Education: Mr. Flint at Work

Charles Stewart Mott, three-time (1912, 1913, 1918) mayor of Flint, Mich., is a bushy-browed, vigorous oldster of 77 who takes a mighty delight in bridge, dancing and thoroughbreds, and in managing his personal fortune, which is one of the biggest (an estimated $100 million) in the state. Over the past 17 years, he has also come to mean a lot more to the citizens of Flint (pop. 163,000). Through his Mott Foundation he has brought supervised recreation to thousands of schoolchildren. He has set their parents to studying hundreds of different courses in adult night classes. And he has changed the Flint school system into one of the nation’s liveliest.

Last week “Mr. Flint” was planning another million-dollar addition to the city’s educational plant. Architects working with the Mott Foundation had just finished the blueprints for a new building for Flint Junior College, and Mott was working on plans to make the college itself a four-year campus. But first, he wanted to make sure that it would be a real community center—a place that every Flint citizen, young or old, would be proud of. “Then,” said Mr. Flint, “I’ll give ’em a million dollars. And then, we can talk about giving them some more.”

Brothers & Stepping Stones. Encouraging the schools to serve the community has been the aim of the Mott Foundation since it first began its program in 1935. A onetime manufacturer of automobile axles who made a fortune in General Motors stock, Philanthropist Mott noted that Flint schoolchildren had little healthy recreation and almost no adult supervision once they got out of school each day. He decided to start a series of boys’ clubs to provide after-school meeting places, andthe Mott Foundation was born.

The foundation’s first step was a modest one—$6,000 to start boys’ clubs in five of the schools. Soon it began to expand. It started buying up vacant lots for playgrounds, set up a Health Center where any child under 14 could get a free examination. On the advice of the late Father Flanagan of Boys Town, it started a “Big Brother” program to provide volunteer “fathers” and “brothers” to 500 boys a year. It also set up 26 “Stepping Stone Clubs,” where girls can gather and learn about everything from making a bed to making a lasting marriage.

The foundation has never been interested in building fancy clubs or parks of its own. Its main idea is to work through the school system, to make full use of the facilities the city already has. It keeps the schools open at night with a vast adult education program—632 classes in 312 different subjects. It finances a summer camp for children who would otherwise never get out of the city, and its Youth Bureau has found jobs for as many as 1 ,000 youngsters in a year. It has poured money into softball, tennis and basketball programs—all supervised by school and community instructors. Once, when two small boys invaded Mott’s office to complain that the Park Department could not afford to keep the city swimming pools open in August, Mott immediately decided to foot the bill. “We are,” says he, “a last-resort organization.”

Fresh Flowers & Fresh Ideas. Today, with more than $20 million in stocks and real estate (the foundation owns at least one bank and four department stores), the foundation can afford to do quite a bit of last-resorting. But that is only the start of its work. By its alliance with the Board of Education, the foundation has turned the schools into neighborhood centers, given hundreds of teachers a chance to earn extra money, and made Flint more community-conscious than ever before.

At 77, Charles Mott, a director of General Motors since 1913, chairman of the board of U.S. Sugar Corp. and member of innumerable organizations (e.g., American Legion, United Spanish War Veterans, Royal Bermuda Yacht Club, Elks, Moose, Masons), still works hard at his goal. He pops into his paneled office every working day, keeps it filled with fresh flowers and humming with fresh ideas. Recently he helped build four new schools, especially designed with auditoriums and gymnasiums which the whole town can use. “We must build back to community activities,” says Mott, “to get people to know their neighbors and bring about a wholesome, small-town atmosphere in a big city.”

For the last 50 years Frank Bailey, 87, onetime president of Brooklyn’s Title Guarantee & Trust Co., has been trying to repay little Union College (enrollment 993) of Schenectady, N.Y. for the $1,600 scholarship it gave him in 1881. Over the years, his repayment has amounted to $1,000,000; he has given a building, endowed chairs of physics, mathematics, and Greek (“Greek did me the most good . . . my teacher taught me to think”). Last week Frank Bailey added another $500,000—to strengthen the college’s departments of electrical engineering and economics.

Thirteen years ago Alfred Jenkins Shriver, Baltimore lawyer, willed $1,395,680.17 to Johns Hopkins University for a new lecture hall.*Last week, after years of demurring over the stipulations in

Bachelor Shriver’s will, the university finally started building. Among the provisions it will have to comply with: paint murals with the portraits of Shriver’s ten favorite Baltimore beauties “at the height of their beauty,” the portraits of all university trustees up to 1887, of the first faculty of the medical school, of six generations of the Shriver family, of clipper ships, and of Shriver’s own Johns Hopkins class of 1891.

*Also bequeathed to Johns Hopkins: Lawyer Shriver’s wine cellar (404 gallons, including 235 bottles of Scotch, 165 of champagne, 15 of pure alcohol, and one of Howard County applejack). Because of the difficulty of figuring out what the tax should be, the whole lot was destroyed by the Federal Alcohol Tax Unit.