A Century of Bumbling

The decision was not rendered until after Cettie's death. Rockefeller, fearing further legal action from the county, waited five months before returning to bury her at Lake View Cemetery. His ire toward the city became as hardened as her tombstone.

At the time, the Cleveland Museum of Art was being constructed, and Rockefeller was courted for a contribution. Appalled by the city's capacity for extortion, he refused. "The way Cleveland dealt with him had long been a sore point with Rockefeller, who believed that no other town so regularly abused him," writes Ron Chernow, author of Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. "He thought the city ungrateful for Standard Oil's economic contribution and railed against low politicians."

In his lifetime, Rockefeller gave away $530 million, which in today's dollars would be more than 20 times that amount. Yet his hometown of Cleveland got little. Scholars estimate that he probably gave about $3 million to area schools, churches, and parks. "New York has always treated me more fairly than Cleveland, much more," he once said.

Writes Chernow: "How many New York hospitals, museums and churches would be enriched by Cleveland's blunder!"

Following Cettie's burial and the destruction of the Forest Hills mansion by fire, Western Reserve University asked Rockefeller for the land, so that the campus could be moved and expanded. He refused.

Ironically, the refusal came years after Rockefeller had approached another civic leader, J.L. Mather, who made his fortune in iron ore, and offered to help the same university, of which Mather was a patron. Rockefeller told Mather that the city needed a first-rate university, one that would be looked upon with the same respect as those in the East.

Mather disagreed. Fine Cleveland families sent their children to places like Yale, of course. There was no need to build a great university here. It would be wasted on working people.

Rockefeller went on to fund his dream by establishing the University of Chicago. Today, Case President Dr. Edward Hundert speaks of creating the "world's most powerful learning environment" out of the school and the surrounding institutions of University Circle, a century-old vision that Mather and his contemporaries dismissed.

Only in death did Rockefeller return to Cleveland, laid to rest beside his wife in Lakeside Cemetery, a place so deep in millionaires that if the net worth of souls could be taxed, the graves would have a greater property value than the entire county.

---

As Rockefeller flourished in New York, Alexander Winton was making a name for himself in Cleveland as the leading manufacturer of automobiles. In fact, the first recorded commercial sale of a car took place at the old Hollenden Hotel on Superior Avenue.

The Winton Motor Car Co. employed some 1,500 people and had branches in London, Toronto, and Honolulu. It produced more than 2,000 cars annually, and its founder was skilled at marketing through races and cross-country trips.

A few years ago, I was having a drink with a Winton descendant, who casually lamented that the old guy had not prospered enough to leave a sizable estate for future generations to enjoy.

"He probably did two things wrong," the guy said. "Women may have been a problem, and when Henry Ford wanted to come and work with him, Alexander thought he was a crackpot."

Historians are unsure whether or not Winton refused to hire Ford, but the two men certainly disagreed on the future of the automotive business.

Ford was convinced that the days of making cars by hand, as Winton did, were numbered. The automobile's future lay in mass production, which would enable the working class to afford cars -- a concept that would forever change America.

Winton, by contrast, believed that producing fewer cars would create a pent-up demand by the wealthy, enabling him to charge more for each vehicle. It was a strategy that ignored the buying power of the emerging working class.

By the 1920s, Winton had saturated the upscale market. Ford, meanwhile, was revolutionizing manufacturing and conquering America with his cheap cars. Cleveland had once again fallen victim to a civic leader's unwillingness to see the future. When a recession hit in 1924, Winton ceased production.

Today, the Ford name is celebrated globally. Winton Place, a condominium on the site of his former estate in Lakewood, is the lone memorial to a man who, for a brief and brilliant moment, held the future of the automobile in his hand.

---

Though Cleveland blew its chance to become the automotive center of the world, it had another meeting with destiny at the end of World War I, when it stood on the verge of becoming the nation's aviation capital.

In the summer of 1990, when Frederick C. Crawford was nearly 100 years old, I spent several days helping make a documentary of his life for NASA. He ran TRW for years. He was one of the principal reasons that the government built an aeronautical laboratory here in 1940.