“The days have been so full of action since we left Brazil the first of May that it truly seems only yesterday that we were having the pleasant meals we took together at the Jaragua,” Cross began, recalling an Olympic junket that had taken them both to São Paulo earlier in 1963. “Believe me, Avery, the Olympic fervor is profound and at high pitch here in Detroit. After all the years of my involvement since I began to work for Detroit with Fred Matthaei personally nearly 20 years ago, I must confess that I personally have never had my heart so set on our getting the games and I hope you agree that optimism that we will do so is warranted and not misplaced. Everyone here is keenly anticipating your visit on September 10th when there will be an opportunity to show you the many changes in the city and the splendid facilities existing and in prospect.”
“In prospect” was a reference to an Olympic stadium on the site of the Michigan State Fairgrounds that had not been built but had been authorized by the state legislature. In the world competition for the 1968 Summer Games, the fact that Detroit alone among the finalists did not yet have an adequate stadium was a possible point of vulnerability, one that Los Angeles had made much out of in its unsuccessful attempt to dislodge Detroit as the U.S. candidate. Cross needed Brundage to understand that the stadium was a reality, even if it did not physically exist, and to vouch for its inevitability he pointed out that Governor Romney had appointed him to the stadium commission overseeing its development. Cross thought of himself as a man of reliability and of Brundage as the epitome of Olympic purity, and the flattery flowed from there to pride in city and country: “I am looking forward to the day when I can stride into the stadium with you and up to the speaker’s platform to see you initiate the 1968 Olympiad and receive the signal honors that will be awarded you as a great American in your own country in the city of your birth because of your splendid lifetime contribution in your avocation of amateur sport.”
Cross was also deeply involved in Detroit civic affairs, serving on both Governor Romney’s state civil rights commission and Mayor Cavanagh’s community relations committee, where he supported the open-housing measures and was aware of the racial friction that issue was causing. His letter came several weeks before the Common Council defeated the Patrick-Ravitz open-occupancy bill, but there already had been intimations of trouble ahead no matter which way that vote went. But like Cavanagh in the afterglow of the Walk to Freedom, Cross insisted that Detroit was a model of civil rights, more advanced than other cities. “I also happen to be a member of the Governor’s civil rights commission under the new Michigan constitution and while you and I know of many of the difficulties in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and numerous other communities, I can say to you that we really have a fine, stable community here that is adjusting to the race problems in a very mature way,” Cross asserted. Then he closed his case: “I know that everyone on the IOC will be watching you and feeling you out for some sign of approval or disapproval of venue of the games at Detroit. I am sure you will give this approval in view of my assurances as I know that in the past you have entertained some doubts under the existing circumstances as to the ability of Detroit and other American cities to come through in the proper manner.” While he had no choice but to be in California that day, Cross said, Brundage could rest assured that “some of our top citizens will be greeting you on the 10th” in Detroit.
Brundage arrived at 10:37 on American Airlines flight 416 from Chicago. Waiting for him were Fred Matthaei Sr., the godfather of Detroit Olympic bids, and Douglas Roby, the Detroiter who held a top spot in the Olympics hierarchy as vice president of the U.S. Olympic Committee and was one of three American voting members on the IOC. The other two U.S. members were Brundage and John Jewett Garland of Los Angeles, a wealthy real estate magnate who had wanted L.A. to get the nomination. It was not without reason that Detroiters wondered whether Garland, the husband of an heir to the Los Angeles Times and the son of the man who brought the 1932 Olympics to L.A., would vote for them in the final round. In letters and conversations, he frequently expressed doubts about Detroit’s qualifications and chances. In an addendum to a recent note to Brundage, Garland had gossiped sarcastically about something he had heard from an old Detroit car guy while hanging out at the Bohemian Grove, the exclusive California campground retreat of the rich and famous in Northern California. “P.S. While at the Grove I heard K. T. Keller [former chairman of Chrysler] state that he thought the odds were 3 to 1 against Detroit winning the Games of 1968. I was tempted to ask him if he was quoting the odds in the ‘book’ Roby was making last fall—but refrained.” If Garland was no friend of Detroit, the support of Brundage would be even more essential.
First stop on the Detroit tour was Cobo Hall, the modern convention center, where Brundage was ensconced in the back of an electric golf cart and tooted around the vast riverfront facility that would serve as the hub of Olympic activities. Then he was taken to the Detroit Athletic Club for a luncheon with Mayor Cavanagh and Governor Romney and members of the Detroit Olympic Committee. Along with Roby and the Matthaeis, Jr. and Sr., the elite group included Benson and William Clay Ford, younger brothers of HF2; Walker Cisler, chairman of Detroit Edison; Martin S. Hayden, editor of the Detroit News; Jack Tompkins, vice president of American Airlines; Thomas B. Adams, president of Campbell-Ewald, the advertising agency for General Motors; the architect Louis Rossetti; and Alfred Glancy Jr., a real estate mogul who brought the Pontchartrain Hotel back to Detroit, had once been part owner of the Empire State Building in Manhattan, and was most proud of his world-class collection of miniature train sets that he brought out for parties at his mansion in Grosse Pointe Shores. Cavanagh opened the luncheon with greetings, praising Brundage as “a builder and a doer” and making a special point of introducing two black officials at the luncheon: Councilman Patrick and Alfred Pelham, the city controller. After lunch Cavanagh led Brundage on a helicopter tour of the city to get a bird’s-eye view of the various Olympic sites.
They hovered over Olympia Stadium, the old red barn, where boxing, wrestling, and basketball would be staged. Not a bad name for the site, though the Olympia, home to the Detroit Red Wings, had been around since 1927. Down to the left, near Wayne State University, was the future site of the Olympic Village. Below was the University of Detroit field house, another venue for indoor events, and over there the State Fairground race track, where the 100,000-seat Olympic stadium would rise. Back around toward Lake St. Clair and the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club, site of the sailing; Belle Isle and the Detroit Yacht Club and the calm waters that would serve for rowing; the Brodhead Armory on East Jefferson that was to be home to fencing and weight lifting; and on back to the roof of Cobo Hall. Brundage had to catch a 5:15 flight back to Chicago, and after a quick stop at Detroit Olympic Committee headquarters he rode with the Matthaeis, Roby, and Tompkins from downtown back to the airport.
Tompkins later sent an after-action report to Mayor Cavanagh detailing what he had heard during that ride and while hosting Brundage in the American Airlines Admirals Club lounge as they waited for the flight: “I have been working with Avery over twenty years in the Olympic effort and have never seen him as cordial, friendly and impressed with Detroit’s ability to handle the Olympics. He was extremely impressed with the new Spirit of Detroit, the new buildings and changes that are taking place and of course was particularly impressed with Cobo Hall.” Tompkins noted that Brundage, usually circumspect, even helped with Detroit’s strategy: “He pointed out the advantages that he felt we had and how we might exploit them in our presentation, as well as the disadvantages the U.S. has, mostly political, and suggested ways we might counteract these. To sum up, it was obvious that his visit here was extremely worthwhile and that we were successful in selling him on our sincerity and ability to get the job done. Several times he mentioned how much he appreciated the time you were able to spend with him at the Detroit Athletic Club and in the helicopter. He emphasized that he was very impressed with your enthusiasm, knowledge of the Olympic n
eeds and your desire for the games.” Tompkins closed by saying that he and his wife were about to leave on an extensive lobbying tour visiting IOC members in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Delhi, Karachi, Teheran, Beirut, Istanbul, Rome, and Paris, before finally reaching the German resort town of Baden-Baden, where the IOC would make its decision.
The Brundage visit sparked a renewed civic optimism. An oversized hardback book boosting Detroit had been sent out to all members of the IOC and various politicians around the world, including all of Romney’s gubernatorial colleagues, and rave reviews were coming back. With a color photograph of the Spirit of Detroit sculpture on the cover, the book showed the city at its world-class best: huge crowds goggling at new cars at the 1962 Detroit Auto Show at Cobo Hall; skyscrapers towering over the Detroit River, called “the world’s busiest waterway”; molten steel glowing in the Rouge plant; a roll call of world-famous Detroiters, including Henry Ford and Walter Reuther, Chrysler and Dodge, Yamasaki and Saarinen; a ball game at Tiger Stadium; JFK addressing a rally outside the Book Cadillac; couples dining at Mayor Cavanagh’s favorite haunt, the London Chop House; models and mannequins on display at the J. L. Hudson Company, the world’s tallest department store; students taking art lessons on the floor of the Detroit Institute of Arts; downtown glowing at night with the iconic red beacon defining the forty-seven-story Penobscot Building; and the Detroit Olympic Committee meeting in the City-County Building. Even Detroit’s American antagonists were impressed. “If you are as good at being governor as your booklet is in depicting Detroit, you are certainly great,” wrote Edmund G. Brown, governor of California. “That is the best book I have ever seen, and you and your people are entitled to a great deal of credit for it.”
After a chance airport lounge encounter Romney had with Con Donovan Jr., vice president of a publishing company that owned Sport magazine, Donovan visited with Tom Adams, the president of Detroit’s Campbell-Ewald advertising agency and a key member of the city’s Olympic committee, and afterward Sport hit the newsstands with a strong editorial on why such a great sports town deserved the Olympics: “Year in and year out, through good times and not such good times, sports fans turn out in large, enthusiastic numbers to support the Tiger baseball team, the Lion football team, their Red Wing hockey team. . . . People in Detroit and surrounding communities love their sports.” The Sunday edition of the Detroit News on September 15 ran a special section about “Olympic City,” making the case for how and why Detroit would be selected. The next day Cavanagh was at the White House where, at four in the afternoon, President Kennedy signed Joint Resolution 72, expressing Congress’s full support for Detroit. Brundage could not attend but sent along a positive note to Pierre Salinger, the president’s press secretary: “I have just returned from Detroit, where I met Mayor Cavanagh, Governor Romney and many of the leading citizens of that city who are behind the invitation. . . . We are impressed by the interest of President Kennedy and the administration in the Olympic Movement and I shall see that is reported to the Comité International Olympique at its meeting in Baden-Baden next month.” (French was the official language of the IOC, headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, and it was common for Brundage, who enjoyed playing the role of globetrotting cosmopolite, to refer to his organization by its French name.)
Of more practical importance to Cavanagh than the congressional resolution of support were two other actions in Washington during that visit. First, Attorney General Robert Kennedy dispatched a letter to IOC headquarters assuring that athletes from every Olympic nation—including some, like East Germany, that were not recognized by the United States—would be allowed entry to compete at the Games. Second, President Kennedy himself took time from his schedule to record a brief film segment the Detroit delegation would include in its Baden-Baden presentation. JFK performed his role flawlessly, though he certainly had other things on his mind. The day before, a bomb planted by members of the United Klans of America exploded under the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, a church that had served as a rallying station during the civil rights campaign there the previous spring. The explosion killed four young girls in a group of children who were walking to the basement for a youth sermon. One of the girls, eleven-year-old Denise McNair, was the niece of Detroit resident Matthew Pippins and his wife, who had now left their east side home on St. Aubin and were on their way to Birmingham for the funeral.
Detroit had tried to land the Olympics five times before, but never with the fervor of this effort. Did the Motor City have a legitimate chance, or were its leaders fooling themselves? The breadth of the lobbying campaign reflected their belief that their time was coming at last. Entertaining Brundage in Detroit, Tompkins lobbying around the globe, researchers compiling a dossier on every voting member of the IOC, local television stations staging telethons to raise money to finance the delegation’s presentation in Baden-Baden—nothing was left to chance. They even staged a torch relay, an event normally held from the previous Olympic city to the next. This time the torch would be carried from Los Angeles to Detroit, from 1932 to prospective 1968, called the longest relay run in history, some 2,521 miles. With Philip A. Hart, a U.S. senator from Michigan and member of the Detroit Olympic Committee, on hand, the relay began from the steps of Los Angeles City Hall at eleven on the morning of September 27 when Mayor Sam Yorty handed the two-pound butane-fueled torch to Jim Beatty, world record holder in the two-mile run. The route out of L.A. followed old Route 66 through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Illinois up to Chicago, then Route 12 and I-94 through Indiana and Michigan to Detroit, with hundreds of high school and college runners carrying the torch, along with a few wheezing journalists and politicians. The relay went day and night for thirteen days, accompanied by a caravan of six station wagons donated by Ford.
On October 11, the morning the relay reached Detroit, Olympic supporters gathered for a rally outside City Hall in front of the Spirit of Detroit, the twenty-six-foot bronze sculpture of a figure sitting cross-legged with arms outstretched receiving emanations from above. Many of the runners from the final day of the race were there. Mayor Cavanagh received the torch from the last runner, two weeks after the race had begun, surrounded by local politicians and members of the Detroit Olympic Committee. “Here before the Spirit of Detroit we witness the true spirit of the Olympic Games and the outstanding cooperation that has always been the hallmark of the American people,” Cavanagh said. “More than 300 people, young and old, have carried this torch, which symbolizes the unity of ideals and aspirations of all this nation’s people over a long and difficult 2,600 mile path to victory. . . . These Olympic torch bearers have done more than bring the hope and convictions of the nation to this city. They have presented those of us who will go to Baden-Baden with an object lesson and a challenge.”
As it happened, there was quite another challenge confronting Cavanagh and his Olympic tribe that morning. About fifty civil rights protesters, equal numbers black and white, attended the rally and booed and jeered and issued catcalls throughout the event. The protesters were expressing their displeasure at the city for the defeat three days earlier of the Patrick-Ravitz open-housing bill. All nine members of the council attended the rally, and the seven who voted against the measure were greeted with boos when their names were announced. So too was Cavanagh, even though he had come out in favor of the bill. Some jeers were heard during the playing of the National Anthem. When the rally was over, the protesters marched in front of City Hall carrying signs conveying the message that a city that denied equal rights did not deserve the Olympics. Cavanagh was outraged by what he considered the rudeness of the protesters in general and their behavior during “The Star-Spangled Banner” in particular. “The booing and catcalling and other disgusting antics during a playing of our National Anthem call for a public apology,” he said. “They owe it to the decent citizens of our city. Today’s small but frantic group by no means represents the thinking or attitudes of the citizens t
hey presume to represent. The runners of all races and creeds lived, ate, ran, and suffered hardships together. . . . They must have been shocked, as I was, to find at the end of their great endeavor such reprehensible conduct.”
Arthur Johnson, executive director of the Detroit chapter of the NAACP, said his organization did not sponsor the protest, although several members participated. “I don’t know of any good citizen who would approve booing during the singing of the National Anthem,” Johnson said. One of the protesters, David Feinberg, later wrote a letter to Cavanagh explaining his motivations.
Feinberg said he enlisted in the army in 1960 while attending Wayne State and served in the military three years. “One of the many facets of Communism I hate is the way the bosses expect that by giving material benefits to the people under their control the people will not think so much about freedom and equality,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, I feel that the people of Detroit have become so excited about the honor and the millions of dollars Detroit would receive from having the Olympics that they have forgotten there are large segments of our population that do not enjoy full equality of opportunity in jobs, education, or housing. It was in this spirit that I demonstrated Friday morning against the bringing of the Olympics to Detroit, even though it would probably be a tremendous economic boost to our city. For how much money are we to accept in order to forget about the Negro and white Americans who died fighting racists in World War II? I love America. I love the principles on which our country was founded. . . . When I returned home Friday afternoon I learned that the Star Spangled Banner had been drowned out by booing and catcalls. I myself heard no announcement that our National Anthem would be played. I therefore do not actually know whether or not I was booing during its playing. Let me make this quite clear: Had I known that our National Anthem was being played, I would have stood at attention and sang the words.”
Once in a Great City Page 27
