During the last twenty-five years, no private citizen in the American Jewish community has played so profound a diplomatic role between Washington and Jerusalem as Max M. Fisher. Born in 1908, the son of Jewish immigrants, Fisher grew up in a small Ohio town. He attended Ohio State University on a football scholarship and, upon graduating in 1930, entered the oil business. Two decades later, Fisher was recog- nized as one of the nation’s leading industrialists and philanthropists. Then, in the late 1950s, he began to carve out a singular niche for him- self in politics, becoming a valued adviser to every Republican presi- dent since Richard Nixon and every Israeli prime minister since Golda Meir. The net result, according to one insider, has been that Fisher “po- liticized Jewish America as it had never been done,” and in the process “defined the new parameters of the Jewish community’s relation to the presidency and politics.” Despite the breadth of his activities, Fisher has chosen to live his life out of the public eye, quietly building bridges between Washington and Jerusalem. Few outside the inner circles of government know the extent of his role; his anonymity was among his greatest assets. Fisher was far more visible in his home city of Detroit, Michigan. In the summer of 1967, following one of the worst riots in American history, Fisher immersed himself in helping to heal a city besieged by economic problems and racial strife, a project that still oc- cupies him today. In Quiet Diplomat, Peter Golden has captured Fisher as he works behind the scenes in private meetings at the White House and State Department, or over the telephone, which a Detroit journalist once referred to as Fisher’s “favorite instrument.” With full access to Fisher’s extensive archives and to the man himself, Golden opens up Fisher’s little-known world of high-level national and international pol- itics. Through this meticulously researched biography march the world leaders of the late twentieth century--Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Alexander Haig, George Shultz, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, George Bush, and Yitzhak Shamir--all of whom have contributed their personal impressions of Fisher and the events that brought them together and made history.


Copyright Information

© 1992 by Peter Golden

All rights reserved. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by the copyright owner, provided that a base fee of $10.00, plus eight cents per page, per copy is paid directly to the Copyright Clearance Center, 27 Congress Street, Salem, Massachusetts 01970. [0-8453-4846-9/92 $10.00 + 8¢ pp, pc.]

Cornwall Books 440 Forsgate Drive Cranbury, NJ 08512

Cornwall Books

25 Sicilian Avenue

London WC1A2QH, England

Cornwall Books

P.O. Box 39, Clarkson Pstl. Stn.

Mississauga, Ontario,

L5J 3X9 Canada

Herzl Press

110 East 59th Street

New York, NY 10022

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUE CARD NUMBER: LC92-71441

ISBN 0-8453-4846-9

Printed in the United States of America

Critical Acclaim for Quiet Diplomat

“Max Fisher is an outstanding American with an abiding interest in our relationship with Israel and in constructive developments in the Middle East. This well-titled biography is a rewarding account of his profound influence and achievements.”

George Shultz, Former U.S. Secretary of State

“In addition to being a fascinating personal story, Quiet Diplomat is an insightful document on the development of the important U.S.-Isra- el relationship. As the leading Jewish personality in the United States, Max Fisher played a major role in this bridge-building process.”

Yitzhak Shamir, Prime Minister of Israel

“The establishment of the state of Israel was an unprecedented event. Similar in magnitude to this event were the people who precipitated Israel’s renaissance. Max Fisher is one of these unique people. With- out his vision, many things we take for granted would not exist. Quiet Diplomat is a story about genesis. And like Genesis, it is breathtaking.”

Shimon Peres, Former Prime Minister of Israel

“When the history of Jewish life in this century is written, Max Fisher will be hailed as one of its great Jewish statesmen. Fisher abjured fancy oratory and public posturing for quiet work in both the general and Jewish political arenas. Quiet Diplomat is to be welcomed as a reminder to his colleagues of his achievements, as a lesson for future generations, and a source of information for those who will record this exciting pe- riod of Jewish history.”

Professor Daniel J. Elazar, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

v

For my wife, Annis, and my father, Lance,

and in memory of my mother, Evelyn

vi

“Don’t you see the significance of what I’m trying to do? [Judaism] is finally taking its place in this country, and think what it’ll mean if I can get up to be a ... big industrial magnate and run down and advise them in Washington ... and at the same time be a Jew that’s fully accepted in the inner circles of ... society .... These things are coming.”

Novelist Myron S. Kaufmann,

Remember Me to God, 1958

“The movement of Jews into the American political elite marks one of the most radical social transformations in Jewish history, and probably for that matter, in history in general.”

Historian David Biale

Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History, 1986

vii

Author’s Note

QUIET DIPLOMAT is an authorized biography. It is based on more than two hundred hours of interviews with Max M. Fisher, and many more hours with his family, friends, and associates —supporters and de- tractors alike. I have had access to the 300,000 documents in the Fisher Archives in Detroit, Michigan, among them official and personal letters, memos, jottings on the back of airplane tickets, photocopies of canceled checks, speeches, photograph albums, balance sheets, ledgers, maps, newspaper and magazine articles, journals, diaries, notes on private and public meetings at the State Department and White House, and an oral history section that holds dozens of audio- and videotapes.

Having enjoyed the cooperation of the subject, however, raises sev- eral questions, the first two being how objective was the author’s view - point and how free was his hand?

Everything of relevance that I culled from the Fisher Archives, in- terviews, articles and books found its way into this biography. I spent over three years working on the Quiet Diplomat and fully half of that time was devoted to research. Do I like Fisher? Yes. And because I like him I have been on guard not to bend these pages to the arc of my affection. Do I agree with everything he’s ever done? Hardly. But this book contains Fisher’s view of the world —not mine —and the perceptions that others hold of him. Events are witnessed through his eyes, while I have concerned myself with his motivation and attempted to gauge the outcome of his efforts. Does Fisher always find his por - trait flattering? I hope not. That wasn’t my intention. However, being a pragmatist, Fisher is fond of saying that the world has few unalloyed devils or saints and that he, like most of us, falls somewhere in the midst of the Great Moral Middle.

There is another bias common to studies of people immersed in politics — authorized or not. This bias, though rarely mentioned by

viii

authors and just whispered about by critics like some shameful dis- ease, is often discernible within the opening pages of most political biographies. I am referring to the political stance of the writer, which on far too many occasions precludes anything approaching objectivity. Fisher has been referred to as the Jewish Republican. I match up with him on one of these —I am a Jew. I do not count myself a Dem- ocrat or Republican. Our area of strongest compatibility is that we be- lieve it is in the interest of the United States to be vigorously involved in world affairs, supporting democracies wherever they bloom and helping to counter aggression against them. Fisher feels —and again, I agree —that the costly lessons of history support this position. As the distinguished foreign correspondent, C.L Sulzberger, observed in his study of the Second World War: “As soon as the sound of aggression from across the seas ... began to be disturbing, we [Americans] insu- lated ourselves with neutrality laws that forbade trade with either side in the conflict. It made no difference that our neutrality always seemed to harm the victim more than the aggressor. We were safe — so we thought —and that was what mattered.”

American isolationism has proved cataclysmic for the world, and provided one of the worst moments in 4,000 years of Jewish histo- ry —the murder of the 6 million. Thus the subject and author of this biography maintain that U.S. support of Israel — and other proven democratic allies —is vital to our national security.

Fisher has dedicated a good portion of his life to this view. And while I do not always approve of the particulars of his political exer- tions, I do, in the broadest sense, applaud what he has tried to accom- plish. This is my prejudice. There is one last question, perhaps the most crucial. Why should the reader be interested in this biography? The nineteenth-century historian Thomas Carlyle’s oft-quoted pro- nouncement that history is nothing “but the biography of great men” is only partially correct. Belonging to more romantic days, Carlyle was overly enamored of heroes and less impressed with the subtle tides of history, which draw their power from all people — great, small and in between. Closer to the point is that historical move- ments are clearer when examined within the microcosm of a single

ix

life. Naturally, the more involved the individual is in his times, the more history that is revealed.

The two seminal events of twentieth-century Jewish history are the Holocaust and the birth of Israel. For better or for worse, both con- sciously and unconsciously, these two occurrences have shaped the present politics of Jews in the United States. The psychological rami- fications are equally profound. Upon confronting either event, Ameri - can Jewry can’t help but demonstrate its complex feelings about being American and Jewish.

Because Fisher’s life has touched every decade of this century and because he was intimately involved in Jewish communal work and na- tional politics, the backdrop of his activities illuminates modern Ameri- can Jewish history. Furthermore, the most historically noteworthy of his endeavors took place behind the scenes. So his career offers a glimpse into the lesser-known workings of government and diplomacy.

In the end, though, the drama of any life boils down to what was accomplished? How long were the odds? How high was the price? Fisher’s accomplishments are notable. As a young man, he joined the first rank of industrialists, then became a force in Jewish and nonsectarian philanthropy. In his early fifties, pursuing his lifelong interest in the political process, he entered Republican Party politics, eventually becoming a valued adviser to an assortment of governors, congressmen, senators, secretaries of state and four presidents. The odds against him were steep. He was the son of Jewish immigrants and, financially, started with little. Personally, Fisher is the opposite of gregarious, which is no help to those who plunge into the frenetic social whirl of philanthropic fund-raising and politics; probably no man who is as temperamentally unsuited for public speaking as Fish- er has faced so many audiences from a podium. Finally, what about the price? Listen to him, and the voices of his wife and children, and judge for yourself.

x

Introduction

EISENHOWERAND THE

REVELATIONS OF SINAI

ON A GLIMMERING October afternoon in 1965, Max Martin Fisher was driving through the autumn-gold Pennsylvania hills to the Gettysburg farm of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Fisher had an appointment to see Eisenhower in connection with his posi- tion as general chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, a national or- ganization that, in coordination with local federations, raises funds for immigration to Israel and for Jews in distress around the world. The year, 1965, was the twentieth anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. To honor the anniversary, Fisher and the execu- tive vice president of the UJA, Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman, conceived of a medal that would be awarded to three military leaders —one from France, Britain and the United States —who played a pivotal part in rescuing the remnants of Europe’s Jews. Fisher was driving to the farm to invite Eisenhower to accept the medal.

At fifty-seven, Fisher was still physically impressive. He was six- foot-two; his weight fluctuated between 200 and 230 pounds, his bur - ly chest and wide shoulders recalling his days as a football lineman at Ohio State University in the late 1920s. In 1959, he had merged his Aurora Gasoline Company with Ohio Oil (later to become the Mar- athon Oil Company), earning himself and his partners $40 million. Since then, he had been immersed in philanthropic fund-raising. By nature, however, Fisher was not suited for the whirl of socializing and speech making that accompanied his style of philanthropy. He

1

seemed friendly enough, with a broad open face and a firm hand - shake, yet he wrestled with an innate shyness. He tended to slouch and to swallow his sentences. Despite a boyish optimism about most everyone around him — a legacy of his small-town boyhood in Sa- lem, Ohio — Fisher’s inclination was to remain distant, enveloped by a gentle elusive sadness. Even when he smiled there was a melan- choly remoteness in his eyes that his family, friends and colleagues noticed, but could not explain.

As of late, Fisher had carried his fund-raising expertise into Repub- lican Party politics. In 1962, he helped George W. Romney become governor of Michigan; he helped Romney win again in 1964, and now the popular governor was being touted as a front-runner for the party’s 1968 presidential nomination. By 1965, Fisher’s first year as general chairman of the UJA, his speeches began to blend philanthropy and politics as the interests themselves coalesced in his mind. Fisher be- lieved that Jewish philanthropic organizations, if politically unified, represented a constituency with the proven capability of gleaning mil- lions of dollars, the key to a successful presidential campaign. Fisher, a consummate proponent of the practical, embraced —and repeatedly quoted — the observation of the nineteenth-century statesman, Otto von Bismarck, who professed that “politics is the art of the possible.” Logically, it followed that Fisher had to uncover what was possible for an American Jew. There was the worn road of serving as a fund-raiser for a candidate and, if he won, collecting your quid pro quo by accept- ing a slot within the administration. This was, for instance, how Hen- ry Morgenthau Sr. won his ambassadorship to Turkey from President Woodrow Wilson.

At gut level, Fisher found the notion of an official role in an admin - istration unappealing. As far back as high school and college, when he was involved with prom committees and theater groups, Fisher pre- ferred to work in the background, and typically, on the business side. Beyond the emotional unattractiveness, Fisher sensed —and in this he was significantly different from Morgenthau Sr. —that to take a titled post would curb his ability, especially in the event of a crisis, to make his voice heard at the White House. As a member of an administration

2

he would owe his boss —the president or the secretary of state — his allegiance, and one who too often disagrees with his boss soon finds himself without a job, and thereby, no voice at all.

Eventually, Fisher opted to become, in the words of Malcolm Hoen- lein, who in 1989 was serving as the executive director of the Confer- ence of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, “the dean of American Jewry.” This deanship, however, was well in the future. Fisher’s choices in 1965 were far from clear. All he had was an unde- fined vision of carving out a niche for himself as an insider-outsider amid the overlapping rings of power. He realized that he required an official platform in a unified Jewish community to have any chance of influencing an administration on behalf of that community. Fisher would have these platforms, several simultaneously, during his career. The UJA general chairmanship was a giant step. Abraham J. Karp, in To Give Life, his study of the UJA’s shaping of the American Jewish community, writes: “It is significant ... that [Fisher’s] first position of national leadership was in the UJA. It was the one enterprise which could serve as both coalescing agent and the fountainhead of united Jewish communal enterprise.”

When it came to national politics, the question remained: how large a role could he play unofficially in an administration? Surely, if you raised an impressive amount of money, you could get yourself invited to dinners at the White House. You could take a wide-eyed gaze at princes and prime ministers and have your photograph snapped with the president and maybe impress some in your social circle who didn’t know how the game was played by having the photo autographed and framed and then hanging it conspicuously in your den. But what did that mean? Nothing. Presidential campaign chests were swelled by this ploy. You traded money for prestige, for a seat near the king, and were granted everything you ever wanted —except influence. Perhaps Morgenthau Sr.’s choice had been the only choice. When you stripped away the pomp of protocol, what possible chance did even “a dean of American Jewry” have of influencing a president?

For the moment, the answer appeared to be none.

3

***

By the time Fisher called on Eisenhower, the former president was nearing his seventy-fifth birthday and in frail health. After leaving the presidency, he claimed to be “bone tired,” and chose to emulate George Washington at Mount Vernon by retiring to the bucolic joys of a 500- acre farm on the edge of the Civil War battlefield. The chief crop was hay, which was used as winter feed for the Angus cattle that roamed the fields. His colonial house was elegantly furnished, and Eisenhower passed the hours on the glass-enclosed sun porch, where he could read or paint or, on occasion, receive visitors.

Fisher, upon entering the house, was directed to the porch. Eisen- hower stood and Fisher shook hands with him. In spite of his poor health, the former president maintained the erect posture of a military man. Since the mid-1950s, Fisher had thought that the popular percep- tion of Eisenhower as an inactive president was woefully off the mark. He felt that Eisenhower exhibited a devout —yet prudent — willing- ness to confront the Russians and demonstrated strong leadership by ordering troops in to ensure the desegregation of the schools in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Fisher took a seat and presented his proposal. Eisenhower listened. Then he began to reminisce about his efforts to aid the Jewish dis- placed persons in Europe during 1945. He promised Fisher that he would make every effort to come to New York and accept the medal. In retirement, the former president kept a keen eye on Republican Party politics, and his advice and endorsements were coveted by can- didates and officeholders. He was aware of Fisher’s burgeoning rep - utation as a fund-raiser for the GOP, and so it was only natural that their talk turned to how the party would heal itself in the aftermath of Senator Barry M. Goldwater’s resounding defeat in the 1964 presiden- tial election.

Their discussion went on for a while and, Fisher remembers, grad- ually veered toward the Middle East, with Eisenhower recalling the 1956 Suez Crisis. The former president’s reminiscences proved to be a major turning point in Fisher’s life.

4

For American Jews and for many in Israel, the Suez Crisis, while somewhat of a forgotten conflict when compared to the euphoric Israe - li victories in 1948 and 1967, and the somber reaction to the heavy ca- sualties of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, had immense geopolitical ram- ifications for the United States and Israel. On July 26, 1956, Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser declared that he was nationalizing the Suez Canal and its future revenues would be applied to the construc- tion of the Aswan Dam. Nasser, writes historian Howard M. Sachar, “was hailed as a national hero. His domestic position had never been more secure, nor his reputation in the Arab world higher.” The initial reaction to the nationalization in Western capitals was outrage. Yet by the fall of 1956, Eisenhower thought the dilemma was behind him, and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles agreed. The French, however, de- vised a covert plan to attack Egypt, convincing the British and Israelis to join them. Israel would land paratroopers near the Suez Canal. The French and British would demand that both sides withdraw. Nasser, his stature among the Arabs on the line, would refuse, thus providing France and Britain with a pretext to strike.

On Monday, October 29, Israel attacked. Eisenhower was livid; he had been tricked by his allies. He thought their strategy would invite the Soviet Union into the fray and the United States would be forced to bail everyone out. The British and French issued their ulti- matum for withdrawal. When Nasser declined to heed it, the British and French bombed Egyptian airfields. Eisenhower contacted Brit - ain’s Prime Minister Anthony Eden via transatlantic telephone and vented his outrage in a spate of language more familiar to an enlisted men’s barracks than to the stately rooms of 10 Downing Street. On Wednesday, Eisenhower sent an ominous message to Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion: “Despite the present temporary interests that Israel has in common with France and Britain, you ought not to forget that the strength of Israel and her future are bound up with the United States.”

The Israelis did not withdraw, and by November 5, they controlled the Sinai and the Gaza Strip. Two days later, Eisenhower’s warnings to Jerusalem became more menacing. He said that there could be severe

5

repercussions if Israel did not evacuate the Sinai and Gaza, a combi- nation of U.N. condemnations, counterattacks by Soviet “volunteers,” the termination of all U.S. governmental aid and philanthropic assis- tance — a move that included the threat of a Justice Department in- vestigation into the tax-exempt status of the United Jewish Appeal and other charities that furnished funds vital to Israel’s survival. Eisenhower’s arm-twisting was effective.

The following morning, Ben-Gurion announced that Israel would withdraw.

Richard M. Nixon, who as vice president under Eisenhower was close to the Suez Crisis, recalls his boss’s thinking in 1956. “Eisenhower,” says Nixon, “never had any illusions about Nasser. First, there were Nasser’s unpolitic statements at that time —to put it mildly. And there were so many interests to consider: we had French interests, British interests, Israeli interests. But what really happened in 1956 was that it came at a very bad time politically. It came right after the Hungarian revolution, after we had bashed [Soviet Premier Nikita] Khrushchev as the ‘Butcher of Budapest’ [for ordering Russian troops into Hungary]. So it was difficult to say, ‘Well, we’re going to support our own people when they are doing the same thing.’ Although ours was justified —and the two were not the same —nevertheless, it was difficult. The second thing is that it came shortly before an elec - tion, which we were going to win anyway as it later turned out. But on the other hand it was an election in which we were running on the platform of ‘peace and prosperity.’ And so all of these factors led to Eisenhower’s decision to force the Israelis out.”

Eisenhower’s forcing the Israelis’ hand so close to the election brought the American Jewish community to the polls in record number. In his study, Political Cohesion of American Jews in American Poli- tics, M.S. El Azhary records that over 90 percent of American Jews who were registered to vote came to the polls in the 1956 presidential election, 74 percent of them voting for Eisenhower’s Democratic op- ponent, Adlai E. Stevenson.

This illustration of an expansive unified Jewish vote, with Israel as the central motivating component, would be a major factor in Fisher’s

6

future —as well as for Nixon and all ensuing presidents. Eisenhower, though, chose to ignore the concerns of American Jews.

In the 1956 race, Stevenson used Eisenhower’s stance to swing vot- ers, insisting that the Israelis ought to be given the arms required to guar- antee their territorial integrity. His strategy did not pay off. On Novem- ber 6, Eisenhower defeated him by more than 9 million popular votes. Although Eisenhower did not require the American Jewish commu- nity’s support at the polls, he did try to operate through “Jewish chan- nels” to influence Ben-Gurion. But Eisenhower had not developed al - liances within the power structure of the American Jewish community, which weakened his efforts. Eisenhower’s dealings with America’s Jews and the Israelis were most conspicuous for what was missing: a reliable conduit between the Oval Office and the community, someone who could have functioned as a diplomatic navigator between Wash- ington and Jerusalem.

Beyond domestic politics lay the question of whether or not Eisen- hower made the correct decision, because the geopolitical fallout from his actions was profound.

Nixon explains: “The French, of course, had their problems [with foreign policy]. But the British are very sophisticated in foreign af- fairs. They had been our close allies not only [in the Middle East], but all over the world. What happened at Suez split the British wide open. The people who disagreed about Suez in Britain still won’t speak to each other. But it was also the beginning of Britain with- drawing as a world power east of Suez. As of the present time [June 9, 1989], you have Britain with a very strong leader in Margaret Thatcher who plays a very significant role, but not nearly the role that could be played if Britain were still a major player. After Suez, the writing was on the wall.”

The implications were equally great for the United States. Even though they were not apparent until eleven years later —on the heels of Israel’s Six-Day War — they drastically altered the American role in the Middle East.

“As a result,” says Nixon, “of our turning on the British and the French when they were trying to protect their interests in the Canal, it

7

meant that they were finished in other parts of the world as well. That was a very unfortunate thing because it meant that the United States then virtually had to act alone.”

Despite the geopolitical consequences of Eisenhower’s pressure, history has recorded that Eisenhower had no second thoughts regard- ing his decision. According to Stephen E. Ambrose, author of an Ei- senhower biography, editor of the Eisenhower papers and director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans, the former president “never wavered on or regretted his decision to force the in- vading parties out of Egypt, no matter what.”

Fisher, though, on that October afternoon in Gettysburg, would hear a different story. Evidently, the ensuing decade had provided an op- portunity for Eisenhower to reflect. For as Fisher’s conversation with him drew to a close, the former president wistfully commented: “You know, Max, looking back at Suez, I regret what I did. I never should have pressured Israel to evacuate the Sinai.”

Fisher was astonished by the statement, but apparently he was not the only one to whom Eisenhower had divulged this information. “Eisenhower,” says Nixon, “many years later, in the 1960s, told me — and I’m sure he told others — that he thought that the action that was taken [at Suez] was one he regretted. He thought it was a mistake.” Fisher started to say goodbye to Eisenhower; it was then, almost

as an afterthought, that Eisenhower revealed another startling facet of his reconsideration. Although the former president did not live long enough to witness the results —in doing so he clarified the course of Fisher’s political career.

“Max,” Eisenhower said, “if I’d had a Jewish adviser working for me, I doubt I would have handled the situation the same way. I would not have forced the Israelis back.” Eisenhower’s statement struck Fish- er with the impact of epiphany. If Fisher had been unsure of the extent of power that an unofficial adviser could wield with a president, he now had his answer, and from an unimpeachable source: the influence exerted could be decisive. It was exactly the role Fisher hoped to play. Fisher thanked Eisenhower for his time and the former president again promised to try to be there for the UJA dinner.

8

***

On December 11, 1965, the United Jewish Appeal gathered for its An- nual Conference at the Hilton Hotel in New York City. It was there, in the Grand Ballroom, that the medal was presented. Fisher spoke of the three honorees: General Pierre Koening, leader of the French Resis- tance; Field Marshall Alexander of Great Britain, who evacuated British troops from Dunkirk and later fought the Nazis in North Africa; and Ei- senhower. In a voice edged with emotion, Fisher repeated what General Eisenhower had said two decades ago while paying a Yom Kippur visit to the Jewish displaced persons camp in Feldafing, Germany:

“‘I feel especially happy,’” Fisher quoted, “‘to be in a Jewish camp on the holiest day of your year. You are only here temporarily, and you must be patient until ... you will leave here and go to the places you wish to go. I know how much you have suffered and I believe a sunnier day will be coming soon.’”

Sadly, Eisenhower was not at the Hilton to receive his medal: Gen- eral Lucius D. Clay, Eisenhower’s erstwhile deputy commander in Eu- rope, was standing in for his friend, who had suffered another heart attack and was in the hospital.

Fisher, saddened that Eisenhower was not there on that evening, was grateful for the political gift that he had given him. Let Nixon then, the first president to allow Fisher to exercise his influence in Washington, define the position to which Fisher aspired.

“There is no question about it,” says Nixon. “A private citizen who has no selfish interest, who, like Max, is not in business for himself, who is a supporter of the administration, can have a substantial influence on a close decision. He can’t create policy, but when it is a very close call, as it was at Suez, someone like Max can change the president’s mind.” Now, all Fisher had to do was choose the right man in 1968. Rom- ney was emerging as a favorite in the polls. But two other hopefuls were courting him — Nixon and Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York. Picking the winner, Fisher soon learned, would prove a far harder task than it originally seemed.

9

Chapter 1

WHATNORMAN ROCKWELL NEVER DREAMED

HAD NORMAN ROCKWELL cast his eye on Salem, Ohio, in those rapturous days just after the century turned, he would have seen the sights he loved: high-school football captains slouching in the mid- dle of Reilly Field waiting for the coin toss, the autumn blazing be- hind them; a scoutmaster and his troop camped in the summery, starlit woods beyond town; a winter dusk gathering over the storefronts and awnings along East and West State Street; and farther out, a brakeman standing beside the railroad tracks as a train thundered past, all of it bathed in Rockwell’s smalltown American light, cool and clear and furiously nostalgic.

Without question, Rockwell could have captured the boyhood of Max Fisher in dozens of his paintings, but Fisher, son of an immigrant and, more significantly, a Jew, would not have fully belonged there.

***

Velvil Fisch, Max Fisher’s father, also grew up in a small town — Yakshitz, in White Russia, among the most poverty-stricken regions of the Russian empire. Velvil was born on April 15, 1888. By the age of seventeen he was tall and broad-shouldered, with dark eyes and thick, dark wavy hair. Velvil was eager to join the two million Russian Jews who fled their land between 1881 and 1920. Although his parents, Icheh and Soreh Fisch, had a daughter, Devora, and two other sons, Yosef and Beril, they had no intention of permitting Velvil to go; nor did they have the money to give him for his passage. They prevailed

10

upon Velvil to marry, arranging a match with Malka Brody, who came from a nearby town, Lyakhovich, and was a year older than Velvil.

At five-foot-four, Malka Brody was six inches shorter than Velvil. She was an attractive young woman, with dark oval eyes and flowing dark hair, who had been orphaned as a child and raised in poverty by an aunt who sold sewing notions. The match with Velvil did not appear to be her best prospect; the idea of marrying and moving into a house with a dirt floor was especially unappealing. But Velvil was stubborn; in spite of his parents’ wishes he planned to emigrate and this plan tilt- ed Malka’s decision in his favor.

In April 1905, Malka and Velvil were married.

Velvil shortly discovered that his new bride possessed a small fortune: nearly $200. (Later in life, their children would tease them, saying their father married their mother for her money.) And Malka must have trusted Velvil, because despite the accounts drifting back of husbands who had gone off to the United States, never to be heard from again, she gave the money to him for his passage. She even wrote her cousins, the Darefskys, and told them to expect Velvil. (The Darefskys had left White Russia in 1903 and settled outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.) So Velvil packed a few belongings in a cardboard valise, kissed Malka goodbye, and prom- ised to send for her as soon as he saved enough money.

On June 2, 1906, Velvil Fisch, booked into the steerage section of the S.S. Zeeland, sailed from Antwerp, Belgium. Almost two weeks later, the ship docked in New York City. Upon landing, Velvil claimed his occupation was that of locksmith and declared ten dollars in assets. His first night in the goldeneh medina, the golden land, he slept on a park bench. The following morning, he traveled to the Darefskys, who advised him to try his luck farther west.

He set out for Pittsburgh, stopping to work odd jobs. By now, Velvil Fisch had changed his name to William Fisher. In Pittsburgh, William rent- ed a flat at 87 Fulton Street and decided to become a peddler. He spent his last money on a horse and wagon and an assortment of cloth and sewing notions, picked a territory in eastern Ohio, and began the wandering life of a peddler —in those years, an immigrant’s first rung on the ladder of suc - cess, what has aptly been described as “schooling for Americanization.”

11

William was easily schooled. He was friendly and curious by nature. He easily picked up English and learned how to read it. The long hours of travel appealed to his restlessness. He did not enjoy staying in one spot for long; there was always something else a farmer or a farmer’s wife required. In just over a year, he saved the money to send for his wife. Malka docked in Baltimore on August 24, 1907. Her name was changed to Mollie Fisher, and she came to the flat in Pittsburgh to live. On July 15, 1908, a son, Max, was born.

For a peddler in the early 1900s, the next step of his imagined rise was to sell his horse and wagon and buy a store. William kept his eye out, and in 1909 he bought a clothing concern in Salem, Ohio, six- ty-two miles west of Pittsburgh. Salem, with a population of approx- imately 14,000, had been founded in 1806 when the Quakers came across the Appalachians to settle.

William adapted readily to small-town life. His store, with living quarters on top, was located at 24 Lincoln Avenue, a block from the center of town. At the outset, he had to supplement his earnings by periodically peddling in the surrounding countryside. Within a year, though, he was making enough at the store to support his family and to put some money aside. In 1910, Mollie and William had a daughter, Augusta, whose name was later changed to Gail. That same year, Wil- liam got word that his father had died, and he stepped up his efforts to bring the rest of his family to America.

Tragically, before he could arrange it, William’s sister, Devora, died, leaving her children in her mother’s care. Yosef, William’s brother, was running the family farm, and it was not until 1913 that William man- aged to bring his brother Beril to Salem. In 1916, a typhoid epidemic struck the town, and William briefly took his family to Detroit, where another daughter, Anne, was born. The Fishers returned to Salem and William established The Fisher Company, selling men’s clothing at 142 East Main Street. In 1920, the Fishers’ final child, a daughter, Dor - othy, was born, and they moved down the block to larger quarters at 63 Roosevelt Street, where the family had a garden and William had a garage for his new Stoddard-Dayton automobile.

William soon set up a larger store at 66 Main Street, Fisher’s Un-

12

derselling Store, stating in his Salem City Directory advertisement that “Men, when in need of quality merchandise such as suits, shoes and furnishings, and you don’t have much to spend, you should visit the low price store of Salem.”

By 1923, Beril, now Ben Fisher, had married a woman in Pittsburgh and returned to Salem, opening a junk business. William turned over his place on Roosevelt to them and relocated his family to a spacious gray stone house at 68 Jennings at the end of town. The porch had honeysuckle vines twisting over it, and there was a big yard with white roses, a chicken coop and a creek running past.

William’s business prospered. The store, because William was so gregarious, became a social center. It was open six days a week, and William worked behind the counter, wearing his steel-frame glasses and wing collar, and invariably puffing an El Producto cigar. In the evenings, he would come home, have a bite of pickled herring along with a shot of schnapps and preside over the family dinner table.

His daughter, Anne Fisher Rose, recalls: “My mother was always cooking. Kreplach, stuffed cabbage, pot roast and her coffee cakes. She never knew how many people my father was going to bring home for dinner, but there was always enough.”

While William became fluent in English early, Mollie did not. She spoke Yiddish to her husband, usually to prevent the children from eavesdropping, and read the Yiddish papers, the Forvets (Forward) and Der Tog (The Day), which she had delivered by mail. Mollie spent her time cooking, cleaning, canning the vegetables she grew in her gar- den and caring for her children. She was close to her daughters, often reading to them from the Yiddish papers, particularly the love-advice columns. But Max, according to his three sisters, was her “sonny boy,” and she doted on him, sometimes to the detriment of his siblings.

For example, when Max and his sister Gail were taking piano lessons, they were both supposed to practice for one hour each day. Max, as rest- less and impatient as his father, had no interest in being glued to a piano bench. So he explained to his mother that boys learned at a far faster rate than girls: four times the rate to be exact. Therefore, while Gail required the hour, he could learn the same amount in fifteen minutes.

13

“And she believed him,” Gail Fisher Rossen recalls today, laughing. “That’s how it was with Mother and Max. He was her ‘sonny boy’ till the day she died.”

“My mother,” says Max Fisher, “was a real Yiddishe Mameh.” This statement is more than it seems, certainly more complex than Irving Howe’s description, in World of our Fathers, of the immigrant Jewish mother: “It was from her place in the kitchen that the Jewish housewife became the looming figure who would inspire, haunt and devastate generations of Jewish sons.”

Zena Smith Blau, in her essay, “In Defense of the Jewish Mother,” offers an alternative view of the mother-son relationship, one that has particular relevance to Mollie’s relationship to Max: “Yiddishe Ma- mehs,” writes Blau, “were active, responsible, stable, expressive and verbal women for whom naches fun die kinder [satisfaction from the achievement of children] represented the highest form of self-fulfill - ment and achievement for a woman.... With no other human being did the Jewish child develop as close, as trusting, as free and fearless a relationship as with his mother, and therein lay the secret other power to gain his compliance ultimately in those areas of behavior in which she chose to exert pressure during the entire period of maturation.” Considering the adult Max Fisher’s active role in Jewish philanthro- py, it is no surprise that his mother’s greatest demands involved his par- ticipation in her specific form of Jewishness. Perhaps Mollie saw how immersed her son was in the Gentile environment of his playmates and hoped to provide some tie to her past. And since for many years Mollie insisted on keeping kosher, riding the trolley to Youngstown, twen- ty-two miles north, to buy from the kosher butcher, she concluded that it was a job that should be passed on to Max. And so Max was direct- ed to travel to Youngstown to buy live chickens and take them to the shokhet to be properly slaughtered. He accomplished his assignment with occasionally amusing results, like the time the chickens got away from him on the trolley car and flapped wildly among the passengers. Charity was another responsibility Mollie handed down not only to Max, but to her daughters. Her favorite charity was the Jewish Nation- al Fund (JNF), which acquired land, planted trees and prepared the soil

14

for the pioneers who were struggling to build a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Mollie dropped coins into her blue-and-white JNF box every Friday and encouraged her children to do the same.

As for Mollie’s leniency with Max, according to Blau this would not damage a child’s later capacity for discipline: “For all their warmth and indulgence Yiddishe Mamehs were demanding, determined wom- en ... [whose] standards and expectations were extremely high.... And, just because he needs his mother’s approval, the young child will work harder to develop the skills she values and be more resistant to the influence of ‘the other kids.’ By the time he matures he will have in - ternalized the motivation and goals that make ... excellence possible.”

***

If Max could depend on Mollie’s good-natured tolerance, this was not the case when it came to his father. William was critical of Max. He felt that his son should help out more around the house and the store. This disagreement between father and son was exacerbated by a cultural gap. William, the immigrant, the man who had made his way alone, was providing a life for his native-born son that must have seemed abundantly comfortable, and Max, in William’s estimation, was taking undue advantage of that comfort. Whereas from Max’s perspective, this was no less than he had the right to expect.

Nevertheless, the conflict, although tense, was a quiet one. William periodically punished Max with a strapping, but there was little shout- ing. William, when angered, grew coldly silent, and Max did the same. Even as a child, Max was reserved. The silence suited him, both his need to control his feelings and as a method to keep from stepping outside of his inherent shyness.

“I was very insecure when I was a kid,” says Fisher. “I was driven to be a success. I wanted to make my mark.”

His fantasies were fueled in Salem’s Carnegie Library, one of the 2,500 libraries erected by industrialist Andrew Carnegie. There, curled up on a comfortable chair, Max read and reread biographies of Car- negie and John D. Rockefeller, and the novels of Horatio Alger, the

15

Unitarian minister who authored over 130 books for boys, all based on the principle that fighting against poverty and temptation leads a boy to wealth and fame. It was this orderly world view, great reward for great effort, that Max would carry into adulthood.

Fisher’s philosophy of wealth also seems to have been shaped by Alger, who wrote: “Money is said, by certain moralists, to be the root of all evil. The love of money, if carried too far, may indeed lead to evil, but it is a natural ambition.... The wealth of [fictional characters] Amos Lawrence and Peter Cooper was a source of blessing to man- kind, yet each started as a poor boy and neither would have become rich if he had not strived hard to become so.”

Max’s other passion, as a youngster, was the Boy Scouts. Scouting was relatively new in the early 1920s; the Boy Scouts of America was incorporated in New York City in 1910, and registration, with annu- al dues of twenty-five cents, began in 1913. Max enjoyed the typical scouting activities: hiking and camping in the woods outside Salem, fishing and swimming in the streams, learning signaling and First Aid. In his junior-high yearbook, the 1922 edition of The Mirror, Fish-

er paid homage to the Boy Scouts in an essay, leading off with what sounded like a rejoinder to William’s criticism: “People sometimes think that Boy Scouts are only a bunch of boys out for a good time. But the Scouts have a larger job than this.”

Scouting did have a lasting effect on Max’s development, for it was there that he met his first mentor, a scoutmaster who was in - strumental in furnishing Fisher with the confidence to shrug off his protective shell.

“His name was Lee Chamberlain,” recalls Fisher. “Funny that I should remember his name.”

Chamberlain, according to Charles Roessler, who has been active in the Salem Boy Scouts for seventy-seven years, was a strong, lanky man, a devout churchgoer and an employee of the Buckeye Engine Company.

“Lee was dedicated to scouting up until he died,” Roessler says. “He was a perfect gentleman and absolutely dedicated to the boys. There wasn’t a finer man in town.”

16

Besides reviewing the Scout saws with his troop, instructing them on the advantages of being responsible and trustworthy, Chamberlain was also sensitive to boys like Fisher in need of a compassionate paternal hand.

“I remember going into a barn,” Fisher says. “And one of the things we had to do was jump out of a hayloft. Everybody jumped, but I got scared and the other kids started razzing me. Lee Chamberlain sat down and counseled me and the next day I went there and I jumped off and I came back as one of the boys.”

***

If William and Max had an uneasy truce when Max was a youngster, this did not hold true when Max entered high school in 1923. The cul- tural differences that divided father from son suddenly widened, and the similarities of their personalities — their drive and stubbornness —terminated the peace.

William’s criticism sprang from his opinion that Max was neglect- ing his chores and wasting his time. This was not altogether true. Be- cause Mollie suffered from eczema on her hands, she could not do the wash, so Max regularly carried the laundry to a neighbor. He also worked in his father’s store on Saturdays, but he preferred finding his own jobs, mowing lawns, caddying at the golf course, delivering pa- pers or splitting logs.

However, Max’s grades, which in junior high school had been in the eighties and nineties, dipped once he was in high school. He excelled in math and history, but struggled with Latin and French and was an average English student. He was too shy to date, so girls did not fill his time, but he played on the football, basketball and track teams, handled the business side of the school plays, participated in numerous clubs, chaired the junior and senior proms, and began keeping a scrapbook of each of his accomplishments. He frequented the local poolroom, developing into a sharp pool player. But he was betting on games, and since he occasionally lost, he would sneak small sums of money from his father’s register.

17

Anote from Charles B. Coffee, a star of Salem’s football team, sent to Fisher more than a half-century after they had last seen each other in the 1920s, captures the spirit of those years: “Do you ever think back to our high school days?” Coffee wrote, “when you and I ran around together? We sure had some good times then. Even when we practiced football in your basement and drank some of your dad’s booze.” Today it sounds like the guileless mischief of high-spirited boys, yet one can imagine the disdain with which William Fisher viewed it.

The strongest conflict Max had with William was over Max’s football career. At six-foot-two and 148 pounds, Max was one of the biggest boys in Salem. He played center, on defense and offense, and was considered one of the finest lineman in Columbiana County. But both William and Mollie, terrified that Max would get injured, refused to watch their son play. (Max’s sister Anne, as athletic and feisty as her brother, with a habit of climbing and tumbling out of trees, never missed a game.) What Wil- liam would have seen on the field was that Max showed the same sort of tenacity playing football that his father showed in business.

Fred C. Cope, a year older than Fisher, was a star track man at Sa- lem. Cope recalls Max as a boy who, although lacking the natural ath- letic ability of a Charles Coffee, was intent on succeeding at football. “The thing that I remember about Max more than anything else,” says Cope, “is that at the end of practice he’d come up to Coach [Wil- bur] Springer and say, ‘What did I do wrong?’or ‘How can I improve?’ Then they’d practice some more. The other kids couldn’t wait to get away from Coach after practice. Not Max. He was constantly trying to better himself.”

Once, when Coach Springer was staying late with Max to tutor him in the finer points of blocking, Max, always aggressive and eager to learn, broke his coach’s collarbone. So Max continued to play foot- ball, parrying his mother’s worries with hurried reassurances and his father’s disapproving silence with a silence of his own, a studied dis- tance that would one day make him a gifted negotiator, but also would interfere with his personal relationships. He was soft-spoken, and yet Fisher admits, sixty years after leaving Salem, that underneath the se- rene exterior he was “pugnacious as hell.”

18

***

When the Fishers lived in Salem there were only five other Jewish families. The closest Jewish communities of any size were in Alli- ance and Youngstown, approximately twenty miles away. Alliance and Youngstown had synagogues, which Mollie and William attended sometimes on the High Holidays, without their children. Mollie, in an effort to prevent her young children from feeling left out at Christ- mas, allowed them to hang stockings in the house. Over the years, she became less observant and no longer shopped at the kosher butcher. Instead, she sent Anne to Votaw’s Market to buy meat and then soaked and salted it before cooking as if it were kosher. She did maintain two sets of dishes and a separate set for Passover when William led a tra- ditional seder. On Friday nights, William chanted the blessing over the wine and Mollie lit candles. Charity, with its obligatory status in Judaism, was observed. In addition to Mollie’s and the children’s JNF contributions, William dropped coins into the pushkeh, a tin box with the name of the charity on it, and when the collectors — the meshu- lakhim — came to collect the money, William invited them home for dinner and provided them with a place to sleep.

Other than these rituals, Max Fisher had no Jewish education. He did not have a bar mitzvah at the traditional age of thirteen and he did not go to Hebrew school. His friends were not Jewish, nor was his community. How then, did he become so identified with his Jewish - ness, growing up in Salem where American culture — Christian cul- ture, the culture that Norman Rockwell enchantingly preserved in his art —was so pronounced?

The philosopher Horace M. Kallen provides a partial answer. Kallen wrote extensively on the concept of Jewish identity and understood the lessons that families like the Fishers were learning in America: that the Americanization of Jews did not mean Jews would become indistinguishable from Christians. But rather, by preserving their Jew- ish identity in a myriad of ad hoc ways, they would live not only as citizens of a nation, but also as Jewish citizens of a nation. Then, too,

19

Jewish identity, for Kallen, would be fortified in America because of anti-Semitism, which would serve as a safeguard against assimilation. Jews could not disappear into a society that did not wish to hide them. Kallen writes: “Of all them which say they are Jews, each may be the synagogue of Satan to [other Jews], but all, whether they speak with the old tongues of Sephardi and Hassid, or the new tongues of Zi- onist or American Council for Judaism, Inc., are equally the synagogue of Satan for the anti-Semite. The common enemy imposes on them a common identity and a common cause.”

And the Ohio of Fisher’s boyhood was filled with anti-Semitism. During the 1920s, the state had the country’s largest enrollment in the Ku Klux Klan. Membership estimates exceeded 400,000. Politically, the Klan won an imposing array of victories. It supported mayors who were elected in Toledo, Akron, Columbus, Hamilton, Marion, Elyria, Newark and at least five smaller cities. The mayor of Youngstown be - longed to the Klan, as did his law director, Clyde W. Osborn, who became the state’s first grand dragon.

In Salem, the Klan staged cross burnings just outside of town and marched through the streets in their white hoods and robes. Still, the Klan was not taken too seriously, and Salem’s children, Max and his sister Anne among them, watched them parade by and taunted them. As Dr. Henry K. Yaggi Jr., a classmate of Fisher’s, remembers: “In those days, the Klan wasn’t violent. They were all show and no blow.” Even though some of the Fishers’ neighbors did belong to the Klan, Max can remember no earnest anti-Semitic feelings among the people in Salem. One of William’s closest friends and best customers was a Mr. Shepard, who held a leadership post with the Salem Klan. Shep- ard, who owned a coal mine, was friendly enough with William to give Max a summer job splitting logs. As a teenager, Max’s application for a membership at the YMCAwas rejected because he was Jewish, and several private parties were closed to him, but these were the excep- tion, not the rule.

Max Fisher’s recollections of his hometown are of the realized American dream, a beautifully simmering melting pot. His sister Anne remembers Salem in a similar spirit. As a girl, Anne accompanied her

20

Christian friends to church and Sunday school and was an ardent fan of the Episcopal Church’s annual picnic.

More than fifty years after leaving Salem, Anne Fisher Rose says: “I never heard the expression ‘dirty Jew’ till I moved to the big city.” In the 1920s, although the Salem Klan disliked Jews and blacks (there was only a smattering of black families living in Salem then), they focused their resentment on immigrants, chiefly Catholics, who were referred to as “cat-lickers.”

There are other indications that the anti-Semitism Fisher was ex- posed to in Salem went beyond — and deeper than — white-hooded parades and denied memberships, was more subtle and lasting. Some interviewers, when confronting Fisher’s recollections of Salem, have implied that his observations have been sugarcoated by memory, as if they have been revised in accordance with the words etched into the stone hearth in the basement bar of Salem’s Elks Club: “The faults of our brothers we write upon the sands, their virtues on the tablets of love and memory.”

For instance, in a July 1980 magazine profile of Fisher in Monthly Detroit, senior editor Kirk Cheyfitz writes: “Fisher says he remembers no anti-Semitism [in Salem]. The Salem of his memory is an Ameri- can Eden.... But it wasn’t exactly that way. Laura Mae Whinery grew up across from Max’s house on West State Street.... She remembers a quiet, polite Max Fisher.... And then, with no prompting, she offers: ‘Of course, I suppose he had his moments with being Jewish.’ But she cannot or will not name those moments.”

These moments should not have been difficult to identify, beginning with Fisher’s nickname, “Rabbi,” which he carried with him through public school and which was inscribed under his picture in the 1926 edition of The Quaker, Salem High School’s yearbook. Fisher, his fam- ily and his friends appeared to consider the sobriquet a warm-hearted joke. As late as 1988, when Fisher celebrated his eightieth birthday, his son, Phillip, presented him with a professionally produced audio cassette, complete with a play-by-play announcer and roaring crowd noises, which contained an affectionate parody of Fisher’s high-school football career. The name most often used on the tape: “Rabbi.”

21

Dr. Henry Yaggi Jr., who played next to Fisher at left guard on the Sa- lem football team and whose father owned the hospital where the boys wound up —with sprains, bruises and the random break or concussion — following the games, explains the meaning of the nickname: “Most of the people [in Salem] weren’t concerned with [a person’s religion],” says Yag- gi. “There was never any discrimination. Hell, Red Cosgrove was captain of the football team and he was Catholic. The only reason that you didn’t like someone was because you didn’t like him. Just like you wouldn’t like somebody in your Sunday-school class. Max and I, we always hit it off. We called him ‘Rabbi,’ the same way you’d call a guy ‘Butch’ or ‘Joe.’ It was just the first Jewish name that everybody would recognize.”

Why, one wonders, would they require a name that everyone would recognize as Jewish? Yaggi’s logic does not address this point; it fo - cuses on the issue of intent. “Rabbi,” to his mind, was used by Fisher’s friends with wit and affection, and thus should not be confused with anti-Semitism.

Yet paging through The Quaker published in 1923, when Fisher was a freshman, a more revealing, unequivocal nickname can be found. This one under the picture of a handsome, light-skinned black man. His real name, Donald Woods, was duly noted, as was his nickname: “Jigaboo.” Only an enormously generous opinion could mistake this sobriquet

as an amiable substitute for “Butch” or “Joe.”

In contrast to the manner in which Dr. Yaggi reflects on his team - mate’s nickname, Fred Cope remembers it as having a distinctive significance.

“Max and I were on the periphery of the student body,” Cope re- calls. “They used to kid me about wearing boots to school because I was a farm boy and [they said I should] get the smell of the farm off me. And Max was not treated like one of the regular students. He was called ‘Rabbi,’ stuff like that.”

Cope continues, highlighting Fisher’s identification with another student who was a victim of prejudice. “I remember a track man,” he says. “A black fellow. He always liked Max. I was down in the dress- ing room and somebody had called the black a derogatory name, ‘Step- pin’ Fetchit,’ I think. Max was patting him on the back. I don’t know

22

what Max was saying because I was over across the room, but he was encouraging [the black man] not to pay any attention to these guys.” Additionally, there is reason to believe that the discrimination may have extended to the football fields of Ohio. On December 1, 1925, when H.P. Braman selected the all-county high-school football team in The Salem News, a piece appeared in the paper that went so far as to wonder whether or not someone was harboring a particular animosity toward Fisher.

“A storm has been brewing around the selection of the center,” the story began. “Fisher of Salem stands far and above any other center, not only in this county, but he was better than the Alliance, Niles, Ak- ron West, Cleveland West and Struthers centers. Some persons close to athletics have held some grudge against Fisher or else do not know his ability. The only excuse one of these persons could give for keeping him off the [all-county] team was that he made three miscues all year, and this the year of the big mud. There isn’t a college center that could claim that record. There are other good centers, with Larkins of East Liverpool, the only snapper-back given a rank near Fisher, but he was not the bear on the defense that Fisher was, for the Salem boy made nearly half of his team’s tackles.”

What is noteworthy about this story is that the other players named to the all-county team were just given a brief mention. And interest- ingly enough, although this was the longest, and most laudatory, piece ever written about Fisher’s football career, he did not clip it and paste it into his scrapbook.

The evidence suggests that most Salemites — like many other small-towners — managed to accept their Jewish neighbors by the psychological maneuver of “exemption.” Peter I. Rose, in his study of small-town Jews and their neighbors, Strangers in Their Midst, ex- plains: “Small-town ‘natives,’ most often having fixed images of what Jews are supposed to be ... differentiate Jewish friends from these im- ages. In most instances we found that exemption served as a device useful for the circumvention of prejudice.”

This addresses why Fisher would remember his hometown as an “American Eden.” The anti-Semitism, to some extent, was not per-

23

sonally aimed at him, but at an overly fantastic conception of what it meant to be a Jew. In addition, Fisher was reserved and, as in his adult years, kept his feelings to himself. In fact, Fisher was past his eighti- eth birthday when he admitted that being refused a membership at the Salem YMCA because he was Jewish was “one of the most painful experiences in my life.”

Although being surrounded by non-Jews and some expressions of anti-Semitism enhanced Fisher’s sense of Jewishness, it also led to the development of a phenomenon Peter Rose refers to as “biculturalism”: Rose writes: “While [the small-town Jew] identifies with fellow Jews —a reference group he can ‘feel’ rather than ‘touch’ —and in many ways expresses a feeling of kinship with his people, he adapts himself to the folkways of the small town in a variety of ways. He enjoys the advantages of sharing two ‘cups of life’ and, in a word, is bicultural.” This biculturalism is often noticeably absent in those who were raised in the teeming Jewish enclaves of America — the Lower East Side of author Harry Golden, for example, where everything Jewish was no farther away than the corner candy store and a bubbling glass of two-cents plain. Unlike Salem, in Irving Howe’s World of Our Fa- thers, Jews effortlessly imported their Judaism from Europe, making the requisite adjustments, gilding their ghettos until they became sub- urbs, but remaining insular and what they deemed a prudent distance from the pitfalls of Gentile America.

Fisher’s capacity to live in two worlds, one Jewish, one Christian, was among the distinctive talents that he took with him from Salem. It was the town’s legacy to him and prepared him for the leaders of the oil industry, the basis of his fortune and the beginnings of his clout. And it also prepared him for the WASP power elite in Detroit and Washington, D.C.

Yet while Fisher propelled himself through the Protestant estab- lishment — whether it was sailing off around the Greek islands with his friend Henry Ford II, or addressing the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans —his identity prevailed. He spoke as Max Martin Fisher, wealthy oil man, investor, philanthropist, power broker, fund-raiser and Jew.

24

***

By the winter of 1925, William Fisher had a decision to make. His wife was anxious to relocate to a big city. With three daughters to marry off —the eldest, Gail, was now fifteen —Mollie felt that her girls should have access to a Jewish social life. William agreed. But in addition to his concern for his daughters’ dating opportunities was his own desire to achieve, his dissatisfaction with the present, his restlessness, all of which he would bequeath to his son. Immigrants by definition and by nature are voyagers. And for William, because his ship had landed at one port did not mean his journey was over. When he was peddling door-to-door, the store in Salem had represented his highest aspiration; now he had another rung to climb. The store had provided a decent liv- ing, but not much else. And America was, as William knew, the gold- eneh medina, where opportunity was supposed to be as boundless as the nation’s borders.

William and Mollie settled on Cleveland, sixty-two miles northwest of Salem, a city they were familiar with from their visits with one of Mollie’s cousins. A new suburb was being built, Shaker Heights, and William saw his chance to make a start as a general contractor. He was not discouraged that he knew almost nothing about construction. Business was simple arithmetic, and as with his clothing store, Wil- liam would learn by doing. He sold his property in Salem and rented a house in Cleveland, at 3673 East 146th Street. He packed his wife and daughters into his car and off William went to pursue his fortune. Meantime, Max moved in with his Uncle Ben’s family to finish his senior year of high school.

***

During his final six months of high school, Max continued his frenetic pace. His grades improved, rising above average, but this was partly due to the fact that he no longer had to take Latin. He was again a member of the Science Club, served on the business staff of the se-

25

nior play, was sports editor of his yearbook and chairman of the se- nior prom. He was on the basketball and track teams, and made the all-county football team. If Fred Cope’s assessment of Fisher’s ability on the football field was correct — that what he lacked in talent he made up for with hustle — this quality was sufficient to impress the scouts from Ohio State University in Columbus, who offered Fisher a football scholarship, which he accepted. That June, Max was among the eighty-five students who graduated from Salem High School, and in the late summer of 1926, with $150 his father had given him toward his college education, he left for Columbus.

Forty-six years later, on June 10, 1972, Max Fisher returned to Salem for the 91st Annual Reunion of the Salem High School Alumni Associ- ation. (Organized in 1882, the association keeps track of Salem’s gradu- ates with remarkable success.) Fisher had come to the reunion to accept the association’s award as the high school’s outstanding alumnus of the year. Over 200 townspeople crowded into the Elks Club ballroom for the banquet. Following dinner, Fisher spoke. By then he had given hundreds of political and philanthropic speeches, yet he still was not a natural speaker; every pause and inflection was noted on his script.

After thanking everyone for the award, Fisher said: “Growing up in Salem provided me with some critically important guidelines. I’m not sure that I could have acquired them by growing up in a city. In cities people tend to break up into smaller groups that have the same inter- ests.... [In Salem], I got to know something about people, [and] I can’t think of a better place to learn about the American people, with all their virtues and shortcomings, than in a small town.”

Fisher talked about discovering the importance of charity not just in his parents’ home, but also by watching the Salvation Army in Salem. He digressed to how his love of automobiles, which began in Salem, influenced his decision to enter the oil industry, and how the sweeping technological changes of the 1920s affected his boyhood. Then he dis- cussed the satisfactions of working with the Jewish Agency to help the Israelis, who are “making the desert bloom again.”

Finally, he concluded: “It occurred to me one day as I stood in the city of Jerusalem that I had only come from my boyhood Salem to the

26

original city of Salem. Jerusalem: City of Peace. Salem: peace. I can only hope that some of the things I have been privileged to do since my high-school days have added a little to the cause of ‘Salem,’ of peace, of shalom. And I am delighted to be able to come back here to a place that in a sense I never left, where I learned that people are important, and say shalom again.”

The crowd applauded. Fisher announced that he was giving a $5,000 annual gift, in perpetuity, to the alumni association scholarship fund. The audience rewarded him with a standing ovation. Fisher smiled, enjoying the pleasure of being his hometown hero. It was a fleeting pleasure, so keen it could not last, the pleasure of vindication. Fisher watched men and women approach him. He shook their hands, accept- ed their hearty thanks, meanwhile thinking of what he did not mention in his speech: that although he had grown up among the people of Sa- lem, he never felt as if he were part of them; he always sensed that, as a Jew, he was an outsider. And because he was Jewish, he was amazed that they had invited him to return.

27

Chapter 2

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

IN THE FALL of 1926, there were 10,000 students on the Ohio State University campus in Columbus, almost as many students as townspeople in Salem. Max Fisher arrived with one suitcase, a mack- inaw and high boots, footwear favored by the boys in rural Ohio, but seen as strictly “farmer” by the college men, many of whom came from Cleveland and Cincinnati. Along with their up-to-date cosmopolitan dress, these young men had a breezy sophistication —popularized in the magazine College Humor —and their style was foreign to Fisher. Forty-four years after matriculating at OSU, Fisher came back to be honored with the Ohio State Centennial Achievement Award. In his speech, Fisher praised the Land Grant colleges because by creating them the United States declared that higher education was no longer the exclusive domain of the wealthy few, but also the right of men and women of modest means. Fisher described OSU as a place with “wide, wide doors,” and although this was true academically, Fisher quickly discovered in 1926 that this egalitarianism did not extend to OSU’s social world.

His friend from Salem, Charles Coffee (who, like Fisher, had won a football scholarship) was also entering Ohio State. One day, Fisher ran into Coffee crossing the campus. They talked about their classes and the football season. Then Coffee, explaining to Fisher why he had been out of touch, said: “Max, I can’t invite you to my fraternity for dinner.” “Why not?” Fisher asked.

“You’re Jewish,” Coffee replied.

So Fisher joined his own fraternity —the Alpha Epsilon chapter of Phi Beta Delta, which by definition was nonsectarian, but whose mem - bers were primarily Jewish. Fisher moved into their solid three-story

28

house at 1918 Indianola Avenue, a winding, tree-shaded road one short block from the campus.

Fisher had grown up as the only Jew among his peers. Now, he underwent his first exposure to Jews. But he was the only country boy among his urban fraternity brothers, and initially he was intimidated. “They were [second- and third-generation] Jews,” says Fisher today. “They came from the cities, were more polished and more sophisticat- ed —and more Jewish. They had a style I didn’t have. They were more affluent and exposed to [education and traditions] I had never seen. And suddenly I was shoved into this mix. They were too fast for me. It was hard for me to get adjusted.”

His fraternity brothers, says Fisher, found him difficult to under - stand. But his roommate, Lou Horowitz, who was from Cleveland, helped him get through this period. “Lou and I used to walk and talk for hours,” Fisher says. “We used to try to explain to each other our feelings about things. And Lou would tell me: ‘Max, you’re going to be a great businessman.’ The fellows at the fraternity didn’t like me at the beginning because they didn’t understand me, and Lou would tell them: ‘You’re making an awful mistake. This man’s going to be a big success someday.’”

During the next four years, Fisher would deal with his uncertainties as he had dealt with them in Salem: by plunging into activities. He worked in the fraternity, cleaning up in the kitchen to pay for his meals. He was the “Richman Brothers’ Man” on campus, taking orders for the clothier, and when football season was over, he worked in Richman Brothers’ downtown Columbus store. He maintained a B average in his course work and played on the football team until his sophomore year, when he was clipped during practice and severely injured his knee. He managed the basketball team and was on the business staff of several social and fraternity committees.

Along with the Jewish social milieu that Fisher experienced in his fraternity, he was introduced to formalized Judaism. “I attended my first religious service at the Hillel House on campus,” Fisher recalls. “And the Rabbi —Lee Levinger —had quite an impact on me. He and his wife used to invite me to their house for kosher meals and for Pass-

29

over. I would play with their [young] son. I learned about being a Jew. I didn’t become more observant, but I understood more and became more conscious of being Jewish.”

Fisher also became more involved in Hillel. He served as its presi- dent and produced a play, The Dybbuk, under its auspices, taking it on the road to Cleveland, Dayton and Cincinnati. Fisher was responsible for financing the production, and he drummed up support in Cleveland from Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, the noted Zionist and later the country’s foremost Jewish Republican.

As in his adult life, Fisher preferred the business end, because de- spite the scope of his college activities, he retained his shyness. A woman who dated one of his fraternity brothers recalls: “I remember Max as very quiet. He was so tall and thin and I thought he was awk- ward. Avery nice boy, but very shy.”

Although Fisher was eventually popular enough to be elected presi- dent of his fraternity, Aron M. Mathieu, a fraternity brother, remembers him as someone who kept his own counsel. “He stayed out of politi- cal discussions,” says Mathieu. “His best friend was Lou Horowitz — ‘Duke,’ we called him. Duke was a Communist back then, and we were always arguing with him, but Max didn’t like to argue. You could tell Max was determined to succeed. We knew he wanted to make money. When he returned from football practice, his mouth was full of bloody cotton from practicing with those giants, and we teased him, really try- ing to comfort him, by lining up, bowing and chanting, with put-on Yid- dish accents, ‘Don’ta worry, Maahx, you’lla makea money, Maahx.’” Money, the lack of it, was on Fisher’s mind. The single voiced am- bition that he can recall from college was “to walk into a clothing store and buy what I wanted without looking at the price.” Once he had lost his football scholarship due to his injuries, his budget was tight; there were tuition, books, fraternity dues and a car loan to pay. So every Sun- day evening, when the fraternity kitchen was closed, he walked over to Tim’s, a restaurant across from the campus, and for fifteen cents got a bowl of chili and all the crackers he could eat. In this manner, Fisher managed not only to fill himself up and to save money, but to cultivate a lifelong dislike for chili.

30

Fisher augmented his work during the school year with summer work when he returned to his family in Cleveland.

“I delivered ice,” says Fisher, “for City Ice and Fuel. It was the best paying job [a college student] could get. Thirty-four bucks a week. That was a lot of money. I was the only Jewish boy who worked at the ice-house, which was on Superior and St. Clair. It [was] a tough neighborhood. This was during Prohibition. We served the speakeasies along with the butcher shops and grocery stores. Well, one morning, when I went to work, I didn’t have my gloves on. The foreman saw my hands were blistered and said: ‘What’s the matter with your hands?’ ‘Nothing,’ I told him. We were carrying 200-pound blocks of ice, and I earned a lot of respect because I kept up even with the blisters on my hands.”

The icemen, Fisher learned, had a profitable scam going. They would load up, say, a butcher shop with 4,000 pounds of ice and charge the shop for a little more ice than they delivered. The extra money went into their pockets. Late one afternoon, Fisher remembers, the foreman, who would go with the men once a month, was riding with him. They had just stocked a grocery store and were en route to the ice-house when the foreman turned to Fisher and asked: “How much money did we make?”

“What do you mean?” Fisher said. “‘How much money did we make?’”

“How much did we knock down?” the foreman said. “I want my cut.” Fisher replied: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

When they returned to the ice-house, the foreman, laughing and jerking his thumb back at Fisher, said to the other ice haulers: “This guy’s not a very smart Jew boy. No sir, this Jew boy’s not very smart.” In several ways, anti-Semitic remarks were easier for Fisher to abide than the strange sophistication of his Jewish fraternity brothers. “I had no problem relating to Christians,” says Fisher. “I never car- ried a chip on my shoulder about that.”

Clearly, Ohio State University afforded Fisher a glimpse of broader and brighter horizons and the opportunity to test himself on a more competitive field than Salem. It also hardened and gave new form to

31

some of what he had learned at home. He no longer had his father around to criticize him. But Fisher must have internalized this process, because it was early in his college days that he began to construct self-improvement lists and to mete out his own punishments.

For example, if he spoke in class or to others without thinking, if he said something hurtful, if he didn’t manage his time or money prop- erly, he wrote it down, promised himself to try not to do it again, and skipped breakfast or subjected himself to what he considered some appropriate deprivation. Perhaps of greater relevance to Fisher’s later careers — since it partially explains the source of his abundant drive — Fisher does not remember ever rewarding himself for his accom- plishments. Whatever he achieved, it was not enough. The peaceful rewards of satisfaction were not in his plans.

***

While Max was earning his degree at Ohio State, the fortunes of his family wavered. William, upon arriving in Cleveland, established an office in the Guarantee Title Building. When general contract - ing did not pan out, he switched to carpentry contracting. After two years of steadily losing money, William contacted a childhood friend, Nathan R. Epstein, who was now living in Philadelphia. Ep- stein had made enough money as an electrical contractor to become a major investor in the Woodrow Wilson Building and Loan Asso- ciation, a thrift institution. It was precisely the sort of success Wil- liam had in mind for himself. He recounted his recent troubles to his friend, and Epstein suggested that William come to Philadelphia and learn the electrical business.

Again, William set off, packing up his wife and daughters, and renting an attractive row house in the Roosevelt Boulevard section of Philadelphia. Six months later, the family was back in Cleveland. Electrical contracting had not proved profitable, and although William maintained his friendship with Epstein, the two men had not gotten along in business. William now made another stab at carpentry con- tracting and did fairly well.

32

Then, on October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed. The United States skidded off into the Depression, and William lost his business. He got in touch with friends and relatives, and came up with a lead —Louis J. Chesnow. Five years younger than William, Chesnow was an architect. Because the Depression had ground the building trade to a halt, there was no demand for Chesnow’s professional skills. So he was in the market for a good investment, and sifted through the city tax rolls hoping to find a failed business that might have some promise. Finally, Chesnow spotted one: the Solaray Sales and Manufacturing Corporation, which had foundered due to a number of nearly worthless shares of stock being issued before the crash. But Solaray did have po- tential. The company produced lubricating oil reprocessed from used automobile crankcase oil, which they refined in their own plant. Since the current models of automobile engines required frequent oil chang- es, and since it seemed that the only profitable businesses during the Depression would be in the essential areas of either food or fuel, the $5,000 down payment for Solaray appeared to be a sound investment. At least Chesnow thought so, and he lined up four other men to in- vest with him. William Fisher wanted in —this was the opportunity he had been waiting for. There was, however, the problem of capital, spe- cifically William’s share of the down payment. He quickly proceeded to raise the money. He went to see Nathan Epstein, his former partner in Philadelphia, whose business had suffered at the start of the De- pression. Epstein was as excited about the possibilities of Solaray as William, and not only agreed to invest, but decided to move his family to Detroit.

In the winter of 1930, not long after the deal was finalized, William and Mollie Fisher relocated from Cleveland to Detroit. Their daughter Gail, now twenty years old, accompanied them, as did their youngest, Dorothy, who was ten. Anne stayed behind in Cleveland with friends to finish junior high.

William Fisher inspected the refining plant of which he was now a partial owner and was disappointed at the grim collection of steel jammed onto a lot at Beaufait near Gratiot, in the middle of a residen- tial area. Yet William was brimming with optimism, even though none

33

of the partners was familiar with the complex process of refining oil. This was the oil business? You could make a fortune — real money and all that it represented to an immigrant stuck in the trough of the Depression: a rapidly dwindling chance for security.

As William got things under way, it naturally never occurred to him that he was altering the course of his son’s life.

***

Tuesday, June 10, 1930, was a beautiful day in Columbus. The sky was blue as turquoise, the sun warm and bright.

That morning, Max Fisher was in a hurry. Ohio State University’s 53rd annual commencement exercises were slated to begin at 9:30, and Fisher had to pack. Richman Brothers, pleased with his work at its Columbus store, had offered him a job at its Cleveland headquarters, which he had accepted. He was supposed to depart immediately after graduation. Fisher, still uncertain what direction to head in, yet still dreaming of great success (“Maahx, you’lla makea money, Maahx”), wasn’t certain he wanted to forge a career in the men’s clothing busi- ness. But any job for a new college graduate in the Depression was a rare opportunity. So even though his parents had moved from Cleve- land to Detroit, Fisher was determined to drive to Cleveland and get to work.

Fisher dressed, finished packing his suitcase, ate breakfast, grabbed his cap and gown, and dashed out of the fraternity house, crossing the campus and stopping outside the high stone walls of the stadium, where over 1,300 graduates and a host of faculty and honorees had gathered.

The Ohio State University concert band played Meyerbeer’s “Cor- onation March,” and the processional began. The robed graduates paraded past the stadium gates, unwinding toward the north curve of the grandstand like a shining black ribbon, while 8,500 relatives and friends watched them on both sides.

Fisher took his seat among the College of Commerce and Adminis- tration graduates and faced the canopied platform. Professor Manley

34

Ottmer Hudson of the Harvard University Law School gave the an- nual address. His theme centered on how drastically and rapidly the world was changing. Technocracy, the domination of technology, was a widely discussed —and to some, a feared —phenomenon. Solo air flights to distant parts of the globe, in record time, were increasing, and picture telegraphy service began. The Depression continued, while the Smoot-Hawley Bill, which raised tariffs on foreign imports, elevated protectionism to an all-time high. France was busy constructing the Maginot Line. The Soviet Union was gearing up its industrial capacity. In Germany, Adolf Hitler was gaining ground and Heinrich Himmler was shaping up the SS —the Nazi Party’s military arm. In the Middle East, Arabs were attacking Jews over Jewish use of the Western Wall, and in England Lord Passfield was issuing a twenty-three-page White Paper, repudiating Zionism and suggesting that Jewish immigration to Palestine be halted. Albert Einstein completed writing About Zionism, and the Jewish Agency, in which Fisher would play a vital role, be- came the representative body of all Zionist and non-Zionist Jews. Professor Hudson exhorted the OSU graduates not to be afraid of the current sweeping changes. “These changes,” Hudson said, “have been so upsetting that as citizens we are now confronted with social and political problems of which the first graduates of this university did not even dream. We must adjust ourselves to a world which seems wholly different from that of our grandfathers. The geographical fron- tiers of our society have ceased to correspond to the political boundar- ies of our ... nations. Each new extension of our knowledge ... enlarges the area in which we live.”

Hudson’s words must have struck the audience as especially mean- ingful, because seated under the canopy on the platform, waiting to re- ceive an honorary degree, was the aviator and inventor, Orville Wright, whose airplane would contribute mightily to the future’s global village. Gazing out across the graduates, Hudson concluded: “The thought that I would place before you is not a vague ideal of world citizen- ship. I am suggesting a world outlook for a citizen of America, be- cause it seems to me to be necessitated ... by our interests as Amer- icans. If we would prefer to be ruled by the past ... we shall neither

35

prove to be useful nor shall we be sure of serving the interests of our own local communities.”

Hudson completed his talk to polite applause, and if Max Fisher, sitting with the sun beating down on his mortar board, was listening, it is now impossible to discern. That recollection is lost. But the spirit of Hudson’s address would be echoed by Fisher throughout his multiple careers in business, philanthropy and politics, and this turn-of-the-cen- tury progressivism indelibly marked Fisher, for better or for worse, as a child of his time.

***

As the Ohio State University graduation of 1930 drew to a close, bu- gles sounded the “Call to the Work of the World,” and the recessional began. Fisher filed from the stadium and ambled through the golden afternoon. He took his time now, scanning the campus, the magnificent brick buildings and the blooming buckeye trees, and returned to the Phi Beta Delta house. He said goodbye to his fraternity brothers, then walked out to where his 1916 Model T Ford was parked. He tossed his suitcase into the back and gripped the car-door handle.

In 1983, more than a half-century after this shining spring after- noon, seventy-five-year-old Max Fisher —moneyed, powerful, cred - ited with more accomplishments than a recent college graduate would dare to imagine —went to the Westin Hotel at the Detroit Renaissance Center to receive the Business Statesman’s Award, which was being presented to him by the city’s Harvard Business School Club. Standing on the dais, Fisher spoke briefly after accepting the plaque, ruminating about his past. What, he wondered aloud, would have happened to him had he gone to Cleveland as originally planned?

This is a question to which there is obviously no definitive response. Yet as Fisher grew older and allowed the press greater access to his life, it was a question that he often discussed in interviews. To some degree, Fisher’s interest in the concept of fate had been heightened in the mid- 1960s by his wife, Marjorie, who, upon reading Edgar Cayce, developed an interest in mysticism. Fisher also admitted, in scores of interviews,

36

that behind any notable success, including his own, you would find not only intelligence, hard work, foresight and all the qualities extolled by Horatio Alger, but also an equivalent portion of luck. Still, the question of what might have occurred had he wound up in Cleveland seemed to fascinate him for another more important and personal reason. As some- one who has periodically kept self-improvement lists, the question pro- vided a method for him to evaluate his life. So on the evening he was being feted by the Harvard Business Club, Fisher posed the question, not anticipating a reply. He was pleasantly surprised.

“A young man stood up,” recalls Fisher. “And he said: ‘Mr. Fisher, if you’d gone to Cleveland instead of Detroit you would be getting this award in Cleveland.’”

This response, though flattering, was not satisfying, as though something in Fisher resisted the solution because it would be the deci- sive settling of accounts, signaling the end of his relentless self-eval- uations, which had been critical during his college years and his later financial and political successes. He would, in short, no longer have the drive to achieve.

But certainly on June 10, 1930, with the sunlight glimmering on the lush green leaves like a glaze, no such question existed. And as Fish- er stood outside of his fraternity house, he took one last look around him. Children were playing on the neatly clipped lawn of the Indianola Avenue public school over on the comer of East 16th Street, and Ohio State students, newly graduated, many accompanied by their parents, were loading up their cars.

It had been a productive four years, Fisher thought. He had made some friends, Jewish friends, big-city friends. He had attended his first Jewish religious service and become active in Hillel. He still had his insatiable hunger to distinguish himself, but he had no specific goal in mind. On the credit side of the ledger, he did have five dollars in his pocket, his bachelor of science degree in business administration, a job waiting for him, and he would no longer have to eat the chili and crackers at Tim’s.

Fisher climbed into his car. As he drove the Ford from Columbus it struck him that he might enjoy checking in on his family before getting

37

situated in Cleveland. Whether it was homesickness —brought on by the sight of other students with their families —or a yearning for his mother’s stuffed cabbage and noodle pudding; whether it was a distant memory of an old joke, “Cleveland is Detroit without the glitter,” or pride and wanting to share the accomplishment of his degree with his parents and sisters, or simply a desire for a final stay with his family before venturing out alone into the world, Fisher headed for Detroit. True, he was heading toward the type of extraordinary fortune that even as a youngster, sitting in Salem’s Carnegie Library with the nov- els of Horatio Alger on his lap, he could not have conjured up in his most spectacular dreams. Yet, despite all of his success, it was a deci- sion he would reflect on forever.

38

Chapter 3

IN PURSUIT OF HORATIO ALGER

IT WAS PAST midnight on June 11, 1930, when Max Fisher pulled into Detroit. William Fisher had rented a wood-frame house with a tiny yard and an even tinier porch on Collingwood, in the northwest section of the city (which was predominately Jewish in the 1930s), and Max navigated the dark, unfamiliar streets until he located the house. Inside, his parents and sisters were sleeping. Max stretched out on a couch. That morning, William woke him, saying that he needed his help. He and his partners in Solaray had acquired a four-and-a-half- acre brickyard in southwest Detroit, on Greyfriar and Northampton, across the Rouge River from the Ford Motor Company’s Rouge com- plex, and they were physically relocating their oil-reclaiming plant from the Beaufait site and rebuilding it on the new lot. Max accompa- nied his father, and the dismantled plant was trucked to the brickyard. As Max unloaded equipment, his career in men’s fashion ended. From childhood on, he liked tinkering with radios and cars, and per- haps it was the sight of the plant’s pipes and engine components that changed his mind. Or perhaps it was the concept of literally being in the oil business —even if it was purifying used crankcase oil, a thick sludge, that was pumped from the floor pits of gas stations. Within days, he notified Richman Brothers that he would not be relocating to Cleveland.

The relocation and construction of the reclaiming plant went on for months. It was finished in the fall of 1930, and by NewYear’s the Key - stone Oil Refining Company was hawking its lubricating oil. William hired Max as a salesman, paying him fifteen dollars a week — when there was money. (At one point, due to a paucity of funds, Max had to turn his car over to a finance company.) Keystone’s difficulty was

39

rooted in the oil market of the time. Beginning in 1928, virgin oil was selling at one dollar per barrel. According to Daniel Yergin, author of The Prize, “all over the world, there were too many producers and too much production,” which made reprocessed oil less appealing. Max recalls working ten- and twelve-hour days and, despite his exhaustion, found that selling over the phone and soliciting potential customers in their offices had an unforeseen benefit: it kept him out of his parents’ house. His four years at Ohio State gave him a taste of independence that now made living among his family feel confining. With his three sisters, he picked up where he left off: he constantly teased them, es- pecially Gail, who invited her large circle of friends over every Sun- day. Max would come downstairs, roll his eyes and proclaim: “Ah, my sister is holding court.” Most troublesome, however, was that he was again at odds with his father.

The conflict between William and Max may have been based in the head-butting between an equally stubborn father and son, but once Max signed on with Keystone he and William had a divergence of opinion about the company. William became a partner in the plant because he viewed it as an investment. He did not believe that he was required to know the technology of the oil business. He would learn what he need- ed by doing it, as he had learned to speak English, to peddle and to run a clothing store. Max, on the other hand, was convinced that success in the oil business would be based in knowing as much technical detail as possible. He was obsessed with it. He read everything he could find on petroleum engineering, enrolled in night classes in petrochemistry at the University of Michigan, and engaged a tutor —a University of Michigan chemistry professor —to direct his studies. With the back- seat of his car loaded with oil samples, he visited refineries throughout the Midwest, comparing their operations to Keystone’s and suggesting improvements that William typically ignored. On those rare evenings he had a date, he drove out to the Keystone refinery and was dismayed when the young woman failed to share his pleasure in gazing up at the crisscross of steel pipes.

“In [the oil] business,” Fisher recalled in a 1972 speech, “I was caught up almost immediately in the process of change that was affect-

40