For the first few years of their marriage, Will took great pains to make the arrangement work, perhaps as a penitence for his callous treatment of Puss. Carrie, too, tried hard to express her love for Will. Whenever Will traveled, Carrie wrote long letters inquiring after his health and experiences. In return, Will showered her with expensive gifts and displayed an uncharacteristic tenderness. For example, one close friend to both the Kelloggs recalled watching Will “tiptoeing over to the chair in which sat his wife reading a book, there to turn higher a lamp so that she would have more light.”32
As the years progressed, however, the couple grew increasingly apart. They were far from loquacious and, as one observer noted, “two people who never say anything spontaneously must have found it difficult to communicate orally any feeling toward each other.”33 Carrie was never able to accustom herself to his brooding silence. To Will’s disappointment, she was just not the type of wife his intolerant perfectionism demanded.34 A mutual friend believed that the two truly loved one another even if Will was unable to express it. Will’s quiet ruminations were not rebukes directed at his new wife; they were simply an instrumental part of his work. “I have to have those times when I can be alone,” he admitted, “when I must have a room to myself where I can spend some time thinking undisturbed.”35 By the early 1940s, glaucoma and increasing blindness made Will even more withdrawn and a series of illnesses made Carrie quite frail. Forced to acknowledge the burden each represented to the other, they mutually agreed “to live their own lives without impinging too much on the activities of the other.”36 After several debilitating strokes, Dr. Carrie Staines died in 1948 at the age of 81.
Will and his second wife, Dr. Carrie Staines, on a typical evening together in their Battle Creek mansion, with Rinson, one of Will’s Seeing Eye dogs and the son of Rin Tin Tin Credit 120
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WILL AND PUSS had five children and three survived infancy: two sons, Karl (1881–1955) and John Leonard (1883–1950), and a daughter, Elizabeth Ann (1888–1966).37 Encumbered by the oppressive duties of running his cereal empire, the socially awkward Will had little time to spend with his children. He rarely gave them what every child craves from their father: loads of unconditional love and silly fun. The man who “never learned how to play” was incapable of sitting on the floor for a game of jacks with his daughter or venturing out in the backyard to have a catch with the boys.
Most of the time, Will was stiff, reserved, and remote. He insisted that his children refer to him as “Father” and never “Papa” or “Daddy.” Their answers to his questions were mandatorily required to begin with a “Yes Sir” or a “No Sir.” Will’s grandson Norman Williamson Jr. recalled, “If they [the children] misunderstood, they were to query politely, ‘Sir?’ ”38 He could quiet his boys’ most boisterous melees with menacing glares and a snap of his fingers.39 Will advocated “corporal punishment swift and sure” when “raising his own children and their children as well. He was convinced that at the heart of any behavior problem was an indulgent parent, usually the mother.”40
The only day of the year his children recalled him being truly jovial was Christmas Eve when the entire family gathered for a sumptuous supper. Will refused to play Santa Claus, even if he had the body habitus to fit the iconic red suit with white fur trim. But he did often hire an actor to play St. Nicholas and hand out gifts to the children. Yet, as Will’s biographer Horace Powell observed, “Christmases are few and far between, and children need a father on ordinary days of the year.”41 Late in his life, Will wrote a letter of regret over his absentee parenting to one of his children, with a mildly manipulative reminder: “I think, however, I have in some ways tried to indicate to you my interest in your welfare.”42
Three generations of Kellogg “men” at dinner, 1923. Will is at the head of the table and to his right is his grandson Kenneth. On the left side of the table facing the camera are Will’s second son, John Leonard, and his two sons, and on the right are Will’s eldest son, Karl, and his two sons. At the foot of the table (in sailor suits) are Will’s daughter Beth’s sons. Credit 121
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KARL HUGH KELLOGG, Will’s oldest son, was drawn toward medicine. Not surprisingly, Will refused to allow Karl to enroll at his uncle John’s American Missionary Medical College, just down the street. Instead, Karl attended the “regular” Detroit College of Medicine (now Wayne State University School of Medicine). After graduating in 1904, the young physician practiced first in Montana, and in 1905, at age twenty-three, he married a young woman named Etta Landrum, from Stevensville, Montana. A few years later, as Will began expanding his factory’s output and workforce, Karl returned to Battle Creek to lead the company’s medical staff. In this role, he instituted a number of progressive policies and on-site medical and dental clinics to insure the health of the workers. At home in Battle Creek, Karl and Etta raised their two boys, Karl Landrum and Will Lewis.
By 1925, Karl’s poor health forced him to retire from medical practice.43 For the next two years, he supervised the construction of his father’s ranch until the pressures and disagreeableness of working for Will became too great.44 While not exactly estranged from Will, Karl did his best to avoid squabbling with him. They fought over everything imaginable: the placement of shrubs and fruit trees around the estate, the chauffeur’s poor care of Will’s cars, the loan of Jadaan to Rudolph Valentino, the profligate spending habits of Will’s horse trainer, and especially Will’s mean reduction of the budget for a house Karl was building near his father’s mansion. Will’s false economies led to Karl’s house almost burning down, thanks to the installation of a cheaply made and easily overheated furnace.45 In 1927, Karl and his family left Pomona (and Will) to develop a successful grapefruit and lemon ranch in Chula Vista, near San Diego.46 A pillar of the Chula Vista community, he died there, at seventy-three, in December of 1955.47
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JOHN LEONARD KELLOGG (1883–1950), Will’s second son, was energetic, mischievous, and robust. The boy especially loved playing practical jokes, including one Halloween when he hoisted a cow up into the belfry of the Battle Creek College. Will took to berating John Leonard for all sorts of infractions, including poor school attendance, failing grades, and not properly conducting himself as a Kellogg. After the worst of these paternal dressings-down, the boy wrote his father poorly spelled letters of apology, which concluded with pledges to do better in the future. The promises rarely stuck; within a few weeks or months, John Leonard found a new way to engage in tomfoolery and enrage Will.48
Norman Williamson Jr. described him as a “virtual volcano of ideas.”49 Horace Powell pronounced him to be “the driving, dynamic, indefatigable spark plug of the manufacturing end of the business.”50 Despite John Leonard’s youthful rebellion, his dream was to assume the helm of his father’s firm. To achieve this goal, he invented all kinds of machines and processes that advanced the quality and sales of Kellogg’s products. Even the reticent Will had to admit, “I do not know the exact number of patents and trademarks which were taken out by J.L. and assigned to the Kellogg Company, but with foreign patents, all told, I think they must have numbered in excess of two hundred.”51
For example, from 1906 to 1914, Corn Flakes boxes were externally wrapped with paraffin wax paper to maintain freshness, in the manner of a Christmas present. This method performed haphazardly, depending on the climate where the boxes were ultimately sold and how long they sat on the grocer’s shelves. In 1914, John Leonard figured out a way to make a paraffin wax paper bag that fit inside the box. Called “Waxtite,” the bag was heat-sealed to preserve the crispness of the cereal, regardless of the grocery store’s ambient temperature or humidity, and maintain the taste, nutrition, and purity of the product. The new moisture-and-tamper-proof packaging proved terrifically popular with consumers.52 Waxtite had another virtue in that it required two inches less wax paper than the older, external wrapping method, thus creating a substantial savings on the company’s packaging costs. Over
the course of a few decades, this form of packaging saved the company millions of dollars.53 Inside-the-box wrappers became the gold standard for keeping food products fresh and free from adulteration, thanks to John Leonard Kellogg.
John Leonard was also fascinated by the science of gastroenterology and prided himself on having read “every book extant on the human colon.” He even concocted several new cereals of his own, with “a book in one hand, a spoon in the other, a health-giving mixture bubbling on the back of the kitchen range.”54 This work led to the development of a new means to make shredded wheat biscuits, improved versions of “cereal coffee,” the creation of corn-soya flakes, and a recipe for wheat bran mixed with the famous Kellogg “malt flavoring,” which became the popular “All-Bran.”
By 1912, John Leonard was managing the W. K. Kellogg Company’s Battle Creek plant, which he had grown to encompass “a huge cluster of buildings extending over 113 acres.”55 Will’s response to this expansion was annoyingly contrary: “You’re making this plant too big for me. I’m not comfortable in it any more.”56 The son bristled at Will’s constant criticism and responded poorly to even the gentlest advice. Yet they were very similar people with respect to their drive, work ethic, and dedication to the firm. After putting in a full day supervising the factory, John Leonard walked across town to the company laboratory where he worked late nights to figure out new ways to improve Kellogg’s cereals.
Almost as stern as Will, John Leonard kept a close eye on each employee and every occurrence in his factory. Unfortunately, his explosive temper frightened and antagonized many of those working for him. For example, a foreman recalled the morning John Leonard found an old clock hanging on the wall that was no longer working and beyond repair. John Leonard abruptly ordered the foreman to replace the broken clock. The foreman neglected to do so because he was busy with far more pressing matters. A day later, John Leonard spied the broken clock still hanging and “ripped it off the wall, and let it fall to the floor with a crash” in front of his shocked workers.57 John Leonard later tried boxing as a form of anger management. His boxing coach grew so weary of John Leonard’s constant braggadocio that the instructor finally “decked him,” marking the end of his foray into the “sweet science.”58
John Leonard had many foibles and flaws but he also had to endure the stress of working for a perfectionist father who picked on his every error and minimized his successes. From a medical standpoint, it is interesting to note that John Leonard suffered from digestive problems and eventually developed a duodenal ulcer. At least two other sons of American tycoons experienced gastric distress while working for their famous fathers: Edsel Ford died of stomach cancer at the age of forty-nine and John D. Rockefeller Jr. long endured dyspepsia and stomach ulcers. Will blamed John Leonard’s digestive problem on his cigarette smoking and chided his son for overworking even as he placed more and more demands upon him.59
The unraveling of John Leonard’s career at the Kellogg Company officially began when Will treated himself to a six-month tour of Japan, China, Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. From November 26, 1919, until May 1, 1920, Will left the company in the charge of his son with the expectation that John Leonard would keep him apprised with frequent letters and cables.60 Inexplicably, the son sent few communiqués to his father and those he did were terse telegrams containing very little information. The paucity of these updates, let alone the fact that his company was running without him, irritated Will to no end. Will’s mood only became more hostile after contracting pneumonia. He spent four weeks, including Christmas Day, flat on his back in a Hong Kong hospital. Fortunately, his travel companion, A. C. Selmon, was an accomplished physician (and Adventist missionary) and he helped Will recover.61 From Hong Kong, Will sailed on to Java, India, Ceylon, Singapore, and the French colony of Cochinchina (now known as the southern portion of Vietnam). He spent his sixtieth birthday in Beijing where he walked along the Great Wall. Imagine his distress when, upon his return to Battle Creek, Will’s men informed him that for the first time in its history the company’s books were awash in red ink.
In Will’s view (and at the Kellogg Company, the only one that really counted), his son had failed his first practical examination at running the firm. With distance and hindsight, it seems that Will’s blame was not entirely fair. Some of the responsibility did, of course, rest squarely on John Leonard’s shoulders. The scion rashly promised to fill orders for cereal that far exceeded the plant’s capacity and committed more money for advertising than the company had in its fungible accounts. But the largest share of the company’s financial embarrassment was connected to events far beyond John Leonard’s control. Specifically, Will had purchased corn futures contracts at exorbitant wartime prices, which were made only more expensive after the grain market collapsed at the war’s end. Will wisely determined to absorb the significant losses generated by his costly supply of corn instead of alienating his consumers by suddenly raising the price for a box of Corn Flakes from what they had been used to paying.62
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JOHN LEONARD’S RELATIONSHIP with his father made its sharpest descent not in the office but at home. The son lived with his wife, Hanna, and their two sons, Will Keith II (1907–2005) and John Leonard Jr. (1910–1938) right next to Will’s house on West Van Buren Street.63 Looking out his window, Will wondered why his son was returning home so late at night or, on many other evenings, not coming home at all. In fact, there was “another woman” and her name was Helen Eberstein Flanner. John Leonard did not have to go far to find his new love. She worked as a hostess in the company’s executive dining room.64
By mid-1923, John Leonard was disappearing from the factory for long periods of time. Will’s diary on June 1 of that year records, “No one seems to know where he has gone.”65 Ten days later, June 11, Will received a brief letter from John Leonard written on Chicago’s Sherman House hotel stationery that “gave no inkling of his plans, merely stating that he was not well.”66 When Helen resigned the following day, June 12, and left for Chicago, Will put one and one together and quickly came up with two lovers. He hired Pinkerton detectives to locate them but it was too late. By summer’s end, John Leonard told his father that he was leaving his family for Helen.67
Will rushed to Hanna’s side and insisted on supporting her and the boys. Disgusted by her husband’s actions, Hanna filed a bill of divorcement in early December. Around the same time, Will again contracted the Pinkerton Detective Agency to locate Helen, which they did in California on December 14, 1923. To her credit, Helen resisted Will’s attempts to buy her off and send her away. In January of 1924, John Leonard and Helen left California for Reno, then the divorce capital of the United States.68
To pass the time while residing in Nevada, John Leonard set up a food laboratory in the garage of the house they were renting. He came up with a new hot oat cereal to compete with the dominant American hot cereal manufacturer, the Quaker Oats Company. Calling his product New-Ota, John Leonard, without a hint of irony, purchased a former Quaker Oats mill in Davenport, Iowa, on the company’s dime. Will was strictly a “cold cereal man” and when he was informed of the purchase, he burned up the cross-continental cable wires with scathing telegrams telling his son to STOP.69 Most of the secondary accounts of this incident agree John Leonard’s oat cereal was a flop but disagree on whether Will found another use for the factory or sold it to a competing company.70
John Leonard’s stack of failures, both personal and professional, outweighed all of the contributions he made to the Kellogg Company. Long a worrier and an insomniac, Will now had many more reasons to stay awake at night.71 By day, the boss rarely missed an opportunity to express his disappointment whenever he saw John Leonard entering or leaving his office, which adjoined Will’s executive suite. On June 22, 1925, the son could take no more and threw down the gauntlet with a hurtful note to his father, which Will dutifully recorded, verbatim, in his diary:
You have spent your life sticking your nose into other
people’s business. Why don’t you try the experiment of minding your own business and leaving others alone. You will live longer and be happier and the whole world will be a damn sight better off. You certainly have stirred up enough [trouble] for me. Why don’t you leave me alone?72
Will added no further comment to John Leonard’s letter in his diary and the battle between these two proud, strong-willed men smoldered over the next two months. Adding hot milk to this bowl of crackling Rice Krispies, John Leonard and Helen eloped to get married.
It was at this point that Will decreed that his son was unfit to receive the keys to his kingdom.73 In August, his lawyers drew up an agreement: in exchange for $2 million in Kellogg Company stock (or $27 million in 2016), John Leonard would resign his position at the firm. The acrimony over this transaction rings clearly in the last lines of the resignation letter John Leonard presented to the Kellogg Company board on September 1, 1925:
Upon the express condition that the tendering and acceptance of my resignation shall not at any time or in any manner be construed to be a voluntary withdrawal by me from the service of the Company, I hereby tender my resignation as a member of the Board of Directors of said Kellogg Company.74
The unforgiving Will exacted a strict permanence to John Leonard’s banishment. Several times in the following years, the son expressed a wish to come back to preside over the family business, but Will promptly rebuffed every request.75
Somehow there remained a filial love between them even if they rarely expressed it to each other. In 1930, Will began working on his last will and testament, which gave the bulk of his riches to his proposed W. K. Kellogg Foundation. He told his attorney, Burritt Hamilton, that he had already discussed the issue with John Leonard, who pledged to honor his father’s wishes and not to contest the will. Hamilton advised Will to get this promise in writing but Will calmly replied, “No, that is not necessary. John L. has given me his word and his word is good. I prefer to take it that way without any formality of writing. John L. will never go back on his word.”76
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