Once in a Great City by David Maraniss

Author:David Maraniss
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Chapter 16

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THE SPIRIT OF DETROIT

AVERY BRUNDAGE, PRESIDENT of the International Olympic Committee, was coming to Detroit, and Richard Cross regretted that he would not be there to greet him. Cross, a blue-chip Detroit lawyer who had risen to the top of American Motors, replacing George Romney as chief executive officer when Romney became governor, had to be in California for a speech to western auto dealers on the day Brundage returned to the city of his birth. A few days earlier, from his law office high atop the Penobscot Building overlooking the Detroit River and his downtown domain, Cross had written a letter to the Olympic potentate expressing his hopes for the visit. He addressed Brundage with the familiarity of an old associate, but also in the ingratiating language of a lawyer trying to close a deal, just as a decade earlier he had made his reputation by negotiating the merger of Nash-Kelvinator and the Hudson Motor Car Company into American Motors.

“The days have been so full of action since we left Brazil the first of May that it truly seems only yesterday that we were having the pleasant meals we took together at the Jaragua,” Cross began, recalling an Olympic junket that had taken them both to São Paulo earlier in 1963. “Believe me, Avery, the Olympic fervor is profound and at high pitch here in Detroit. After all the years of my involvement since I began to work for Detroit with Fred Matthaei personally nearly 20 years ago, I must confess that I personally have never had my heart so set on our getting the games and I hope you agree that optimism that we will do so is warranted and not misplaced. Everyone here is keenly anticipating your visit on September 10th when there will be an opportunity to show you the many changes in the city and the splendid facilities existing and in prospect.”

“In prospect” was a reference to an Olympic stadium on the site of the Michigan State Fairgrounds that had not been built but had been authorized by the state legislature. In the world competition for the 1968 Summer Games, the fact that Detroit alone among the finalists did not yet have an adequate stadium was a possible point of vulnerability, one that Los Angeles had made much out of in its unsuccessful attempt to dislodge Detroit as the U.S. candidate. Cross needed Brundage to understand that the stadium was a reality, even if it did not physically exist, and to vouch for its inevitability he pointed out that Governor Romney had appointed him to the stadium commission overseeing its development. Cross thought of himself as a man of reliability and of Brundage as the epitome of Olympic purity, and the flattery flowed from there to pride in city and country: “I am looking forward to the day when I can stride into the stadium with you and up to the speaker’s platform to see you initiate the 1968 Olympiad and receive

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