For the last decade of his life, Will relied upon an elite trio of German shepherd Seeing Eye dogs. The first, Rinson, was the son of the Hollywood canine legend Rin Tin Tin. After Rinson died, Lee Duncan, Rin Tin Tin’s owner, sent Rin Tin Tin’s other son, Rinson II, to Battle Creek. That dog died prematurely, too, and was replaced by the famous dog’s daughter, Rinette, who proved to be Will’s favorite and most affectionate canine.112 One of the few times an associate saw Will smile broadly during this period was when he crowded several of his executives into a small conference room and Rinette “developed a resounding flatulence.”113
Some afternoons, Will’s nurse took him to visit his company’s headquarters.114 Once there, he neither checked on the progress of his successors nor did he enter the toasting or packing rooms. Instead, Will remained in the plant’s parking lot, seated in his wheelchair, clutching his white cane and his dog’s leash. He enjoyed feeling the heavy machinery as it reverberated through the concrete and listening to the roar of the giant ovens converting the “sweetheart of the corn” into boxes of Corn Flakes. Most of all, he loved the aroma of toasted grains wafting out into the atmosphere blanketing Battle Creek. For Will, it was the scent of accomplishment.
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THERE WAS ONE PRESSING ISSUE Will was determined to solve before his improbable run to glory ended. How would he dispose of all the money he had accrued? Where could it be put to the best use and in a manner that would reflect well on his name, family, and values? During the last two decades of his life, Will put his financial affairs together in a manner reflecting the good orderly direction in which he conducted his business.115 His process was the exact opposite of the scattershot approach his voluble brother John employed with his wealth and energies. As early as 1909, Will discussed his charitable intentions with colleagues, “If I am successful in getting out of debt and become prosperous in my business affairs, I expect to make good use of any wealth that may come to me.”116 Although Will had long dreamed of “aid[ing] humanity in general and America in particular,” he later noted, with his not so common sense, “it has been much easier to make money than to know how to spend it wisely.”117 By late 1929, Will had figured out the correct equation and shared it with his friend and advisor, Arch Shaw:
I know how to invest my money. I’ll invest it in people….I want to help those with little or no income. I want to establish a foundation that will help handicapped children everywhere to face the future with confidence, with health, and with a strong-rooted security in their trust of this country and its institutions.118
In June of 1930, Will inaugurated the Kellogg Child Welfare Foundation.119 Two months later, in August, the charity was legally reorganized, its mission broadened, and formally renamed the W. K. Kellogg Foundation for “receiving and administering the funds for the promotion of the welfare, comfort, health, care, education, feeding, clothing, sheltering, and safeguarding children and youth, directly or indirectly, without regard to sex, race, creed, or nationality in whatever manner the Board of Trustees may decide.”120 Writing to his physician, A. R. Dickson, Will recalled how his grandchild Kenneth’s severe head trauma, the huge expenses for his medical care, and the paucity of good treatment options motivated his foundation work: “This caused me to wonder what difficulties were in the paths of needy parents who seek help for their children when catastrophe strikes, and I resolved to lend what aid I could to such children.”121
In recognition of this investment in the nation’s youth, President Herbert Hoover invited Will to participate in the “White House Conference on Child Health and Protection.” Held on November 19–22, 1930, the summit focused on the welfare of dependent, orphaned, or abandoned children, child labor, children’s health issues, and gathered together “3,000 men and women, leaders in the medical, educational, and social fields as they touch the life of the child.” Will must have taken some pride that he, and not his brother, was invited to the White House to discuss such nationally important matters.122
On December 8, 1930, Time magazine headlined the new foundation with the tart observation that Will’s philanthropy “belied the general impression that he is a dour moneymaker.” The article compared the two Kellogg brothers of Battle Creek. John sold his shares in the cereal business for $250,000 in 1906 and immediately began the Race Betterment Foundation, in the belief that “business should be the servant of society.” Will, on the other hand, preferred to let the money amass like Croesus before giving it away, based on his conviction that “business should be the benefactor of society.” In the course of their lives, Time reported, John “made himself more famous than his business (the Sanitarium) and his benefactions. Brother Will Keith made his business (Kellogg Co.) more famed than himself. The public knows practically nothing about him.”123 All that was about to change. Whenever the name Kellogg is uttered today, most of us instantly think of Will’s cereal; but a great many others consider the good works of his wonderful foundation. Either way, it is Will who accomplished both.
By 1934, Will fully endowed his W. K. Kellogg Foundation with more than $66 million (approximately $1.17 billion in 2016). He took to comically griping about the many long-distance telephone calls the foundation staff made or the salaries he paid his professional grant makers. Such jibes were all for show, however, and Will wisely gave them a free hand to conduct their charitable business. Nevertheless, it took many years before he was entirely comfortable with his full name appearing so boldly on the foundation’s letterhead. Even as late as 1951, the year Will died, the founder expressed sincere hesitance over using his initials in the foundation’s formal name. Dr. Emory Morris, a dentist who assumed the foundation’s presidency in 1943, recalled “The only way I could stave off this suggestion was to tell Mr. Kellogg that to take the initials from the name of the Foundation would be to leave the public in wonderment as to which Kellogg (W.K. or John Harvey) was back of the Foundation.”124 It was a convincing argument worthy of a resourceful foundation president.125 The name, “W. K. Kellogg Foundation,” stuck. Since then, the foundation has donated billions of dollars to support a long list of worthy and important causes. Today, it remains one of the largest charitable foundations in the world with assets of over $9.5 billion and is a major force in advancing the health of children and their families in Michigan, across the United States, and around the globe.126
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DURING THE EARLY 1950s, Will’s authorized biographer, Horace Powell, took the bold, if clinically unorthodox, step of asking a psychiatrist to conduct a postmortem, psychological analysis on his subject. Mr. Powell describes the unnamed mental health professional as a “relative in considerable contact with Will Kellogg through the years.” The psychiatrist in question was almost certainly Dr. William S. Sadler, a former Battle Creek Sanitarium physician who knew both Kellogg brothers well, was married to their half-niece Lena, and in 1910, after studying medicine under John, took an additional year of psychiatric training under Sigmund Freud in Vienna.127 Whoever the clinician actually was, however, his diagnostic explanation of what drove Will to do the things he did remains astute.
To begin, the psychiatrist diagnosed Will with a massive inferiority complex. “He was going to show his brother, himself, and the world that he, too, had superior qualities and that only an unfortunate set of circumstances had prevented him from being as eminent as the Doctor. Those circumstances he eliminated.”128 The consulting physician was even more impressed by Will’s deep-seated unhappiness and frustration: “In all my long practice of psychiatry, I don’t know of a more lonely, isolated individual….Just a modicum of added extrovertism would have given him the capacity for an outlet which would have meant much to his total happiness….Here was a man of great brain power, of practically photographic memory, who lacked the self confidence needed to complete his being.”129
An unidentified friend of Will’s, most likely Arch Shaw, disagreed and insisted that “he was happy in his own way, with a deep appreciation of living. Concededly, this w
as a quiet happiness, not exuberant, and only occasionally reflected on Mr. Kellogg’s rather impassive countenance. Coming from a religious family, with high, ethical standards, he found real satisfaction in a life-long hobby of helping others.”130 The same friend spoke with admiration of Mr. Kellogg’s stoic ability to let nothing interfere with whatever he designated as his “Number One Project,” even when facing family tragedies such as the suicide of one grandson and the disabilities of another. As Will stated on those rare occasions he allowed someone into his inner life:
Now, I can’t do anything about what has happened. I can’t let this happening interfere with my main project in life, so I must start again and not think about this tragedy any more…I could never reach that goal if I let anything interfere with my health, my energies, my strengths, my attitudes.131
When asked about these contradictory assessments, Will’s daughter, Beth Williamson observed, they were all “partially correct.” Her father found a “deep and lasting satisfaction from the accomplishment of so many things of benefit to humanity,” Beth noted, but “this quiet joy was almost in conflict with the self that had never had a youth, had never been able to loosen up.”132 Late in his life, it was Will who most succinctly described his warring psychic needs when he confessed to Arch Shaw: “I would give the world to be able to get along with people as well as you do.”133
It is tempting to suggest that Will’s lust for empire building and his generous philanthropy were motivated by his stark childhood. His youth was so bereft of the attention and love every child needs and craves, no matter where he sits in the pecking order of birthdays or how brilliant his other siblings might be. As a boy, his parents’ apocalyptic, if not frightening, religious beliefs and their cold child rearing likely emotionally scarred him. As a young man, he was sentenced to nearly twenty-five years of hard labor under the abusive command of his older brother. Every day of his adult life, long after he left the San, Will grappled with a well of hurt and anger that constantly beat false messages of failure into his every thought and action. His botched relationships with two wives, three children, and many more grandchildren only amplified the negative thoughts swirling about in his head. More than six decades after his death, the historian who will never meet the man, let alone psychoanalyze him, must be guided by compassion as he simply concludes Will was, like so many of us, a damaged soul—even if the precise causes for that damage were uniquely his own.
And yet this extraordinary man refused to be completely oppressed by his damning life experiences. Instead, he applied his executive expertise in creating a lasting structure to make things right, or at least better, for countless children and their families, beneficiaries he would never meet. His famous statement “I never learned how to play” was not a lament; it was a cautionary warning. Will bravely chose to focus his laser-beam intensity and considerable fortune to his “Number One Project,” the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. Will’s greatness, then, resides not only in how he revolutionized how the world eats breakfast but, more triumphant, in the way he transformed his personal disappointments and tragedies into a charitable trust that advances and benefits humanity in perpetuity. It was a supreme achievement that Will Keith Kellogg was born to do.
16
The Final Score
DURING THE WINTER of 1918–1919, John contracted bacterial pneumonia followed by a relapse of his long-standing tuberculosis and a painful bout of pleurisy. This triple assault on his scarred lungs forced him to quit Battle Creek for sunny Florida, where he remained critically ill and bedridden for seven and a half months. It was not until late May of 1919 that an out-of-breath and haggard Dr. Kellogg finally made his way back home, determined on returning to a full slate of work activities at the San. For John, the very idea of not being able to doctor, lecture, and hold forth over his medical kingdom was a fate worse than death.1
A few weeks later, in June, he hosted the national meeting of the Edward Livingstone Trudeau Society, an association of tuberculosis experts named for the physician who ran the famous sanatorium in Saranac Lake, New York.2 At John’s personal request, several of these distinguished doctors examined his chest. In a pre–Kübler-Ross act of denial and bargaining, John asked if he rested thoroughly for one full year, might he expect to live five more years?3 His doctors shook their heads, as John must have done countless times when examining hopeless cases. They told him that his pulmonary condition would continue to deteriorate, his breathing would only become more labored, and he would likely be dead from a slow suffocation within three years.4
Even though the doctor managed to outwit his doctors by living another twenty-four years, he was never really the same, robust, bombastic John Harvey Kellogg of years gone by. The gossip over his imminent demise only grew louder each year he avoided Battle Creek’s harsh winters by spending them in Florida.5 It also spurred the San’s board of directors to plan for his succession.6 As the 1920s progressed, John grudgingly ceded the day-to-day control of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. His replacement, Dr. Charles Stewart, was a respected physician and vice president of the Sanitarium but the transition was rocky, at best. The San was John Harvey Kellogg and John Harvey Kellogg was the San.
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MUCH TO JOHN’S CHAGRIN, the men now running the San forged a different path with new clinical approaches and amenities in the hope of generating a greater profit margin. In 1927, Dr. Stewart announced plans to build a luxurious fifteen-story tower at a cost of more than $4 million (over $54.5 million in 2016). The new building significantly boosted the Sanitarium’s guest capacity but it also increased the overhead costs. Replete with carved wooden Corinthian columns, stained glass windows, marble flooring, a grand dining room worthy of royalty, and hundreds of richly furnished guest rooms, the “Tower” was the tallest building between Detroit and Chicago.
John did not like Stewart’s expansionism one bit. He railed against what he saw as the board’s commercialism and greed. He argued for the San to maintain its patient-centered focus, based not on profits but on the improvement of health through biologic living. John also expressed concern that the San would never be able to pay off the huge loans required for the construction. In the booming economy of 1928, when the American stock market was skyrocketing and the San was packed with patients, his colleagues derided their former boss as out of touch, an old man resistant to new ways and a changing world.7
The San Tower Credit 127
The San Colonnade Credit 128
John’s gloomy predictions became reality after the stock market crash of 1929. Suddenly, a health facility built and staffed to accommodate a daily census of more than 1,300 patients was attracting fewer than 300. Many of the wealthy people who regularly flocked to Battle Creek no longer had the means to afford such extravagance. The San’s debt of over $3 million (about $41.5 million in 2016), not counting interest charges of more than $500 per day (or $6,910 in 2016), translated into drastic layoffs, salary cuts, and plummeting morale. At the end of 1932, the San was forced into receivership. Thereafter, neither John nor the trustees controlled the Battle Creek Sanitarium. It was now run by a group of private and city bondholders who demanded a profit on their investment.8 Thus, John found a new windmill to tilt at and for the next decade he fought bitterly against the “outside interests” controlling the San.9
Miami Springs–Battle Creek Sanitarium, circa early 1930s Credit 129
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THERE WAS YET ANOTHER enterprise of John’s that worried the trustees almost as much as the San’s fiscal predicament. On December 1, 1930, Dr. Kellogg announced the opening of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Miami Springs, Florida. The luxury resort featured a Spanish American architectural design and an interior decorated with Native American motifs, Navajo woven rugs, and bedroom suites made of mahogany. Glenn Curtiss, the airplane pioneer, health enthusiast, and eugenics advocate, offered the hotel to the doctor for the price of $1.00. The seventy-eight-year-old Dr. Kellogg knew a good deal when he saw one but told the multimi
llionaire, “Mr. Curtiss, I think one dollar is too cheap.” Instead, John handed Curtiss a crisp ten-dollar bill to close the deal.10 The Miami Springs Sanitarium’s one hundred rooms remained fully booked during the winter months for the remainder of Dr. Kellogg’s life. Everybody seemed to love it save the San’s board up in Battle Creek, who only saw the Miami Springs facility as a keen rival and competitor.
The Miami San offered an array of lectures, dietary consultations, exercise programs, and health classes that would be quite familiar to denizens of spa resorts today. It boasted, but barely conducted, a research program centered on extending life spans and improving the lives of the elderly. There was also the temperate Florida climate during the dead of winter. With his impeccable sense of occasion, John invited several marquee names to the new facility, including the best-selling authors Dale Carnegie (How to Win Friends and Influence People) and Will Durant (The Story of Philosophy); Nobel laureate and surgeon Alexis Carrel; Gene Tunney, the world’s undefeated heavyweight boxing champion from 1926 to 1928; as well as Henry Ford and Thomas Edison (and their wives).11 When treating the famous, Dr. Kellogg often announced his medical findings to reporters, who then filed their stories on the wire services feeding newspapers across the nation.12
The Kelloggs Page 41