Up Rose Little Orvie Then

In his five terms as mayor of Dearborn (pop. 94,530), on the western edge of Detroit, irrepressible Orville L. ("Little Orvie") Hubbard has managed to obey almost every impulse that has popped into his head. It has not always led to the happiest results. His wife, for instance, once complained publicly that in a domestic tiff he had belabored her with a blackjack. The sheriff of Wayne County tried to jug him for not paying a $7,500 libel judgment, thus forcing him to set up a temporary government in exile at Windsor, Ont. (TIME, Aug. 21). And finally, a recall group began working for a special mayoralty election in the hope of throwing him out of office.

Not a whit abashed by such rebuffs, Little Orvie threatened to sue anyone who signed a petition against him. But beyond that, Orvie betrayed little anxiety, even though the recall movement had been touched off by one of his own awful political blunders. He had jealously refused to let the Ford Motor Co. (which employs a fourth of Dearborn's population) donate a $4,500,000 hospital to the city presumably because Ford had insisted on making its gift through the Greater Detroit Hospital Fund instead of letting Little Orvie handle matters directly.

Counterattack. Orville wisecracked when the recall leaders delivered their petitions to city hall--in an armored car. But early this month Orvie got his 225 Ibs. up on the stump and began to counterattack in earnest. He lit into the Ford family as though the Fords had been poisoning the drinking water; he swiped simultaneously at both the late Henry Ford and Negroes.

"The good grandfather went down south in 1917 and brought 'em up by the trainload," he bawled. "They wooed, and they cooed, and they multiplied." He took cracks at the "Abie's Irish Rose boys." He charged that Recall Leader Charles A. Wagner had walked out on his first wife, "taking all the wedding presents with him." For good measure, Little Orvie also belabored the Dearborn police ("one drives while the other sleeps") and firemen ("one day on, two days off").

As he talked, he pointed occasionally at a bowl containing three goldfish, each named for one of his chief critics. He gave his audiences entertainment: a chorus line and a trick violinist. He raffled off door prizes and gave away free thimbles. Through it all he maintained such a beaming air of disarming good humor that Dearborn voters found him simply impossible to resist. Last week they voted to keep him in office. The vote: 16,872 to 12,732, the biggest margin he has ever rolled up.

Countermeasures. Victorious, Little Orvie mounted a chair outside his office on election night and waved to a cheering crowd of 400 fans. He introduced his wife ("you see she's not all beat up"), his platinum-blonde daughter Nancy ("the member of the family who dyes her hair") and his eight-year-old son Henry Ford Hubbard ("I named him that because I wanted to show I had nothing against the Fords").

Next day Little Orvie really began enjoying the fruits of victory. His police chief announced that the three local newspapers and the Detroit News (all of which had opposed Orvie) would be denied Dearborn crime news because they could not be trusted to print the truth. Next day Orvie lifted the ban but turned to the problem of the Springwells Park section of Dearborn, which had voted, 629-77, to throw him out.

"I am writing the mayors of Lincoln Park, Inkster and Melvindale suggesting that they annex it," he said. "If they want it, they can have it." Meantime, he added, "It's going to be tough to get snow-removal trucks in there between now and spring."

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