Posts Tagged ‘Henry J. Kaiser’

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Laid-off shipyard workers dilemma: Should I stay or should I go?

posted on December 22, 2010

By Laura Thomas    

(Second of two articles)     

Lon Van Brunt Kaiser Richmond Shipyard worker 1945 from "Fore 'N Aft" newsletter

As the holiday season of 1945 approached, Kaiser shipyard workers faced an uncertain future on the West Coast. Interviews with workers in the “Fore ‘n’ Aft,” the Richmond shipyard newsletter, reflected some anxiety: “What do I think about the end of the war?” said laborer Lon Van Brunt. “Let’s study about that: I look for it to be hard times.”  

The local press reports, often tinged with sentimental hope, insisted that the Dust Bowl migrants were tossing mattresses back on their cars, packing up pots and pans and leaving wartime housing in droves.  

“Many couldn’t wait to get ‘back home’ after the war, but they found they didn’t like it back there anymore,” said native Richmond resident Marguerite Clausen in 1985 in an interview conducted with Judith Dunning for the Bancroft Library’s Regional Oral History Office. “They turned around and came back again. And they brought all their families with them.” *

Bernice Rarick, Portland shipyard worker, 1945, from "Bosn's Whistle" newsletter

Bernice Rarick, a Portland worker reflected that ambivalence when she told the “Bosn’s Whistle,” the northwest Kaiser shipyard newsletter, she was going right back to her ranch in Idaho yet wondered, “It doesn’t seem possible that everyone can go back to normal living again.”    

Transplants try to find their place    

The women were the first to go despite the fact that some 70 percent in a December 1944 Yard Two survey said they wanted to work. Black migrant workers also struggled to find new employment with the unemployment rate for black men in 1948 about 15 percent, three times the state average.    

“News came over that the contracts were cancelled, and that was it,” recalled Margaret Cathey who came from Iowa and worked as a welder. “You didn’t get two weeks notice or anything like that, no. You were just finished.” She was lucky because she found a job with the telephone company, anxious to hire women operators.    

A welder at the Kaiser shipyards, Willie Stokes earned $10 a day but, after the war, was only able to find unskilled labor at $6 and was unemployed by 1947. “One day you are an essential worker in a vital industry and the next you were a surplus unskilled laborer essential to no one,” he said in an article, “Willie Stokes at the Golden Gate,” by Cy W. Record published in “The Crisis Magazine,” June 1949.    

It took a while for many ex-shipyard workers to find their footing. In an article in “Salute Magazine” in June 1946, writer William Hogan called Richmond, “hangover town” because so many were still living there or had returned in hopes of finding work.    

Mostly from rural areas with ways that seemed backward, these workers and their families had been lifted out of poverty working for Henry Kaiser and were destined to prove themselves, especially to long-time Richmond residents.    

The Richmond Field Hospital continued to serve Permanente patients after the shipyards closed in 1946.

“I said, ‘Well, here these people are. They’re not going to leave here. This is Mecca,’ ” recalled Clifford Metz, a former Richmond school official who had insisted the notion that the migrants would go back was an illusion.    

“I think we went down maybe ten or fifteen thousand people in a short time. Most of them, well, they had learned that they liked it here. Some of them, with the money they had, they could invest. They were not unintelligent people.”    

Selena Foster, who came from Fort Worth, Texas, in early 1944, and her husband, Marvin, were among those with that precise idea.  “My husband said to me, ‘We have no home to go back to.’ We had a little money and we found property was fairly reasonable if you could find something to buy,” she said in 1992.    

The Fosters did make a trip back to East Texas in a shiny new car that made quite an impression on their family, but they returned to Richmond and within months had bought a home on Hoffman Boulevard and 29th Street, one of the first African-American families to do so after the war.    

The uncertainty of that holiday period 65 years ago was soon eased by a postwar economic boom in both the Bay Area and the Northwest. The upturn raised the fortunes of many who arrived back then with little but hope. Over the decades they have become woven inextricably into the cultural fabric of both regions.    

*Marguerite Clausen, “A World War II Journey: From Clarkesdale, Mississippi, to Richmond, California, 1942,” an oral history conducted in 1985 by Judith K. Dunning, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1992.

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End of war: happier holidays but uncertain future for workers

posted on December 18, 2010

By Laura Thomas

(First of two articles)

Happy people around the world celebrated the end of World War II in 1945. Meanwhile, workers at shipyards across the country were losing their jobs.

Christmas 1945 was undoubtedly the happiest Americans had known since 1940, the year before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Japanese surrender in August closed the final chapter of World War II and meant the return of loved ones serving overseas and the hope that normal life would resume.

But it was not entirely clear what that would mean for tens of thousands of shipyard workers in California, Oregon and Washington whose lives were irreversibly changed by their trek westward to work for Henry Kaiser. Would their lives ever be normal again?

From a height of 93,000 employees in the Richmond shipyards in 1943, the total spiraled downward in 1945 as the contracts were cancelled, with 40,000 workers in March dropping to 16,000 by the end of September.

In the Northwest, where Kaiser had yards in Portland and Vancouver, Wash., the cutbacks were sudden. From January to December, employment fell from 90,000 to just above 10,000.

After three years of hard-driving work fueled by a strong sense of mission and new experiences, many, especially the women and black workers, were once again jobless and possibly a little disoriented.

Vancouver worker Chauncey Del French describes the last day on the job in November for the paint crews who “took off like so many flushed quail to their locker room…a half-hour later, the ‘painters’ parade’ started up the dock.

“Men and women, arm in arm, sang Auld Lang Syne in the rain. They had their honorable discharge papers and were going to collect their ‘rocking chair money’ and live the life of Riley,” French wrote in his book “Waging War on the Homefront.”

Workers in the Northwest were told to grab farm labor work with 9,000 jobs available picking pole beans. “Highest wages ever received in Oregon by farm workers are being paid out this year,” stated an article in the “Bosn’s Whistle,” the shipyard newsletter, which noted they would be displacing Mexican workers who had been brought in to do the picking during the war.

The Marine Phoenix was the last troopship built in the Kaiser Shipyards in Vancouver, Washington.

Henry Kaiser relentless in pursuing postwar contracts

Meanwhile Kaiser said he “was determined to keep the job level at Richmond shipyards at the highest possible point” as he anticipated rail car and dry dock contracts. He also labored to get repair contracts and to attract work building ships for the Merchant Marine. Despite the major lobbying by Kaiser’s top officials motivated by concern for the workers, the U.S. Maritime Commission closed Richmond’s and Portland’s yards in 1946 and 1947.

No doubt what had Kaiser worried was news in his own press. “Fore ‘n’ Aft,” the newsletter for the Richmond yards, reported a survey of Yard Two workers in December 1944 that showed 63 percent of the out-of-state workers wanted to stay in California.

Yet, in 1945, many started to move to better jobs or – as contracts disappeared and layoffs began amidst some predictions of mass unemployment – started to head home. They also faced loss of the medical care provided by the Permanente Health Plan and the much-touted child care program that Kaiser had helped to start with the Richmond schools.

As the number of health plan enrollees in the shipyards dropped, Kaiser Permanente was invited to provide care for Vallejo residents of eight large wartime public housing dormitories and, in July, its first attempt to extend prepaid medical care to the general public was under way.

But other services that eased the burden of these dislocated workers disappeared rather quickly. Richmond hesitated to step into the breach, with some hoping that cutting back on services and beginning to tear out wartime housing would prompt the workers to leave. And many did leave, but, as it turns out, not for long. 

Next time: Laid-off shipyard worker dilemma: Should I stay or should I go?

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Kaiser-built 1954 sports car delights today’s collectors

posted on November 15, 2010
1954 Kaiser-Darrin donated to Oakland Museum by retired KP pediatrician Ed Schoen

By Ginny McPartland

When Henry J. Kaiser went into the car manufacturing business in the late 40s, he had big ideas, as he did in all his ventures.  Unlike his many successful start-ups – the most notable legacy being Kaiser Permanente – his foray into the automotive business seemed a failure at the time. He went on to make a success in producing Jeeps, but the economy sedans (the Henry J), luxury and family cars (Manhattan and Special), and the sporty, two-seater Kaiser-Darrin were no longer manufactured after 1954. The small Kaiser Motors Corporation had lost out to the big three: Ford, General Motors and Chrysler.

The happy part of this story is about the Kaiser-Darrin, which is living a charmed life today in the hands of avid collectors.  Earlier this year, a “supercharged,” red Kaiser-Darrin garnered a handsome $220,000 in a classic-car auction in Scottsdale, Arizona. Other Darrins have sold in recent years for $100,000 to $176,000 at the same auction.

One of the first American sports cars, the Darrin has a fiberglass body, sliding doors that disappear into the fenders, a three-position soft top, bucket seats, and a low center of gravity good for cornering. Only manufactured in 1954, the Kaiser-Darrin came in four classy colors –yellow satin, cream, red and light green. To date, only 80 or so widely scattered examples of the Darrin have escaped the junk heap.

Famed automobile designer-to-the-stars Howard “Dutch” Darrin, an on-and-off Henry Kaiser collaborator, developed the prototype of the fiberglass-body beauty on his own and unveiled it to Henry Kaiser as a fait compli. Henry Kaiser was not pleased. He is reputed to have told Darrin the idea was scatter-brained.  But Kaiser warmed up to the idea when his second wife, Alyce “Ale,” piped up: “Oh Henry, it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” 

Kaiser agreed to produce 435 of the stunning vehicle that turned out to vie with the 1954-released Ford Thunderbird and the 1953 and later Chevrolet Corvettes.  These sports cars were America’s answer to British models, such as the Jaguar produced as early as 1948. The Kaiser-Darrin and the Chevy Corvette compete for bragging rights for the first fiberglass body – the Darrin prototype was developed in 1952, and the Chevy Corvette was first shown and produced in 1953.

1954 Kaiser Motors Corporation sales brochure

Fifty to 100 unsold Darrins, touted in the sales brochure as the “the sports car America has been waiting for,” were reportedly left in a forgotten snowy lot in Willow Run, Michigan, during the winter of 1954-1955. Darrin, whose heart was in the Kaiser-Darrin, later bought the abandoned roadsters from Kaiser. He put them in saleable condition and souped up many of them with Cadillac V-8 engines.  A Willys Jeep 6-cyclinder engine was standard in the Darrins produced by Kaiser.

Permanente physicians drive Kaiser cars

The story of the Kaiser automobile intersects early on with the Kaiser Permanente saga.  As a perk of the job, Permanente physicians were given a Kaiser car to drive to work and for their personal use. In the days before 1952, doctors used the company car to make house calls ($5 per visit). The physicians had a choice of vehicles; most chose one of the sedans. But Ed Schoen, MD, a pediatrician who joined KP in 1954, saw the Darrin as an apt ride for a bachelor relocating from Boston to the San Francisco Bay Area.

Schoen had followed fellow resident and friend Cliff Uyeda to San Francisco where Uyeda was a KP pediatrician. Schoen joined KP in Oakland where he worked for 49 years, the longest tenure of any KP doctor. He became chief of pediatrics at the Oakland Medical Center in 1966 and regional director of newborn screening in 1990 before retiring in 2003.

Kaiser-Darrin postage stamp 2005

When the auto manufacturing venture ended in 1955, Kaiser offered to sell the cars to the doctors at bargain prices. The Darrin had originally retailed for $3,600. Schoen got his with 6,000 miles on it for $900. He would drive the unusual sports car exclusively for the next eight years, and he got a lot of attention driving around town. “People used to follow me home from work and ask me, ‘what is it?’” Schoen related. And as a bachelor, Schoen found that girls fancied a ride in the Darrin.

After meeting his wife, Fritzi, who came to the U.S. from Austria in 1958, Schoen took her many places in his cream-colored convertible. “I courted her in that car. . . She liked it,” he said. Ed and Fritzi married in 1960, and it wasn’t long before the Darrin was no longer practical. A daughter, Melissa, was born in 1963, and son Eric came along in 1968.

But Schoen kept the car and drove it to work for many years.  In recent years, he had it restored and preserved it in his garage. He entered it in car shows and won a couple of prizes competing with Ford T-birds and Chevy Corvettes. He also loaned the car for the 50th anniversary of Kaiser Permanente Vallejo and for display during another KP event in Oakland at Mosswood Park. The Darrin was never neglected:  Schoen took it out for a spin almost every weekend.

Rarity has its rewards

After owning the car for almost 50 years, Schoen donated his Darrin to the Oakland Museum in 2004 for the Henry J. Kaiser “Thing Big” exhibit. The Darrin was shown along with a 1953 Henry J Corsair Sedan in the ambitious exhibit that covered Kaiser’s amazing life as a 20th century industrialist and co-founder with Sidney R. Garfield, MD, of the Kaiser Permanente health plan. Today, Schoen’s Darrin is in storage awaiting a new venue.

Schoen was interested to learn about the high bids cast for the $220,000 Darrin in the 2010 Barrett-Jackson auction in Scottsdale. “When I donated mine in 2004 to the museum, it was appraised at $60,000 to $75,000,” he related.  He also noted the differences between his car and the one on the auction block. “The original Darrins did not have supercharged engines. Mine just had the 6-cylinder Willys Jeep engine . . . it was not a high performance car.”

To see a Kaiser-Darrin in action, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBtuXBVBPMY

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Hawaii: Not your garden variety paradise

posted on October 7, 2010

By Ginny McPartland

To most outsiders, Hawaii is that far-off paradise where people go for that well-deserved rest and recreation. They come back tan and relaxed, and everyone is green with envy. To be sure, the Hawaiian Islands offer plenty for the casual visitor. But to the residents, it isn’t just about gargantuan waves and potent Mai Tai’s.

Hawaiians have to worry about the same things mainlanders worry about: a livelihood, a good future for their children, and quality health care. Lucky for them, taking good care of patients is top of mind for physicians in the Hawaii Permanente Medical Group. On a recent trip to Honolulu, I witnessed their determination first hand.

HPMG President Geoff Sewell MD and Heritage Director Tom Debley discuss KP history during a 50th anniversary event.

Although in a partying mood (they’re celebrating 50 years as a medical group in Hawaii), Permanente doctors focused on issues during a party/seminar in Honolulu. What have they done right in the past five decades? And what do they need to do differently – better – in the future?

Overcoming a tough situation

The Hawaii Permanente Medical Group staffed the second launching of Kaiser Permanente in Hawaii. In 1958, Henry J. Kaiser had built a 143-bed hospital in Waikiki and had hired a group of doctors who had other interests as well. In 1960, Kaiser realized that the doctors needed to serve the KP membership exclusively for the partnership to work. He then asked The Permanente Medical Group in California to help set up a new group.  Headed by Phillip Chu, MD, the reconfigured medical group began providing for Hawaii members in August of 1960. 

The 1960s was a difficult time for Permanente physicians, indeed for all group practice doctors. Across the country, traditional medical societies resisted prepaid group practice claiming it was “unethical” and denied patients choice of physicians. The hostile physicians denied hospital privileges and medical society membership to group practice physicians, and at times labeled the new care delivery method as “socialist” and its product “inferior.”

Undaunted, the Hawaii Permanente physicians persevered. They set out to prove their detractors wrong.  In 1969, the Hawaii region participated in a study conducted by the Hawaii Medical Association and the University of Michigan that showed KP hospital care to be above average in the state. Later, in 1977, the results of a University of Michigan quality of care study showed Hawaii Permanente Medical Group doctors to be well above the average among Hawaiian physicians. A total of 454 Oahu physicians in 18 specialties, including 42 Permanente physicians, participated in the study.

Quality a major focus

As early as 1969, the Hawaii region had established its own ongoing medical audit system. In 1971, the region received a federal grant to set up an experimental four-year program to monitor inpatient care. Later, Hawaii medical staff developed methods for monitoring outpatient care for all the Kaiser Permanente regions.

Not only was the Hawaii staff distinguishing itself in quality of care, but they were also participating in government programs to reach out and help the poor of its communities. The group participated in a federal Medicaid program in 1971 to care for 500 indigent families on Oahu and later expanded the program to Maui. Other community outreach programs followed.

Perhaps the ultimate community outreach program was launched in Hawaii last year when Kaiser Permanente started a high-tech mobile service on the Big Island. The 500-square-foot exam unit on wheels brings care and preventive screenings to thousands of KP members and to the uninsured in the community.  The van is equipped with digital mammography equipment and is connected to Kaiser Permanente’s comprehensive electronic health record system.

Doing fine now, thank you very much

Fifty years after its founding, Kaiser Permanente Hawaii is thriving. With 430 physicians, 4,400 employees, almost 224,000 members, 278 critical care hospital beds, and 17 outpatient clinics on three islands, the region has established itself as an organization bent on excellence and community service. In the past year, Kaiser Permanente Hawaii has received these designations:

– Highest-rated private health insurance plan in Hawaii (National Committee on Quality Assurance, NCQA, 2009)

–Number 1 Medicaid plan in the nation (US. News & World Report, 2010)

–Highest-rated health plan in the U.S. for breast cancer screening (NCQA, 2009)

–Highest accreditation rating of “excellence of quality and service (NCQA, 2009). Hawaii has earned this rating every year since the NCQA began rating health plans in 1999.

Henry J. Kaiser’s big Hawaii plans honored

View an early Hawaii KP patient could wake to.

Henry Kaiser’s flamboyant entrée into the Hawaii health care scene in 1958 eventually dovetailed beautifully into the Hawaii Permanente Medical Group’s plans. In celebrating its jubilee, the group staged a key event at the Hawaii Prince Hotel on Waikiki, the site of Kaiser’s first Hawaii hospital. Located adjacent to the Ala Wai Boat Harbor, Kaiser Permanente’s early patients awoke to beautiful tropical sunrises and drifted off to dramatic sunsets.

In 1986, the old hospital was blown up in a public spectacle that became part of an episode of the celebrated television series of the time, “Magnum, P. I.” starring Tom Selleck. The implosion made way for the new hotel, and Kaiser Permanente built a new, modern hospital on Moanalua Road north of Honolulu. This is the site of the Hawaii region Moanalua Medical Center and Clinic where construction is under way to expand and improve services.

Front view of the Hawaiian Village hotel built by Henry J. Kaiser in 1955

Meanwhile, just around the corner in Waikiki, Henry J. Kaiser had built his Kaiser Hawaiian Village, a uniquely designed resort that is now the Hilton Hawaiian Village. Kaiser showed his respect for the indigenous population by designing the villages to represent  the culture of the hotel’s surroundings. He employed Hawaiian Samoans to come to the resort site and hand-build the guest cottages. These craftsmen actually wove coconut fronds into thatching. To honor Henry Kaiser, the resort has created museum-like public displays telling the story of his Hawaiian feats.

Today, the Hilton resort also hosts the Bishop Museum Collection, a satellite museum that gives visitors a taste of the original Hawaii. The main Bishop Museum, recently restored and with a new science building, is the largest museum in the state and the premier natural and cultural history institution in the Pacific. The museum is located in Honolulu off the beaten tourist path.

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Historic Ceremony in Kaiser Foundation School of Nursing History Made News 60 Years Ago

posted on July 29, 2010

By Tom Debley
Director of Heritage Resources

Sixty years ago this week, seniors from the first graduating class of the Kaiser Foundation School of Nursing passed the torch to the junior class in a capping and candle lighting ceremony reported in the local newspaper, the Oakland Tribune.

The school was dear to the hearts of industrialist Henry J. Kaiser and his wife, Bess, who established the Permanente Foundation Health Plan (later renamed Kaiser) at the beginning of World War II. Its founding purpose was to provide funds for medical research and educational and community service programs in addition to creating Kaiser Permanente.

Mr. and Mrs. Kaiser personally presented the diplomas to the nursing school graduates in 1950.

Henry and Bess Kaiser, left, at first graduation of nurses from the Kaiser Foundation School of Nursing in 1950.

Bess Kaiser died in 1951, and the honor guard at her funeral service was made up nurses from the nursing school.

Kaiser sent each member of that honor guard a St. Christopher Medal and a hand written note that read, in part, “…The Honor Guard service was a most beautiful thing and…it gave me strength and courage… Mrs. Kaiser would want to wish you that health and safety may always accompany you and she will be happy knowing that you can have the blessing of this St. Christopher Medal.”

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Launch of the S.S. Multnomah Tanker, One of Kaiser’s Last Ships, Was 65 Years Ago This 4th of July Weekend

posted on July 2, 2010

By Tom Debley
Director of Heritage Resources

Sixty-five years ago this 4th of July weekend, World War II was drawing to close and one of the last of the Kaiser-built ships for the war, the SS Multnomah, was launched in Portland, Oregon.

Henry J. Kaiser, who had witnessed his boyhood hero Teddy Roosevelt as the trust-busting President fighting monopolistic business practices, had lived through the Great Depression and he had a vision of a better post-war America.

“If we re-build a world of monopoly and special privilege, we will taste a defeat as bitter as a victory for the Axis powers,” he once said during World War II. “Our task and our hope is to release our energies for creative effort. …It is now our portion to be better-fed, better-housed, better-clothed, better-skilled in all the arts of production than at any time in the history of mankind. It is now our lot to enjoy better health…”

It was for visions like this that Kaiser, whose desire for better health for all Americans became Kaiser Permanente, led a heroic civilian production army of Kaiser employees who set records in shipbuilding never matched before or since.

So we thought it would be a good Fourth of July moment to let you relive those times by bringing you, from our Heritage Archive, a recording of the launch of the SS Multnomah, a tanker named for the county where the main city is Portland, on July 3, 1945 – 65 years ago Saturday.

The Multnomah was among the last of the Kaiser ships launched from his Oregon shipyards.

Launch of the SS Multnomah

Click on left side triangle to listen.

This photo is of the SS Multnomah under her second name, the Esso Worcester, sailing as a privately owned oil tanker.

Click on the bar to hear the launch of the SS Multnomah from the Swan Island Shipyard by Mrs. Martin Pratt, who was the wife of the Multnomah County sheriff. You will hear the crack of the champagne bottle and a shipyard workers quartet, the Singing Sentinels, singing Anchor’s Away as the Multnomah slides into the Willamette River.

Typical launch of a Kaiser ship in Oregon during World War II is show, this being the Liberty Ship William Clark. The steel plate aloft is the keel plate for the next ship to be built, the plates being lowered into place as the just launched ship hit the water.

The SS Multnomah went into private shipping after the war as an oil tanker. It was renamed the Esso Worcester in 1947, the Hess Refiner in 1961 and the Pieces in 1976. The ship was scrapped in Taiwan in 1984 after 39 years service.

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Henry Kaiser’s Respect for People of All Races Dates from African-American Worker Who Was One of First Employees Ever Hired

posted on June 15, 2010

By Tom Debley
Director of Heritage Resources

“Tote! Tote!”

Little Edgar Kaiser, 5, would call out to a gregarious black laborer named James A. Shaw with those words.

Jimmy Shaw would hoist the lad up onto his shoulders and carry the boy, all the while raking asphalt on a road-building project for Edgar’s father, Henry J. Kaiser.

The year was 1913. The site was a work camp where the toddler would often live, sleeping in a car or a tent, with his parents, Henry and Bess Kaiser. Little Edgar’s affection for riding on Shaw’s shoulders, calling out “Tote, Tote!” when he’d see Shaw, earned Jimmy the nickname “Tote,” or sometimes “Totem,” for the rest of his life.

"Totem" Shaw is seen in an undated photograph after his retirement in Fontana, Calif. (Photo courtesy of John Charles Anicic Jr., author of "Images of America: Kaiser Steel Fontana," Acadia Publishing, 2006.)

This was in the early years of Henry Kaiser’s fledgling road-building business—long before he became the great 20th century industrialist who gained fame building highways, dams, and World War II ships.

And Totem Shaw’s story, as recorded in historic archives, helps shed light on both Henry and Edgar Kaiser’s later reputations as businessmen who understood the value of workforce diversity and, in their personal lives, moved beyond racial divides decades before the rest of the country.

Born in 1879, Shaw was not quite two years older than Henry J. and represents the earliest documented friendship between the Kaisers and a person of African heritage. Shaw’s is a powerful story that helps explain why Henry Kaiser was open to hiring minority workers.

Shaw was Kaiser’s first black employee, hired several years before Kaiser even formed his own company. He actually was hired by A. B. Ordway, Kaiser’s very first employee, when they were working for another company paving part of Post Street in Spokane, Wash., about 1909. Kaiser was general superintendent and Ordway was foreman.

One day Shaw walked up to the Post Street paving gang and asked Ordway for a job. According to Gordon Barteau, a Portland Oregonian newspaper reporter who wrote a profile of Shaw in 1943, “Ordway sized Tote up and said he thought Tote looked kind of runty for a job like that.”

In a style reminiscent of Kaiser himself, Shaw offered to work for free for a week on trial.

“Well … the first day he wore out two men and the next day Ordway told him he was on the payroll,” the Oregonian reported.

“Tote” worked in a variety of jobs on just about every big Kaiser project – from road building in Cuba to the Grand Coulee Dam, the Vancouver Shipyards in World War II, and the Kaiser steel mill in Fontana, Calif., before he retired. It was during the war years in Vancouver, according to Barteau’s article, that whenever Henry Kaiser “comes to town he always looks up Tote and they hash over the old days.”

Clearly, it was Shaw’s relationship with Edgar and his ability as a skilled laborer with problem-solving skills that made him a lifelong, unforgettable friend of Henry Kaiser.

During construction of the original Highway 99 between Redding and Red Bluff in Northern California, in 1921, Kaiser was having trouble keeping a muddy detour open. He’d sent in a work crew of six men, and they had failed.

Kaiser summoned Shaw. “Tote,” he said, “every truck on the job is stuck in the mud. …You go down there and see what you can do.”

Shaw grabbed an axe, a pick, and a shovel. In short order, he had all of the trucks out of the mud and running.

“How did you do it?” Kaiser asked him.

“Mr. Kaiser,” he replied, “when you do things, you mixes brains and money. Well, sir, I mixes mud and brains.”

“Kaiser loved the phrase,” wrote one of his biographers, Mark Foster. “It became a company slogan.”

Shaw lived his final years in Fontana. They had a big party for him when turned 85 in 1964. In addition to cards, gifts, and a huge birthday cake, a teletype arrived from the giant Kaiser Industries headquarters in Oakland—birthday greetings from A. B. Ordway, who had known “Tote” since the day he had walked up to Ordway on Post Street in Spokane and asked for a job.

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As World War II ended 65 years ago, Henry J. Kaiser Led the National Drive to Collect Millions of Pounds of Clothes for Overseas War Relief

posted on May 26, 2010

By Tom Debley
Director of Heritage Resources

Sixty-five years ago Friday, May 28, the New York Times reported that Henry J. Kaiser, as national chairman of the United National Clothing Collection, had announced that more than 125 million pounds had been gathered on the way to a 150-million-pound goal for overseas war relief.

It was a momentous time as America prepared for the first Memorial Day following Germany’s unconditional surrender—VE Day—less than three weeks earlier and the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt only six weeks earlier.

In an example of Henry Kaiser’s spirit of supporting the social needs of people, he had agreed in January to chair the clothing drive at the request of President Roosevelt.

Said the President in a Jan. 22 letter to Kaiser: “…As many war victims have died from exposure and a lack of adequate clothing as have died from starvation… The importance of the cause demands a leader who will stimulate thousands of our people throughout the land to give vast amounts of volunteer service, as well as inspire all Americans everywhere to contribute all the clothing they can spare. I am confident your personal leadership will command the nationwide cooperation needed for success…”

Henry Kaiser had never led such a national campaign before, but took up the cause with the same gusto with which he had built ships for the war, and which had earned him nicknames as the “can-do” industrialist and the “patriot in pinstripes.”

There is enough spare clothing in America’s clothes closets and attics,” he said, “to go far toward relieving the stress of these innocent people.”

By a mid-March kick-off, Kaiser had 2,500 volunteer local chair people lined up on his way to 7,600 for the drive. The goal was surpassed with a total of 150,366,014 pounds of used clothes, shoes and bedding shipped overseas.

Clothing drive poster was used nationwide in Henry Kaiser-led overseas war relief effort.

As if that were not enough, Kaiser repeated the feat after VJ Day— the surrender of Japan on Aug. 14, 1945.

World War II was finally over and Kaiser this time responded to a request from President Harry Truman.

The sponsoring agency for both volunteer drives was the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which had been formed by participating World War II allied nations. It was disbanded after the war, with its functions transferred to agencies of the newly formed United Nations, establishment of which had been supported by Kaiser.

By example, Kaiser further embedded into his organizations a spirit of service to the common good that continues to this day within his lasting legacy, Kaiser Permanente, co-founded with surgeon Sidney R. Garfield and open to the public in October 1945.

As one of his biographers, Albert P. Heiner, summed it up: “…Once again, Kaiser had proved he was more than an exciting industrialist, he was a man with a heart.”

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In Memory of Lena Horne & Launch of the SS George Washington Carver Liberty Ship

posted on May 10, 2010

By Tom Debley
Director of Heritage Resources

Singer Lena Horne prepares to launch the SS George Washington Carver on May 7, 1943 at Kaiser Shipyard No. 1 in Richmond, Calif. This photograph was taken by African American Photographer E. F. Joseph for the Office of War Information.

This week we pay tribute to the great jazz singer Lena Horne, who died Sunday, May 9, at the age of 92.

What’s her connection to Kaiser Permanente? Sixty-seven years ago, on May 7, 1943, Lena Horne broke a bottle of champagne across the bow to launch the SS George Washington Carver, a brand new Liberty ship built in Henry J. Kaiser’s legendary World War II shipyards in Richmond, Calif.

She was proudly representing the more than 7,000 African American shipyard workers — 1,000 of them female “Rosie the Riveters” — and all of whom received their health care from the medical care program that would become Kaiser Permanente after the war.

Their story is part of Kaiser Permanente’s long and proud history of ethnic and cultural diversity.

The SS George Washington Carver was the first Kaiser-built Liberty ship to be named for a famous African American, and many of the men and women who built it were African Americans.

Anna Bland, a burner, is shown at work on the SS George Washington Carver as it was being rushed to completion in the spring of 1943. Photograph by E. F. Joseph for the Office of War Information.

Carver, you will recall, was the scientist, botanist, educator, and inventor who had died only four months earlier in 1943. Who better to christen her on her maiden voyage than one of America’s most admired  and talented African American women?

Also on hand that day was a well-known African American photographer, E. F. Joseph, who recorded the event for the Office of War Information.

The ship was initially assigned by the War Shipping Administration (WSA) to the American South African Line, Inc. for merchant service. But in November 1943 the ship was turned over to the United States Army and converted to the Hospital Ship Dogwood.

In January 1946, the ship was again converted to carry a combination of troops and military dependents as the USAT George Washington Carver before retiring to National Defense Reserve Fleet.  It was sold for scrap in 1964.

Today, the story of these African American workers, the SS George Washington Carver, and its launch by Lena Horne is one of the legacy stories of the Home Front that is part of the history that is shared in the Rosie the Riveter / World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, Calif.

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Henry J. Kaiser: America’s No. 1 Civilian Hero

posted on April 13, 2010

By Tom Debley, Director, Heritage Resources

Henry J. Kaiser was featured as "Shipbuilder No. 1" in a 1943 Real Heroes comic book.

Sixty-five years ago this year Henry J. Kaiser emerged on the American scene as the single most popular civilian hero of World War II, which came to an end in 1945.

It was a Roper Poll that spring that reported that—in the words of Stephen B. Adams, author of “Mr. Kaiser goes to Washington”—the American public “believed Kaiser had done more to help the president win the war than any other civilian.”

A Gallup Poll a few months later found Kaiser at the top of the list of people Americans thought should be president—with Kaiser trailing only Generals Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower. It is no surprise, then, that Kaiser was on President Roosevelt’s short list for vice president when he chose Harry Truman in the election of 1944.

Why not Kaiser? One answer comes from Michael Dobrin, guest curator of a special exhibit on Kaiser’s life at the Oakland Museum of California in 2004, who concluded Kaiser was too progressive for Democratic Party leaders.

“…Conservative party insiders—probably sensing coming postwar struggles over civil rights—balked at his overt advocacy of voter education, voters’ rights and support for unions,” Dobrin wrote in The Museum of California Magazine. “His name was dropped from the list.”

The public’s admiration for Henry Kaiser—whose most enduring legacy is co-founding with surgeon Sidney R. Garfield the medical care program that bears his name—lasted up to and beyond the end of his life in 1967. Indeed, he was so beloved that when he died in 1967 mourners flooded his memorial service with more than 20,000 white and red roses – said to be the entire supply of all florists in the San Francisco Bay Area. This was in addition to thousands of orchids and other flora from people in the Hawaiian Islands.

As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in condolences sent to Kaiser’s family, “Henry J. Kaiser embodied in his own career all that has been best in our country’s tradition. His own energy, imagination and determination gave him greatness—and he used that greatness to give unflaggingly for the betterment of his country and his fellow man.”

Today, of course, his efforts—and the legendary labor of almost a quarter million men and women of all races who worked for him in his West Coast ship building operations—are honored by the Rosie the Riveter / World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, Calif., which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.

In addition, the newly renovated Oakland Museum of California will reopen May 1 with its first major redo in nearly 40 years. Its completely new Gallery of California History will include Henry J. Kaiser. According to the museum, the theme of the gallery will be Coming to California—“an idea that evokes not only the arrivals and departures of people throughout human history and their interactions with the inhabitants already here, but also the notion of coming to terms with the influence of California on our individual and collective identities.”

Late last year, Kaiser also was inducted into the California Hall of Fame and is featured in an exhibit at The California Museum  in Sacramento.

Interested in learning more about Henry J. Kaiser? Here are three good books, any one of which you might find in a local library (or for sale online):

“Henry J. Kaiser: Builder in the Modern American West,” Mark S. Foster, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, 1991.

“Henry J. Kaiser: Western Colossus,” Albert P. Heiner, Halo Books, San Francisco, Calif., 1991.

“Mr. Kaiser Goes to Washington, The Rise of a Government Entrepreneur,” Stephen B. Adams, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1997.

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