The following is my summary of the autobiographical sketches written at unknown dates by the automotive pioneer Henry Bourne Joy,  whose papers are found in the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan.

Henry B. Joy brought Packard Motor to Detroit in 1902.

1. Boyhood of Henry B. Joy

2. With J.F. Joy in England—July 1884

3. Development of Aviation Interest in Detroit

4. Joy-Beecher Controversy

Boyhood of Henry B. Joy.

Henry lived the first 28 years of his life two blocks from the Detroit post office “until I embarked on the sea of matrimony and removed to another part of the City.” His father James F. Joy, was president of the [Michigan Central] Railroad, with depot, office, and shops six blocks away from the family’s home. John F. Griffiths was Mr. Joy’s secretary. Young Henry liked to play with the telegraph in Griffiths’ office: “The result was chiefly a great deal of trouble, because I did not understand that I should leave the telegraph key closed after I had finished ‘operating.’” In the railroad’s shop “I was entranced with the big machine tools turning car axles and making big shavings of steel, on which, of course, I had promptly to burn my fingers.”

Charles Austin Fosdick, who wrote 'Frank in the Mountains' under the pen name of Harry Castlemon.

It was “intensely hot” at the Exhibition, but Henry “was to fall in love” in one building: “There I met my fate.” A Corliss engine furnished power to the machinery hall. Over the next few days he sat on the platform by it. The engineer “let me touch the engine; he let me fill the oil cans; he let me go around with him as he oiled the vast machine. Yes, I may as well confess, I was enraptured.”

Back at home, Fred went to military school in Orchard Lake; Henry envied his uniform. He was allowed to enroll the next year and was put in charge of the drum corps. “In that drum corps I finished my musical education.”

He stayed at school over Thanksgiving and on Thanksgiving Day was skating on the lake when he fell through the ice. “I was really at the time quite interested in getting out.” He persisted and did hoist himself onto solid ice once again.

Naturally enough “the family had not been greatly pleased with my failure to come home Thanksgiving.” He did go home for Christmas. Santa gave him and Fred telegraph instruments. “We got a hold of some old wire, and while the family was absent, we proceeded to tack wires on the nice woodwork from one end of the house to the other, and set our telegraph company in operation. It was wonderful. It really worked. When mother returned, and we ran to her to show her what we had accomplished, we were disappointed at the effect of our skillful wiring work.” Later, after investigating at the Detroit Fire Department Telegraph Headquarters and the Western Union office, he figured out how to conceal the wiring, which he then surreptitiously installed throughout the house.

Easter was a repeat of Thanksgiving, and he stayed at school reading “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” and “The Count of Monte Christo.”

After another year at military school, Henry transferred to the Patterson School, in Detroit, and “fell under the instruction of a woman, a splendid woman” named Miss Hosmer. Mathematics now became an “enjoyable pastime.” Unlike his father, whose library of 10,000 volumes included an “elaborate” collection of Latin and Greek volumes and perhaps more than 3000 in French, young Henry was less of a language scholar, although he still “got by successfully.”

1916 Packard

Neither father nor mother ever spoke a cross word to each other. “It was a happy home of good cheer and good will and left an indelible impression on me which will endure with me to the end.”

With J.F. Joy in England—July, 1884

J.F. Joy was “vastly interested in keeping the Wabash as an entity and having it made tributary to his city of Detroit.” This would give Detroit “an entrance…for business to the great southwest.” The elder Joy “had become engaged in the effort to extricate the Wabash from the mire of financial complications into which it had been lead [sic] under the masterful guidance of Jay Gould.” The railroad’s health was also important to those Detroiters who were “engaged in the establishment of the new Union Depot gateway.”

Returning from Yale in June, Henry learned of his father’s plan to go to London. Having always found it “exceedingly entertaining” to follow his father on business, and relishing the opportunity to meet “very distinguished and prominent people,” Henry used “sincere effort” to go along. It was to be his first sea voyage and first visit abroad. Besides Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London, he was keen to “follow out some of the descriptions in Dickens.”

Cunard's 7700-ton 'Etruria,' of 1885

There proved to be but few diversions during the journey. “I, myself, being a moderate reader, thought the load of books I carried on board for my father to last him the ten or twelve days of the voyage would have lasted me, I estimated, approximately six months.” That is, if he had been able to read Latin, Greek, and French at the pace his father maintained. (Here, he reveals that his father, then 74 years old, had come to Detroit in 1836 and hung out his shingle as a lawyer.) There were some after-dinner conversations with Garrett and Depew. Of the latter, Henry thought that “a more interesting and entertaining man could never have lived in the world. His unending supply of stories and anecdotes kept the company entertained in the highest degree.” But Henry was later somewhat disabused of his high esteem when his father called Depew “Mr. Vanderbilt’s man Friday.”

Reaching port in Liverpool, they made their way to London, where they stayed at the Langham, reputed to be London’s best hotel. In comparison to the hotels of New York, Boston, or Chicago, Henry found it to be “dark, gloomy, forbidding, and unattractive throughout its interior.” The roast beef and mutton chops were good, though.

Chauncey M. Depew

“What? You here, Harry?” Mr. Joy said.

“Could I do anything for you, Father?” Harry asked.

“No,” his father said. “I’ll be back to the hotel in the afternoon.”

But Captain Pavey overheard all and acknowledged Harry. “I want to tell you that you should be proud. We’re going out to lunch and then down to my office for a meeting. Would you not come along?”

This time Harry “lost no time in assenting.”

It wasn’t the last time during the visit to London that he was invited along to meetings in Captain Pavey’s office.

Development of Aviation Interest in Detroit

Dictated by Henry B. Joy at the request of Harold H. Emmons, Detroit, Mich., December 3rd [no year given]

Joy Aviation Field, later to become Selfridge Field and elements tending to develop interest in Aviation locally

Joy began earnestly to study aviation and how Packard Motor could contribute to the service of the country “in case war should lead us into such difficulties as participation.” He had been increasingly interested in aviation since the Wright Brothers demonstrated flight at Fort Myer, in Washington, D.C. “I decided to drive towards an aviation motor in the Packard Experimental Department…”

Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge

Two years into the war, the board decided not to pursue the testing ground, so “the land purchases which I had made were left in my ownership and possession.” Joy lived on the square mile in a tent, “spending as much time there as I could directly supervising the grading, going back and forth to the Packard factory each day over mud roads hub deep.” His interest was engaged because no such problem of drainage and reclamation had ever been attempted in the Detroit area.

When America entered the war on April 7, 1917, Joy was living in a frame house that he had built at the property. Much building of dikes, grading of ditches, and seeding of fields had been done at his own expense. The land was a foot lower than Lake St. Clair and really “was nothing but a ‘cat-tail’ swamp.” The federal government and Joy Realty Company worked out a three-year lease deal paying five percent on the calculated $195,000 price for land purchase and development. An option to buy was included. The road Joy had opened to Gratiot Avenue was paved with concrete by the State of Michigan and named Henry B. Joy Boulevard. A railroad was built on the property and buildings erected.

Joy Aviation Field became the first training center for military aviators.

“There is an interesting sideline in connection with my effort to develop an Aviation Field in the vicinity of Detroit as above outlined, which few people or practically none, know about or appreciate.”

The crash of the Wright Flyer that claimed the life of Lt. Selfridge.

Joy Field was renamed after Lieutenant Thomas Etholen Selfridge, whom Joy had seen killed on Sept. 17, 1908, in a crash with Orville Wright at Fort Myer.

After the war, the government did not exercise its option to buy at $195,000, so the property reverted to Joy’s control but the government continued to occupy it.

Whether Selfridge would become a permanent air base became “purely a political matter.”

“Finally the military authorities and the politicians in Washington decided to retain Selfridge Field, but instead of coming to me and discussing the matter, they instructed the District Attorney to institute condemnation proceedings and I was charged in public print with trying to get rich out of the Government and selling the property at twice its value, etc., etc.” An assessment process carried out by the D.A. showed the value between $400,000 and $500,000. So the authorities approached Joy about reinstating the option.

Joy agreed to this and the $195,000 was paid “in due time…after much silly negotiation and the matter was closed.”

He had felt that the base would be a benefit to Mt. Clemens, but ultimately he concluded otherwise because “the constant flying of planes all day long, daily, including Sunday, and the target practice which is incident to military training, causes so much disturbance in the contiguous area as to be decidedly detrimental to the upbuilding of a community anywhere within the vicinity of such a military aviation training field.” 

BEECHER-JOY CONTROVERSY

(A matter too obscure for summary here, involving the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher’s contention that Republican Party presidential candidate James G. Blaine had solicited a bribe from James F. Joy.)

Gelek Rimpoche, October 29, 2009

Q. As I read about you on the website, a couple of questions came to me.

A. OK. To be honest with you, I don’t even know who wrote it on my website and what they wrote. I have no idea.

Q. You spent your youth at Drepung Monastery.

A. Right.

Q. Is it in Lhasa?

A. It is near Lhasa, about six miles west of Lhasa, and when I was there, it was pre-Communist-takeover, before 1959. My experience in Drepung was mostly late-Forties and the early Fifties. So that was a city of its own. We call it monastery, but it [is] so like a city. It has over ten thousand monk in that monastery. It is like little city, and it has its own little sections…sections of, you know, sort of segment of a group of monks. So basically there’s four segment, and two are huge, two are very small. Two are huge…my segment belongs to the west side of the monastery, which is largest of all. But probably be six, seven thousand monks, my segment. It is really a city of its own.

Q. I wondered what it like and what was the physical setting—was it on the side of a mountain?

A. Yeah, it is the foothills of a big, important mountain in Tibet. The important mountain is perhaps one of the tallest mountain in the center Tibet, one of the tallest mountain in the center Tibet. It is a huge, tall mountain in the center, and the little hills are going right and left. Then there’s a foothill valley, is where the monastery is located, in the valley between the right and the left hills. And in the center at the back there’s a huge, high mountain.

Q. When you think about the years you spent there, I assume, you’re talking about late-Forties, so you were eight years old?

A. Eight, nine—to nineteen.

Q. You recall that as a happy, tranquil time?

A. Very, very, very happy, tranquil a time. The life in the monastery is, I think, it’s very great. Life in the monastery is very great. Although in the West when you say a monastery you may think everybody eat together, live together, but the monastery where I had been, it has a life of its own and every individual, groups, all, one or two, the monks have its own little kitchen, its own little cooking system. It’s almost like a life, full life. Yeah. 

Q. Independent existence?

A. Quite independent existence, as well as general set-up, too. Because the general set-up is, normally they give you cheese, soup, et cetera, is available, they have for everybody. One to four cups of tea is available, one or two bowls of soups available. But it might not necessarily be the best quality you wanted. So a lot of individual cookings are there, so much so that there is very little people will be eating in general. [Laughs.] So that’s what I say there’s a life of its own, it have everything there. So when you cook yourself, you have to arrange your own materials, too. So that means fuel, too, food, everything’s your responsib[ility] when you’re privately cooking.

Q. Aside from your spiritual learning at that age, were you also learning academic subjects?

A. It’s mostly academic subject. Academic subject we learn [unintelligible]. It’s a very ancient Buddhist, Indian Buddhist philosophical subject, such as metaphysics, or wisdom, compassion, and discipline, and logic. The five famous subject are taught in addition to prayers and chantings and so forth.

Q. What about your English? When did you learn English?

A. Only in the United States.

Q. Oh, really? Even when you were in India you did not know—

A. Very little. Very little. Even now I consider myself, my English is a street language, honestly. I’ve not been in school at all. It’s a street language. And Sesame Street—

Q. That kind of street language?

A. And Days of our Lives.

Q. Really? I used to work on that show. [Turns off tape recorder to tell of experience holding cue cards on the soap opera in Burbank, 1979 to 1982.]

A. When I first came into the Unites States—

Q. Which was what year?

A. Eighty-eight. The first visit I came eighty-four, and I came in eighty-six. But I literally moved here in eighty-seven, eighty-eight. When I came to visit, I don’t have a work to do, so I look at [Days character] Victor Kiriakis…the characters and their compositions, I listened to them, so you’re involved with them. And really, it’s a great help for me to pick up language and the culture, too.

Q. Sesame Street you say that you watched?

A. Yeah, a little bit. Not all the time. I watched Victor Kiriakis more than Sesame Street.

Q. Were you here in Ann Arbor in 1988? This was the first place you settled in the United States.

A. First place I came…but I was in Texas in 1977, in Arlington, Texas, for about seven, eight months.

Q. Teaching?

A. Yeah. There was a healer, and a very good healer, no doubt. As a person he’s a little crazy. Almost like unstable person. So he wanted me to come over and teach and for three or four months, some people are translating for me. He was trying to set up a little institute. He’s a very good healer. He had very strong support of a lot of wealthy people, but he’s not good administrator or manager. So he wouldn’t manage. And then I went back, and he [says], “You know what, we don’t get anything.” [Laughs.} Because he had nothing. And he used to say [whispers], “I have a lot of money under my bed.” We looked and it was seven hundred dollars or so. Yeah. So he tried to make institute and doesn’t work that way. He’s very good healer. He heals people extremely well. He charges tremendous amount of money for the healing—tremendous amount! He work only three days month. [Unintelligible] people don’t come, say, “I’m out of money.” [Laughs.]

Q. Let me ask about your leaving Tibet to go to India. Was it a dangerous passage to India in 1959?

A. No doubt.

Q. Tell me one or two things about that, please?

A. Oh, when I was leaving, I left my monastery and crossed the mountain, two or three mountains, and reached to a place where one of my estate is. And when I reach there the public in that area would not allow me to go, saying, “Your parents is not here, you’re young”—I’m nineteen years old—“you shouldn’t leave.” And every time I try to leave, then there were twenty, thirty, forty people [in the road?] and block me.

Q. Some of them blocked you?

A. Twenty, thirty, forty people. They kept on begging me not to go—very nicely, begging me not to go. Then one of them noticed there’s a danger from the Chinese. Then they let me go.

Q. Was this at the frontier between Tibet and—

A. No, no, no, no. It was only a one-day journey. Probably twenty-five, thirty miles.

Q. Were you on foot?

A. Yes. Twenty-five, thirty miles. Maybe a little more. A few miles more. Definitely below fifty miles anyway. So we have one estate of our own. So they won’t let me go at all. I was hoping to get some horses from the estate. And finally they let me go—no horses. But then in the evening, later in the night, whatever the horses [unintelligible], four or five, and a couple of mules, and they catch up with me. That’s how I left.

Q. So you were walking at night through the mountains?

A. Right, right, right.

Q. You crossed the border from Tibet into India?

A. Yes. That was also mountains. That was at midnight—past midnight to cross Indian border. This is a month later since I left my home.

Q. It took a month? In between times you stayed at—

A. Different areas.

Q. With families?

A. Some families. I think people know us. So everywhere we’ve been, wherever we go, people make arrangements.

Q. I see. Did you have a different way of dressing from the average person, so that it was obvious you were—

A. This is a small area, and everybody knows who it is. That’s how—you don’t have to write a book, Who’s Who, because everybody knows who’s who. Very small community.

Q. You spent nearly twenty years in India [actually nearly thirty].

A. Yes. India and other countries.

Q. It’s almost like your life is divided into three segments.

A. Yes, twenty years in Tibet, twenty years in India, twenty years in United States—thirty years now [twenty is more correct]—and then whatever the remaining I have still, making extension. Hopefully there’s another twenty years.

Q. Tell me a bit about your life in Ann Arbor.

A. You know I came here first on the invitation of two students from the U of M.

Q. Sandy Finkel and Ora Glasser?

A. Yeah. So I stayed with them. They hosted me. I stayed with them together for—we stayed together for a couple of years, actually. She had house and share everything. When I say everything, I mean kitchen. [Laughs.]

Q. I understand. The communal areas.

A. Yeah, sort of communal area. Yeah. For a while. And then I’ve been able to buy a house in Ann Arbor because of a student-slash-friend of mine from Malaysia paid to [unintelligible] a house where we were renting, bought and paid house where we were renting.

Q. For you?

A. For me. So I was in Ann Arbor on Cherry Street for a while. And then I moved to the present house. Again, another [unintellibible] for this big a house, they came to visit and they thought it was too small for me. So they wanted me to sell the house, and at last they paid more money on top, bought and paid the house what I’m living today.

Q. And where is that?

A. It’s in Ypsilanti—Ypsi Township.

Q. How long have you lived in Ypsilanti Township?

A. Nineteen ninety-four, I moved. During that period, we started Jewel Heart, both Sandy and Ora and me, and a woman named Ruby Webber. Four of us. Ruby, Sandy, Ora, and me, we started Jewel Heart.

Q. Do you ever ask yourself, “If I had been born here in Ann Arbor, what would I be doing today?”

A. No, I don’t. I do not, because I was not born here anyway. So I don’t think about that. [He goes on with previous strand and mentions that Allen Ginsberg and Phillip Glass helped to start Jewel Heart.]

Q. I’ve been aware of them. So it’s been a successful endeavor?

A. Yes. Because we started at Jewel Heart with a good motivation for serving people, whatever little I know about Buddhist teaching, and to share that with the people—not to convert people in Buddhism but the good aspects of Buddhist teaching such as compassion and wisdom and morality and generosity and patience and concentration or meditation. And those I’ve tried to share to the service of the people. I consider United States as a home—a home away from home. So this is what little my contribution [is] to the people in the United States, people in the world, people in the United States and particularly people in Michigan—and Ann Arbor, Michigan. We started this organization with zero money. Actually, we started this organization with a penny less, truly speaking. At that time Ruby had some money—some money, meaning $200. People write in the newspaper “some money,” people will think about a thousand, you know. [She had] a couple of extra hundred dollars available and she utilized that. So we really started with a penny less. And now you know the organization became OK by itself. We have a couple of people working here—four, five, people, five, six, or seven, I think—paid people who work here, including myself. And people work here with an under million-dollar-a-year budget.

Q. A hundred million dollars a year?

A. Under. [Laughs.]

Q. There’s a big difference.

A. Under a million-dollar organization. So far, because of the kindness of the people, we never went in debt. We’re not in debt—true nonprofit. Nothing will be left at the end of the year [laughs], but true nonprofit. We owe nothing to anybody, except our house mortgage. We were in the downtown in Washington Street a while. It was great, and the people of Ann Arbor are so kind, so open, they really accepted up with open arms, and no one really looked at us as these strange Asian, what are you doing here? And then we somehow, that house is not suitable for us: (a) historic home and (b) it’s three story, you couldn’t utilize two upper stories, and I thought we were not doing justice for the place nor the place doing justice for us. So we sold it. We sold it and bought this.

Q. When was that?

A. Only last year, I think.

Q. In 2008?

A. 2007, I think. We utilized all the space, what we have. We lost a little bit store business, unfortunately. But then the store is actually to serve the membership, their spiritual needs [unintelligible]. It’s not really an open store. So it’s OK. Although we wish we had more business. But that’s fine.

Q. I see that you have two books published by major New York publishing houses. That must be satisfying as well.

A. I owe them three more books. I taking advance already and not giving the book yet. They’re chasing me.

Q. Last thing—

A. [He mentions that the Dalai Lama has come twice to Ann Arbor with the help the University of Michigan—the second time particularly.]

Q. I’m wondering about your reaction to the celebration of your seventieth birthday.

A. I think the people are very kind. I went to New York; they celebrated in New York. And then I went to Florida [to] a group of Vietnamese to give them teaching—they invited me and I went there—

End of Side A

Q. So, just a word about what’s in store for your future. Are you in good health?

A. I’m not in good health. I’m a sick old man, honestly. But I don’t have aches and pains. And I don’t have a disadvantage on my mind. And whatever little I can serve the people, I will continue until I get a collapse.

Q. So you’ll work until you collapse?

A. Yeah. I’ll work until I collapse or until I cannot work. And that’s what I’ll do.

The Anti Monkey Butt Lady was giving out free sample packets of Anti Monkey Butt Powder after the Southern Illinois 100, which was run Labor Day at the Du Quoin Magic Mile, Du Quoin, Illinois. Not only is she an excellent model (her mother, a photographer, has had her before the lens since an early age), but Stephanie Thomas is crew/car chief, mechanic, and sometimes spotter on the Number 34 Anti Monkey Butt Powder Chevrolet, which is driven in the ARCA RE/MAX series by Darrell Basham. She had just taken the electrical boxes out of the car at the end of the race, which explains the smudges of grease in the first photo. Stephanie is a student in the high-performance motorsports program at University of Northwestern Ohio, in Lima, her hometown. A second photo (bottom) shows her in battle gear just before the Kentuckiana Ford Dealers ARCA Fall Classic 200, on September 19, at Salem Speedway.

Stanley Pokorney and his wife Rita, of Wayne City, Illinois, had a popcorn stand at the Du Quoin State Fair. Stanley said they also sell popcorn at local fairs throughout southern Illinois. The traditional get-up is just for fun.