Posts Tagged ‘Henry Kaiser’

‘Aloha’ Symbolizes Kaiser Permanente’s Entry into Post-war America

posted on July 27, 2010

By Tom Debley

Front and back covers of launch program for the S.S. Burbank Victory, July 28, 1945 (Courtesy of the National Park Service, Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park, Launching Program, RORI 3169)

Director of Heritage Resources

The world was changing dramatically 65 years ago this week. The war in Europe was over, and Japan would surrender within a few weeks. In Richmond, Calif., the last Victory ship built in the Kaiser Shipyards was readied for launch on July 28. Above the ship, the S.S. Burbank, the word ‘Aloha’ in giant letters was suspended between two cranes.

An orchestra played Hawaiian music, guests wore leis made from fragrant pikake blossoms, and Henry J. Kaiser’s wife, Bess, cracked the traditional flower-wreathed bottle of champagne across the bow.

“In launching the last of the Victory ships, we are not registering a finality,” said Kaiser, “but beginning the second phase in the achievements of our industrial family.”

Looking on were Kaiser’s two adult sons, Edgar and Henry Jr.

It was said 10,000 people were on hand, including shipbuilders who had worked on the very first Victory ship.  They sang “Aloha” to Mr. and Mrs. Kaiser and, as the S.S. Burbank slid down the way into San Francisco Bay, flowers tossed from the deck showered the crowd.

The symbolism of the “Aloha” theme has only grown over time. The Hawaiian word is used to say both goodbye and hello. America was saying farewell to World War II, and greeting the post-war world. Henry Kaiser was leaving shipbuilding and embarking on new ventures—including opening the Permanente Health Plan, later renamed Kaiser, to the public. And he was advocating for national reforms that would make health insurance available to all Americans.

Indeed, days before the launch of the S.S. Burbank, Kaiser announced he had drafted a legislative proposal that he presented to several U.S. Senators to create a national program of voluntary prepaid medical care.

“…The greatest service that can be done for the American people,” said the preamble to Kaiser’s 1945 proposal, “is to provide a nationwide prepaid health plan that will guard these people against the tragedy of unpredictable and disastrous hospital and medical bills, and that will, in consequence, emphasize preventive instead of curative medicine, thereby improving the state of the nation’s health.”

These events also were coupled with opening the Permanente Health Plan and Hospitals to the public under the leadership of physician co-founder Sidney R. Garfield. Thus, this week became the springboard for the 65 years—to date—of continually defining the future of health care with the growth and leadership of Kaiser Permanente . (See: Opening a Prepaid Health Plan to the Public 65 Years Ago this Month.)

This would be Kaiser’s ultimate legacy.

The Kaiser family at the launch of the last Kaiser Victory Ship, July 28, 1945.

As the preeminent California historian, Kevin Starr, has noted, “After all the things he did—the great dams he had built, the great waterways, the unprecedented work in the shipyards—Kaiser knew that this was the thing that would last.”

Or, as Kaiser, himself, said on several occasions in the last years of his life in Hawaii, “Of all the things I’ve done, I expect only to be remembered for…filling the people’s greatest need—good health.”

National health care legislation failed in 1945 and many times thereafter, but Kaiser, Dr. Garfield and their successors have persisted in advocating for heath care for all ever since and saw President Obama sign the Affordable Care Act last March 23. That came exactly 65 years and 20 days after the official date of Henry J. Kaiser’s original “Proposal for a Nationwide Prepaid Medical Plan Based on Experience of the Permanente Foundation Hospitals,” which had been prepared in consultation with Dr. Garfield.

Today, Kaiser and Garfield are honored for their contributions on the Home Front of World War II at the Rose the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park for making prepaid medical care “a legacy of the WWII Home Front.”

(Special thanks to Veronica Rodriguez, Museum Curator at the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park, for locating and sharing use of the program images for the launch of the S.S. Burbank Victory, July 28, 1945.)

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Opening a Prepaid Health Plan to the Public 65 Years Ago this Month, Kaiser Permanente Begins Its Post-World War II Life

posted on July 22, 2010

By Tom Debley
Director of Heritage Resources

This Oakland Tribune clipping is one of many news stories when Kaiser Permanente began opening its doors to the public.

Sixty-five years ago this month the curtain was about to fall on the dreadful years of World War II, and Dr. Sidney R. Garfield and industrialist Henry J. Kaiser were raising the curtain on their plans to expand their prepaid Permanente Foundation Health Plan—later renamed Kaiser Foundation—beyond Kaiser’s employees to the general public.

So it was, in July 1945, that they announced that the “first large extension of the family health plan” beyond Kaiser workers would be in Vallejo, California, about 30 miles northeast of San Francisco.

The idea of going to Vallejo with a Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospital resulted from a grassroots invitation from citizens there—a sort of populist request for prepaid medical care. That should come as no surprise. The new medical care program—nicknamed “a Mayo Clinic for the common man” by one writer of the era—had been a hit with workers in the wartime Kaiser Shipyards in nearby Richmond and was getting nationwide media notice.

“I don’t see why this can’t be done everywhere, for everyone,” said one shipyard worker. “This should be for everybody,” added another. “We must organize and demand this not only for us workers but for all their families. It should be for everybody in America.”

Against that backdrop, Kaiser Permanente was invited to town by a tenants’ council of the Vallejo Housing Authority to provide care for residents of eight large wartime public housing dormitories. A doctor was assigned to each dormitory and a clinic was set up within an existing public health service infirmary.

Meanwhile, with the cooperation of local physicians, a citizen’s committee had unraveled wartime bureaucracies to get the government-sponsored Vallejo Community Hospital opened in 1944. It was needed because the Mare Island Naval Shipyard at Vallejo and the nearby Benicia Arsenal ordnance facility had drawn thousands of wartime civilian workers. The city’s few doctors had been swamped by a flood of new patients.

However, with the war ending, the government was no longer willing to support a community hospital. The military-style facility—long, low buildings spread over 30 acres—closed after the war ended in August, leaving thousands of civilian families without medical care.

Before long, the not-for-profit Kaiser Foundation Health Plan needed a full service hospital in Vallejo. So, on April 1, 1947, Kaiser Permanente re-opened the 250-bed Vallejo Community Hospital as its own, having first leased it as surplus property from the Federal Works Agency. Later, it bought the hospital at the site where Kaiser Permanente’s Vallejo Medical Center remains to this day.

“This…marks the beginning of efforts now underway by the Kaiser organization to offer Permanente Foundation facilities to all groups interested in complete prepaid medicine,” the July 1945 announcement read. The existing facilities were those on the Home Front of World War II serving Henry Kaiser’s shipyards and steel mill. They were in Richmond, Oakland, and Fontana in California and in Vancouver in Washington state.

Kaiser Permanente's Oakland Medical Center started with rebuilding of the burned out shell of a former hospital, seen here in 1942 with Dr. Sidney R. Garfield, at right, and Ned Dobbs, liaison between physicians and the architects.

A few days later, Clyde F. Diddle, administrator of the Oakland Medical Center, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the Oakland hospital was being opened to the public under four principles: prepayment, group medical practice, adequate facilities, and “a new medical economy.”

“This ‘new economy,’ strongly opposed in part by some factions favoring the traditional family physician-patient relationship, follows the old Chinese practice of paying the physician while you are well,” the Chronicle said.

Added Diddle, “We offer medical service from nasal spray to surgery—and all under one roof. The important thing is that there are no barriers to early treatment. …Patients are encouraged to come in early…”

The Chronicle article also reported that Henry Kaiser was preparing a proposal for Congress to establish a nationwide system of voluntary prepaid medical care.  This would be the first of many continuing efforts to support Sidney Garfield’s dream of health care for all Americans that have continued to the present day.

These historic events are honored today by the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, which includes historic sites of the wartime medical care program. Notes National Park Service interpretative materials: “Today, prepaid medical care is central to American culture—it is a legacy of the WWII Home Front.”

Forecasts in 1945 projected eventually serving about 25,000 people in Vallejo. Today, the Vallejo Medical Centers serves about 10 times that number in California’s Napa and Solano counties alone. The entire Kaiser Permanente multi-state program serves 8.6 million members.

The “official” date for Kaiser Permanente’s opening to the public became Oct. 1, 1945, but the work got under way in earnest starting in July.

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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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Henry & Bess Kaiser: ‘Unabashedly Sentimental’ Valentine’s Day Story

posted on February 12, 2010
By Tom Debley

Bess & Henry Kaiser

Thinking about sweethearts across America expressing their love this Valentine’s Day weekend, my attention was drawn to almost 200 newly acquired recordings in our Kaiser Permanente Heritage Archive.  One recording qualifies as a “singing Valentine” from Henry J. Kaiser to his wife, Bess, as World War II drew to a close 65 years ago.

First, the backdrop.

Bess Kaiser, with Henry, prepares to launch one of her husband's ships. Sons Henry Jr., left, and Edgar look on

One has to understand that the Kaisers—along with their sons Edgar and Henry Jr.—were “unabashed sentimentalists,” as Kaiser biographer Albert P. Heiner has recalled.   “They showed their affection for each other by effusive words of love they so often expressed.  And by unhesitatingly putting their arms around each on a regular basis.”

Henry Kaiser called Bess “mother” in private and public.  This struck a cord within the Kaiser organization, and she became widely known among Kaiser’s employees as “Mother Kaiser.”

In October 1945, this sentiment was reflected at a banquet honoring “Mother Kaiser” with a song from a group of Kaiser singers in a rendition of  “Let Us Call You Sweetheart.”  Based, of course, on “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” this popular song dates from 1910—three years after the marriage of Henry and Bess.  It became a lifelong favorite of the couple.

If you take a listen to the song, you will hear the singers invite the audience to join in.  Listen especially to the end when Henry Kaiser—a little off key—joins in an unabashedly sentimental solo.

A second recording at the banquet was a humorous takeoff of the 1892 classic “Bicycle Built for Two.” Here are the changed lyrics:

Bessie, Bessie,
Give me your answer do!
I’m half crazy
All for the love of you!
It won’t be a stylish marriage,
We can’t afford a carriage,
But you’ll look sweet upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two.

Henry, Henry, here is your answer dear.
I can’t cycle. It makes me feel so queer.
If you can’t afford a carriage,
Call off your bloomin’ marriage,
For I’ll be blown if I’ll be ‘tow’n’
On a bicycle built for two.

Henry, of course, provided much more for Bess than “a bicycle built for two.”

Bess & Henry J. Kaiser in 1946

As one of the 20th Century’s most successful industrialists, Henry Kaiser also built several lines of automobiles. Kaiser’s love for Bess and for automobiles is illustrated in one of the photographs reproduced here. It is an image from our history archive that shows Henry and Bess playfully taking a spin in a door-less small truck in 1946 at a Kaiser industrial plant in Trentwood, Washington.

Henry and Bess Kaiser’s lasting legacy, of course, is Kaiser Permanente.  In 1942, they formed the Permanente Foundation Health Plan, a charitable trust, to serve the health care needs of 200,000 Kaiser employes on the Home Front of World War II.  It was Bess who picked the name.  The couple had a retreat along the bank of Permanente Creek south of San Francisco that she found beautiful and calming.  Read more about that in “Search for the Source of the Permanente” by our senior consulting historian, Steve Gilford.

Let me close with special thanks to collector Ron Gorremans of Lincoln City, Oregon, from whom the Kaiser Permanente Heritage Archive acquired these World War II era recordings.  The audio clips are from master recordings of 118 ship launches during the war from Henry Kaiser’s Swan Island Shipyard in Portland, Oregon.  They are currently being digitized.  When that is complete, we will deposit the originals in a permanent preservation archive as well as make the digital copies available to the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park for use in its interpretive program.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Henry Kaiser’s Legacy Woven into Rich California Tapestry

posted on November 26, 2009
Kaiser on horseback at site of his first California road project

Kaiser on horseback at site of his first California road project

What do Henry Kaiser, Carol Burnett, and George Lucas have in common? Not obvious? How about John Madden, romance novelist Danielle Steel, bodybuilder Joe Weider – and Henry Kaiser? Not intuitive? OK, what about Clint Eastwood, restaurateur Alice Waters, and Color Purple author Alice Walker? Still stumped?

Try this combination: Henry Kaiser, Earl Warren, Leland Stanford, architect Julia Morgan, Hiram Johnson, photographer Dorothea Lange, pilot Amelia Earhart, and polio vaccine developer Jonas Salk. Starting to see a pattern here? These famous historical figures are all recent inductees into the California Hall of Fame.

Henry Kaiser, 20th Century industrialist and co-founder of Kaiser Permanente Health Plan, will be officially inducted into the California Hall of Fame (launched in 2006) in December.  This will be Kaiser’s eighth inclusion in lists of hall-of-fame honorees, including the U.S. Labor Hall of Fame in Washington, D.C., where he was honored in 1990.

California Gov. Arnold Swartzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver announced the 2009 list of honorees this fall. They are (alphabetically): entertainer Carol Burnett, former Intel CEO Andrew Grove, governor and U.S. senator Hiram Johnson (19th Century), decathlete and philanthropist Rafer Johnson, Henry Kaiser, philanthropist and peace activist Joan Kroc, filmmaker George Lucas, football commentator John Madden, gay rights advocate Harvey Milk, artist Fritz Scholder, author Danielle Steel, fitness and bodybuilding pioneer Joe Weider, and Air Force test pilot General Chuck Yeager.

Inductees

To learn more about the 2009 inductees and the 38 from previous years, go to

http://californiamuseum.org/exhibits/halloffame/inductees

Schwarzenegger said the intent of the hall of fame is to highlight the broad range of California interests by honoring trailblazers who have distinguished themselves in more than one field and “impacted the world with their overall courage, determination, and creativity.”

Henry Kaiser, it can’t be disputed, personifies the governor’s definition of California’s best and brightest. His amazing career began in 1913 when he bought a failing road-building company and turned it to success with innovation in paving techniques and branching into building levees and dams.

When Kaiser lost his bid to build the Shasta Dam, he started a cement company to provide the six million tons needed for the northern California project and quickly became the world’s largest cement producer.

Kaiser's Barge 21 on Bay Bridge construction

Kaiser's Barge 21 on Bay Bridge construction

He played a major role in the construction of such pre-War wonders as the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in Washington State, and the 1933-built Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge. He even built roads in Cuba and levees in Mississippi.

During World War II, Kaiser established West Coast shipyards whose workers built war ships at record-breaking speed. Kaiser employed a mix of skilled and unskilled workers that included the first women shipyard workers, as well as African-Americans, Chinese, Hispanics, and Native Americans.

Making of a health care program

Taking care of workers, many transplanted from the South and other parts of the country, entailed the creation of a health care program that placed emphasis on workers’ safety and a healthy lifestyle to avoid illness and injury. With 100,000 shipyard workers in the four Richmond, Calif. shipyards alone, the Kaiser Health Plan became the largest civilian medical care program on the Home Front of World War II.

Sidney Garfield, MD, developed and ran the medical care program, based on a prepaid, group practice model he had found successful on earlier Kaiser worker care programs. When the shipbuilding contracts evaporated at the end of the War, Kaiser and Garfield opened the health plan to the public. Eventually, union agreements kept the plan afloat and allowed it to grow to serve 8.5 million members today.

After the War, Kaiser turned to other industrial endeavors — manufacturing automobiles, homes, dishwashers, aluminum, steel, chemicals, electronics, and aeronautics.  But Kaiser always wished — and believed — that he would be best remembered for his work to provide better health care for all people.

In the decade before his death in 1967, Kaiser often said:

“Of all the things I’ve done, I expect only to be remembered for . . .  filling the people’s greatest need — good health.”

– Ginny McPartland

Kaiser Permanente Historian Tom Debley will be interviewed Tuesday, Dec. 1, on Capitol Public Radio (KXJZ 90.9 FM) about Henry Kaiser’s legacy and his induction into the California Hall of Fame. The interview will air on Insight with Jeffrey Callison from 10:05  to 11:18 a.m.  For more information:

http://capradio.org/programs/insight

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