Who were the Uncommon Friends?

Uncommon Friends   by James Newton. Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel, and Charles Lindberg were twentieth-century giants known personally by not only Mr. Newton, but by each other. In this book, the author recalls a lifetime of friendship with all of them. Purchase Uncommon Friends, from the Henry Ford Estate online gift shop

artha Berry, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, Charles Lindbergh, Alexis Carrel, George Washington Carver, Jens Jensen, John Burroughs and Jack Miner were significant in contributing to society. These pioneers explored and revolutionized light, sound, transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, education and conservation. Each person made a mark to benefit mankind. Through hard work, determination, and intimate friendships with one another they bridged the gap between their respective fields and met the needs of their generation. While an age has passed their legacy of accomplishments and friendships remain. Henry Ford was the leading manufacturer of American automobiles in the early 1900's. He established the Ford Motor Company, which revolutionized the automobile industry with its assembly-line production method. In 1914, he paid workers $5 a day and reduced the workday from nine to eight hours; he also introduced a profit-sharing plan.  Ford had a nose for finance and devoted time and energy to educational and charitable projects. He established both Greenfield Village and the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. In 1936, Ford and his son Edsel established the Ford Foundation, the world's largest foundation, which provides grants for education, research, and development. His genius was the ability to cut through complicated problems.

Thomas Alva Edison is undoubtedly the most famous inventor in American history. Edison designed, built, and delivered the electrical age. He was the epitome of the self-made man; he was a poor boy who achieved fame and fortune through hard work. Although he had only three months of formal schooling, Edison became known as the "Wizard of Menlo Park."

Edison commented that, "anything that won't sell, I don't want to invent; its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success." He was among the country's few millionaires in the late 1800's. Edison had a total of 1,093 patents, one for every 12 days of his adult life. On October 12, 1931, at the U. S. President's request, the lights were turned off at 10:00 a.m. for two minutes all over the United States in his memory.

Harvey Firestone was the founder and president of one of the country's fastest growing tire companies, and one of America's best-known businessmen. Real keys to his leadership were his ability to delegate responsibility, and to know men. He used "consensus management" by getting opinions of his management staff and having them come to obvious decisions. He had a genius in choosing the right person for the right job. "My most valuable executives have picked themselves by their records; people prove themselves at lower levels." He was one of the first in the country to offer company stock to his employees at reduced rates, so that hey could be part of the operation.

John Burroughs was born on April 3,1837, on a farm near Roxbury, N. Y., in the Catskill mountain region. After a sketchy early education, he became a country schoolteacher at 17 and then studied at Ashland Collegiate Institute and Cooperstown Seminary. His earliest essays were published about 1860 in journals that included the Saturday Press and the Atlantic Monthly. He later described the Atlantic as his "university," and he was a frequent contributor to it. 

From 1863 to 1872, Burroughs worked as a government clerk in Washington, where he became a close friend of Walt Whitman. After 1872, he lived, studied nature, and wrote in the Catskill region, first on a farm, near, Esopus, N.Y. and after, 1908 on his family farm, near, Roxbury. He died aboard a railroad train in Ohio on March 29, 1921.

Charles A. Lindbergh is best known as the man who flew solo from New York City to Paris in 1927 and for the kidnapping and murder of his son in 1932. But he was a much more complex man. Between 1931 and 1935, he invented an "artificial heart" with Dr. Alexis Carrel. He worked for the U. S. Government in obtaining military knowledge about Nazi Germany prior to World War II, but was against the U. S. entering the war. He was regarded as the world's foremost authority on aviation matters and his words carried much weight. When war was declared against Japan, he discontinued his noninvolvement activities, flew about fifty combat missions as a volunteer, and served as an advisor to the U. S. military. Pan American World Airways hired him as a consultant on jet transport purchases; he eventually helped design the Boeing 747.

Lindbergh received the 1954 Pulitzer Prize for his book The Spirit of St. Louis. Between the late 1960s and the early 1970s, he became an active environmentalist. He turned down an invitation to the 40-year anniversary of his historic trans-Atlantic flight. Lindbergh died of cancer in 1974 in his home on the Hawaiian island of Maui.

George Washington Carver, the second son and youngest of three children of Negro slave parents, was born on a farm near Diamond Grove, Missouri. 

Carver received a B.S. from the Iowa Agricultural College in 1894 and a M.S. in 1896. He became a member of the faculty of Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts in charge of the school's bacterial laboratory work in the Systematic Botany department. His work with agricultural products developed industrial applications from farm products, called chemurgy in technical literature in the early 1900s. His research developed 325 products from peanuts, 108 applications for sweet potatoes, and 75 products derived from pecans. 

He moved to Tuskegee, Alabama in 1896 to accept a position as an instructor at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute and remained on the faculty until his death in 1943. His work in developing industrial applications from agricultural products derived 118 products, including a rubber substitute and over 500 dyes and pigments, from 28 different plants. He was responsible for the invention in 1927 of a process for producing paints and stains from soybeans, for which three separate patents were issued.

George Washington Carver was honored by U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in July 14, 1943 dedicating $30,000 for a national monument to be dedicated to his accomplishments. The area of Carver's childhood near Diamond Grove, Missouri has been preserved as a park, with a bust of the agricultural researcher, instructor, and chemical investigator. This park was the first designated national monument to an African American in the United States. George Washington Carver was bestowed an honorary doctorate from Simpson College in 1928. He was made a member of the Royal Society of Arts in London, England. He received the Spingarn Medal in 1923, which is given every year by the National Association for the Advancement of colored People. The Spingarn Medal is awarded to the black person who has made the greatest contribution to the advancement of his race. Carver died of anemia at Tuskegee Institute on January 5, 1943 and was buried on campus beside Booker T. Washington. *

* Reprinted with permission: "The Faces of Science: African Americans in the Sciences" Mitchell C. Brown, Princeton University, Date Accessed: August 1, 2004

Dr. Alexis Carrel completed his formal medical education in 1900 for the University of Lyons (France). He moved to the United States in 1904 where he worked for what is now known as the Rockefeller Institute. Subsequent progress in surgery of the heart and blood vessels and in transplantation of organs has rested upon the foundation he laid down between 1904 and 1908. 

Carrel received the 1912 Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology for his work with blood vessel suturing and the transplantation of organs in animals. He and Charles Lindbergh collaborated in inventing a perfusion pump for circulating culture fluid through an excised organ. His pioneering techniques paved the way for successful organ transplants and modern heart surgery, including grafting procedures and bypasses.

Jack Miner was born John Thomas Miner in Dover Center, Ohio on April 10, 1865. He moved to Canada in 1878 and established a bird sanctuary at Kingsvi!le, Ontario, in 1904. He soon became known as one of the chief bird conservationists in North America. In 1931 his friends established the Jack Miner Migratory Bird Foundation to ensure the continua tion of his work. Miner died in Kingsvi!le on Nov.3, 1944.

Martha McChesney Berry was the founder of the Berry Schools for academically able but economically poor children of the rural South—those who usually could not afford to go to other schools. These schools of the early 1900s grew within three decades into Berry College, a comprehensive liberal arts college. As a result of her work of forty years with the schools and college, Berry is among Georgia's most prominent women of the first half of the twentieth century.