CHAPTER 3
George Greenleaf: Community Steward

Father felt a deep commitment to his city, and I believe he left it a bit better than he found it, especially its school system. In his old age he confided his unhappiness with how the city’s leadership had evolved.

“Our city once had a great people, and it no longer has them,” he complained. As he saw it, its business and professional people, its newspaper owners, the board of institutions, were all mediocre. In the heat of one of Father’s political battles, the town’s leading citizen, in money and prestige, tried to buy him off. It may be that I inherited from him my critical view of our institutions generally, large and small, for profit and not-for-profit.¹

ROBERT K. GREENLEAF

George Washington Greenleaf was, by every account, a remarkable man. He was also Bob Greenleaf’s original template for a servant-leader. A tall, slim gentleman with an angular face and wire rim glasses, he cut a fine figure in turn-of-the-century Terre Haute. Bob described his father as “bright, lean, spare, gentle, soft-spoken.”² He followed politics avidly, was involved in his community, worked long hours, and sang baritone in The Rusty Hinge Quartet.

George was descended from people who, to use the words of Hoosier poet Sarah Bolton, “paddled their own canoe.”³ John and Margaret Feuillevert were French Huguenots (Calvinists) who fled to England in the 16^th century, some of the earliest refugees from religious persecution in their home country. In 1634, their son Edmund Greenleaf (“Feuillevert” translates to the English “Greenleaf”) packed up his wife Sarah and their nine children and sailed to America, settling in Newbury, Massachusetts. Their descendents were famous doctors and fighters and not-so-famous merchants and shopkeepers. Edmund and Sarah’s son Stephen (1628–1690), the eighth of nine children, married Elizabeth Coffin, the daughter of Tristram Coffin, who formed the company that purchased Nantucket Island for “20 pounds and two beaver hats.” Stephen and Elizabeth’s oldest son, Captain Stephen Greenleaf, Jr. (1652–1743), became known as “the great Indian fighter” for his brave but injury-ridden service battling Indians and the French. Captain Stephen’s son, Rev. Daniel Greenleaf, (1679–1763), got into trouble with his Congregational Church in Yarmouth when he “talked of worldly matters on the Sabbath.” His great offense occurred after a second Sunday service when he asked for the loan of a horse so he could hurry to Boston and see his oldest son who was near death with smallpox. The patriarchal lineage included another doctor, a shipping merchant and farmer who built the first house, sawmill, and gristmill in the town of Brattleboro, Vermont; an ancestor who died at sea in 1803 while on “a coasting voyage for his health;” and other fine men who led good lives and served their militias when duty called. And so it went through the years.

At least two luminaries sprouted from branches of the Greenleaf family tree. Famed Quaker poet, pamphleteer, abolitionist and suffragist John Greenleaf Whittier (b. 1807) was a descendent of Edmund Greenleaf’s grandson Tistram, who had come to America with his parents at the age of six. Poet T. S. Eliot was two generations closer to Bob’s line than Whittier. Eliot claimed descent from the same “illustrious” Rev. Daniel Greenleaf who not only had quarrels with his church members at Yarmouth but, apparently, also with his wife. At one point she moved twelve of their children to Boston, where she opened an apothecary and grocery so she could earn enough to send several of the children to college.

Samuel Knight Greenleaf established a Midwestern branch of the family when he moved to Ohio in 1832. After his death, his wife Olive, 29two of her children and their families moved to Paris, Illinois, a small town across the state line from Terre Haute. Olive lived to the age of ninety and was known around Paris as “Grandma Greenleaf,” a pillar of the Baptist Church who took a lively interest in all current events. She was Robert K. Greenleaf’s great-grandmother.

Bob’s grandfather, William Knight Greenleaf, enlisted with the Illinois Volunteers in 1862, was wounded at the battle of Lookout Mountain, and spent the next eighteen months in captivity at the Andersonville Prison in Georgia, where more than 49,000 prisoners died after enduring terrible suffering. He spent his time productively, however, by apprenticing to a Confederate doctor. After the war he moved his family to Terre Haute, where he seems to have had a sort of medical practice.⁴

George Washington Greenleaf, born in 1870, was the youngest of a large working-class Terre Haute family and a lifelong resident until his death in 1950. George had a distaste for war and zealous patriotism, maybe because of his father’s stories about his Civil War experiences. Bob never knew his paternal grandparents, but he reflected all his life on his own father’s life experience:

When he returned to Terre Haute, George ran a grocery store. Most of his customers were employed by a nearby glass-blowing plant, and George extended them credit during the hot summer months when the 30plant was closed. One fall, the workers returned to find their plant permanently shut down without notice. That ended the Greenleaf grocery business, but the workers never forgot his kindness. “I recall the old ledgers being up in our attic,” remembered Bob, “and, through the years, one of these old glass blowers would occasionally run up to pay his bill.”⁶

Mr. Greenleaf next worked in a hardware store until he got the job as machinist at Rose Polytechnic’s Practice Shop. Somewhere along the way he acquired an expensive set of mechanical drawing instruments, which may have indicated aspirations to be a draftsman. Bob eventually inherited these instruments, along with his father’s personal machinist’s tools, and passed them along to his own son.

George Greenleaf was active in politics because he saw himself as a community trustee—one who took responsibility for the wider affairs of his city. He started as a precinct committeeman, serving four years on the City Council and eight years on the school board. He was not without personal ambition but consistently put principle above pragmatism, as he proved in his fight against Donn Roberts.

Donn Roberts was elected mayor of Terre Haute in 1912. He quickly gained control of the city’s officialdom: police, judges, prosecutor, and sheriff. Then he made a fatal mistake. He tampered with the federal election in 1913. “Tampered” may be too mild a word. The mayor and his cohorts flat-out hijacked the election, according to the account of one historian:

Dogs were special favorites for Roberts. His minions registered the names of dogs as voters in every precinct, then hired men to visit each precinct and vote under the appropriate canine’s name. One such “worker” bitterly complained because he voted twenty-one times and was paid for only twenty. He received 25 cents per vote.⁸

A local grand jury said the election was “the most appalling condition of lawlessness that could possibly exist in a civilized community,” but Mayor Roberts was acquitted in what was called a farce of a trial.⁹ He and his Democratic machine continued to steal money from the city treasury, engage in construction swindles, and control the city’s red light district. Two years later, George Greenleaf—a Republican on the City Council— and a few other like-minded citizens decided to go to the Feds. In March, 1915, one hundred sixteen people were indicted on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States government. Among them were most of the elected power structure of Terre Haute. It was called the biggest election fraud in American history.

During the trial at the U.S. District courtroom in Indianapolis, the manufacturer of the voting machines used during the election claimed they were tamper-proof. On the stand, George Greenleaf, the wizard mechanic and machinist, demonstrated that the voting machines could, in fact, be tampered with. His son recalled the incident seventy-three years later. “[Father] later said to me that he didn’t think they had tampered with the machines. ‘They weren’t smart enough. Besides, they had enough control over the tabulation process (they had bought off some Republicans) that they didn’t need to tamper with the machines.’”¹⁰

The whole scene reminds one of a line spoken by Abe Martin, a cartoon character drawn and syndicated by humorist Kin Hubbard of The Indianapolis News: “Now an’ then an innocent man is sent t’ th’ legislature.”¹¹ This time, Terre Haute was lucky that a few innocent men remained to clean up the city.

On April 18, 1915, Vandalia Railroad train number seven stopped a few minutes at Terre Haute’s Union Station. It was transporting Donn Roberts and fourteen of his cohorts to the federal penitentiary in Leaven-worth, Kansas. Fifteen thousand residents, many of them cheering, came to watch their former mayor smile, bow, and wave as the train chugged westward.¹²

Even after the steel door clanged shut on his Kansas cell, Roberts would not resign as mayor. The City Council moved to impeach him. During the debate Roberts’ attorney was asked, “Do you believe that a city of 60,000 inhabitants should be governed by a man who is serving sentence in prison on conviction of a felony?” The attorney replied, “It is not the question at issue. I do not think that this Council should 32deliberately kick him out of office.”¹³ That comment drew huzzahs from many die-hard Roberts supporters.

Unbelievably, Roberts later ran for Governor of Indiana from prison. He was released in 1919, returned to Terre Haute, and almost won another term for Mayor. Then, he dropped out of sight. Young Bob Greenleaf saw him one more time and learned the kind of respect granted his father by his toughest enemy:

Several years before Donn Roberts’ trial, George Greenleaf showed his practical compassion after a great tragedy. Around 9:30 p.m. Easter Sunday night, March 24, 1913, a killer tornado hit Terre Haute and leveled a six-block-wide strip across the south side of town, just a few blocks from the Greenleaf home. At 1906 South 9^th Street, a house and barn were blown away but a horse was found uninjured in the cellar of the house. The storm wiped out the Root Glass Company, designer and supplier of the original Coca Cola bottle. Twenty-five people eventually died.¹⁵

Rev. Benson, the Greenleaf family’s pastor at Montrose Methodist Episcopal Church, woke Mr. Greenleaf in the middle of the night and asked him to take over relief efforts at the church. George got dressed, moved into the church for the next few days, and performed admirably. Bob later noted, “That pastor, at that time, would not have rated Father as a pillar of his church. But when he had that kind of problem, he knew where to take it.”¹⁶

Four days after the tornado, 5,000 Midwesterners had died from the accompanying flood, and few parts of Terre Haute were spared the water or the misery. George took his nine-year-old son along to inspect the damage, a trip Bob remembered vividly:

Besides taking his son to City Council meetings, the Rose Poly practice shops, and visits for official business, George made sure Bob was exposed to as much of the real world of work as there was to see in Terre Haute. Bob remembered it all:

It was the kind of father-son relationship that was more common in America when the family worked together on the farm, a closeness that tended to disappear after most dads went to work in offices and factories and left their sons at home. Even in Terre Haute during the first twenty years of the century, most fathers probably did not spend as much time with their sons as George Greenleaf did, especially if they had as many responsibilities as this man. Young Bob learned lessons from his father that he would later apply in his own life and pass along to others, especially in his writings on servant leadership. Specifically, Bob described several memorable events where his father demonstrated the power of withdrawal, accessing intuition, and “seeing things whole.” It was a vivid learning experience:

George Greenleaf used his personal political ambitions as a vehicle for service. In 1916 he made a run for County Clerk of Vigo County, an election that he lost. Bob suspected the effort put him in debt, even though his 36father never mentioned it. It was a major loss, because the position held more political power and paid more money than George’s previous elected positions. In his later years, George told his son, “If I had won my last big contest for office, that would have put me in the big money, and I would not be here today. I am lucky that I lost.”²⁰

George returned to his role as a school board trustee. Then, in the fall of 1918, he accepted an appointment to the office of Inspector of Factories, Buildings, and Workshops for the State of Indiana at a salary of $2,000. On October 14, school board attorney Henry Moore gave an opinion that Greenleaf’s new position disqualified him to remain on the board, because it would violate a state law disallowing any person to hold more than one lucrative office. The newspapers were already speculating about who his replacement might be.²¹ They were premature.

George Greenleaf was out of town when the move was made against him. He returned two days later and vowed to fight for his job. Indiana’s Attorney General issued an opinion in Greenleaf’s favor, but the local folks didn’t seem to think this mattered. The board insisted that the fact that Attorney General Stansbury even gave an opinion upheld their view that he was a state employee (Greenleaf was actually an appointee) and was no longer a member of the school board.²²

One can understand their nonchalance. By law, the Terre Haute School Board was limited to five members. Mr. Greenleaf, who had been elected to the board by the largest majority in history, often questioned the board’s leaders and voted against them. In response, the majority “machine” on the board allowed a trustee whose term had expired to remain on the board—as chairman!—and then seated an additional unelected person as a voting trustee. As a result, two “members” of the board were unelected and illegally empowered. No matter. This was Terre Haute.

On October 18, Greenleaf went to court and got a temporary restraining order to prevent the board from unseating him. In response, the board held a secret meeting and ousted Greenleaf anyway, appointing one of their buddies as his successor. Judge John Cox held board members in contempt. The case dragged on for weeks, while school board attorneys sought and were granted four postponements. The judge’s final judgment was to hold board members in contempt, scold them, and instruct them to go home and “straighten out this mess.”²³ It was a lenient sentence by any standard.

The board was still not impressed. A week later, they had done nothing. Finally, on February 12, four months after the brouhaha began, Judge Cox ordered Greenleaf reinstated as trustee. Board members received no punishment for their actions.

Through all this, George Greenleaf continued to attend every board meeting. He was not recognized by the Chair, but he spoke anyway, an early version of Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, a common man speaking and acting with dignity in the face of corrupt officials who had violated his profound notions of fairness and decency.

George traveled in his state position. He had an office in the Indiana Capitol building and kept a room in Indianapolis. He came home on weekends, but Bob often visited him in the big city. George kept this job for two years. Bob later wrote about his father’s tenure:

George Greenleaf continued to be an inspiration to his son until his death at age eighty. Even though Bob seldom traveled back to Terre Haute, he continued corresponding with his father and often reflected on his father’s life, especially after he and Esther moved into a retirement home. 38

The last essay Robert Greenleaf wrote before his death was My Life With Father, a tribute to the man who embodied so much wisdom, courage, responsibility, and calm during his lifetime. In it, Bob acknowledged the grounding afforded him by a father who served his community and cared for his son: