Will and John Leonard Kellogg (Will’s second son), sitting atop one of his father’s prized Arabian horses, circa 1931 Credit 122
John Leonard Kellogg never did go back on his word and he never succeeded in righting his once shining career after being fired from Kellogg’s. He moved to Chicago where he tried his hand at a number of failed business ventures. Eventually it was Helen who took hold of the family bankbook and stock portfolio.77 He spent the last month of his life in the California sun. While visiting his brother, Karl, in Chula Vista on April 3, 1950, the sixty-seven-year-old John Leonard suffered a fatal cerebral hemorrhage.78 The sudden death of his youngest son stunned the ninety-year-old Will. Refusing to shed tears in front of others, Will sequestered himself in his bedroom for several days.79
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WILL’S DAUGHTER, Elizabeth Ann, known to all as Beth, had the dual burden of looking a great deal like her father and being his most dutiful child. After Puss’s death, Beth was unfailingly helpful to Will “even when he tried to dominate her thinking.”80 Her husband, Norman Williamson Sr., hailed from a Seventh-day Adventist family in Toronto and moved to Battle Creek to study pharmacy and work at the San. This connection, along with Norman’s inability to find a clear employment track at the Kellogg Company, led Will to suggest she find a more suitable mate. Beth stood her ground and married the man she loved. By all accounts, theirs was a happy and mutually nurturing relationship, even if the father-in-law and son-in-law never succeeded in developing a mutual respect for one another.81 Norman Jr. recalled with admiration his mother’s matrimonial choice and unstinting loyalty to his father. “It took a very strong person indeed to stand up to W. K. Kellogg when he was at the peak of his choler.”82 Beth and Norman gave Will five grandchildren: Kenneth (b. 1912), Eleanor (b. 1913), Norman Jr. (b. 1915), John Harold (b. 1916), and Elizabeth Ann (b. 1920).83
Only nine months after Puss’s death, tragedy again struck Will’s personal life with a resounding force. In May of 1913, a seven-months pregnant Beth dropped off her eldest son, Kenneth, at her father’s home while she completed some errands downtown. Ignored by the housekeeper, the toddling one-year-old rambled from room to room, until he climbed out of a second-story window, fell to the ground, and severely fractured his skull on the concrete driveway below. The grandfather dropped everything and recruited the finest neurosurgeons from Chicago and Detroit to attend to the boy.84 Comatose for more than three weeks, Kenneth was left with partial blindness in one eye, paralysis of the right arm and leg, and severe cognitive impairment. Kenneth never fully regained his health. Will was inconsolable, both because of the circumstances and the outcome of Kenneth’s disabilities. The accident opened up a floodgate of emotions for the buttoned-down Will, who doted on Kenneth and, according to Kenneth’s younger brother Norman Jr., enjoyed a “mutually reciprocated relationship that was unique among all W.K.’s grandchildren for it lasted to the end.”85 After the accident, Will constantly worried about the boy’s welfare and actively meddled in how his parents dealt with his disabilities. For example, when Kenneth was about six, Will insisted the boy be sent away to a special live-in rehabilitation hospital-school near Chicago, in the hope that some improvement of function might be regained. Instead, the move only succeeded in separating a debilitated and frightened child from his loving parents. Will’s overbearing concern, something pediatricians have termed “the vulnerable child syndrome,” extended to a hyper-vigilance over all of Beth’s children.86 Norman Jr. later recalled, “W.K. was to propose living arrangements which would take each of Beth’s children…away from her home at various times for conditions he diagnosed and cures he prescribed, giving his daughter little choice but to go along with his pronouncements.”87
Will Kellogg, his daughter, Beth Williamson (standing behind him), and his grandchildren (left to right): John, Norman Jr., Elizabeth (in Will’s lap), Kenneth (standing; Kenneth was the grandchild who fell out of a window as a toddler and suffered serious injuries), and Eleanor Jane, circa 1923 Credit 123
Beth’s unflagging loyalty to her father came at a huge physical toll. During her last decade of life, she suffered a series of debilitating strokes and was eventually confined to long-term care at the Glendale (California) Sanitarium. Beth died on Armistice Day, November 11, 1966, at the age of seventy-eight. Her son Norman Jr. eulogized his mother with the bittersweet observation, “The last several years of her life were far from the joy that she had looked forward to at the time of her father’s death.”88
Will and his favorite grandson, John Leonard Jr., circa 1925 Credit 124
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UNDAUNTED, Will began grooming John Leonard’s youngest son, John Leonard Kellogg Jr. (1911–1938) to take over the firm.89 Every Saturday, they took long walks along the streets of Battle Creek, always finishing up at the cereal plant where Will mentored the boy on the knotty problems of mass-producing Corn Flakes, the complexities of distribution, advertising, and marketing, and where and how to purchase the best grain. In 1925, Will arranged for a fund of $25,000 (about $338,000 in 2016), with which the fourteen-year-old Junior could learn about investing in the stock market under Will’s direct supervision. At Christmas of that same year, Junior accompanied Will to greet the employees. The boss shook the hand of each Kellogg worker and, with the other hand, presented him or her with a life insurance policy in lieu of a bonus check. Next in line to Will, Junior tentatively wished every worker good tidings of cheer. When the boy looked to his grandfather for some reassurance, Will admonished him: “You stand right here now, and do as I say.”90
Two years later, Will promised the sixteen-year-old John Leonard Jr., “Some day you’ll be at the head of this growing business.” Not surprisingly, the other grandchildren resented Will’s favoritism. An unidentified grandchild griped, “Grandfather was a little obnoxious in holding him up as an example to us other grandchildren. It was a little hard to take, for Grandfather always presented John Jr. as a shining light who was going to become a great business leader.”91 One can only wonder how John Leonard Sr. felt while reading a letter from his father praising Junior’s business acumen, thus effectively skipping over his own son for the top spot. “He is a wonderful chap,” Will wrote John Leonard Sr., “and the more I see him the more I appreciate the foundation that he has for becoming a first-class executive.”92 Will hardly contained his pride for John Leonard Jr. within the family. On October 23, 1929, one day before the stock market crash that ushered in the Great Depression, Will wrote the best-selling author Paul de Kruif how he had just rebuffed another lucrative buyout offer: “We turned down the proposition because we have all the money that we need, and are saving the business for John, my grandson. If my life can be spared to see John develop into a businessman during the next four or five years, it will be worth more than several million dollars to me.”93
W. K. Kellogg and his grandson John Leonard Jr. greeting Kellogg Company employees at Christmas, circa 1925 Credit 125
In late 1928, John Leonard Jr. left Battle Creek for Wellesley, Massachusetts, to matriculate into an eighteen-month accelerated business course at the prestigious Babson Institute, a favorite training ground for the scions of American industry. One classmate described the Corn Flake prince as “a flea on a griddle, very intelligent but with more nervous energy than his power plant could accommodate.”94
Will’s plans for his grandson would have been overwhelming for even the most poised of twenty-year-old men, which Junior was not. The boss appointed him as executive vice president, which included a seat on the company’s board of directors, the Budget and Merchandising Committees, and the all-important “Control Committee.” To round out Junior’s training, Will assigned him to investigate how the various departments of the plant might run more efficiently, supervise the advertising and sales departments, watch the foreign exchanges where the company had investment interests brewing, work out new plans for extending sales territories, develop work standards in the factory, and, ultimately, travel to and help c
oordinate the efforts of the newly built Canadian and Australian factories. Will also asked the long list of temporary Kellogg Company presidents he would hire and fire over the next several years to mentor his grandson so that Junior could take over their job, but none of these men seemed to take this proposition very seriously.95
Will’s approach to mentoring the young man alternated between avuncular advice and direct orders. For example, Will sent Junior a memorandum on November 11, 1931, entitled “Suggestions for One Who Wishes to Hit the Trail Successfully, Make the Grade, Play the Game, and Win.” Although he told the young man these were “fifteen suggestions not commandments,” the reality of the communiqué was that Will expected his grandson to heed every one of them.96 In the missive, Will ordered Junior to get plenty of sleep and recreation so as not to appear tired or work under tension; to avoid looking rushed; have few “irons in the fire at one time”; to finish one job before starting another; “do not scatter your ammunition; concentrate and you may get your bird”; avoid the word “I” in all conversations; lead rather than push others; always exhibit patience; avoid dominating your elders because age often confers a great deal of valuable experience; “do not dictate to your elders; better endure and let the other fellow boss. After all is said and done, we are all striving for results”; consider the feelings of one’s employees; be humble; “keep your feet on the earth and your head up”; be kind to all but choose one’s friends very carefully; and “remember, it took six days for Jehovah to create the earth. We should not try to reconstruct it in any less time.” No matter how hard John Leonard Jr. tried to follow these “suggestions,” it was inevitable that he, too, would fail to live up to Will’s rigorous, and rigid, standards in running the Kellogg Company. Will craved the idea of retirement but like many powerful men he was unable to release the reins of the company that was the core of his identity. Within a few months of Junior’s tenure, the reams of memoranda delivered from the boss’s office to his grandson’s desk took on an increasingly critical, harsh, and, at times, hurtful tone.
Desperately trying to appear confident and in control, John Leonard Jr. was emotionally insecure. His constant efforts to please his grandfather and real concern over whether he was, to use one of Will’s favorite phrases, “making the grade,” manifested themselves into chronic indigestion and heartburn, requiring frequent trips to the executive washroom where he was often seen to be “clutching a toilet and retching.”97 To counteract these symptoms, John Jr. guzzled down bottles of Sal Hepatica, a once popular mineral salt laxative that claimed to reduce stomach acidity. He also regularly “dosed” himself with hefty amounts of liquor. After one especially rowdy, alcohol-fueled weekend in Detroit, Junior reported to work “much worse for the wear and clearly hung over.” A deadly serious Will “read him the riot act about keeping himself physically in shape.”98
The once nurturing relationship ruptured in the fall of 1934. While horse riding at the Battle Creek Country and Hunt Club, Junior fell and hit his head hard enough to experience unconsciousness and a brain concussion. He landed at the University of Michigan Hospital for a lengthy stay, followed by an even lengthier period of recuperation at a ranch in Montana. Junior’s absence steamed Will more with each passing day. Finally, on July 19, 1935, he wrote his grandson that he was tired of “indirectly aiding and abetting you in these various matters by allowing your salary to be continued while you are on rest cure.”99 Will’s solution was to discontinue the young man’s sumptuous salary of $10,000 per annum (about $172,000 in 2016). In the same letter, the boss transformed into the grandfather as he reassured his heir that “there is a whole lot of future ahead of you and plenty of time for activities later.” Nevertheless, Will believed that “only drastic action would pull John out of a tailspin.”100 The drastic action Will chose was to publicly humiliate Junior by demoting him from high-flying vice president to a $50-a-week salesman assigned to the grocery stores of rural Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, outside Milwaukee.101
After demonstrating little skill in selling cereal to the grocery trade, John Jr. was transferred to the company’s food laboratory, with the expectation that he had inherited his father’s genius for industrial cookery. There, Junior co-opted a technician’s work for puffing corn grits and wheat in a manner similar to that of puffing rice to make Rice Krispies. Junior called the new cereal creation “Pops.” The grandfather-owner and grandson-employee relationship metaphorically popped when Junior approached the boss with a proposal to sell the new method to the Kellogg Company. Will chastised the grandson for trying to sell him something that was developed in his company’s laboratory on company time. Family history repeated itself and the beleaguered grandson quit the firm in anger.102 Litigation over cereal being another family trait, Junior sought restitution in the courts for his so-called creation of “Pops.” His lawyers were no match for the Kellogg Company’s battery of legal bulldogs. Without irony, Will sought help in handling his grandson from his son, John Leonard, who he had forced out of the Kellogg Company only a decade before:
By the way, I received a note from your John [Junior] the other day in which he asked to be relieved from his work with the Kellogg Company. The boy seems to be discouraged and thinks that in some way his grandfather has lost interest in him….I wish you would look John over and see if it is time for him to have a conference with his physician.103
In 1937, John Jr. married an airline stewardess named Mary Muensch, moved to Chicago, and started his own company, New Foods, Inc., with the support of his father. The company manufactured a puffed corn cereal he called “Nu-Corn.” The product flopped and the company quickly ran out of capital. Worse, the U.S. patent Junior applied for, and which he desperately needed to make the process his own, was denied. On February 26, 1938, a co-worker found John Leonard Kellogg Jr.’s body slumped over his desk in the shuttered Nu-Corn factory. Nearby was a note addressed to his brother, Will Keith II (“Keith”). In the letter, Junior apologized for his business failures and expressed the deluded notion that his wife and unborn child (Mary was seven months pregnant) would be better off without him. After signing the letter and sealing it in an envelope, he put a revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger. John Leonard Kellogg Jr. was twenty-seven years old.104
Will was on a steamship making its way through the Panama Canal when he received the horrific news. Unable to return home in time for the funeral, he made a rare church visit in Panama and knelt in prayer to the memory of his dead grandson. Devastated by John Leonard Jr.’s death, Will obsessed and grieved over his role in the tragedy. Nearly two decades later, Will’s biographer, Horace Powell, described Junior’s suicide with a bit of well-warranted treacle, “Thus died Will Kellogg’s last hope for a dynasty for his business—and forever he was to be haunted by the ghost of a promise made to a young boy.”105
Will’s meddlesome demeanor failed to enchant his other grandchildren. With the exception of John Leonard Jr. (before their falling-out) and the disabled Kenneth, Will was increasingly distant with them, especially as they grew into teenagers and young adults. Will’s grandson Norman Williamson Jr. recalled that his grandfather was far more demonstrative and comfortable with his prized horses and dogs, and, to a lesser extent, babies: “From these examples one might deduce that he craved closeness, but he simply couldn’t relax his guard with those who might reciprocate, save for pets.”106
Although Will supported several siblings, cousins, and other family members over the years, he required them to spend their money wisely. When this proved not to be the case, his response was typically harsh. For example, Will gave one unidentified relative $5,000 as a wedding present. He expected the couple to use the money as a down payment for a house even though he stated no stipulations of any kind. Instead, the newlyweds spent all of it on immediate needs and recreational activities. A year later when the couple visited the old man at his ranch in Pomona, Will had his butler seat them in the hallway, on a “hard bench with a stiff, upright back.” He left them squ
irming and staring at his treasured mural of St. George for over an hour before deigning to grace them with his presence. During the meeting, Will articulated his displeasure and told them that they had spent his money “foolishly.” Although they had hoped for another check, the couple left the Big House empty-handed and with the impression that they were not welcome to return.107
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IN 1935, Will underwent an operation to resolve his worsening glaucoma, followed by a second procedure in 1937. Both were unsuccessful.108 The following year, 1938, he took the uncharacteristic step of agreeing to sit for a portrait by Frank O. Salisbury. The British portrait painter was renowned for his renderings of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, J. Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Andrew Mellon, Andrew Carnegie, and the coronations of King George VI and Elizabeth II of Great Britain. Salisbury’s picture is, to use the cliché, worth many thousands of words. In oil and canvas, Will looks old, world-weary, and unhappy. It hangs to this day in the main lobby of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation offices, eerily following the movements of all who enter.
Portrait of W. K. Kellogg, by artist Frank O. Salisbury, circa 1938 Credit 126
By 1940 Will was so blind that he could “barely see a hand held close to his face, or recognize an old associate.” Along with his sight, he lost one of his few cherished leisure activities: reading the popular works of H. G. Wells and Arnold Toynbee and Mr. Gibbon’s scribblings on The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.109 Despite Will’s enjoyment of the history of other people and places, he did not want his personal history to be written about and expressly sealed his papers to prying eyes. He avoided giving out biographical sketches to universities seeking to grant him an honorary degree or even for a brief entry in the annual edition of Who’s Who. Railing against all potential biographers from his Pomona perch, the industrialist told one writer, “I am not going to start my memory spinning. I live in the present. Don’t ask me questions about what has gone before.”110 He wrote another would-be biographer on August 19, 1940: “From what you write I have no doubt whatever of your ability to write a biography. However it so happens that I am not especially interested in having my biography written.”111
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