One-Million and a Quarter Fornology Pageviews and Counting

Sue and I at Detroit Bookfest 2022. Come join us next July.

After a decade of writing my Fornology blog, I'm going to release my last anthology of my best posts called Michigan Time Capsule. It is a sequel to my Detroit Time Capsule that I released last year. Together, both volumes contain 130 of my 517 posts [25% of my best work]. Michigan Time Capsule will go to press in January 2023 and be available on my Amazon author site early this spring.

My original intention when I retired in 2009 was to write a semi-autobiographical memoir which culminated in Zug Island: A Detroit Riot Novel. In 2011, my publicist recommended that I start a blog. I was not enthusiastic, but she explained how blogging was a way to build an audience. Once I got the hang of it, I found I enjoyed writing the posts because of the instant gratification and interaction with my readers. 

By the time Terror In Ypsilanti was ready, I had people waiting to buy it and sold over 500 pre-release copies. That is a respectable amount for an independent title. But ten years and six books later, I am ready to ease up on the workload and pursue other interests. 

Anyone wanting to purchase any of my titles can click on my book covers in the left and right sidebars of this post, or you can check my Author Site where all of my books are listed together. Each title comes in a quality, paperback edition and all ebook formats. Terror In Ypsilanti and The Elusive Purple Gang also come in audio editions.

Thanks to all of my loyal readers for helping make my retirement productive and meaningful and to all the friends I have made along the way.

Eddie Wingate: Black Detroit's Big Daddy

Eddie Wingate

One of the economic Titans in Detroit's African American community of the 1950s through the late 1970s was Eddie Wingate. Wingate was born in Moultrie, Georgia, on February 13, 1919, the oldest of six boys. Young Eddie quit school in his adolescence to work on a nearby farm to help support his family on two dollars a day. During the Great Depression, his $10-$12 weekly earnings went a long way, but he had ambition to do better.

Eddie kept hearing the old folks talk about the economic promised land of Detroit where Blacks were making good money working in the auto plants and steel mills. In the late 1930s, Wingate scraped together all the funds he could and drove to Detroit in his rundown Model T to seek his fortune. 

At the age of nineteen, Wingate got a job with the Ford Motor Company. It is in the Ford plant that he became acquainted with the illegal numbers racket, called the Policy Racket by government prosecutors. He soon became involved with the business end of the operation.

After almost a decade of working on the assembly line and saving his money, Wingate quit his factory job and became the silent, majority owner of a restaurant named The 20 Grand Supper Club. He was also the sole owner of The 20 Grand Hotel next door where he ran his numbers empire and hosted Detroit's African American cafe society.

By 1961, Eddie Wingate was wealthy enough to pursue his passion for music. Along with his inamorata Joanne Jackson Bratton, they founded Golden World Records (GWR) that made waves in Detroit's pop music scene. Together, they established GWR, Ric-Tic Records, Wingate Records, and J&W Records, Inc. They built their own state of the art studio using the best musical equipment money could buy.

Wingate and Bratton developed their talent roster and used The Driftwood Lounge in the 20 Grand Supper Club, owned on paper by Bill Kabbus and Marty Eisner, as a performance venue for Edwin Starr, The Parliaments, the Manhattans, Laura Lee, and The Funkadelics. The popular venue was a good place to showcase their talent and build an audience to help sell records. 

Wingate's personal friend Berry Gordy also used the Driftwood Lounge to break in his growing list of future Motown headliners like The Supremes, Little Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, and The Miracles to gain experience before sending them out on the "chitlin circuit" to hone their performance skills.

In 1968, Wingate and Bratton sold their record labels, their studio and production facilities, and their artists' contracts to Berry Gordy for one million dollars. Herion and cocaine were flooding the Black community and Wingate's adopted son became a junkie. Disgusted, Wingate turned his back on the hustlers in the music industry. The record business became more trouble than it was worth to him.

The 20 Grand Hotel at 2100 W. Warren Road next to the Supper Club  was where Wingate ran his numbers empire from rooms called "The Hole." A Michigan State Police informant testified to a federal grand jury that Wingate's numbers operation included a professional sports book which took bets on football and baseball games ranging from $1,000 to $2,500 over the phone from all over the country . The undercover surveillance occured from June to November of 1976 and relied heavily on wiretapping transcripts.

Early in 1977, the FBI arrested the top operators of the massive inner city bookmaking and numbers running operation. Along with Eddie Wingate, other operators Clarence Williams, John White, Walter Simmons, and Burrell "Junior" Pace were indicted. The men pleaded nolo contendere and paid heavy fines but were never convicted.

The federal government was more interested in the organization's kingpins. In March 1977, a federal grand jury brought indictments against mafioso brothers Anthony and Vito Giacalone for tax evasion. Wingate sold his business interests and left Detroit for Florida. The weather was better there, as were his chances for survival. He left his family operation in the capable hands of his younger brothers.

As a side note, playing the numbers today survives in all fifty states as government run and controlled lotteries used as revenue producing vehicles. Government knew a good thing when it saw it. The odds of winning contemporary govenment lotto games are many thousands or millions of times higher than the classic street game which used only three numbers chosen from 000 to 999, rather than five or six numbers including double digits. It is ironic how laws and attitudes change. What people once went to jail for is now advertised on television and in every convienence and liquor store in the nation.

Modern Michigan Lotto Slip

What is lesser known about Wingate outside of Detroit's Black community is that he and other numbers associates helped many Detroiters buy their first homes despite real estate covenants enshrining racial segregation. Entire White neighborhoods were redlined and off-limits to Blacks who could otherwise afford a conventional mortgage. They were routinely denied mainstream bank loans in desirable Detroit neighborhoods. 

Wingate recognized opportunity when he saw it, so he went into the residential real estate business, financed by his gambling profits which were considerable. Authorities would say that he and his associates were loansharking and laundering money, but their clients had steady jobs and most could pay off their monthly mortgage payments on time.

Because of men like Eddie Wingate, Blacks in Detroit had a higher percentage of home ownership in the 1950s and 1960s than any other urban center in the country. To many Detroit residents, Eddie Wingate became a local folk hero despite his underworld activities and connections.

Wingate was sole owner of several commercial buildings which were essentially number and money drops where people from the community were employed as money counters and accountants to keep his game running smoothly. It has been estimated that every dollar spent on the numbers circulated as many as five times in the neighborhoods where the game was played. 

Wingate also mentored, influenced, and helped finance many Black entrepreneurs to get started in businesses providing employment and services to city residents. In many respects, Wingate was a rainmaker who brought prosperity to many people enduring hard times. 

Eddie Wingate died in Las Vegas on May 5, 2006, at the age of 86. His body was taken back to Detroit for a funeral service at New Bethel Baptist Church on Saturday, May 13th. Wingate's body was interred at Roseland Park Cemetery on Woodward Avenue in Berkley, Michigan.

Mr. Don Davis, chairman of the First Independence Bank in Detroit, wrote in Wingate's online funeral guestbook, "He was the go-to guy (in Detroit) to get anything done of any magnitude if you were Black. The guy held the community together."

Detroit's Numbers Racket 

Ann Arbor High Graduate Becomes Mr. Las Vegas

Moe Dalitz in Las Vegas publicity shot.

Morris "Moe" Dalitz was born in Boston but his family moved to Detroit where he grew up in the same Paradise Valley neighborhood with many of the original gang members who became known as the Purple Gang. In his adolescence, Moe's family moved to Ann Arbor where he completed his high school education.

 

During the Purple Gang's dominance controlling Detroit's illegal liquor business, Moe helped his father operate Campus Cleaners, a small chain of cleaners and dyers businesses in the Ann Arbor area. Moe used their fleet of laundry trucks to distribute Purple Gang liquor in Washtenaw County.

 

 

Moe became affiliated with the Little Jewish Navy--a faction of the Purples, that controlled smuggling along the Detroit Riverfront. When three of their top leaders were brutally assassinated by the Purples over an unpaid liquor debt, Moe quietly relocated to Cleveland where he continued his bootlegging operation and opened a chain of mob-protected casinos in Ohio and Kentucky. This became his life's work.

Unlike many of his associates who spent their money as soon as they made it buying fancy clothes and flashy cars, Moe maintained a low public profile by investing in legitimate businesses in Michigan. Dalitz held an executive position in the Michigan Industrial Laundry and the Colonial Laundry of Detroit where one of their illegal services was laundering gang money. Moe was also the president of Dalitz Realty Company in Wyandotte, Michigan, that specialized in selling industrial-zoned tracts of land in the Downriver area.

Dalitz served stateside in the United States Army during World War II. While still wearing the uniform, he loaned Detroit Steel $100K to save a collapsing merger with Cleveland's Reliance Steel which proved profitable. In the late 1940s, Dalitz and his underworld backers used Teamsters Union pension funds and began investing in Las Vegas. They lent front man Wilbur Clark--famous Las Vegas developer--the money to build the Desert Inn and then the Stardust casinos.

Dalitz with Bob Hope and Desi Arnez.

Moe Dalitz became a gaming pioneer and a legend of the Las Vegas Strip. His casinos were one-stop resorts catering to a new demographic changing the face of the Las Vegas Strip--working-class Midwesterners. The Desert Inn and Stardust catered to America's postwar, burgeoning middle class. Dalitz and his investors transformed Vegas from a gambling town to a vacation resort destination. Other organized crime figures took notice and began investing in Vegas opening the door to the Midwest mob's infiltration of Las Vegas, which led to skimming the casinos' gross profits "off the top."

Dalitz and other former mob figures discovered a way to sanitize their images. In the early 1950s, they formed the Paradise Development Company which built the Las Vegas Convention Center, Sunrise Hospital, the Boulevard Shopping Mall, a championship golf course, and several buildings at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Dalitz became a philanthropic civic leader earning him the name Mr. Las Vegas.

Dalitz at Kefauver crime hearing.

Dalitz came from the rough world of the Purple Gang in Detroit and the Mayfield Road Mob in Cleveland. Despite his great success as a businessman and philanthropist in Vegas, Dalitz was never able to completely shed his associations with organized crime figures. He was called to testify before the Estes Kefauver Crime Hearings on February 27, 1951.

Senator Kefauver asked Dalitz, "We have sworn testimony that you lent Detroit Steel $100,000 for $10,000 worth of company stock. You made $230,000 from that deal, didn't you?"

"Maybe more," was his unapologetic answer. "When I cast bread upon the waters, it comes back cake."

"Mr. Dalitz, didn't you make your original fortune as a rum runner?"

"I didn't inherit any money, that's for sure," Dalitz responded sidestepping the question.

Moe with only daughter Suzanne.

Fifteen years later on August 10, 1966, Dalitz was subpoenaed to testify before the Nevada Gaming Commission about the skim and payments to underworld figures. The government was closing in on organized crime organizations who controlled the casinos behind the scenes. The underworld was looking for a way out of the casino business.

Howard Hughes

Deliverance came in the guise of Texas billionaire and movie mogul Howard Hughes. Hughes moved from Boston and rented the penthouse of the Desert Inn to live in seclusion as an eccentric hermit. In 1972, Dalitz wanted Hughes out of the suites because the holiday season was approaching and "high rollers"--important to the Desert Inn's bottom line--had annual reservations for those rooms. Hughes didn't gamble. Dalitz had intense negotiations with Hughes over the eviction. 

 

Weary of Dalitz's threats, Hughes asked him how much he wanted for the Desert Inn. Dalitz said $13,250,000. Hughes had his chief of Nevada business operations Robert Maheu write out a check and told Dalitz "Get the Hell out of my casino." The penthouse floor became Hughe's private residence while the floor beneath his penthouse suite was used for his business operations. Hughes lived there for four more years until 1976 when he was rushed to Houston, Texas in a Learjet where he died on April 5, 1976. The autopsy listed the cause of Hughes' death as kidney failure.

The Desert Inn sale marked a seismic shift in the ownership of Las Vegas Strip casinos. Corporate interests and billionaire financiers like Kirk Kerkorian were the only entities with the kind of money to buy out the mob. Groups like Bally's, MGM, and Conde Nast ushered in the postmodern corporate era in Vegas that we are familiar with today.

La Costa Resort and Spa

 

Dalitz and his backers did not get out of the resort business entirely. They moved to San Diego County in 1962 and built the La Costa Resort and Hotel for $4,250,000, which catered to wealthy Americans and aging wise guys looking to escape winter weather back East. On August 31, 1989, Moe Dalitz died in Las Vegas of congestive heart failure and kidney disease at the age of eighty-nine.

Suzanne Dalitz, her Dad, and the Vegas Mob Museum

World Traveler George F. Pierrot

Detroiters who grew up watching television in the 1950s and 1960s are no doubt familiar with George F. Pierrot, the gravelly-voiced, rotund host of the World Adventure Series on WXYZ (channel seven) which debuted in 1948 and George Pierrot Presents on WWJ-TV (channel four) which debuted in 1953. Pierrot holds the distinction as the only Detroit television personality to host shows on two local stations concurently. Pierrot instilled the desire to travel in many of his younger viewers.

From the point of view of the audience, Pierrot's job seemed easy enough. He introduced his guest travelers who showed and narrated their 16 mm films of the Western United States and exotic world location with speakers like Don Cooper, Stan Midgley, Dennis Glen Cooper, and Lowell Thomas. Behind the scenes, Pierrot booked the speakers, viewed and edited their films for content, and handled all negotiations and background arrangements.

"I demand a good reporting job," Pierrot said. "Sure, I want good films, but the speaker must have his facts straight. Viewers want indepth lectures and documentaries on what it is like in different countries." Like Pierrot himself, all of the commentators on his shows belonged to the Circumnavigator's Club whose headquarters was in New York City. Pierrot's shows were sponsored by Edward Brink of The Mutual of Omaha insurance company.

World traveler, author, and raconteur, Pierrot was born in Chicago on January 11, 1898, but his family moved to Seattle where his father practiced medicine and introduced his son to globetrotting. George studied journalism at the University of Washington before becoming the editor of the Washington Daily, but he left to write for a national magazine based in Detroit called The American Boy in the early 1920s. Pierrot became a regular luncheon and banquet speaker at service organizations and non-profits all over the city making him a much sought-after personality in Detroit.

When The American Boy went out of business in 1934, Pierrot pitched the idea of a weekly travelogue program to the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) to boost the museum's poor attendance during the Great Depression. In those days, world traveling was a much bigger deal than it is now. Travel was impossible for the average person. Pierrot became the director of the World Adventure Series. For a yearly membership fee of one dollar or a charge of ten cents per lecture, the public could attend the Sunday afternoon travelogues. The programs were a big hit and set Pierrot up with his life's work. The DIA series ran in the Longfellow Auditorium until 1979.

With the start of World War II in Europe, Pierrot complained in October 1939 that "It's hard enough under normal circumstances to assemble world celebrities for lecture programs, but now the war is disrupting every travelogue series in the country. However, we do have the war to thank for our first feature of the season. A motion picture newsman returning from Poland will show two of his films this Sunday. 'Poland Under Fire' at 3:30 pm and the 'Defense of Poland' at 8:30 pm."

The DIA suspended The World Adventure Series in October of 1942 because of gas rationing and the curtailment of public transit on Sundays when the programs were held. Gas stations were closed and drivers were asked to stay home in an effort to save gas for the war effort. Forty-five percent of the program's audience came from the suburbs, so the museum shut the program down. The DIA resumed its Sunday World Adventure Series the following year when the ban on Sunday travel was eased. Rather than travelogues, documentary films from the battlefronts where Americans were fighting and dying dominated the lecture program until the war ended. These programs were well-attended. There was no commercial television in those days, so Detroiters flocked to the DIA to see the latest film footage from the front lines.

One-millionth USO serviceman winning a day on the town. Saturday, April 24,1943.

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Pierrot did his part for the war effort by becoming the director of the Detroit Branch of the United Service Organization (USO) in 1942. He ran one of the most extensive and successful programs in the country. Activities for American soldiers and sailors included weekly dance parties and an entertainment unit that showed free motion pictures with special features like Movietone News and cartoons. Pierrot reported to the Defense Department that the Detroit USO entertained 40,000 G.I.s a month.

Three years after the war ended, Pierrot took his World Adventure Series to the new medium of television. For twenty-eight years from 1948 until 1976, he brought the world of travel to Detroiters in their living rooms. In 1979, the DIA's World Adventure Series went dark after forty-two years.

Pierrot led the way for television travelogue hosts like Rick Steves and Anthony Bourdain. In addition to travel, George was known for his love of food, drink (Strohs), and off-color limericks. On February 16, 1980, George F. Pierrot suffered a heart attack at his Indian Village home and died forty-five minutes later at Henry Ford Hospital. He is buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Wayne County.

World Adventure Series with George Pierrot circa 1960 

Michigan Outdoors with Mort Neff 

Michigan Native American Treaties--Paradise Lost

Civilization comes to the Great Lakes?

Thousands of years before the first Europeans set foot in the New World, indigenous tribes were living in migratory groups and large settlements thoughout what became the continental United States. Competition for land and natural resources in America began long before the white man arrived. Great Lakes tribes were feeling pressure from the Iroquios Confederation to the east and the Sioux Nation to the west. 

The Ottawa, Ojibwe (Chippewa), Wyandot (Huron), and Potawatomi settled near Fort Detroit in the eighteenth century and allied themselves with the French first, and then the English, as the Great Lakes area became a pawn of international politics in the French and Indian War against the British. There was much Native American blood shed on both sides depending on a tribe's loyalies. In 1783, Great Britain ceded the Michigan Territory to the nascent United States. 

During the nineteenth century, the Erie Canal opened up the Michigan Territory to settlers with a lust for land. The lucrative fur trade declined due to overtrapping and changing European fashion trends. Michigan pioneers wanted farmland and saw the local Indians as an obstacle, but to legally assume ownership of Indian ancestral land, governmental treaties were written to relinquish tribal claims to the land. 

Tribal leaders received cash, European goods including farming implements, clothing, barrels of whiskey, and empty promises. Once a treaty was signed, duly witnessed, and blessed by the Jesuits, the land was opened to lumbermen, farmers, surveyors, and land speculators from the East. The new American government failed to live up to the terms of its own treaties or its obligations to displaced indigenous peoples.

Pioneer farm in Monroe County.

Early Michigan settlers preferred the tillable fertile areas in the southern half of the Michigan Territory, but once the North was assayed, mining concerns from the East were interested in copper, iron ore, and limestone extraction. It was only a matter of time before the government put pressure on Northern Michigan tribes to cede their land holdings too.

Michigan Native American Treaties with the United States

*Treaty Name         Date     Area of Concern

Greenville              1795    The Detroit area north and south along the Detroit River.

Detroit                   1807    Much of Southeast Michigan.

Maumee                1817    Most of today’s Hillsdale County.

Saginaw                1819    Alpena-Lansing and areas east.

Sault Ste. Marie   1820    Eastern Chippewa County in U.P.

Chicago I              1821   Southwest equivalent in size to Detroit treaty of 1807.  

                                
Carey Mission      1828   Most of today’s Berrian County in the Southwest corner of Michigan. 

        
Chicago II            1833   In today’s Berrian County.

Washington         1836  Western half of northern lower peninsula of Michigan and the upper peninsula east of and including Alger and Delta Counties. 

Cedar Point         1836  Today’s Menominee County and part of Delta County.

La Point               1842  The upper peninsula west of Alger County and Delta Country.                                            

* Special thank you to Randall Schaetzl of Michigan State University

Ottawa War Chief Pontiac 

Erie Canal Opens Michigan to Settlement

Detroit's Beloved Weatherman Sonny Eliot

Sonny Eliot and friend at the zoo.

Weatherman Sonny Eliot was well-known to generations of Detroiters. He began his career in 1947 at the very beginning of television broadcasting in Detroit and spent thirty-five years at WWJ (now WDIV), which included seventeen years hosting "At the Zoo." For many years, he was the Master of Ceremonies for Detroit's J.L. Hudson's Thanksgiving Day Parade. In 2010, Eliot retired from broadcasting.

Sonny Eliot was a cultural icon for Baby Boomers and their parents. Once called the Ernie Harwell [Detroit Tiger sportscaster] of weather, Eliot had an unprecedented 50% share of Detroit's television market during his weather segment. Perhaps he is best described as a borscht-belt comic weatherman and best known for his hybrid blending of weather conditions like "snog" for snow/fog, "cloggy" for cloudy/foggy, and "droudy" for dreary/cloudy. In addition to his television career, he was the author of four children's books. Eliot had a wonderful sense of humor and loved to make people laugh.

Marvin Schlossberg was born on Hastings Street December 5, 1920. He was the youngest child of Latvian Jewish parents. His mother nicknamed him "Sonny." He credits his mother for his sense of humor. His parents owned and ran a hardware store on Detroit's East Side. As he grew up, Sonny developed a passion for flying.

B-24 Liberator bomber

"During World War II, he was a B-24 bomber pilot who was shot down over Germany. Flak tore into his plane in February of 1944. He held the bomber as steady as he could while his crew parachuted before he jumped. Sonny was apprehended by a German farmer armed with a pitchfork and spent eighteen months in Stalagluft I until the end of the war. The POW camp was located near Barth, Germany. It was liberated the night of April 30, 1945, by Russian troops. The American prisoners were soon evacuated by American aircraft in "Operation Revival" and returned home.

Mel Butsicaris, son of Johnny Butsicaris and nephew of Jimmy Butsicaris, the Lindell AC bar owners, gave me permission to share his Facebook post on the Sonny Eliot he knew.

"Sonny was an incredible man and many stories have been told and written about his life. He lived, worked, and played in Detroit, so people felt like they knew him because he would take the time to acknowledge them. Uncle Sonny is what I called him. He was a unique man and a joy to be around: funny, smart, adventurous, generous, and fun-loving. He fit in with anybody he was with.

 

How we recognize Sonny best.

"People would see Uncle Sonny hanging out at the Lindell AC (Athletic Club) sports bar during the week. My dad even gave him an office on the second floor of our building. But on the weekends he focused on his two loves--his wife Annette and flying with my dad in an airplane they co-owned. Flying was their shared addiction.

"Uncle Sonny made everyone feel like a friend, so people naturally felt like they knew him. I have lost track of how many times people have come up to me and say they saw Sonny Eliot drunk at the Lindell feeling no pain, or Sonny was so funny after he had a few drinks. Newsflash! Sonny Eliot did not drink alcohol.

"To all the people that bought Uncle Sonny a drink in the Lindell, I am sorry for overcharging you, but you insisted I make him a drink. I would give him his usual glass of soda water with a splash of ginger ale for some color and a lemon twist. I would put my finger over the pour spout so it only looked like he was getting whiskey. His drinking was an act, but his wit, fun-loving personality, and his genuine kindness were real."

Marvin (Sonny Eliot) Schlossberg died peacefully among family and friends in his Farmington Hills home on November 16, 2012, at the age of ninety-one. Sonny Eliot led a remarkable life touching the lives of millions of Detroiters and leaving us better for the experience.

WWJ video tribute to Sonny Eliot--https://youtu.be/Y0iVuyfDUjM

Sonny Eliot nurses baby elephant with a Coke at the Lindell AC 

Terror In Ypsilanti: John Norman Collins Unmasked--Radio Free Flint Podcast

Join us for Detroit Bookfest 5 on Sunday, July 17th, 2022, at the Eastern Market, Shed 5.

 

Some months ago, I did an hour long Zoom podcast with Arthur Busch of Radio Free Flint, but there were some technical difficulties in post production. 

Art edited a ten minute segment for me, so the interview would not be a total loss. Some of my answers are clipped but can be found within the pages of Terror In Ypsilanti.

Radio Free Flint--Terror In Ypsilanti