George Hoddy's Legacy

At the age of 105, George Hoddy has passed away (you can read the Argus Press news story here), but I know his influence on our community is not over. I have known George since I returned to Owosso 15 years ago, worked with him on the Team 21 effort and other community endeavors, and met with him regularly. After encouraging me in my run for City Council, he would call me up with suggestions and I welcomed the chance to sit with him and hear the perspective of someone who came to Owosso during the Depression and who had a lifelong commitment to creating jobs, encouraging business growth, and building up our community. I learned two important lessons from George, and I believe there are two important parts of his legacy we need to continue.

Lessons Learned. When I think of what I learned from my talks with George, two main points will stay with me:

1. Care about the Institutions of the Community. George was an incredibly loyal man. He was loyal to his company and the people who worked for them, and he was loyal to the community in which he and his employees lived. He recognized that a successful business needed a successful community and he worked hard to either support, transform, or create the organizations and institutions that made this community work. He joined the hospital board to ensure there was good health care for his employees; he ran for the school board because he felt the community needed a strong education system; he recruited Baker College to Owosso because there was a vacant property and because he knew such an education institution would support both education and business. He donated, he made calls, he lobbied elected officials, and he served (for years and years) because it was the right thing to do. His was the era when commitment meant more than joining a Facebook page, when change occurred not because of a letter to the editor, and when loyalty meant sticking with people and organizations even when they were out of favor.

2. Common Sense Makes the Most Sense. It is easy to get caught up in policy debates, political posturing, personal gossip, and media spin, but George never was. He always had a no nonsense approach to issues that was borne out of his training as an engineer and his experience as a businessman. Sometimes he offended people, sometimes he was rebuffed, but you always knew where he stood; his common sense logic was always clear. Frequently, the power of his presentation was sufficient, but even when he did not gain his objective, he was never defeated. He was not ever deterred from his goal, when I knew him, of industrial development and job creation. The last time I saw him, he told me "Give 'em Hell! Don't let them give you the run-around."

The George Hoddy Legacy. We are all sad to lose George from our community, but the testament of our devotion to him will be how carry on some of his work. He was the end of an era, but we should not think of his passing as the end of a way of life. Rather, we should be committed to continuing on those things he stood for. For me, two pieces of his unfinished work will be a focus:

1. Support for Entrepreneurs. George Hoddy was a sparkplug, a risk taker, and a hard worker. He was smart, and he applied himself diligently to see his business ideas realized. This is the definition of an entrepreneur, and we should appropriately remember George in the same way we think of Henry Ford, CS Mott, and Charles Kettering (who recruited George from Ohio State). While George was part of the history of American, and notably Michigan, industrialism before, during, and after World War II, we should not think of his passing as the end of entrepreneurialism in our State or our community. The nature of business is changing: away from automobiles to health care and renewable energy, and away from manufacturing to knowledge- and service-based industries. But we still have, and need, business people (yes, women as well as men) who have good ideas and have the moxie to realize them. Our role, as a community, is to help create an environment that spawns entrepreneurs, and as public and private organizations, that provides support to those willing to start a new business. George Hoddy was brave enough to start a business in the Depression; who will be the George Hoddy of this generation in this time and place?

2. Regional Cooperation. I got to know George Hoddy late in his life when we worked together on Team 21 at the end of the 20th century. George understood clearly that new business growth depended on local government doing two things. First, cities and townships need to provide the infrastructure necessary for industry, in particular water and wastewater services. Second, local government needed to be efficient in the use of their revenues to get the most out of the taxes paid by business. George was no fan of government, and he told me several stories of his frustrating experiences at City Hall, but I never heard him suggest we could do without government; nor did I hear him complain about paying taxes. He just had a simple expectation that government should work effectively to meet the needs of local businesses.

After long years of personal experience, and then witnessing disputes between the units of local government in mid-Shiawassee County, George had a common sense solution: the Cities of Owosso and Corunna, and the Townships of Owosso and Caledonia should either merge into one local government (George liked the name "Curwood"), or at least cooperate closely in the construction of infrastructure and the provision of municipal services. Using his good name and his effective powers of persuasion, he brought a number of individuals from businesses and private organizations together with elected officials and staff from the local units of government. His logic was clear, and he was encouraged by several studies from MSU and the testimony from various experts that showed how much could be saved by combining services. What he did not anticipate, nor could he fully understand, was the level of distrust among local officials and their resistance to change. In the end, the strong attachment elected officials had to their particular units of government hampered Team 21 from achieving the objectives George hoped.

In retrospect, and ironically, George Hoddy in his nineties may have been ahead of his time. Now, as local governments are facing their own fiscal challenges, and as our economy becomes more dire, the benefits of cooperation may now be apparent to more people. But distrust and resistance persists. If we want to honor George Hoddy, we should strive to bring about regional cooperation among our units of local government. George Hoddy is gone, let's hope his good ideas, his approach to issues, and his loyalty to institutions can become his legacy to this community, a community which is not defined by policitcal boundaries.