U.S. Sen. John C. “Jack” Danforth unfolds his lanky frame, opens a door in the back of his private office in Washington, reaches into a cupboard and pulls down a copy of the slender maroon volume that has been part of the Danforth family for generations.
Picking up a black, felt-tip pen, he carefully inscribes the frontispiece just as his grandfather did, writing the recipient’s name at the top just over the title words “I Dare You!” then drawing a curved line to the four phrases beneath the title and adding the word “to” and his own signature as he issues the same challenge his grandfather issued to so many people through his book.
“I dare you! to stand tall, think tall, smile tall and live tall.”
It is the same challenge that drives the descendants of William H. Danforth, founder of the Ralston-Purina cereal and grain empire, the same challenge that led one grandson to the U.S. Senate and another, his namesake, to head a major university.
And it is the same challenge that accompanies both of them as they change course. Soon after Jack announced his decision not to run this year for a fourth term as senator from Missouri, older brother William H. “Bill” Danforth said he would step down in June 1995 after nearly 24 years as chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis. In early 1995, Jack will return to St. Louis, where he will try to merge twin passions for the law and religion (he holds degrees in law and divinity from Yale) as he forges another phase of a distinguished career.
Jack, 57, ordained as an Episcopal priest, has spent most of his life in law and politics. Bill, 68, is a physician who planned to spend his life quietly in academic research but whose talent for administration and quiet leadership took him down a different path. Chairman of the Danforth Foundation and a member of several boards, he will remain active in community affairs.
Heirs to one of the greatest industrial fortunes of this century, Bill and Jack Danforth could have chosen far less demanding careers or lived lives of leisure. They could have allowed the money to overtake them as have so many heirs to great fortunes. They could have been forced into the family business or made to feel that they had to score big in a public arena to make their family proud.
But their real inheritance may have been loving grandparents and parents who believed in strong families, public service and personal fulfillment, and lived their own lives that way.
The belief in the power of family shines through in separate interviews with each brother-Jack in his traditionally furnished Senate office crowded with family photos, Bill in a small conference room across the hall from his own office in a Washington University building that dates from the 1904 World’s Fair.
Each takes pains to make sure the interviewer knows they don’t consider themselves more successful than the siblings who come between them: Dotty, 66, mother of three and grandmother of soon-to-be 10, and Donald Jr., 62, the brother who followed his father into the family business and is now a businessman and investor in St. Louis.
“We were raised in a family that had high aspirations for their children, and those high aspirations tended to be along the lines of service and high-minded beliefs, living up to your responsibilities,” explained Bill. “Both my Danforth grandparents admired service very much.”
Known for his inspirational books and speaking, as well as his talent for commerce, the first William H. Danforth wrote weekly messages to his employees at Ralston-Purina and passed along the same inspiration to his grandchildren.
Jack was 20 when his grandfather died in 1956. “He was really a charismatic person, very colorful, very daring and very much into slogans like `I dare you,’ so I think he put a stamp on all of us,” said Jack. “I think in addition to that our dad was very loving and very reassuring, a very down-to-Earth person.”
The Danforth children were taught early on to challenge themselves. “You were really expected to be your best, to do your best,” said Jack.
Jack knows he had every advantage growing up, but thinks the most important ingredient was family. “For us family was everything, and I think that what’s happened to the country, the family’s disintegrated. I’ve never seen any legislative ideas that make up for lack of a family.”
“I think it gets back to family,” says brother Don Jr. “People that write articles like you do always focus on the members of the family like my grandfather, who was tremendously successful, a very visible, wonderful person. But our father and our mother were just absolutely terrific in bringing us up, talking over things, always interested in what we were doing and always giving us a lot of encouragement. Our father was a tremendous influence on all of us-and that’s never been brought out in all these articles because maybe our grandfather was more visible-but he was a very tremendous personality, very quiet, very determined, and very loving and very supportive.”
Exemplary marriages
The marriages of grandparents and parents also set an example as partnerships. Married in 1950, Elizabeth, known as “Ibby,” and Bill Danforth have four children and 12 grandchildren. Involved in campus activities, Ibby always has been one of her husband’s best assets, and he knows it. When he announced his retirement, he also mentioned owing her a trip around the world.
Jack and Sally Danforth married young in 1957. After five children and five grandchildren, Jack credits his wife with keeping the family strong despite the trials of politics and public life. “My wife is a truly wonderful wife and a wonderful mate. That’s been her vocation, that’s been her calling.”
He also credits his family with teaching him the importance of caring for your children. “Obviously there were expectations but also a lot of encouragement and a lot of recognition of personal idiosyncrasies.”
Determined to be a lawyer and a politician from an early age, Jack startled his family when he decided instead to attend divinity school after he graduated from Princeton University. “That was the only time they raised an eyebrow,” he said, recalling the many talks he had with his parents about this new calling.
Eventually he realized he would be unhappy if he didn’t continue his early commitment to law and politics, so he attended law school while he finished his graduate work in religion.
Ordained in 1964, Jack constantly sought ways to combine his callings, serving as an assistant or associate rector in New York and St. Louis while he practiced law. As a senator, he has conducted weekly services at St. Alban’s Church in Washington since 1977.
Jack always has looked up to Bill. “He would talk to me as though I was worth talking to, and that meant a lot to me,” Jack said. Don was Jack’s playmate, but Bill was his admired and respected adult brother. Jack still remembers Bill taking him outside during an eclipse of the moon and explaining it to him.
“We have a family that has been very close. We love each other a lot,” Jack said. “The real key is family,” he said, repeating it to emphasize the point. “The family creates expectations of you. You don’t want to let them down. You want them to be proud.”
He remembers a time after the difficult race for his second term in the Senate when he felt keenly that he had let his family down. “I almost lost it. It was a real blow-it was close. Afterwards my brothers were trying to give me advice. I was very hurt by that. . . . I thought my brothers weren’t proud of me anymore. I was 46 years old and still trying to please my brothers.”
The doubt was only in his own mind.
“I’m always proud of Jack,” said Bill. “I think he is a terrific person. Jack does what he thinks is right.”
The Thomas controversy
Jack never doubted his family’s support and pride during the time he describes as the most difficult in his life: the 1991 controversy over the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. Thomas was an assistant Missouri attorney general under Jack and a close family friend. Jack was asked by the White House to lead the Thomas confirmation effort at the same time he was confronting the Bush administration on civil rights legislation.
“It (the confirmation) was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Jack said. “At the same time, it was the best thing I’ve ever done.” Jack has written a book about his experiences during those battles that will be published next fall and, leery of scooping himself, has avoided interviews about Thomas recently.
Jack began his political career as the first Republican elected to statewide office in years. He became Missouri attorney general in 1969 and used the office to build a political powerbase that launched two governors, fellow Sen. Christopher S. Bond, judges and, of course, eventually a Supreme Court justice.
“At that time we were truly the reform movement in state government, and that was exciting for a politician. . . . We were tilting at windmills.”
The following year Jack challenged Stuart Symington for the U.S. Senate and lost. “I was such an underdog right from the beginning that there was no sense of (failure) at all.” Six years later, after Symington announced his retirement, Danforth defeated former Missouri Gov. Warren Hearnes for the Senate seat.
By the time Jack reached Washington, his eldest brother had been chancellor of Washington University for five years. A graduate of Princeton the decade before Jack, Bill graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1951 and returned to St. Louis as an intern at Barnes Hospital. He joined the Washington University School of Medicine as an assistant professor in 1960 and became a full professor seven years later, after being appointed vice chancellor for medical affairs.
How did someone who didn’t want to head a major corporation end up running a university?
“I think it is a little surprising too,” admitted Bill. “I came out of a business family and made a conscious decision that was not the way I wanted to spend my life.
“I very much enjoyed medicine. I like doctors and I liked dealing with patients.”
With his serious, almost grave demeanor, and his gentle manners, Bill seems more like an ideal physician or researcher than someone at home in the business world. But his knack for fundraising and fiscal management are apparent when the achievements of the last two decades are catalogued.
The university’s endowment of $1.72 billion is nearly 12 times greater than in 1971. A five-year campaign that ended in 1988 raised $630.5 million, which university officials said was the biggest single fundraising venture in the country.
In fact, one of the highlights was the building of a new Business School in 1986. That fundraising effort was aided by a matching grant from the Danforth Foundation, which has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to the school during his tenure. Bill said he doesn’t participate in Danforth Foundation decisions about proposals from the university.
Good connections
Bill has been able to use his connections (he serves on the boards of Ralston-Purina and McDonnell Douglas) and his background to promote synergy between the business and academic communities.
And, on occasion, having a brother in the U.S. Senate has come in handy for the chancellor and the university. In 1992, Washington University hosted the first presidential debate, drawing media attention, prime-time TV coverage and high-level visitors to the campus. The quickly arranged coup was made possible by the Danforth brothers and their connections.
At the time, Jack said the debate “fell into my lap” when a former employee called on a Friday afternoon to let him know that if St. Louis could raise $500,000 for debate expenses within hours, the first debate was theirs. Within a half-hour, the money was guaranteed by Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc., and Jack had been assured there were enough hotel rooms available to handle the event.
Somewhere along the line he found time to squeeze in a call to Bill. “I said, `You might be interested in knowing this . . . the debate is going to be in St. Louis, and Washington University is one of the places being looked at by the commission.’ He was very, very interested in it, and he seemed really excited about it.”
Two days later, the campus was bustling with predebate activity.
The Danforths’ coincidental retirement announcements fueled a rumor that the senator will succeed his brother as chancellor, speculation that amuses the Danforths and brings quick denials.
Both are leaving jobs at which they’ve excelled, and they’re leaving on their own terms.
“He loves his job, but it’s the right thing to do,” Jack says of his brother. “I know it’s the right thing to do even though I’ll miss it a lot. It’s time for me to do something else. . . . I want to show that I can do something other than hold public office, something St. Louis-oriented, something to make the community better.”
Another answer to his grandfather’s challenge.
