It certainly was fortunate that fellow Rotarian, Dr. Whitley decided to travel with us on our little adventure to France and North Africa. I don't know what I would have done without him; probably end up in a hospital in Lisbon. As happened, I ended up in the St. Claire Shores hospital for almost a week. But, now I was back to work and lots to do.
On June 17th, we set a record with the Dutch Immigrant Soc. We had two inbound and two outbound charters for them. Almost 800 DIS members, 400 coming back from Amsterdam and 400 departing, fortunately I was able to get some New York airport staff to come to Detroit to help out.
When I came to Detroit I made the acquaintance of Rudi Postmaa. Rudi had attended University in Michigan and upon graduation had opened a travel agency in Grand Rapids. His father, who had been a teacher in Holland, owned a travel agency that specialized in student travel. Since I had been so involved with the University of Hartford in setting up Spanish language courses in Barcelona Spain, and Smith College with their travel to Ethiopia, I found that we had a great deal in common. I could handle the transportation side of travel and I needed someone I could work closely with on arranging the land portion such as hotels, transfers, sightseeing, etc. Our working relationship and friendship made a good team. I could make a contact such as I did with Chrysler Corp. management club. I convinced them that a group flight for their Management club members would be a fun thing to do during Chryslers two week vacations close down. I then brought in Rudi to handle the land arrangements. The result was I had 45 people flying to Europe on KLM.
Rudi Postmaa handled the land arrangements for my Eastern European group with Impresario Magazine. This was a performing Arts Tour that I have mentioned previously. It was not an easy program to set up as it entailed performance tickets to the Bolshoi, in Moscow, The St. Petersburg Ballet School in (Stalingrad in those days) St. Petersburg, as well as performances in other Eastern Europe cities. In Moscow we were able to get a special dinner set up with a number of Bolshoi Ballet performers. This relationship with Rudi resulted in KLM getting business from him. As a good Dutchman, Rudi would always put his personal groups that he had sold, through my office and on KLM. It was one hand washes the other, except we had also developed a personal friendship. I would often visit his father when I was in Amsterdam.
One very great surprise happened on July 23rd. when a police raid on an unlicensed liquor bar called "a blind pig" resulted in the infamous race riots of 1967. It was hard to believe the chaos that ensued. Rioters broke into stores and made off with furniture, clothing, and food and just about anything they could lay their hand on. What made it worse was that the mayor told the police not to fire and to stay back. He believed that it would not grow as it did. At one point, the rioters were sniping at cars on the expressway. Since the KLM office was in the middle of downtown Detroit, on Monday the 24th, I decided to drive down to my office to see if we had any damage. I was under the impression that the riot was pretty well over. I was sitting in my office looking out at all the damage when an army tank came around the corner. Crouching behind the tank were several National Guard troops with rifles at the ready. It didn't take long for me to get to my car and get out of there. Here are a few pictures that may give you an idea of the devastation.
It was Wednesday the 26th before we could reopen the office and it took weeks for the city to clean up everything and get back to normal.
The riot pretty well made up my mind for me. I had been toying with the idea of moving our office out of Detroit into one of the suburbs. The girls of our staff did not feel safe in downtown. We would often encounter derilicks sleeping in the lobby of our building and others hanging around pan handling. The Gateway Center building was in the center of downtown. Eastern Air lines also had an office on the same floor as us. British Airways was across the street and several other airlines were in nearby buildings. I had broached the subject at one of our Detroit Air Line Managers meeting and found that most wanted to stay where they were. There seemed to be some unwritten law that mandated all air lines be in the same area. In any event, I called Roger Ackley in Chicago and aprised him of my desire to move our office and asked him to set up a meeting with Luke Asjes in New York for the three of us to discuss my proposal. I had already filled in Roger and had no objection from him. When we met with Asjes, he listened to my reasons for wanting the move and told me to go ahead and get several proposals as to where I would relocate. He agreed with me that our location was not acceptable. All I had to do now was find the new location.
Unknown to me at the time, fate was to play a roll in our relocation.
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