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This file contains interview on politics in Grand Rapids under the McKay machine, notably the work of the League of Women Voters and Citizens Action.
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1536970
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Judd, Dorothy L. - Interview, 1/25/80
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1536970
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Judd, Dorothy L. - Interview, 1/25/80
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This file contains interview on politics in Grand Rapids under the McKay machine, notably the work of the League of Women Voters and Citizens Action.
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Grand Rapids Oral Histories Collection
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Scanned from Grand Rapids Oral History Collection at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library (Box 1)
RECORDS AND ADMINISTRATION
Gerald R. Ford Library
NATIONAL 1985
1000 Beal Avenue Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-2114
DOROTHY L. JUDD
Oral history interview on politics in Grand Rapids under
the McKay machine, especially the work of the League of
Women Voters and Citizens Action.
A Presidential Library Administered by the National Archives and Records Administration
RECEIVED NOV 10 1980
GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS SERVICE
GERALD R. FORD LIBRARY
Legal Agreement Pertaining to the Oral History Interview of Dorothy L.
Judd.
In accordance with the provisions of Chapter 21 of Title 44, United
States Code, and subject to the terms and conditions hereinafter set
forth, I, Dorothy L. Judd, of Grand Rapids, MI, do hereby give, donate
and convey to the United States of America all my rights, title, and
interest in the tape recording and transcript of a personal
interview conducted on January 27, 1980 at Grand Rapids, MI
and prepared for deposit in the Gerald R. Ford Library. This
assignment is subject to the following terms and conditions:
(1) The transcript shall be available for use by researchers
as soon as it has been deposited in the Gerald R. Ford Library.
(2) The tape recording shall be available to those researchers
who have access to the transcript.
(3) I hereby assign to the United States Government all
copyright I may have in the interview transcript and tape.
(4) Copies of the transcript and the tape recording may be
provided by the Library to researchers on request.
(5) Copies of the transcript and tape recording may be
deposited in or loaned to institutions other than the Gerald R.
Ford Library.
Mrs Donor Dorothy Juad
Date
august 5, 1980
Rober Wome
Archivist of the United States
august 14, 1980
Date
This interview is being conducted with Mrs. Dorothy L. Judd in her
home in Grand Rapids, Michigan on January 27, 1980. The interviewer
is Dr. Thomas Soapes. Present for the interview are Dr. Soapes and
Mrs. Judd.
SOAPES:
How did you get involved in politics here in Grand
Rapids?
MRS. JUDD:
My family have always been active in the community - -
my mother, my father, my grandfather. It's just a tradition in the
family to take some responsibility in the community. As far as the
party is concerned, I've never been a strong party person. The
League of Women Voters has been my great interest since the 1920s.
I served as president of the local and state league and as a director
on the national board of the League of Women Voters. So most of my
approach to governmental affairs has been on nonpartisan issues.
However, I am a Republican, and I was elected as a Republican to
the state constitutional convention and served always in the
Republican political caucus on that convention.
SOAPES:
What year was that?
MRS. JUDD:
Nineteen sixty one and two. I continue to keep up
my membership in the party, but I have many disagreements with
party people.
SOAPES:
Your activities in the League of Women Voters you
said started back in the twenties. What kind of activities was
the League involved in at that time.
MRS. JUDD:
Almost as many things as it is today. We got the
first federal aid law through with aid for maternal and infant welfare.
I worked on that in the early twenties. And I think we were chiefly
responsible for the amendment in '28 that changed the terms of
congress and the presidency. We were interested in international
affairs. We were trying to get the World Court accepted and we had
Manley 0. Hudson, professor international law at Harward.
(Hudson later wrote the definitive history of the World Court and
was himself appointed judge of that court in 1935.) So that's the
kind of thing we did in the twenties.
SOAPES:
Did you have any contact with Julia Lathrop in the
work at the League?
MRS. JUDD:
Yes, Julia Lathrop's work as head of the Children's
Bureau under President Wilson had a great influence on our concern
for juvenile justice. And locally we began work then on conditions
in the Children's Home and its administration by the Probate Court.
Here we first met the power of Frank McKay.
I was on the national board in 1931 to '33 and I was
head of their department of what we then called "Efficiency in
Government." We worked on permanent registration for Michigan
when I was in the Michigan league, got that passed. There were all
aspects of the League's work I was interested in.
SOAPES:
The [Frank D.] McKay machine, of course, was
operating here in the twenties and thirties.
MRS. JUDD:
Yes, he came into power in the late twenties in the
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state government, and we fought him then. I say we - - it was a
citizens' organization. See, Grand Rapids is nonpartisan govern-
ment so we had this nonpartisan citizens' organization to investi-
gate city manager [George] Welsh's handling of relief during the
depression. He had some good new ideas about the handling of relief,
but everybody was suspicious that McKay was profiting by it. So
this brought about a fight against Welsh at that time in the early
thirties.
SOAPES:
In what way did you think McKay was profiting?
MRS. JUDD:
Principally through the food and construction by
work relief. Welsh had a central food store. I can't remember the
details any more but there was a chance there to make some money.
SOAPES:
This was a food store where the welfare recipients
would be likely to be - -
MRS. JUDD:
They had to go down to one central store to get it
and then they had to walk home with their welfare bags. And that
was a very insulting thing to those people. And then we had two
public improvement projects both reservoirs, going on at that time,
one under the work relief program of Welsh's and the other under
the regular private employment method. So it was a good chance to
compare the costs, and of course the work relief job proved to be
the more costly.
SOAPES:
When did you start organizing and working in the
operations to try to undo McKay's machinery?
-3-
MRS. JUDD:
We tried to change the city commission to eliminate
his control of the commissioners. And my father was elected to
the commission at that time from the Third ward. At the same time
Manager Welsh was forced to resign and the new commission had to
make a drastic move to reassure the public about welfare. So it
appointed L. A. Cornelius, a prominent and highly respected citizen,
president of a large industry, to give six months without pay to
reforming the system. But McKay kept the majority control;so the
reform government only had about a year to operate before the
commission went back into the hands of the machine.
SOAPES:
This would have been about what year?
MRS. JUDD:
Thirty-three and four, right in there.
SOAPES:
So it was just a temporary setback for McKay and he
came back.
MRS. JUDD:
Yes. In the meantime, of course, he was becoming so
strong in the state government.
SOAPES:
Now I understand from some of the other people I've
talked to that his power was centered in the immigrant precincts
of the town.
MRS. JUDD:
Well, yes. In fact there was always a rumor that he
was Polish, I don't know.
SOAPES:
I've heard the rumor that either he was Polish or
that he was Lithuanian. [Laughter]
MRS. JUDD:
Anyway I think in those days, it was natural where
-4-
you have wards for nationalities or races to unite and that's a
place to build political power. (You see, our city charter, written
in 1916, had provided for election at-large and the city remained
in control of the Citizens League of that era until George Welsh
got the charter amended in 1923 to provide for three wards.) I
don't think McKay ever got very far with the Dutch.
Oh, I had another opportunity - - you told me you
were coming to talk about Ford, now you've got me talking about McKay.
SOAPES:
Well, we'll get to Ford - - I was just leading up
to it.
MRS. JUDD:
Do you want me to go on with McKay?
SOAPES:
Sure.
MRS. JUDD:
Well, the state was getting in such terrible condition
with his control. He had the complete power of appointment over all
the state employees, appointment and dismissal. And it was costly.
Finally Professor James K. Pollock, head of the Department of
Political Science, University of Michigan and Len Upson, who was
running the Michigan Citizens Research Council in Detroit, decided
that we should try to get a merit system into the state government - -
this was in '34 and '35. They persuaded Governor [Frank D.]
Fitzgerald to appoint a commission to draft a statute for a civil
service system. I knew Fitzgerald quite well. He came to the
house and we discussed this, and I think it was a very courageous
thing for him to do. In fact, I think in the end it brought about
-5-
his death, maybe by a heart attack - - it was sudden. Anyway, he
appointed this excellent commission, one Republican and one Democrat
and these two research men, Pollock and Upson and myself. We made
a long and careful investigation of the spoils system and came up
with this fact that no department head - - when they tell me today
a department head can't fire civil servant - - no department head
in those days could fire a McKay backed employee. So he just
controlled the whole thing through his control of the employees
of the state government. And when we got the statute through in
1937 and it began to operate, why his power was gone in the state.
But he kept attacking the law and he got it repealed in 1939, got
the statute repealed by the legislature. So then in 1940 we revived
the statewide citizens organization and got it put into the consti-
tution. That was the end of McKay's power in the state. But then
we still had the problem of his power in the Grand Rapids City Hall.
SOAPES:
Did you begin to work then with Dr. VerMeulen's group?
MRS. JUDD:
No, this came along in the forties when we were
working in the city hall. Welsh was mayor for twelve years - - from
thirty-eight, I think, until we recalled him in forty-nine. But one
of the problems was the financing of the city, didn't have enough
money. The Chamber of Commerce in 1944 appointed a committee to go
into the problem of city finances. I was on that committee, and
Jerry Ford's father was on that committee - - it's just a little
incident, I was going to tell you about it. We met at luncheon
-6-
once a week for quite a long time. Well the war was on you know
and of course Jerry was in the Navy, wasn't he?
SOAPES:
Yes.
MRS. JUDD:
In the Pacific. We never could start talking about
city finances until Mr. Ford finished telling us all about Jerry.
So that was my first finding out about Jerry.
SOAPES:
At that time, wasn't his father in the Republican
party organization?
MRS. JUDD:
I suppose so; I don't really know. He was in the
paint business.
SOAPES:
Yes.
MRS. JUDD:
But he was so fond of that boy.
SOAPES:
What are the principal traits of Ford, Senior that
you remember?
MRS. JUDD:
Oh, he was a very nice man; everybody liked him very
much. I never knew him well enough to say much more.
SOAPES:
You didn't have an intimate, personal relationship
with the family?
MRS. JUDD:
No, no. In fact, even today I'll bet Jerry wouldn't
know me if he saw me. We've had plenty of correspondence during his
years as congressman because I'm always telling a congressman what
I think he ought to do. And we didn't always agree, of course.
SOAPES:
Of course in this time now in the early forties
VerMeulen's "Home Front" group is beginning to work, and with
-7-
your interest in good government I assume you had at least an
interest in what they were doing.
MRS. JUDD:
Yes, but I was not a part of it because I was very
active in the nonpartisan League of Women Voters during the forties.
In fact I wrote a textbook for the city schools on our city govern-
ment - - it was an official textbook for the city classes and that
was published in forty-eight. As I look back on it now I don't
know how I ever did that and all that Welsh battle too.
SOAPES:
But you didn't actually meet with VerMeulen's group
or help him organize?
MRS. JUDD;
No, but VerMeulen invited himself to our group once.
You see in 1949 we had organized - - I say we - - just a whole lot
of people that were upset over the Welsh administration. We got
together and organized what we called "Citizen's Action.' This was
nonpartisan - - we had a Democrat, Julius Amberg - - the first, as
president one year and a leading Republican, Bert Cole, the next.
We continued to alternate. Then Tom Quimby was president and he
later became an assistant in the foreign department in Washington - -
he was a Democrat. I can't remember who the different ones were
but they alternated. I am getting my story mixed up. It isn't
time for Bill VerMeulen yet. Let me back up.
The object of a previous coaltion up to that point
had been to get adopted an amendment that would improve the tax
assessment system, because this was one of the methods by which
-8-
McKay gained and held power in the city was by fooling with assess-
ments. They would go up if he didn't like a person and down if he
did. And that Chamber of Commerce committee in 1944 was the one
that discovered this terrible weakness in our system and showed
that assessments ranged from 10% to 90% of real value. So we started
out to amend the charter to take the power of appointment of the
assessors from the commission and to set it up as a single assessor
under the city manager. And this caused great furor on the part of
George Welsh and, of course, McKay. But we had a very fine organ-
ization as far as leadership of all different aspects of the community
were concerned, our amendment passed by 186 votes.
When City Manager Frank Goebel announced his appoint-
ment of a professional appraiser as City Assessor at a City Commission
meeting before a packed audience, Mayor Welsh went into a rage, fired
him off hand and physically chased him down the aisle and out of the
hall.
Those several hundred of us in the audience went off
to meet in small groups in various offices, all agreeing that there
must be a mass meeting in Fulton Street Park - right downtown, and
have speakers. I was scared to death of the idea - - nobody will
come and that will just kill the whole movement right then and
there. But they all insisted on doing it. And Don Bauma, who was
one of the speakers, and so was Dr. Littlefair, Minister of the
Fountain Street Church, which is a very liberal church, and I think
-9-
Julius Amberg, were the speakers. Gerald White was the presiding
official. Anyway, Don Bauma and I walked down Fulton Street, a
beautiful evening, and all the streets seemed to be just full of
people that were converging on the park, and I couldn't believe my
eyes. Well, the paper estimated there were some five thousand
people there. And McKay sat in his car on the side street and watched
the whole thing. But thank goodness even George Welsh decided to
put a cordon of police around the platform. I don't know what he
thought might happen, whether all these good citizens were going to
try and kill McKay or what. Anyway, I will never forget the chief
of police, Bill Johnson, now of course he didn't speak to us and we
didn't speak to him, but, oh, I was so glad to see him there. He's
been a city commissioner since that time. Well, that was the way
it got started. The Calvin College students put arm bands on and
carried petitions for the recall of Mayor Welsh and got people to
say they would take petitions - - it wasn't to get them signed there
but to get people to take them and get them signed. So they dis-
tributed something like three thousand petitions. I can't recall
the number of signatures we got, but it was a stupendous number
from the whole city to put that amendment on the ballot. And to
make a long story short, we filed the petitions for a recall election.
And then George took it to court and said the petitions were invalid
and there was something wrong with them - - ditto marks instead of
dates or something like that. We lost in the lower court and we
-10-
appealed it to the state supreme court. Welsh in the meantime was
president of the National Conference of Mayors, which was made up
of mayors of non-city managers of cities, and he had been invited
to go on that "Town Meeting of the Air" trip. Did you ever hear
of that?
SOAPES:
Yes, I've heard of that.
MRS. JUDD:
It went around the world. And he was on it. And
when he was in Rome, he got the news that he had lost the case in
the state supreme court and he wired his resignation.
SOAPES:
That was in 1949.
MRS. JUDD:
Yes.
SOAPES:
What surprises me is that with the power that McKay
still had when you were trying to get this new assessment system in
that you were able to get the vote to put it in. I'm sure he was
using what influence he had to deliver his precincts in the way he
could deliver them, and you were still able to overcome that.
MRS. JUDD:
Yes, after a recount in several precincts produced
errors. We did an awfully big job of campaigning for that amendment.
SOAPES:
It was a lot of - -
MRS. JUDD:
We had a lot of meetings in people's homes all over
the city. It was a big organizational job. We got out a little
newspaper. We had something like three thousand members - - every-
body who had circulated a petition we considered a member.
SOAPES:
So it was a project then of just good organization,
-11-
canvassing your potential vote and making sure you got it out.
MRS. JUDD:
And it was being a very representative group to start
with, the board itself was.
SOAPES:
You had some well-known people of good standing.
MRS. JUDD:
Yes. And the members had elected the board. It was
well thought through. It was a great experience for me to be a
part of it.
SOAPES:
You said VerMeulen had come to your board and had
made his case for your alignment.
MRS. JUDD:
Oh yes, I never did answer your question about
VerMeulen. He came to the Citizens Action board one day and gave
us all the bad stories he could think of about McKay, and he was
quite insistent that we turn the tables on McKay and use his own
methods against him. But the board included two fine professors
from Calvin College, and if you know our Dutch people, they're very
strong on morals. And one of them was head of the Calvin Theological
Seminary, Dr. Henry Stob, a very fine man. Another was Dr. Donald
Bauma, a historian, I think. Now what was your last question?
SOAPES:
Did they work with you in passing this assessment
change?
MRS. JUDD:
No, I don't think SO. No, you see they were strictly
partisan, they were Republicans. They called themselves Young
Republicans, didn't they?
SOAPES:
I think they had adopted the "Home Front" name by
that time.
-12-
MRS. JUDD:
Oh, yes. Well, it was a movement across the state - -
Detroit had a group, Kalamazoo had a group, Flint had a group. And
they were all trying to get McKay out of control of the Republican
party because it was hurting the party. So, fortunately, that was
going on at the same time and of course it all helped both ways.
And of course after Welsh resigned and then we undertook to elect
a mayor, and of course we elected Paul [Goebel]. And Paul had been
active in the Young Republican group. Then the "Citizen's Action"
deliberately and officially disorganized. So often these things die
out and leave a bad taste at the end, but we decided that after we
had gotten Paul elected twice that we were on a good route to keeping
our good government and we decided to disorganize. We didn't know
what to do with the minutes because we didn't want Welsh or McKay
to get hold of the minutes; so we put them in a vault in the bank.
And I got to thinking the other day - - I wonder if they are still
there. I don't know who would have the authority to get them out.
SOAPES:
It would be interesting to recover those to see what
was there. This is important background information because of the
fact of his [Fords] association with the "Home Front" and his father's
work with it too.
MRS. JUDD:
Oh yes.
SOAPES:
When did you first become aware of Jerry Ford as a
potential congressional candidate?
MRS. JUDD:
In '48. The League of Women Voters had always held
-13-
candidate's meetings where the candidates of both parties, if it
were a primary, would speak and would have an equal amount of
time - - so it took a pretty strong person to preside to keep it
timed that way. We knew that there was a lot of controversy, of
course, in '48 with the McKay situation and our congressman was a
McKay man, [Bartel J.] Jonkman. By the way, he had a very fine and
respectable sister in public welfare work, but he was really just a
McKay man in congress. So we invited our state president of the
League of Women Voters to come over from Flint and preside with the
idea that she would be very neutral. There were six candidates from
the Republicans, and I think only one or two Democrats were running.
And we had one meeting in each ward, and the meeting in the second
ward was held first and that went along alright. And when we got
to the first ward, it was held in the west side library, somebody
criticized Jonkman and he lost his temper. And of course Jerry was
one of the candidates there. Jonkman lost his temper and just flew
into a rage right on the stage there and stepped down and walked
out and never turned up at any other League meetings. And this
really opened the way for Jerry, I think, people were so angered
with Jonkman. Jerry was clearly outstanding as among the rest of
the Republican candidates.
SOAPES:
Did you work directly for Ford's campaign that year?
MRS. JUDD:
No, I was working on "Citizen's Action.' We were
all being very careful not to get into partisan matters. This was
-14-
a League of Women Voter's candidates meeting I was talking bout.
The LWV of the United States you know sponsored the presidential
debates in the last election, same kind of thing on a national basis
which we were doing then in the state and cities.
SOAPES:
The connection between Jonkman and McKay, was that
a principal focus of what Ford was talking about during that campaign?
MRS. JUDD:
I don't remember at all what he talked about.
SOAPES:
I was wondering whether this campaign was run as an
anti-McKay campaign or if Ford was running it on particular issues.
He makes mention of his concern about Jonkman's isolationism as
being something he didn't care for.
MRS. JUDD:
Oh, he does?
SOAPES:
Yes.
MRS. JUDD:
Well, maybe Jonkman had taken his cue from [Arthur]
Vandenberg. Vandenberg was a great isolationist, you know. In fact
the League of Women Voters fought him like mad all through the
twenties and early thirties on the World Court issue, and it was his
amendment that really killed the membership of the United States in
the World Court. And then it was in the forties that he had this - -
what do you call it in a religious meeting?
SOAPES:
A conversion.
MRS. JUDD:
A conversion, yes, and really became the chief
advocate of the United Nations which included the World Court.
That was '44 and '45, and maybe Jerry took a leaf out of that book,
-15-
I don't know.
SOAPES:
Was any question ever raised about Vanderberg having
any relationship with McKay?
MRS. JUDD:
Well, I suppose they must have been friendly. Nobody
could be elected as a Republican if they didn't have McKay's backing.
But I don't think McKay had anything to do with Vanderberg's inter-
national policies. I don't think McKay was interested in that field.
SOAPES:
You said that once Ford was in congress, you had
numerous opportunities to communicate with him and that you had
disagreements with him now and then.
MRS. JUDD:
I don't know what they were about. I still disagree
with [Harold S.] Sawyer, and keep voting for him.
SOAPES:
Once Ford is elected he's got the job of not only
being congressman but keeping his fences mended back here at home.
Do you remember how he kept his name before the voters back here?
Was his name in the paper all the time?
MRS. JUDD:
No, I'm sorry to say my memory doesn't pick up very
much of it. I was very busy with the League of Women Voters and
with the state constitutional convention and later with the state
civil service commission.
SOAPES:
His name was raised a couple of times in the fifties
about possibly running for governor or for senator. Do you remember
those?
MRS. JUDD:
No, I don't remember anything about that.
-16-
SOAPES:
What kind of reaction was there in this community
when Ford moved up to be the leader of the Republicans in the Congress?
MRS. JUDD:
In the house, you mean?
SOAPES:
Yes.
MRS. JUDD:
Oh, of course we were very proud of him, sure. Very
proud when he became president. He's been criticized on that pardon
business, but I think he had to get that issue out of the way before
he could do anything constructive. I think he had good men in when
he was president, his advisers, did a good job.
SOAPES:
Do you remember any situations back home here while
he was congressman when he was involved in controversies that seemed
to be somehow threatening to his political position, any difficulties
he seemed to be in?
MRS. JUDD:
No, I just wasn't close enough to him. I wasn't as
active in the national League of Women Voters then as I had been
earlier. So national issues, I didn't have much time for them, I
guess.
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