His education at Yale University would permanently imprint the third trait in Hibbard's character. At its Sheffield Scientific School, he grappled with the needs of society, from chemistry and the environment to transportation and bridge building. Civil engineering suited Hibbard, as well as the future roll his family expected him to have at Hibbard Hardware.

Around campus, he fit in well with the other students. At 5 foot 11 inches tall, Hibbard stood erect but casually, as did other men of good social stature. In overall looks, some might call him average, but he kept his well trimmed dark brown hair swept straight back with just enough hair oil to do the job but not enough to be greasy. Upon closer inspection, his tanned, slightly freckled face sported a large nose, and a broad smile that welcomed friend and stranger alike. Having lived most of his life within walking distance of Lake Michigan, he loved sailing. Fellow members of Yale Gun Club knew him as being a deadeye marksman, despite his need for round wire-rimmed eyeglasses. And those who saw him driving around campus would probably agree that his Stutz Bearcat roadster fit his can-do attitude and almost bottomless energy.

In January of that year, the powerful, lightweight, and stylish Bearcat had been driven from the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, across the newly opened graveled Lincoln Highway to New York City in a record-breaking 11 days, 7 hours, and fifteen minutes. While Edwin "Cannon Ball" Baker was the man behind the wheel, Miami Beach developer and owner of the Indianapolis Speedway, Carl Fisher, had been the driving force behind the highway itself.

Before his vision of a coast-to-coast vision became tangible, Fisher started planning a new brick highway to go north to south. The Dixie venture caused havoc, as cities and states clamored to be included along the way. They were even willing to pay for part of the construction. As a result, it sprouted two official routes. "I just like to see dirt fly," Fisher would say. And fly, it would - for 4,000 miles from Sault-Saint Marie, in Northern Michigan to Miami. Once open, anyone who wanted to could go to Florida could do so without traversing the usual hazards, such as muck, red clay slush and cypress swamps.

While the Florida land values heated up, Hibbard brought his sheepskin home to Chicago where a job awaited him at Hibbard Hardware. Despite his prominent name, Hibbard's freshly inked diploma meant little in a company where each man had to prove himself first. He received the lackluster position as clerk in the marketing department. At least, the corporate culture no longer demanded every man start at the very bottom dusting tinware at $400 a year, as the Chairman of the Board, A. C. Bartlett, had.

Bartlett's straightforward business philosophy left nothing to the imagination, but it did make a lifelong impression on Hibbard. "If the young men, when coming into the house, fully realize how much their advancement, and ultimate welfare and success depend on their thoroughness, diligence, loyalty and integrity, their futures are assured, for with that realization, no one of intelligence can deliberately throw away his opportunities." The qualities that Bartlett espoused saturated every department at Hibbard Hardware. Indeed, long-time employees and his uncles, men with decades of experience, crowded the corporate ladder. While he found his talent and energy well suited for marketing, patiently waiting for promotions was not Hibbard's strong suit.

On April 6, 1917, when America entered the Great War, the conservatism set in place by company president, John J. Charles, paid off over the next few months when practically every male employee of military age who could enlist went into uniform. Women were employed in place of young men wherever possible. Order clerks and elevator operators, and men of advanced age were fitted with scientific care to those jobs where experience rather than agility was the prime essential. Hibbard left his job and signed up for the Navy. His brother, William Evans Casselberry, Jr., who was comparably employed mentally juggling barrels of nails, followed him.

Hibbard enrolled as an apprentice seaman in October 1917, went into officer training, and graduated from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station in March 1918. His first assignment, the USS DeKalb, was a troop transport that had been a German navy cruiser, before its seizure by the U.S. The ship made eleven transatlantic voyages, transporting more than 11,000 troops. In June, Hibbard transferred to the destroyer USS McKean, which patrolled in the Atlantic for most of his time aboard. But it was aboard the destroyer DeKalb that the accidental pre-firing of a gun left Hibbard Casselberry completely deaf in his right ear and ended his military service.

While the war continued, Hibbard returned home to Chicago and his job. There he found Chicagoans differing in their support of the war due to the city's large German population. The following October, he probably had little time to read about the Allies' final push toward the German border because the very breath of the city was being suffocated by the deadliest epidemic in history. On October 18, a day remembered as Black Thursday, the city ran out of hearses, and passenger trolleys draped in black trolled the streets collecting the dead. But those who would live through it would see the country change drastically within two years, especially in Florida.

As the Twenties exploded, Hibbard watched the number of orders to be shipped to the Sunshine State pile up higher than snow in a Chicago blizzard. Builders needed everything from shovels, roofing materials, to pedestal sinks and claw-footed bathtubs. He changed jobs, probably searching for greater opportunity, but stories of Florida's riches followed him to his new position as a salesman for Welsback, manufacturer of gas mantles used in lamps, flints for lighters, and electric metal filaments for light bulbs. Dreams of easy money had drawn waiters, clerks, writers, doctors, and gangsters, at the rate of a million and a half a year. In the Miami-Dade County area alone, the population would quadruple between 1915 and 1921.

Visions of Florida surrounded him. Young women in form fitting swimsuits smiled down at him from the billboards, as they lounged on the white sand of Miami Beach. Ads he read made subdivisions such as Addison Mizner's Boca Raton sound like paradise on earth. People gossiped about the ever-exploding Florida. One of the hottest tidbits was that former presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, known to many as "The Great Commoner," could be found floating on a raft under an umbrella on a lagoon at the Miami-Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables. Handsomely paid, Bryan preached on behalf of developer George Merrick. "You can wake up in the morning and tell the biggest lie you can think of about the future of Coral Gables, and before you go to bed at night, be ashamed of your modesty."

No doubt, Hibbard dodged one of Coral Gables developer's eighty-six buses crammed with wanna-be wealthy speculators headed to Florida. Everyone else, it seemed, bought one of Henry Ford's contraptions, jumped into it, and headed south looking for fun and sun in the land of instant riches. Hibbard could see that they bought property: in the first ten months of 1924, sales topped $10 million dollars ($121.25 million). Across South Florida, sales records rose as fast as Miami skyscrapers.

As large wads of cash took a one-way trip to Florida, unnerved Northern bankers declared war on their greedy southern counterparts. They complained to the brass at the New York Federal Reserve and fought back with a little ink of their own by creating and distributing anti-Florida advertisements. In outrage, the Indianapolis Times complained, "Literally thousands of persons are leaving the state in search of something for nothing in the land of oranges and speculation."

Florida responded by enlisting an army of politicians, bankers, and newspaper representatives to stomp up to New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel to firmly, and indignantly, deny the accusations of fraud that investors were bringing forth. With the wind against their words, however, the army retreated, making hollow promises to join in a campaign to drive the real estate sharks from Florida and protect the public from further land swindles.

By mid June 1925, a dark financial cloud began drifting over the Sunshine State, but few people profiting from development saw it coming. Shrewd Miami Beach developer Carl Fisher noticed and took his property off the market at the height of speculation. Other investors noticed when Internal Revenue agents started snooping around in the courthouse records, to see if taxes had bee paid on the speculator's profits. The boom became less boisterous, and land prices began slide down. Addison Mizner, whose architectural and development empires boasted Palm Beach and Boca Raton, found his business cracking underneath the stress. Smartly, he migrated north to nest among a new flock of snowbirds in Orlando.

The problem for Welsbach, and therefore Hibbard, was how to get their products delivered and thus their invoices paid. The Florida East Coast Railroad had placed an embargo on all freight except livestock and perishables. Later, the embargo extended the list to include household goods and bottled drinks, seeing the lull in activity as a chance to do maintenance on their overworked equipment and single-lane tracks. When steamship companies also declared an embargo, desperate builders and suppliers frantically searched for new ways to get goods into South Florida. Old windjammers and rusty schooners, resurrected from backwaters along the eastern seaboard, came to life. Crumbling engines cranked up, ragged sails raised, and leaky hulls crammed full of lumber, hardware and steel headed for Miami and the Beach. Hibbard knew no builder paid his invoice until he received his materials, and on August 22, 1925, there were 820 freight cars to be unloaded in Miami, with 1,300 more waiting on sidings further north.

In stark contrast, advertisements in Florida heralded that life had never been better. Lakeland developer Paul O. Meredith insisted the boom would last until the gulfstream ceased flowing. George Merrick showed his confidence by placing an order for another 1,000 homes, some of which would retail for $100,000 ($1.17 million). In case paradise alone was not enough to woo the ultra-wealthy, Florida politicians and bankers went a step further. To make sure their state was a safe haven for money, they passed a law to prohibit a state income tax and inheritance tax - a situation that continues today. Florida newspapers celebrated by printing articles confirming that and other grand opportunities, which drew the next tide of money into the banks.

Sparks ignited in the eyes of otherwise sensible people. Their cheeks flushed at the thought of the riches they could make. Florida fever became so contagious even youngsters became infected. Four Brooklyn boys admitted they had deliberately set fire to their school to distract their teachers while they made their escape to the Sunshine State. The junior fortune hunters landed in the Children's Home Society instead.

Hibbard loved controversy, so he and his friends surely debated Florida's merits and maladies. Some might point out the blatant example of corporate daring by Mathew Quinn of the Atlantic Building Corporation. On December 5, 1925, he ordered the four-masted schooner, Annie C. Ross, to set to sail from New York with $100,000 ($1.17 million) worth of building materials. Quinn sailed south to Florida without having selected a site to build. Surely Quinn knew something others did not.

In contrast, others could shake their heads and scorn the thought. The Prins Valdemar sinking surly epitomized overzealous behavior could turn into a fiasco. The old warship had been towed into the shallow channel of Miami harbor for conversion into a hotel, and then became stuck. The crew threw all ballast overboard, expecting the lightened boat to rise, and thus leave plenty of breathing room between the ship's hull and the channel bottom. Instead of rising, the top-heavy ship quickly flopped over to one side and capsized in the middle of the channel. A month later, the schooner still squatted in front of the harbor entry, like a stubborn old man refusing to budge. On the other side, ships waited to unload an estimated 45 million feet of lumber. Without the materials, how could builders finish their projects, collect their fees, and pay their bills to wholesalers up north? How would they pay their men's wages, or their men buy food, if there were any?

Even the well-known financial reporter B. F. Forbes did nothing to waylay those questions. According to the Fort Myers Tropical News, after he traveled through the state, he was surprised, and "expecting a reaction after the frenzied real estate activity of the last year, but being now on the spot, he (Forbes) is shrewd enough to avoid any prediction as to when the reaction will set in."

With no definitive report on which Welsbach could depend, Hibbard probably suggested to his employer that he should go south and send back a sound firsthand account of the situation. However, opening his mouth first and worrying about the details later was the flipside of his bold nature. What if there were no firm details, only more speculation? With his word and outspoken character on the line, Hibbard needed to do what Forbes could not. He needed to take the pulse of the Florida boom and declare it dead or alive.

To get the agreement of his wife, Mel, Hibbard suggested the drive south would double as a vacation. She would have preferred to take a train or an airplane, but Florida's transportation maladies were obviously part of its problem. No doubt, Hibbard painted their journey as a glorious adventure. They could take their three-year-old son, Hibbard Jr., along on the nearly 4,000-mile automobile trip down the Dixie Highway. Without room to travel comfortably with a nanny, their second child, Leonard, who had been born in November 1924, would be better off staying in the loving care of his nanny and grandfather. Hibbard would have suggested a stop to see family and friends along the way, especially in Winter Park where her maiden aunt, Miss Mary Leonard lived. Aunt Mae, as family members called her, would make sure Mel enjoyed the gaiety of its winter social season, something Mel had not been able to do on their prior trip.

When they arrived in Coral Gables, Hibbard and Mel could glide through canals in imported gondolas. They might stay at its Biltmore Hotel, dance to its orchestra and play golf on its two courses. Little Hib could enjoy the spectacular Venetian Pool, with its cascading waterfalls, and a bottom painted in a rainbow of colors. Subsidized in part by Welsbach, Hibbard would finally get his chance to experience South Florida's boom, if it still existed.

Once Mel agreed to go, Hibbard must have thought of little else. But, like window-shopping, he was only going south to look, not buy. At the end of the trip, he knew they would return to the Winnetka. Certainly, Hibbard had no reason to complain about living there, nor could he debate the move. There they had moved at the urging of family members. With machine-gun toting gangsters ruled the streets, and bootlegger Al Capone drove around the city in an armored car, it was no place two sons. Now he lived in a spacious home back to back with Mel's father.

When Hibbard met her, Mel's tall and stylishly slender figure graced his eyes. Her dark auburn hair pulled back into a sophisticated knot told of her restraint, while her eyes sparkled with bits of light on a deep blue ocean and hinted of life teeming inside. Having been a sorority girl at Wellesley College before transferring to Northwestern University, she transformed into the perfect society woman, conscious of its whims and expectations. Still, she had matched his energy perfectly. Once they returned to Winnetka, however, Mel's world became one of domesticity. She became content to stay home, play the piano, or be with the children. However, having a nanny for them allowed her opportunity to golf with her father or a hand of contract bridge. Weekends were spent with likeminded friends and neighbors.

Living in Winnetka must have looked like life by the numbers for Hibbard. Each morning, before he caught the train into Chicago, he lathered up his face to shave. More than once, he must have asked the man in the mirror if this would be life for the next forty years. Thirty-two years had passed already since his birth - practically a half a lifetime.

It had been on March 6, 1893, that messenger fought the cold, wind whipping off Lake Michigan and down Chicago streets to get up the front walk of two-story brick home. In any other neighborhood, people would call William Gold Hibbard's home imposing, but this was Prairie Avenue, "Millionaires' Row," and home to over seventy-five of the country's leading industrialists. Mr. Hibbard, or Gold, as his friends and family called him, had built his home ten years before George Pullman constructed his home at 1729, or Philip Armour had his at 2115. Nevertheless, 1701 was substantial in its size and sat on a commanding corner lot.
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When the door opened that morning, Gold's mouth formed a broad grin, and his cheeks flushed with pride. The sixty-nine-year old titan of American industry brought his personal forty-four star American flag out of its resting place, hustled outside and ran it up his personal flagpole so fast he set the neighbors wondering.

A casual observer might have thought Gold hoisted the flag to celebrate the World's Fair, with its trademark 264-foot Ferris wheel, or President Grover Cleveland swearing in a few days earlier in, a March inaugural then the custom. At first, the odd sight outside the Hibbard home confused his neighbors, retailer Marshall Field and Byron L. Smith, bank president of Northern Trust, as they walked downtown together. Smith turned to Field asking, "What's the flag for? The President was inaugurated two days ago," as was customary until 1933.
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With his cool, keen eyes, Field studied the flag, as the wind snapped it to a brisk salute. "Byron, what would Hibbard put out a flag for?" Suddenly, Smith's eyes widened and he slapped his thigh with delight, "A boy, by Jove!"

With his distinguished gesture, William Gold Hibbard announced the birth of his first grandson, born to his daughter Lilian and her husband Dr. William Evans Casselberry. The infant had actually been born the night before, but arrived so late that the proud parents didn't inform the grandparents of the joyous news until the morning of the sixth.

Up until that time, Gold Hibbard and his wife Lydia had four beautiful daughters and two lovely and intelligent daughters-in-law, all of whom had given birth to delightful bundles of femininity, nine in a row, between 1882 and 1891. The more the flock of granddaughters increased, the more Gold chafed. His apparent discontent grew from private jokes among his friends and family to a widely known fact around Chicago. Finally, he stopped giving his traditional gift of a $20.00 ($475) ($1,395) gold piece for a newborn and fell back on humor and competition. He plunked down $100 ($6,975), as the "bounty" for the first grandson.
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So ecstatic was Hibbard, so well-known was his passionate desire for a grandson, that as the good news spread, his friends, business compatriots, and even mere nodding acquaintances flooded his house and business with even more flowers and congratulations than even the parents received. The event must have been particularly buoyant for Gold because the parents allowed him to name the boy Hibbard Casselberry, thus anchoring his surname before it vanished forever. Gold probably believed the distinction of sporting two such important surnames bestowed merit enough on any boy - no need to burden him with something as useless as a middle name.

As a child, Hibbard Casselberry most likely came to know his grandfather better than the other grandchildren through a stroke of misfortune when the boy was stricken with rheumatic fever. Most common in school-aged children and teens, the disease began in the nose and throat and spread quickly among children three to nine-years-old. The Hibbard neighborhood certainly qualified.

Acute rheumatic fever is an elusive disease, much the same today as it was then. A child could come down with a fever, inflammation, swelling, and pain in and around the joints. Arthritis seems to land on one joint, stiffening it for a few days, then disappear and move on to an entirely unrelated joint. Whether detected early or overlooked at the time, the disease can seriously scar the heart valves, sometimes killing the person in which it took up residence before he or she would reach age twenty-one. Even with early detection and good care, patients who passed that milestone could find themselves with problems. If the fever-scarred heart is damaged again, rheumatic heart disease and congestive heart failure could result.

If Hibbard was going to get the disease, he was certainly born into the right family to combat it. His father, Dr. William Evans Casselberry, a highly regarded physician, would later become president of the American Laryngological Association. The scholarly organization of doctors and scientists made significant contributions to the care of patients with disorders of the larynx and upper respiratory tract. Dr. Casselberry also was a department head at Northwestern University. Besides the clinical concern, this was his and his wife's first child.

Gold must have been concerned about Hibbard's siblings, William Evans Casselberry Jr. and Catherine, and the rest of his grandchildren. But for his first grandson to have his illness, with its foreboding possibilities, would have torn at Gold's heart. He had lost two of his own sons. In 1857, Henry had died at eighteen months of age. Ten years later, Jessee died soon after birth. Not until later would he see two sons, William Gold Hibbard Jr. and Frank Hibbard, grow up to become men. But to have the light of this celebrated grandson extinguished before his own would be unthinkable to Gold.

Disguised as adventure stories of his early years, Gold would have taught his grandson lessons about business, and crafting the image of a pioneer into the boy's young mind. Someday Hibbard might use this information to turn his own vision into a reality.

Hibbard learned about perseverance and hard work. His grandfather's name may not have been as famous or well financed as that of his neighbors along Chicago's Prairie Avenue, but the tools he built and sold have shaped America since 1855. His small company had flourished, despite burning to the ground twice. The first time was in 1857, only two years after Gold started it, and again in the Great Fire of 1871. That year, when he got the news that his business was going up in flames, as was most of Chicago, he held to his vision with a clenched fist. Without hesitation, Gold ordered his men to move all the building materials they could from the company warehouse into the three-year-old brick home he had built for Lydia on Prairie Avenue, as well as into its stable. In splendid dedication to her husband, Lydia looked at the experience as an adventure, took displaced neighbors and friends into their home and fed tired, sooty-faced workmen at all hours.

In another dramatic tale of the Great Fire, Hibbard picked up his trademark quick thinking and marketing genius. A. C. Bartlett, Gold's partner, had made sure their sample boards for products were spared from the flames. Then he rushed telegrams to their customers asking them to remit their payments as soon as possible, so the company would have money to reorder supplies and to place more orders. In return, he promised their company would redouble its efforts to give its customers promptness and fair treatment. Even with the company nearly in ashes, the cash flowed in. And because the firm had built and maintained top-notch credit, suppliers agreed to ship goods directly from the manufacturer to the buyer. Within twenty-four hours, Hibbard Spencer Bartlett & Company was back in business. According to a later Chicago Daily article, this accomplishment was long remembered as the quickest turnaround of any business after The Fire. Then Gold's firm rose like a phoenix to build a new warehouse the size of a city block within twenty-five days of clearing away the scorched rubble. Using many of the tools it supplied, Chicagoans rebuilt their city.

Over his lifetime, Hibbard tried to emulate Gold, who maintained a reputation for being scrupulously fair. Keeping his word was not a mere trait, but part of the conservative foundation on which Gold and Lydia lived their lives. Their children would be raised no differently.

Until they are grown, however, grandchildren can test any rule, then wrap up a grandparent's heart in a smile. No doubt Hibbard was spoiled, but he and his grandfather played, each one entertained and amused by the other. But more than anything else, Gold wanted Hibbard to have the energy, ambition, and steely-eyed focus he would need to meet life's challenges, as the death of Gold's father had done to him. Hibbard had encountered few challenges in his younger years, except maybe for the time when his shotgun mouth shattered all social etiquette and political decorum.

During Hibbard's time on the DeKalb, his tendency to have overzealous energy and a tin ear for diplomacy materialized in San Francisco, one of the ship's ports of call. Hibbard managed to get a complaint filed against him by, of all people, the managing editor of the San Francisco Examiner. The letter, handwritten on plain paper, said the following:
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San Francisco Examiner
July 17, 1918
To the Superior Officer of Lieutenant Castlebury
Dear Sir,
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I desire to lodge formal complaint against Lt. Castelbury of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.
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The facts are these:

On Wednesday afternoon, my eighteen-year old daughter attended, at the St. Francis Hotel, a meeting called for the purpose of affording protection to American soldiers who are now, or may be made, prisoners in Germany. As she left this meeting with a girlfriend, Lt. Castlebury (who has met my daughter, having been entertained in my house where he was a visitor, upon his own request to be permitted to call) stepped up to the two young ladies and asked them what they were doing at the hotel. They informed him that they had been in attendance at a meeting, and explained its object.
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Lt. Castlebury retorted to this effect: "You might have been engaged in more patriotic business. You might better have been promoting a movement to suppress the Examiner and Mr. Hearst.
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My daughter's friend was shocked at these remarks, and thinking that Lt. Casselberry did not know to whom he was speaking reminded him that he should be careful, as he was addressing the daughter of the Editor of the Examiner. This
reminder did not serve to end Lt. Casselberry's insults. Instead of apologizing, he repeated his slander, and added to his statement that the Examiner and Mr. Hearst ought to be suppressed; that everybody knew that Mr. Hearst was one of the largest holders of German bonds in the United States; and that all of his papers should be suppressed, and cognizance taken of his unpatriotic conduct."
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These insulting and slanderous remarks of Lt. Casselberry were made not only in the presence of my daughter's friend, but in the hearing of others.
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My daughter, who is a mere schoolgirl, was so humiliated by the insults of this officer that she came home in tears.
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I call your attention to this conduct of Lt. Casselberry because I am certain you will hold with me that an officer of the United States who would wantonly insult a young lady the hospitality of whose house he had accepted, and subject her to the humiliation consequent upon his insults in a public place, disgraced the honorable uniform that he wears.
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I am, dear sir,
Very respectfully yours,
Justin McGrath
Managing Editor
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It's not hard to imagine how angry the ship's captain was, or the numerous other officers far up and down Hibbard's chain of command. For certain, they noted that a seaman's infuriating someone whose opinion could deeply help or injure the entire nation's war effort was an incredibly stupid thing to do, and that it was a blunder that needed to be fixed - immediately. As could be expected, the Navy snatched Hibbard's one stripe, demoting him back to ensign, even before he could reply to the accusation:

Second Endorsement
Receiving Ship, Mare Island, Calif.
July 20, 1918
From: Hibbard Casselberry Ensign USNRF
To: Commandant, Mare Island, Calif.
Via: Office Channels
Subject : Complaint against Ensign Casselberry by Mr. Justin McGrath

I met Miss McGrath with Miss Gwynn at the St. Francis Hotel last Wednesday. Miss Gwynn I know fairly well; Miss McGrath I have met only once, when I called on her sister at her home. On coming up to Miss Gwynn, I recognized Miss McGrath as someone I had met, but failed to remember the time or the place. I had never heard that Mr. McGrath was connected with the Hearst papers.

In the course of conversation, I made the statement that among the industries with at least partial German interests, which should be suppressed, I considered the Hearst newspapers. I made this statement not having the slightest idea that I was in the presence of anyone connected with the Examiner. Miss McGrath asked me to quote some article. I replied that I could not remember any, but based my opinion upon conversation with men better posted than myself, and newspaper articles.

I also said that at the time when the papers published articles about the number of German bonds in the United States, I had heard it said that Mr. Hearst was among the large holders.

At this point, Miss Gwynn said to change the subject, which I did. I did not hear her say anything previously about being the daughter of the Editor of the Examiner. I have since talked with Miss Gwynn, who said that she tried to hint to me that I had better stop, but that I had failed to understand. Not until then did I realize with whom I was speaking. Since then I have had no chance to apologize to Miss McGrath.

I certainly would not willfully or knowingly say anything to hurt a young lady, particularly one who has entertained me, and is such a good friend of Miss Gwynn.

While Hibbard did not know the facts at the time, he had not been without knowledge. Hearst proved that the demand for peace in the modern capitalist economy can be raised with as reactionary and selfish intent as the demand for war. In a 1918-1919 Senate committee, members would receive a formal report on foreign propaganda, espionage, and intrigue that showed Hearst maintained close financial and business relations with German industrialists. In fact, German financiers, not American ones, had invested heavily in Hearst's earlier expansion of his newspapers. His taking a stand with the Allies could result in the creation of an unnecessary and unprofitable rift. Unfortunately, Hearst could no more be censured for his actions than J. P. Morgan, or the Wall Street bankers who backed the Allies could be. Regardless of Hearst's questionable business dealings, or Hibbard's own temporary lack of diplomacy, no grandson of Lydia Hibbard's would ever have knowingly insulted a young lady in public.

Women were coming quickly to the forefront and would soon change the country's political and social atmosphere. They had received the right to vote, but with the passage of a prohibition on alcohol, no one could have a drink to celebrate. Many young women of the nineteen-twenties split with their stricter, more religious sisters and rebelled as flappers. Proper young women in Chicago's society felt their collective strength and energy growing, but they still depended on the support of their husbands and fathers. One respectable outlet for their energy became the tea dance, similar to an alcohol-free cocktail party.

It was at such an affair in September 1920, that Jack Finlay, Hibbard's best friend, took him aside. "Hib, I want you to meet a girl!" he exulted. She was twenty-two-year old Miss Mary Elizabeth Leonard. Hibbard's brown eyes widened, and his wide mouth broadened into a full grin. She wore colorful and luxurious clothing, with a hemline just at or below the knee, as was the latest style. What Hibbard must have loved most was that Mel's sharp mind and wit challenged own. "She's the bee's knees," he would have said.

In courtship, Hibbard was his grandfather Gold reborn. As a friend once said of Gold, he was "a man whose course of action was always a word and a blow, and the blow came first. When he found the right girl, rival suitors would simply have to make other arrangements." Mel would confirm these traits twenty-five years later in a letter to him about their courtship:

"Darned if you didn't take her (Mel) to a football game with seats in a box and to dinner and dancing afterwards. Walks on the beach and the Skokie, shooting guns, and shooting your mouth off, and shooing younger dance partners and beaus off the scene... Do you really think that was nice?"

Hibbard knew what women in his social circle thought was nice. With a sorority of female cousins living nearby, femininity lingered like a breeze off Lake Michigan. Young women liked caring men who danced, made them laugh, and would take them places they could not go unescorted. However, before most parent would let a daughter out of the house, a man had to have impeccable manners, suitable employment, and a good family background. Mel's first choice for husband had been a Jewish man she had met in Boston, and whose family owned an upscale jewelry store. However, her father quashed the romance, forbidding her to marry a Jew, no matter how nice he was. The women's movement changed the lives of many, but not Mel's. Mr. Leonard's command ruled.

Mel had come from a very privileged but angst-filled background. Her parents, John Robert Leonard and his wife, Harriet Olcott Leonard, originally from Albany, New York were wealthier than the Hibbards and Casselberrys put together. On her mother's side, Mel's pedigreed bloodline stretched directly back to William Bradford, who not only stepped onto Plymouth Rock but ruled as governor of Plymouth Colony in the 1600s. While not quite as esteemed, the Leonard family had established Cotrell & Leonard Fashionable Hatters & Furriers of Albany in 1832. The company claimed to be the most complete hat and fur store in America.

As a child, her family retreated to the Adirondack Mountains during the summer where her father and his parents had cabins. As the firstborn independence seemed as natural as the green leaves that her little feet crushed when she explored the area. Even in Albany, after her brother Daniel was born, Mel's life was simple, filled with piano lessons, dancing, and Sunday school. Another sister, Harriet, came along. Then, quite as a shock, her parents whisked them all off to Europe for the summer, taking her aunt, Mary Leonard, with them. Apparently, Mrs. Leonard had tired of being the only woman in Winnetka not to have seen Paris. Although Mel's mother had learned to speak French as a child, her father muddled though with a guidebook, humoring his wife's whims.

For Mel and her siblings, Daniel, Harriet, and later, Debbie, music surrounded their cloistered lives. They learned recital pieces and created plays to perform after dinner. When she was old enough, she learned to drive the family's electric car. Only when her father was without a partner for golf had he acquiesced to have her join him to play a round. When she hit her first ball, it landed in a rough along side another golfer's ball. A man with a kind smile walked up to Mel, who blushed from beneath her pink bonnet. "Young lady," he said, "Do you know you are good looking under that hat?" He claimed his ball had not been attracted to her hat, but that it had found something else to adore. Then he burst out laughing. Mel knew the man. He had a homey place called Kykuit, with rows of rocking chairs where people could come, visit, listen to hymns and sing. He was John D. Rockefeller. After that encounter, Mel felt grown. The day also brought her a new passion, the sport of golf.

Only Mrs. Leonard's illnesses flawed that socially perfect picture. Particularly high strung, she would later bolt out of their family home as a means of escaping domestic arguments, usually going to Europe. By the time Mel was in her teens, her mother returned with an illness that left her an invalid and confined to her bedroom. Because of this development, Mr. Leonard allowed Mel only one year at Wellesley College. After that magical year, he demanded his daughter transfer to nearby Northwestern University. Like any otherwise vivacious young woman, she probably felt trapped between her devotion to her father and her silent yearning for freedom from such emotional burdens. But when Mr. Leonard demanded she return home, the discussion ended. Grudgingly, Mel obeyed but never went into her mother's room unless her father insisted. Her father also may have harbored the concern that, beneath her competitive and bubbly façade, Mel had her mother's instability.

Nevertheless, Hibbard wooed and won the charming Miss Leonard. Although her Jewish suitor was replaced, his flame must still have burned brightly. When Hibbard took Mel for his wife in a gala wedding ceremony on June 25, 1921, the former beau sent her a special wedding present: a dozen bone china plates with gold letters spelling out "MEL," the initials of her maiden name.

Names played an important part of life in the lands of the elite, but without personal substance to back it up, any name would be forgotten or, worse yet, rebuked. When Gold arrived in Chicago in 1853, no one knew him, yet after forty years, the words Hibbard and Casselberry could be found in Chicago's first Social Register. His company, best known by its TruValue Hardware brand, would last over one-hundred years.

Gold had gifted Hibbard an influential name. For over three decades, Hibbard had been reared, educated, and primed to be successful. However, no one could have prepared him for the weeks and months ahead. Florida changed the course of people's lives. It was about to change Hibbard's with ricochet speed.