‘Best Dearborn Stories’ excerpt: The Day Orvie Cut Governmental Waste
The Dearborn Historical Museum’s book compiling the best Dearborn stories from residents and former residents will soon go on sale, a perfect gift for the holidays.
The book, the first of its kind ever compiled by the museum, is titled Best Dearborn Stories: Voices From Henry Ford’s Hometown. The book will be sold at the museum’s gift shop at the McFadden-Ross House, 915 Brady.
Profits from sales of the book will go to the museum, which has begun a membership drive to help keep its doors open after city funds run out during the current fiscal year ending June 30, 2012.
David Good
We will feature excerpts from the new book over the next couple of weeks. This first one is by David Good, a longtime Dearborn resident who I had the pleasure to work with at The Detroit News when Good was editor of the features section. Good authored the book, Orvie, The Dictator of Dearborn, a story about Dearborn’s longest serving mayor, the late Orville Hubbard. Good’s story below is one of more than 100 that appears in the Best Dearborn Stories: Voices From Henry Ford’s Hometown.
By David L. Good
Orville Hubbard wasn’t what you’d call bashful about letting people know how much he hated it when he felt they were wasting his time. You could tell by the “Please Take a Number” sign and the “Now Serving” numerical display in the mayor’s outer office at Dearborn City Hall. That was just in case you missed the sign above his front entryway, an inspirational saying he had cribbed from old Henry Ford, “People get ahead during the time that others waste.”
So how, exactly, was I going to tell him that, through no fault of my own, I had wasted approximately three hours of his precious time the day before — as we started a series of tape-recorded interviews I hoped would eventually become a book. I had already thought of the title: Orvie. Of course I didn’t have a publisher, but that could wait till later.
The late Dearborn Mayor Orville Hubbard stands defiantly in the center of Michigan Ave. outside the Dearborn City Hall.
It was a fine mid-September day in 1972. I was 30, had been married to Janet for almost a year, and had recently wrapped up a three-year stint covering Dearborn and environs as a reporter for The Detroit News. Now I had been transferred to a beat covering the Detroit City Council, and I fancied I had quickly developed a good relationship with the likes of Carl Levin, Tony Wierzbicki and David Eberhard.
I also fancied I’d done a pretty good job of making it through those three years with Hubbard, who, as anyone who picked up a piece of embossed city stationery would immediately know, had been “mayor of Dearborn since January 6, 1942.”
True enough, Dearborn Heights Mayor John Canfield had bellowed at me when I greeted him a day after writing a story I knew would anger him. “Here’s your most unfavorite newspaper reporter,” I chirped as I entered his office. “You’re goddamned right you are,” he exploded.
But somehow I’d managed not to tick off Hubbard, at least not that I knew of. (He probably didn’t remember that 10 years earlier, when I was a journalism major at Michigan, he phoned my home to complain that a nerdy-looking young man driving a car registered to my father had been photographing the mayor’s home on Mead. I was impressed with Hubbard’s quick response to a perceived threat, but I went ahead anyway with plans to write a negative editorial on him for a student publication in Ann Arbor.)
So here I was, taking a few days’ vacation from the News, waiting to go in for our second day of interviews. The day before, I remembered, he had vented about a local attorney who had once sued him successfully for libel (“Christ, it helped his business”), the Wayne circuit judge who had ruled against the mayor in the libel suit (“If I could find the cemetery, I’ll go out and piss on his grave”), and a former city appointee who had gone over to the opposition (“The son of a bitch — I should have been fired for ever giving him a job in the first place”).
After a few minutes, the mayor summoned me. Still an imposing figure at a diet-assisted weight of about 280, Hubbard was dressed in a white starched shirt, navy slacks and his trademark white-on-navy polka-dot bow tie; his navy suit coat was hanging up. As I sat down, he wheeled around in his chair to face me.
“Well, let’s get started,” he said briskly.
I clicked on my tape recorder and said what I had been fretting about saying since the night before, when I discovered that every word I thought I was taping had somehow been transmuted into an annoying hum.
“Mayor,” I said, “I have some bad news. My tape recorder seems to be working fine now, but it didn’t pick up anything from yesterday’s session. We’ll have to go back over all the stuff we covered yesterday.”
There it was. Three hours of his time yesterday – totally wasted.
“We’re not going to go back over anything,” he snapped.
Great, I thought, he’s going to call the whole project off after we’ve barely started. His publicist, Doyne Jackson, had warned me initially that the mayor would never cooperate with this book project. Miraculously, however, he agreed to make himself fully available for interviews, with no preconditions whatsoever.
Except that he didn’t want to retape yesterday’s session. The reason soon became clear. Bending down, he pulled a tape recorder from a desk drawer. “Here,” he said, “take my tape and return it when you’re done.”
“You made your own recording?” I asked, restating the obvious.
“Well, you can’t be too careful, can you?” he said, chuckling. “I figured I might need it someday.”
That was Orville Hubbard – always thinking ahead, never allowing himself to be blindsided. It was a microcosm of his 36-year mayoral career.
As for the book, Wayne State University Press published Orvie, The Dictator of Dearborn in 1989, almost exactly 15 years after a massive stroke silenced the mayor and cut short our interviews. Had he not died seven years before publication, I believe Hubbard would say he got what he expected from me: an adequate platform for explaining his views, along with an accurate — albeit “warts and all” — recounting of his life and career.
At least I hope he wouldn’t figure I’d wasted his time.
November 19th, 2011 at 2:43 pm
“Orvie” was the Huey Long of southeast Michigan. A racist blowhard who could do nothing without the money of Ford motor company. What cemetery is he buried at?
November 20th, 2011 at 7:51 am
It’s great we’re all waxing nostalgic, however, there is no place in our modern society for a bigot like Orville Hubbard. His racist legacy should be buried along with him.
November 20th, 2011 at 8:44 am
Yes, Ali, segregation is bad…..unless we self-segregate in the name of “community”. Dearborn hasn’t changed as much as we’d like to think. It’s still an inner-ring suburb of the ghetto but instead of being on the surface as in Orvie’s day, the fears, prejudices and loathing are just under the surface of a thin veneer of social acceptance and political correctness.
November 20th, 2011 at 10:57 am
I was informed by the person overseeing the book that it will be available for sale in the McFadden Ross Museum beginning November 10th.
November 21st, 2011 at 12:19 pm
‘Wayne’ makes an interesting comment. The Arab-Muslim ‘community’ self-segregates…but I don’t think, as Wayne seems to, that because it is self-imposed it is not bad. The Arab-Muslims of Dearborn are taught that the non-Muslims hate them. They are taught that American freedom is something to resist and ridicule. They are taught that it is acceptable, even preferred, to hate the rest of America. I will not say that every Dearbornite Arab-Muslim shares this view, but it is widespread and comes from the ‘community leaders.’ This result of self-segregation is harmful to us, their neighbors, and it is harmful to the Muslim-Americans themselves, as it leads away from integration into American society.
November 21st, 2011 at 2:06 pm
I don’t know anyone who agrees with Orvie’s racism, but I think everyone waxes nostalgic about a time when the City of Dearborn was clean and prosperous, had excellent services, and went about its business with an obvious and deserved sense of pride.
I remember coming here as a 5 year old on the train, staying at the Fairlane Motor Inn, going on the Rouge tour, visiting Greenfield Village, driving by Ford World HQ – what an impression on a kid from a small town in Western Michigan. Wish Dearborn’s current Mayor could still get some of that Ford money . . .
Life is generally a mixed bag, and its unfortunate that the Mayor who played such a large role in “gettin ‘er done” was also such a bigot (and so much more!) But that’s history . . . changing it is called revisionism.
Wonder what today’s kids will say about us someday . . . hmmm.
November 22nd, 2011 at 5:35 am
“Wonder what today’s kids will say about us someday . . . hmmm.”
Since so many of them will be “occupying” our basements by the looks of things, they’d better just say “thanks”.
November 22nd, 2011 at 8:11 am
I don’t know whether to laugh or cringe. These ideas exist only in your head. The Arabs of Dearborn followed (and continue to follow) a typical immigration pattern. One followed by immigrant groups all over the WORLD who live in proximity to each other for support, especially when the community is in its infancy.
As for local Arab immigrants being taught to hate? It appears the hate comes from people like you.
November 22nd, 2011 at 1:11 pm
Yes, Hubbard definitely had something our city doesn’t have today – the huge tax base that Ford paid back in the day, which was around 80% of all property taxes in Dearborn, because Hubbard was purposely allowing residential properties to be under assessed. In the late 70’s that changed when the state legislature reworked the tax rules and formulas. From that time on, all commercial and residential properties were taxed with what was believed to be a much fairer formula, which resulted in residential property taxes being increased significantly.
However, Hubbard took full advantage of all of those Ford tax dollars and built one of the biggest recreational, cultural and amenity rich cities around. As far as I know, to this day, Dearborn still has more of of all of the above than any comparable city in America and Dearborn also has more of all of these “goodies” than many large American cities. Hubbard also provided services that were unheard of in most cities, many of them which still exist today, despite cutbacks in services and the other perks residents have come to expect.
Hubbard was definitely a racist, but many other white Americans, including politicians back then were also racists. The difference was that unlike the other politicians who didn’t publicly state they were racists, Hubbard was very vocal about his racism, which has sadly tarnished an image of perhaps one of the best mayors that ever served in America.
We are all flawed human beings, as was Hubbard, but much of what services and amenities Dearborn residents still have today, was due to the creativity of Hubbard and the ability to be wise enough to know that recreation and cultural activities for residents, and especially for children, builds a strong city. And despite the serious issues Dearborn faces today, Dearborn is still a much nicer city than any other surrounding community. Most of that is due to Hubbard, and obviously due to Ford Motor Company paying the majority of taxes back in the day.
So while Hubbard’s racism is an extremely sad testament to his legacy, and while there may be some that continue to focus on his racism, I’d bet that if one would talk to most people who lived in Dearborn during Hubbard’s regime, they would tell you that he was the greatest mayor we ever had and perhaps one of the greatest mayors in America.
November 22nd, 2011 at 1:50 pm
How many other cities had their own resort like we did with Camp Dearborn? While I don’t agree with being racist, I do agree that Mayor Hubbard did a lot for the people of this city. Especially the kids. No kids that I know of anywhere had it like we did growing up here. Especially in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s and I don’t think any kids will ever have it like that. He didn’t cut the kids programs to pay for an agenda that most citizens didn’t want. It seems like everything here was geared towards families and children. Love him or hate him you have to admit that he did things for the people of this city and had their best interest at heart.
November 24th, 2011 at 6:47 pm
Hubbard wasn’t a racist…When one of the first black families moved into the city, he had the police visit them every hour, all night long, just to be sure everything was OK.
November 27th, 2011 at 2:27 pm
Mr. Chami, I wish these ideas only existed in my head. I don’t know how you can deny the truth when it is played out every day in Dearborn. Read the comments of the ‘leaders’ who speak for the Muslim community which have appeared in local newspapers. The typical immigration pattern was being followed until the 80’s, as my Arab classmates at Fordson worked hard to be American. Now, kids in school report their Muslim classmates brag ‘I am Muslim, not American.’ The student at Fordson who was giving me a tour of the school acknowledged that she is told that the non-Muslims of Dearborn hate her. How is that a figment of my imagination?
November 11th, 2012 at 4:49 am
I take great offence to your statement and lack of respect for former Mayor Orville Hubbard and the city of Dearborn. I would never go into the Muslim cities and say there is no place in ANY society for the teaching of a pedophile. Therefore his book and legacy should be buried along with him. That would be disrespectful. We must remember to have respect for one another. The truth is, you cannot bury it. It will always be, because it is our history, Dearborn history. I sincerely apologize if I offended anyone of muslim belief or otherwise.