A tornado ten years ago swept through Flint, Mich., and tore up the town. Afterward, hundreds of people came from miles around to pitch in and help rebuild. Up walked an old geezer wearing a carpenter's apron and carrying his own hammer and nails. When he tried to climb a ladder to help nail roofing, a foreman shooed him away. The would-be carpenter was furious. "They think I'm too old!" he grumped. "That's all nonsense. I can outwork half these guys, and I'm as handy with a hammer as the next one!" To prove it, he devoted three hand-blistering hours to nailing sheathing onto the back and side of the house.
The man was 78 then. He is 88 today, and still as flinty and nosy and energetic as ever (though he had to give up tennis at 75). His gesture was characteristic of the man they call "Mr. Flint." His real name is Charles Stewart Mott. He is a multimillionaire philanthropist and the biggest benefactor that Flint—or most any other city—has ever seen.
Much of Mott's good work goes unheralded. His latest took place a month ago, and it was only a routine report put out by the Securities and Exchange Commission last week that broke the news. Mott has made a gift of 1,826,421 shares of General Motors common stock —worth more than $128 million—to the nonprofit Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, benefactor of the people and institutions of Flint.
Axles & Applewood. When Mott arrived in Flint in 1906, the city already was a boomlet auto town. Mott, who had been trained as a mechanical engineer, was president of the Weston-Mott Co., manufacturers of wheels and axles. General Motors bought him out, made him a director and, in the process, the largest single stockholder in the corporation. Mott still owns outright, or controls in trust, another 800,000 or so G.M. shares, controls several banks, ten municipal water companies, four department stores and a sugar company.
From the outset, Mott turned his energies toward the betterment of the community. He served three terms as mayor, got a water-filtration plant and a storm sewer going. From his 18-room Tudor mansion, "Applewood," he began putting money into the Y.M.C.A. and the Boy Scouts, invested in new housing for the growing number of auto workers and their families, bought a farm for the use of underprivileged children, donated land for a park and buildings for hospitals and colleges.
Member of the Family. In 1926, he established the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation to put his money to work in an organized way during his own lifetime. Too many "well-intended ideas and plans go astray after a man's death," he said. The foundation has supported everything in town, from the U.S.O. to churches and crippled children. But many times Mott dug into his own pocket for direct aid as well. In 1929, after some bank employees embezzled $3,600,000, Mott shelled out enough money to save the bank; it cost him more than $1,000,000 in co!d cash. In later years he donated millions of dollars for library buildings, the Flint Junior College, a swimming pool and a school for handicapped children.