Education: The Senator’s Hobby

When darkness fell on Halloween, the small fry of Ferndale, Mich. (pop. 29,675) were out on the town as usual. They roamed the streets and pushed at doorbells; they begged for cookies and smeared the store windows with slogans written in soap. But one window they steadfastly refused to touch. On the morning after the big night, the plate glass of the Higgins-Pontiac showroom was, as always, clean.

In the last 20 years, it has become something of a Ferndale tradition for the youngsters to pay George N. Higgins this special tribute. A bluff, grey-haired man of 52, he is a familiar figure around town. He runs a trucking firm as well as the Pontiac agency, and for six years he has also been a state senator. But his fame in Ferndale rests on quite another activity—his hobby of sending boys & girls through college.

Standing Offer. George Higgins never got to college himself; he only managed to squeak through high school by working after class as a janitor and a soda jerk. After that he struck out for Detroit, became a star salesman for General Motors, finally earned enough money to buy a Ferndale agency of his own. Then, one day, a teacher from Lincoln High School happened to tell him about a “mighty deserving poor boy” who wanted to go to college. That night George Higgins decided that the boy should go, and that he should take the responsibility of paying the college bills.

As his business grew, Higgins began to expand his hobby. He phoned the Lincoln and St. James High Schools and made them a standing offer. Each year, he said, he would send off four or five of their students, no matter what their race or religion or where they wanted to go. Soon a steady stream of youngsters was filing through his office—the sons & daughters of elevator operators, mechanics, and factory hands.

Sometimes Higgins did not bother to wait for the high school crop. Once, he spotted a boy selling newspapers on the corner and, after a talk with him, sent him off to college and pharmacy school. Another time, he met a girl who lived in a hut by the railroad tracks. Within a short while, she was in college, too. In those days, Higgins never kept track of the money he spent. It was not until 1946 that he organized his hobby into a foundation.

Personal Touch. Today, the Higgins Foundation boasts a permanent kitty of $20,000; every time it falls below, Higgins simply deposits another check. The foundation does not cover all expenses, but Higgins digs into his own pocket to see personally that “my students are dressed nice.” Ferndale merchants have long since grown used to having a few of his students come around, armed with the familiar instruction: “Tell ’em I said to outfit you and charge it to Mr. Higgins.” Last week George Higgins totted up his score, found that he had seen 75 boys & girls earn degrees at dozens of campuses from Annapolis to the University of Michigan. Each of the students has a folder in the Pontiac office, filled with clips and letters (“my heartwarming mementos”). Once in a great while, when a student seems to be taking things too easy at school, Higgins summons him home for a stern lecture (“You’ve got to scratch. You’re not riding a gravy train”). But in all the years of his hobby, he has never had a failure. “About the only one who comes close to it,” George Higgins likes to say, “is a girl who up and gets married on me—before she finishes college.”