By Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli
At first neither of these books caught my interest -- until I began looking them over, and then reading them.
For very different reasons "Asylum for the Insane: A History of the Kalamazoo State Hospital" by William A. Decker M.D. and "Billy Durant: Creator of General Motors" are fascinating depictions of their times and people and their places in Michigan's history.
I was reluctant to get too deeply in "Asylum for the Insane." As a teenager, I went to the asylum near Detroit with a friend to visit her grandmother, an elderly woman I knew not to be insane, but merely old, and perhaps no longer wanted in her children's homes. Maybe there was dementia. Who was I to judge at 16?
At the asylum, she lay full time in a bed among many other beds, with no room of her own, no space from prying eyes -- just a hospital bed strung among many. On our way out, as we walked across the hospital grounds, a woman stood at a third-floor barred window screaming obscenities at us. I, to my eternal shame, never went back with my friend to visit her grandmother and was almost relieved to hear the woman died soon afterward.
Which brings me to my trepidation when opening "Asylum for the Insane: A History of the Kalamazoo State Hospital." If ever a book should have been written and published, this is this book. What Decker has brought to light is not only the history of the Kalamazoo State Hospital -- the first to house the insane in all of Michigan, opening Aug. 29, 1859 -- but the history of the care of those afflicted with mental illness.
Some of the things here are self-explanatory: the history of the buildings, the people -- good and bad -- involved in the decisions affecting the mentally ill, the course of treatments -- some so recent as to be shocking. The history is both fascinating and sordid. The cataloging of buildings -- when erected and, when demolished -- is more for the people with a true interest in that particular asylum. But the rest is of general interest and should be a part of everyone's basic knowledge of how the mentally ill were treated and how they are treated now, with some hope for eventual cures and optimum treatments.
The journey from "pest house" in 1832 to asylum in 1859 was actually a short one in time, but long in understanding that the mentally ill should not be confined to county poorhouses or jails. A new facility was built in Kalamazoo for the sole purpose of tending to those with mental diseases; the people who, up until then, were kept in the attics of homes, or in jails with criminals, or locked away in poorhouses. All places of no treatment. Places of shame.
The early belief that those with mental problems were paying for sins committed in a previous life did nothing to bring sympathy for their plight. So, from Bedlam in England, where citizens paid a fee to tour the sights and taunt the mentally ill confined there, up to the 1850s and Dorothea Dix, a teacher who held a prayer meeting in the female prisoners' cells at the Cambridge, Mass., jail. What she found appalled her and led to a lifelong dedication to improving the plight of those afflicted.
The Kalamazoo State Hospital was to become a model for treatment over the years, incorporating jobs for those who could handle them: farms to work on, arts and crafts for patients and even types of programs to prepare the patients for eventual release.
Decker has included here not only the history of a single institution, but a history of therapies, including lobotomy, leucotomy, electric shock and others. What I had taken to be, perhaps, a dry accounting of a state hospital's rise and demise turned out to be a wide and deep look at the fields of care for the mentally ill. Oddly, his references to the 1980s seemed as remote as earlier references. When Decker headed the institution, he found that doctors were difficult to come by, due to low salaries. It wasn't until the 1980s that he could get the salaries increased and attract physicians who would otherwise prefer working at easier and better-paying jobs. When Decker joined the staff at Kalamazoo in 1953, the ratio of patients to doctors was 500 to 1, hardly a ratio guaranteeing sufficient care.
Decker not only gives us a look into how and by what philosophies the hospital was run, but also into such issues as dealing with the criminally insane as well as dealing with physical illnesses, murders, suicides and accidents. For sheer coverage of the topic, as well as a story of a facility that is very much a part of Michigan's past, this book is one of the best.
"Billy Durant: Creator of General Motors" by Lawrence R. Gustin, a 23-year writer with The Flint Journal, is the story of a man unafraid to fail, a true entrepreneur -- the man who made General Motors, lost it, regained the company again and went on to bring many of his ideas to fruition.
Billy Durant, revered and maligned in his lifetime and afterward, was a man who made and lost fortunes, seemingly a man of short attention span. Once one company was up and running, he was on to something else.
It began with the road cart and Durant's search for a cheap, light, horse-drawn buggy. But soon that wasn't enough. He was into the automobile after at first discounting its value and predicting a quick demise for a vehicle that scared the horses and made too much noise. The one thing about Billy Durant was that he had an eye for the new and for making huge sums of money.
He began in Flint in the 1880s, at a time when lumbering fortunes were disappearing and the city was in decline. Beginning with the Flint waterworks, Durant devised a method of asking people what they wanted from their city and then implementing those needs. He soon had the waterworks in good shape and had made some good friends in town. While out reading a meter one evening, he met men who were soon to change his life, the lives of everyone in Flint and the future of the country.
By the age of 40, Durant was a millionaire, but with true entrepreneurial spirit was looking around for the next challenge. In 1901, David Buick's new car company brought out the first Buick and then sold off the company for $225. Durant, sensing a golden opportunity, sought to consolidate many of the early car companies into one. Ford would have nothing to do with a merger but Billy Durant couldn't be stopped. Soon he had other companies on board, and on April 6, 1908, General Motors was born. Billy wouldn't take the presidency but received a salary that soon made him a millionaire many times over.
By 1910, he was still trying to buy Ford, offering $8 million for the company. This time, New York bankers knocked down the deal and Durant left General Motors, only to return later to run it again. The years in between brought him successes and failures.
After problems with Durant, Walter P. Chrysler wrote: "Billy laughed at me" (after stating he wanted Durant to check only with him on business matters, not his subordinates).
"'Walt,' Billy said, 'I believe in changing the policies just as often as my door opens and closes.' I wagged my head and said, 'You and I can never get along.' That's the kind of fellow he was, though; we'd fight, and then he'd want to raise my salary."
By 1921, Durant was deep in debt again. His spectacular rises and falls in business continued until his death. It seems the money wasn't at the root of his drive to succeed; it was more the personal pleasure in knowing that he had accomplished whatever he set out to do.
The history here follows the rise and fall of Michigan itself. These were men of vision, who created an automobile business that sustained millions of workers, created a sound tax base, and led the country in a new and quickly growing business.
One can only imagine, if the moribund car companies of today had a Billy Durant at the helm, how problems with the combustible engine might have been foreseen and new engines, new designs and replacements for gasoline might have been found in time to do the country some good.
Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli can be reached at ebuzzelli@aol.com
