(Blogger's note: A certain reader in California has complained about all the snow pictures, so enough of that for awhile. Today's update is in text form, for a change, and it's not about snow.)
The Virginia who Outgave Santa Claus
By Janet Dagley Dagley
janetdd@optonline.net
It doesn’t seem right, somehow, to applaud as a life ends. But in this case we must make an exception, because I am not only clapping, I’m on my feet offering my own standing ovation to Virginia Weiffenbach Kettering, who died Monday at the age of 95.
What a life she had! What a person she was! And what a legacy she leaves! Bravo!
(Yes, I know I’ve just used up my exclamation-point quota for the year. But it’s for a very good cause.)
Virginia Kettering gave millions — approximately $150 million — to charity. She gave of herself, steadily, persistently, thoughtfully. And on a cold day in the fall of 1982, she graciously gave me just what I needed, just when I needed it.
Even if you never heard of her — and most people outside Dayton, Ohio, haven’t — you probably know the name “Kettering” from New York’s famed Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
http://www.mskcc.org
or possibly from the city of Kettering, a Dayton suburb named after Mrs. Kettering’s late father-in-law, Charles Kettering, whose invention of the electric self-starter gave the automobile age a jump start in the early 20th Century. Mr. Kettering was also the co-inventor of Freon, the “miracle compound” that makes your refrigerator refrigerate, and he was one of the founders of (and largest stockholders in) General Motors. Other Charles Kettering inventions include the electric cash register, the spark plug, leaded gasoline, quick-drying paint for automobiles, safety glass, the portable electric generator, four-wheel brakes, the automatic transmission, the electric railway gate, and the first synthetic aviation fuel. So the Kettering family did end up with some money from all that, one of the greatest fortunes in the nation at one time, and by the early 1970s, after the deaths of Charles in 1958, his son (and Virginia’s husband) Eugene in 1969, and their son Charles Kettering II in 1971, she became the guardian of that fortune.
At that point, she could have just coasted for the rest of her life. Theoretically, that is: anybody who ever encountered Virginia Kettering knows that while Charles Kettering invented the automobile self-starter, his son Eugene did him one better by marrying the human version. Mrs. Kettering put herself, and the family fortune, to work, becoming a spark plug that year after year tried to bring downtown Dayton back to life. While the spark did catch a time or two to get the city center’s engine going for awhile, it never seemed to last for long. I still visit downtown Dayton now and then when I’m in the area (Hi Mom!), and despite Mrs. Kettering’s efforts, the place always seems like a 3-D illustration of a neutron bombing: buildings intact, but no people.
Of course, those who’ve studied the situation academically and/or professionally can tell you that downtown Dayton, and the downtowns of most every mid-sized American city, became ghost towns in part because of the automobile age and the simple fact that even in a city whose farsighted planners made the streets extra-wide to allow even the largest horse-drawn wagon to turn around, parking all those automobiles was problematic. While educated professional journalists can argue all they want about whether it was ironic or coincidental that Mrs. Kettering used automobile money to try to solve a problem caused largely by automobiles, I prefer another overused word: karma.
Only some of Mrs. Kettering’s charitable contributions went to downtown Dayton; she also bet on other long shots, such as cancer treatment, or even what some consider unnecessary indulgences, such as the arts. Even before her husband’s death, the Ketterings gave sizable donations to create what are now two of the city’s best-known landmarks: the U.S. Air Force Museum, and the Kettering Tower, a 30-story version of that mysterious black rectangular object in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” And in subsequent years, Mrs. Kettering gave and gave again to preserve, restore and expand an existing landmark: the old Victoria Opera House. But she didn’t just pull out her checkbook whenever she saw a need. Mrs. Kettering wisely saw no point in saving that building single-handedly. Even as she gave, she continually challenged her community to give — and work — with her. When she used the word “we,” it was not out of some haughty sense of privilege. She meant “we,” because she wasn’t about to do it alone.
It’s a cliche, so of course you’ve heard it: Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he’ll be able to eat for a lifetime, and/or sit in a boat and drink beer all day. Contribute to a community by throwing checks around like lightning bolts, and you’ll get respect, even awe, but you won’t teach the community to do anything but beg. Challenge that community, as Virginia Kettering did, to renew and improve itself with your help, and you create something that just might keep going long after you and your money are gone.
In 1982, as a feature writer for the Dayton Daily News, I pulled the plum assignment of interviewing Mrs. Kettering for a Sunday magazine article. Not only did she agree to talk, but she invited me to her place for lunch. Several of my colleagues recommended that I trip and fall while on the property, so that I might get a share of the Kettering fortune myself. I laughed politely, but in truth I was quite nervous about sitting down for a meal with such a prominent and distinguished person. What to wear? What fork to use? What questions to ask? What if I spilled something on her, or myself? Then, a few hours before the interview, I was reading through the newspaper’s files on Mrs. Kettering when I ran across one small fact that put me at ease: she was born in Kentucky, just like the thousands of other Dayton-area residents who migrated from Appalachia in hopes of a better life in the big city. I wonder if anybody ever called her a briarhopper. Anyway, I figured that since she was from Kentucky, and I from Tennessee, we could communicate somehow.
I walked extra-carefully up the sidewalk and rang Mrs. Kettering’s door at the appointed time, and Robert, an older African-American gentleman who worked for her, answered the door, took my coat, and led me to Mrs. Kettering herself. She graciously explained that they were in the middle of some major cleaning, waving toward a stack of rolled-up rugs in the room behind her. “I hope you don’t mind; we’ll be having leftovers for lunch,” she said apologetically. The table was already set with silver and china and cloth napkins and soup, bread, and salad. Of course I didn’t mind leftovers.
I don’t remember what kind of soup it was, but it was delicious. And it was hot. As the steam from the soup, combined with the dust from the rug-cleaning, wafted up my nostrils, I began to sniffle, as discreetly as possible, but I could tell that before long I would need to blow my nose, or sneeze, or both. I reached for my pocket, hoping to find a tissue, only to realize the dress I’d chosen so carefully for the occasion had no pockets. I listened intently as Mrs. Kettering talked, nodding as appropriate, while my sniffles increased steadily in frequency and intensity. Finally, just as I was about to dab at my nose with the corner of one of Mrs. Kettering’s fine linen napkins — uncouth but better than letting my nose drip into the soup — she recognized my problem. “Robert, I’m afraid we’ve stirred up a lot of dust with our rug-cleaning. We need some tissues.” By the time she’d finished the sentence, he had the box on the table, and Mrs. Kettering pulled out a tissue and handed it to me just in time to catch the sneeze I could no longer hold back. And being the absolutely classy dame that she was, she took another tissue for herself and sneezed along with me.
A few weeks later, I was interviewing a young Dayton socialite on a completely different topic. She’d read the article I wrote about Mrs. Kettering, and I got around to telling her about the tissue incident. “I know just what you mean,” she said. “The first time I met her, it was at a big formal event, and I was rushing around getting ready, dealing with the kids, the baby sitter, putting on my dress and makeup. I couldn’t get the dress zipped all the way in back, and I was going to ask my husband to help but in my hurry I forgot all about it and just put my coat on over it. There we were at the event, standing there shaking hands with people, and Mrs. Kettering came up, put her arm around me and said, ‘Here, let me help you with that,' reaching around to zip my dress. I felt like I should be embarrassed but she was just so gracious that I couldn’t be.”
I don’t know what they’re going to put on her tombstone, but “Here, let me help you with that,” wouldn’t be a bad choice.
I left Dayton not long after that, and never encountered Mrs. Kettering again. I see by her obituary in the Dayton Daily News, written with the style and respect she deserved by my former colleague Ben Kline:
http://www.activedayton.com/ddn/obituary/daily/0219ketteringobit.html
that she was active and involved with the city until the end of her long life. Ben reports that her survivors include her two daughters, her daughter-in-law, nine grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren.
To that list I would make one small addition: ...and the city of Dayton, Ohio, which now must rise to Virginia Kettering’s challenge and go on without her.
Tissue, anyone?
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @11:16 AM
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19.2.03  |
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