6 Tires, No Plan : The Impossible Journey of the Most Inspirational Leader That (Almost) Nobody Knows (9781608322589)

by Rosenbaum, Michael

  On his first day of class in 1944, Bruce met two of the people who would influence his life the most: Geraldine Konfara, his future wife, and Sister Marie Ellen, his homeroom teacher. Sister Marie Ellen saw more in Halle than he saw in himself, and she shared that view with him in a way that changed him forever.

  As Bruce would move on in his life, he’d meet several people who saw promise in him, from the person who would lend him money for his wedding to the mentor who lent him money to invest in his first (failed) business and the first distributors to open a line of credit for his fledgling tire company. Over the ensuing years, Halle would make sure he repaid the confidence people showed in him, both financially and ethically. Each of his patrons would learn that their faith in Halle was justified, that he could be trusted to deliver on his promises.

  Before all of them, however, there was Sister Marie Ellen.

  “She had faith in me,” Halle remembers simply.

  Sister Marie Ellen was one of the many people with a better vocabulary and social skills than Halle possessed, which made her opinion of him credible, albeit surprising. As his final semester began, Bruce Halle needed two half-credits to graduate with the rest of his class. While Sister Rose worked with Halle to complete his biology requirements, Sister Marie Ellen began tutoring him in English.

  As Halle struggled to perfect his writing skills, Sister Marie Ellen began to ask him about his plans for the future. Like many of his classmates, Halle had a vague idea about graduating and finding a job, possibly in an auto plant. The nun suggested college as an alternative path.

  “My high school academic record would make you think I wasn’t smart enough,” Halle says with a smile. “I have those records and, once in a while when I really feel like punishing myself, I look at them. It’s terrible.”

  Even more startling than Sister Marie Ellen’s vision of Bruce Halle as a college student was her suggestion that he give a graduation address on behalf of his fellow athletes. Halle was comfortable and engaging in small groups, but he had never made any kind of public presentation. When he had moved to Detroit, his New England accent was a source of humor for many of his classmates, who thought he sounded sarcastic if all he said was “hello.” By the time he was a senior at Holy Redeemer, the accent had not softened much, but he wonders if it had become more endearing as the faculty got to know him better. Whatever the case, Sister Marie Ellen changed the course of his life with a simple suggestion that he speak in public.

  “I probably wouldn’t have gone to college. I don’t know what I was going to do,” Halle remembers. “But she inspired me to do something different, because I would have probably taken a job in Detroit like my classmates.”

  Certainly, the suggestion of a college education wouldn’t come from Halle’s parents. Higher education was a foreign concept to his working-class father, and the costs seemed insurmountable. Even more relevant, Bob was the smarter son, the better student, and he would naturally be the first to go to college if any Halle son made that leap.

  But Bruce Halle, not Bob, was the son who was graduating this particular year, and his homeroom teacher was showing more faith in him than he had in himself. Sister Marie Ellen worked with him through the spring months, helping him earn his missing half credit in English and draft his speech. As they worked together on class work, preparing the presentation and rehearsing Halle’s delivery, the idea of college became increasingly less strange.

  “We started in February or March, and I was spending a lot of time with her after class and during class or after school, writing this talk and then practicing it and having her help me,” Halle says. “I spent a lot of time with her, and obviously she was an intelligent school teacher and she just inspired me. Okay, I am going to go to college. I’m going to go to Eastern. I’m going to go. Actually, three of my classmates went and I roomed with them. Of course, I think they were all surprised I joined them, but I did.”

  Halle’s speech was titled “The American Way of Life,” and it marked his first public speaking opportunity. His audience was on his side, though, as the C-minus student exhorted them to “Take your diploma, and with it your ambitions. Keep your ideals close to your heart, and with your youth and energy go forth into this land and make your dreams come true. For this is America, the land of opportunity.”

  The exact text of the speech was not wholly relevant, because the experience was much more than a teenager’s oration. The simple fact of the speech—Sister Marie Ellen’s surprising faith that he could be more than he realized—was the life-changing component. Five decades later, in 2001, Halle would return to Holy Redeemer to speak at the dedication of the Halle Gymnasium—a gift from a grateful, though challenged, student.

  In the spring of 1948, however, Halle could not predict anything beyond graduation. All he knew then was that there was a bigger world than the one he had grown up in, and an educated, smart, polished woman believed he might have a place in that world.

  A FEW GOOD MEN

  As Bruce Halle graduated and set his sights on college, business was the furthest thing from his mind. Although he’d been exposed to business people and families that owned businesses while he was in high school, he hadn’t ratcheted up his own vision of the possibilities ahead.

  Halle enrolled in the fall of 1948 at Michigan State Normal College in Ypsilanti—renamed Eastern Michigan University in 1959—with a goal of becoming a physical education teacher at the high school level. “Coming out of high school and being involved in sports, that’s what young guys wanted to do,” he explains.

  The pressure was substantial for the first Halle to go to college. Fred Jr. had essentially become self-supporting at sixteen, but Bruce continued to rely on his parents for some of his expenses.

  “I did most of it and they helped me where they could. Mom and Dad, on the weekend, would give me four or five dollars. That was all that they could do. In fact, it was a big sacrifice at the time and more than I could have expected,” Halle says.

  Bruce picked up odd jobs to help cover his tuition of $75 per year and living expenses on campus. Working in the cafeteria at the Men’s Union gave Halle a chance to forage for food for himself and his friends, but the leftover sandwiches were never quite filling enough for the starving college students. Halle and his roommates at Munson Hall—all friends from Holy Redeemer—would cadge food from young women they knew, including Geraldine Konfara, by writing letters home, all of thirty miles from Ypsilanti to Detroit.

  “We wrote to all the girls and gave them a sad story and asked them to send us cookies and stuff like that. Some would actually make cookies and send them, but Gerry worked at J.L. Hudson, so she’d just buy some and send it in a big box and we’d get them that way,” Halle says.

  Halle continued courting Gerry, and she would often come up to the school for the Saturday-night dances that were a monthly feature of campus social life. During his freshman year in college, Bruce and Gerry attended the wedding of Bill DiDonato—whose family’s television had been a source of wonder for Halle in high school—and his bride, Ann. That night, Halle explained to Gerry that the two of them would be married one day, but she scoffed at the idea, and his profession of love didn’t turn the two of them into an exclusive couple.

  At college, Bruce resumed the patterns of his high school years, including both athletic activities and poor grades. He joined the football team and made friends on the squad, but the combination of work, classes and athletics was more than he could juggle. His grade point average was below C and it was beginning to seem that Sister Marie Ellen was wrong about him, after all.

  Halle’s college career was interrupted—some might say mercifully—by the start of the Korean War in the summer of 1950. Fred Jr. had enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve after his stint with the Marines, and Bob Halle decided to enlist as well—even though Bob was still in high school. Both brothers were activated in the summer of 1950, between Bob’s junior and senior years in high school, and Bruce felt compelled
to enlist as well.

  “Now, they’re both activated, and I’m ending my sophomore year in college and I’m a failure as a student. I’m not really doing anything, and so I decide to enlist in the Marine Corps,” Halle says.

  Bruce went to boot camp at Parris Island in South Carolina, while Bob was shipped to San Diego. The two brothers went through boot camp in parallel and compared notes—just a bit competitively—on their progress. Bob remembers besting Bruce’s marksmanship score of 209 by setting a record at 210—although he suspects Bruce remembers the scores just a bit differently.

  Boot camp was a life-changing experience for Halle, as the combination of training and discipline chipped away at his anger-management challenges. During one touch football game on pavement, a fellow Marine tripped Halle, leaving a bloody scar on his hand. The sergeant allowed Halle to take his revenge, but only for a limited time. When it was time to stop, he had to have the control to stop.

  Gaining that control was far from an instant process, but the discipline and force of basic training were more powerful than Halle’s temper. Halle began to become more disciplined and, if not less aggressive, certainly more controlled.

  “The best piece of advice I ever got in my life, I got from my brother Fred,” Halle says. “I was going into the Marine Corps and he told me, ‘Bruce, keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut.’ With his great advice I went into boot camp, and Sergeant Delio, a tech sergeant, is in charge. Sergeant Pratt, a three striper, is his assistant. So they get a new guy in, a Corporal Riley, a reservist that’s called up. First day, he takes us to the dentist. In boot camp you can’t speak to anybody. You can say, ‘Sir, Private Halle requests permission to speak, Sir.’ ‘Permission granted, speak.’ You have to do that. They beat that into you, that whole concept. Now, we’re at the dentist, waiting, and I’ve got to go to the head. So, I walk up to Corporal Riley and I say, ‘Corporal, can I go to the head?’ That’s all. I don’t say ‘Sir.’

  “Later we’re in our barracks. Chow is over and I hear: ‘Halle, get your ass in here.’ They’re all in there—Corporal Riley, Sergeant Pratt, Sergeant Delio—and I’m standing at attention. ‘Sir, Private Halle reporting.’ Pratt shoved me. I bounced back. He shoved me again. He shoved me some more. Delio, the staff sergeant says, ‘Would you like to hit Sergeant Pratt?’ ‘Yes, sir, fucking right,’ I said. So they beat me around, they shoved me around and I survived, but I deserved it. So, in the morning, we fall out and they say, ‘Halle, fall out.’ I say, ‘Oh shit, they’re going to kill me here in front of these eighty guys.’ But they moved me up to squad leader. Because I took their shit.”

  After boot camp, Bruce was sent to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where Fred Jr. was already a sergeant in a different battalion.

  “I go to see Fred, and Fred’s a tough dude,” Halle says. “All the guys are saying, ‘Don’t mess with Sergeant Halle.’ He’s a staff sergeant. I’m a private. I go in the barracks looking for him. ‘Don’t go looking for him. He’s an SOB. Don’t go near him.’ I walk up to Fred. He’s in the hallway and I touch him on the back of the shoulder and he turns around and swings at me. Of course, I knew he was going to do that and I stopped his punch and he says, ‘Oh. Bruce.’

  “So there was an NCO club, a non-commissioned officers club. I’m a private. I can’t go there. But Fred takes me in there and we’re getting—it’s called a slop shoot there in the Marine Corps, so we’re in the slop shoot, getting 3.2 beer. While I’m standing with Fred, out comes the master sergeant that’s the head of my company. He kicked me out and he gave Fred hell, but we were brothers and it was fun.”

  As boot camp ended in November, 1950, the newly promoted private first class enjoyed a thirty-day leave to return home before fulfilling his three-year obligation, which would likely include a tour in Korea. Halle was dating both Gerry and another woman at the time. Although he and Gerry were somewhat a couple and he had predicted that they would marry, they still were not exclusive.

  “I had a date with another girl I was dating the first night I got back,” Halle remembers. “The second night, I had a date with Gerry. I never went back to the other girl. It was just meant to be with us.”

  Bruce and Gerry got engaged at the close of 1950, but they debated whether to get married right away or wait until Bruce’s military hitch was over. In February 1951, Gerry and another woman traveled to Washington, DC to spend a weekend with Halle and a friend. The couple chose to accelerate their plans and get married the following month, on March 17—St. Patrick’s Day.

  “Gerry and I are going to get married,” Halle remembers. “We have no money and, of course, our families are regular working families. And we’re trying to plan a wedding, which we did in Dearborn Heights at Warren Valley Golf Club. The whole thing would cost $800, which was a fortune; I’m a private in the Marine Corps and I’m making $18 a month, something like that. Gerry’s cousin, John Van Brunt, was working for a leather maker named Raymond Walk. And Raymond Walk, through John, loaned Gerry and me the $800 to get married and to have this wedding.”

  In the 1950s, it was common to give the bride and groom the most versatile of gifts: cash. Bruce and Gerry spent their first night of wedded bliss as most newlyweds do: counting the proceeds from their party.

  “We are counting it out, because it was a fortune for us, and we got $1,300,” Halle beams. “That was amazing.”

  The newlyweds received a large number of $20 bills at their wedding and, for a working-class family, $20 was a substantial gift. Even after repaying Walk for the $800 loan, Bruce and Gerry started out with $500 in the bank. Later, Halle would decide to give each Discount Tire employee who gets married a gift of $1,000, which he estimates as the modern equivalent of the $20 bills he received in 1951.

  Halle had almost missed his wedding, thanks to his inability to secure enough leave time to get from Camp Lejeune to Detroit and back. Halle originally wrangled a one-week pass for his wedding and honeymoon, but the captain cut his leave to seventy-two hours just before his leave was to begin. Lacking the heart—or courage—to break the news to Gerry, Halle left camp and hoped he could get an extension while on the road.

  Hitchhiking was a fairly common form of transport in the 1950s and a young Marine in uniform could rely on the kindness of passing motorists. Halle hitched the eight hundred miles from Camp Lejeune to Detroit, arriving just in time for his wedding rehearsal on Friday night. Following his wedding on Saturday, the newlyweds took Gerry’s brother’s car on their honeymoon to Chicago, with Bruce stopping regularly to call his father for news about a leave extension. The Marine Corps was unrelenting. Halle’s leave ended at midnight Sunday.

  Bruce and Gerry took a two-day honeymoon in Chicago before driving back to Detroit on Tuesday. Back in uniform, thumb raised, Halle started hitchhiking his way back to Camp Lejeune, arriving on Wednesday—three days overdue. The captain was not amused.

  Halle was called into the colonel’s office, along with the captain and Halle’s master sergeant, who delivered the same advice Halle had received earlier from his older brother—keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut. Believing his cause to be just, Halle ignored “the best piece of advice I ever got in my life.” His pleadings won him thirty days of mess duty—KP—and the enmity of his commanding officer.

  While the punishment ended the matter for the colonel, the captain had unfinished business with his AWOL private and had him transferred to a unit deploying for maneuvers in Europe. With D-Day less than seven years in the past, potential invasions and military exercises had serious meaning for the Marine Corps. For the locals in the Mediterranean nations Halle invaded—Italy, Spain and Greece among them—the show was highly entertaining. Clad in full battle gear, Halle and his fellow Marines would clamber down rope ladders off their ship and into landing barges. As the barges reached shore, the invading horde would leap out to storm the beach while families lazed on nearby picnic blankets, clapping and cheering for the brave young Americans coming to s
ave them.

  COMING OF AGE

  Maneuvers in Europe separated the newlyweds but provided Bruce Halle a reprieve before he shipped out to Korea. Upon returning to Camp Lejeune in November 1951, Halle was promoted to corporal and received a thirty-day leave to visit the wife he hadn’t seen since his two-day honeymoon nine months earlier. They reconnected with family, friends and each other, lunched at J.L. Hudson’s department store and tried to fit in enough togetherness to last through their next separation.

  On January 1, 1952, Halle took his first plane ride on the way to Camp Pendleton, California and, eventually, Korea. Halle’s decision to fly gave him an unexpected break when he reported to his base. When his plane landed at Chicago’s Midway Airport—then the world’s busiest—a winter storm blocked his progress. Halle reported to base late, along with dozens of other Marines who were stuck on buses, trains or roadside hitchhiking locales. Overdue sergeants were busted to corporal, corporals were busted to private, but Corporal Bruce Halle had a note from the airline and escaped punishment, receiving a promotion to sergeant a few weeks later.

  By the time Halle shipped out in early 1952, much of the worst action was over, although his brother, Bob, had not been so fortunate. Bob Halle arrived in Korea in 1951 and was wounded twice in battle—first suffering a minor mortar wound and later a head wound sustained during a nighttime firefight. The family was notified that Bob was missing in action, learning later that he had been found. Bruce Halle’s younger brother returned home to Taylor Township at the end of 1951, a war hero.

  “I was very fortunate in that I got to Korea in February of 1952,” Halle says now. “The end of 1950 is when the United States got chased out of the Chosin Reservoir and I missed that. That was where a lot of guys lost their lives or got hurt. I got there after that.”