The Ordeals of Orville

Orville L. Hubbard had been running for one public office after another for almost ten years, but he could not get elected. Then, one fine day in 1941, the citizens of Dearborn, Mich. (pop. 94,000) were overcome by a desire for reform and they elected loudmouthed, 225-lb. "Little Orvie" Hubbard their mayor.

Orville opened his office to all comers, stocked it like a gift shop with articles to pass out to voters. With the help of a "strong man" city charter pushed through by his supporters, Orville chopped the once-dominant city council down to size, hired & fired department heads at will (Dr. Marvin Buell, city health officer, attained fleeting fame by rendering a difficult triple-tongued selection on the ocarina while the mayor formally fired him.)

Thimbles for the Ladies. An ex-auto-worker and ex-marine who started with nothing and worked himself through night school to a law degree, Orville Hubbard brooked no opposition. He made his fire chief pay a $973 bill for thimbles which Orville passed out to housewives in his campaigning ("Here's a bill," said Orville. "It's customary to pay these to hold . . . jobs."), and then he had the chief make his whole department hose down the streets one morning at 3 a.m.; this made the chief so unpopular with the firemen that he had to quit. When the Dearborn Press turned against the mayor, Publisher William Klamser's personal property assessment was jacked up 50%.

Withal the mayor had a flair for endearing himself to the voters. He signed all his letters and documents in green ink in inch-high letters, conscientiously dispatched special greetings on green-or canary-colored stationery to new mothers, new brides and new residents, mailed thousands of "wish you were here" postcards to Dearbornites from his vacations (although his mother complained recently that Orville hadn't written to her in more than a year). The voters liked the show well enough to give Orville five terms-- something they had never done for any previous mayor.

A Blackjack for the Kids. But a few months go, Dearborn began losing patience with Mayor Hubbard's lightheaded antics and heavy-handed rule. Voters reacted angrily when he tried to block a new $4,500,000 hospital which would be paid for with money donated by the Ford Motor Co., winced as he poured city money into a project known as Camp Dearborn, an elaborate public summer camp too far from the city to do most residents any good. When taxpayers complained, Little Orvie simply told them to shut up and raised property assessments.

Then his wife Fay sued him for divorce, complaining that he gave her only $10 a week to run the house and was wont to belabor her and the three oldest of the four kids with a blackjack. Reformers started a recall movement, and Attorney John J. Fish slapped a $100,000 libel suit on Orville for accusations he had made while electioneering. The mayor talked his wife into dropping the divorce suit and outwitted those who wanted to recall him--but he lost the libel suit.

Attorney Fish won a $7,500 judgment. Little Orvie couldn't pay. Last week Attorney Fish invoked Michigan's body attachment law, under which he could have Hubbard jailed until the judgment was satisfied. A Wayne County deputy sheriff went to City Hall to arrest the mayor, but the mayor was not there.

Stationery for the Mayor. Wearing a loud bow tie, a crew cut and a big smile, 47-year-old Orville Hubbard was off on a trip (at his own expense)--a little survey of bathing beaches in Chicago, Atlantic City and elsewhere, a mayors' convention in Canada and a few side trips that might, he explained, keep him away from Dearborn for weeks & weeks. When he got to Windsor, Ont., just across the Detroit River from Dearborn, he said, he would set up a government in exile and run Dearborn by telephone. As an added precaution, Orville also placed an order for a new batch of stationery, with a letterhead that read: "Temporary office of the Mayor of Dearborn, Wayne County Jail."

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