you. I rec’d your check for $5.00 today. Thanks for same. You can be assured that it will be spent for something useful & I know that this fine gift of yours is much needed at this time & I’ll always remember you for it and again I want to thank you for it & I know each one you have helped will appreciate your kind offering. A Merry Christmas &

  Always a Happy New Year

  I AM BILL GRAY

  NORTH CANTON, OH. R.D. #7

  Bill Gray, like so many who wrote to Mr. B. Virdot, wanted not a handout but a job. It was the hope of many that in reading their letters the mysterious B. Virdot would reach out to them with an offer of employment, a part-time position, or someone to contact who might know Someone. During the Depression, that “Someone” was capitalized because he or she might have an inside track on a possible job. In those leanest of days a job went unfilled only as long as the time it took for someone to get wind of it.

  Many of those who wrote to B. Virdot invited him to their homes. “Here it is,” wrote Bill Gray, “all these facts above mentioned are true & real & you can check me up on same.” In an era of scams, Gray and scores of others wanted the donor to see for himself that things were as described—or worse. In the Canton of the 1920s and the Depression, a fellow couldn’t be too careful, and the well meaning and trusting were prime targets for the unscrupulous. Those who wrote the letters were constantly exposed to flimflammers and schemers. Sam Stone was not a child himself, and it may well be that among the many considerations that led him to operate behind the mask of B. Virdot was this: its anonymity shielded him from the connivers who would have been eager to make his acquaintance. But those who
wrote to Mr. B. Virdot inviting him to inspect their homes and their lives had a purer aspiration—they hoped that if he visited and attached a face to their hard-luck stories he might find work for them. His gift was most welcomed, to be sure, but the relief it brought was transient and their misery was not.

  Bill Gray was the son of Urias, a cigar maker, and Catherine Gray. He was the oldest of four children. He had a brother Charles, who worked as a foreman on the large painting jobs; a brother Roy; and a sister, Carrie, a nurse. Gray and his wife, Viola, had four children, Marjorie, Robert, Betty Jane, and Grace Ruth. In 1933, at the time he wrote to B. Virdot, he was forty-seven.

  But even today, three-quarters of a century later, there are more than dusty memories from those Hard Times. Bill Gray’s eldest child, Marjorie Markey, turned ninety-seven on October 10, 2009. She lives in the County Home in Ohio’s rural Wyandot County, 108 miles due west of Canton. She remembers the Depression only too well. She was forced to drop out of high school after the crash of ’29 to help support the family. In 1933, she was twenty-one and had long been working as “Gray the Painter’s” bookkeeper, so she saw firsthand the economic maelstrom and what it meant for her father.

  She remembers how he did all he could to protect the family from the worries that consumed him, but she also remembers the sound of his steps late at night pacing across the bedroom floor above. She remembers the terrible headaches that afflicted him, how underneath his straw hat he concealed a white kerchief he had soaked in cold water and tied around his head to relieve the throbbing ache. And she remembers how a lifetime of business acumen counted for nothing, how the steady flow of income was reduced to a trickle, and then, nothing. On top of the losses he suffered, there was the embarrassment, the sudden unseemly slide from prominence to subsistence, and all of it so terribly public.