CYRUS STEPHEN EATON, JR. Father of Cyrus, John, Cathy, and Elizabeth Grandfather of Nathaniel, Shantin, Isaiah, Sarah, Charlie, Matt, Chris, Colin, Devon,
Early Life Cyrus S. Eaton, Jr., born in Cleveland, Ohio, on February 2, 1918, was the fifth of seven children and first son born to Cyrus Stephen Eaton and Margaret Pearl House Eaton. Lee, Mary, Betty, and Anna were his older sisters, and Farlee and Mac followed him. When Cy was born, the family lived on Overlook Road in Cleveland Heights, then moved a year later to Cleveland Heights Blvd. next to a high school and steep raving, a wilderness where the children roamed. Three years later, they moved to 8917 Euclid Avenue in a mansion (later known as the Health Museum) in Cleveland that had eleven bedrooms, servants’ quarters, a dance hall, shooting gallery, and his favorite, an electric train set. On the large grounds there were trees to climb, acres to explore, and in the winter play “fox and geese.” He and sister Betty rode horses, played hockey, went tobogganing, and swimming. His father Cyrus was consumed with business, and the children were often taken care of by nannies (Klinger and Miss Thomas), Hughes the chauffeur, gardeners, cooks, and housemaids. One summer, the family traveled by ship to England and spent the summer in Guildford, Surrey, England where they rode horses, played lawn tennis, and had elegant teas on the lawn.
An early traumatic memory was the huge explosion due to x-rays catching fire at the Cleveland Clinic across the street from their home. He treasured the memory of accompanying his father when he was six on a camping trip in a Nova Scotia National Park, where a nefarious frog bit him. Summers spent at Deep Cove, Nova Scotia, delighted him. He and Betty sailed in the Cup and Saucer, challenging because it was so tippy. As a ten-year-old, he dug for treasure on Oak Island with a friend. He kept a journal that summer. Later, he visited Deep Cove with Bronx Park and Wilbur Cross who wrote the Peachy Stories about rowing crew and swimming from Deep Cove to Eager Island. Cy kept a single scull in the swim house and rowed out to Snake Island on calm days.
The family first summered, then moved to Acadia Farms in Northfield, Ohio. Cy and his siblings helped tend the orchards and vegetable gardens and take care of the horses, chickens, and rabbits. He loved being outdoors, playing ice hockey, competing in horse shows, and playing tennis. He and his sister Betty enjoyed playing pranks.
Cy attended kindergarten at Hathaway Brown School and grades one through seven at Hawken School. His parents, separated in 1926, officially divorced in 1934. In 1931, at thirteen he was sent to Kent School, a boarding school in Connecticut, where he attended grade eight twice because he was immature and what he called a “spoiled brat.” His sister Betty wrote, boarding school “freed him from tyranny of an unreasonable parent, one who away frequently but made outrageous demands and often lost his temper at home.” The headmaster at Kent School, Father Sill, was an early mentor. Kent’s motto “Simplicity of Life, Self-Reliance and Directness of Purpose” were codes Cy followed the rest of his life. He played hockey, football, and rowed for the crew team. After his first year at Colgate University, where he played more than studied and was invited to join all of the fraternities, he spent a year working on the Messabi Iron Ore Range in Minnesota.
The War Years He met Mary Stephens, a junior at Hathaway Brown School, when she was sixteen and he was twenty-one. Her parents even let her go to a house party at Colgate University with him. Cy never finished his degree because he joined the army. Enamored of flying, Cy enlisted at Fort Hayes as an aviation cadet on September 27, 1941. He was stationed in Pine Bluff, Arkansas; San Angelo, Texas; Ellington Field, Texas; Midland, Texas; Mac Dill Field, Tampa Florida; and Lake Charles, Louisiana. He graduated from Ellington Field, Texas, class of 42-D with The Air Corps Advanced Flying School and began active duty on April 29, 1942. When Cy finally proposed to Mary, the letter asking her father’ permission, long delayed, finally came. Hank Coakley, his good friend, had penned it. Cy and Mary married four years after meeting while he was getting his wings in 1942. His choice of best man, Hank tragically died in a plane crash. His father became his best man. Very ill, Cy spent his wedding night in the hospital while Mary attended an old night co-ed slumber party.
He arrived in England on June 1, 1943. As an operations officer and 1st lieutenant with the 553rd Squadron and the 386thgroup with his B26 squadron, he was stationed in Colchester, England. On July 30th the men were roused. “Group Commander Colonel Lester Maitland spoke to the flight crews saying; “I realize I’ve been tough on you during training. I always stressed bombing, gunnery, and formation flying because it is important when going against a strong enemy air force. This first mission is a culmination of your seven months of hard training; make it a good one and good luck!” Their targets were airdromes and fighter bases in France, Holland, and Belgium. Chester Paul Klier described their first mission when, despite evasive action, bullets riddled the plane Cy rode in as an observer. “To inhibit a spin possibility, Pilot Lieutenant Zimmerman put the landing gear down with the hope it would help stabilize his plane which was rapidly showing signs of kicking over into a spin. It was to no avail, seconds later the ship lurched over into a slow spin! Lieutenant Cyrus Eaton was flying as an observer pilot standing on the flight deck just back of the two pilots. He dropped to the cockpit floor and slid open the two floorboards that covered the nose well; which by virtue of the extended nose wheel strut was now clear. He dove into the opening headfirst, egress was most difficult due to the G-Force build up as the spin tightened. It was like being pasted to the interior of the nose well - suddenly he was free of the aircraft’s influence and found himself tumbling in the air. He pulled his ripcord and the canopy blossomed with a snap. Continuing its downward spin, the flaming sixteen-ton bomber and its gallant crew plunged into the bay creating a tall geyser of water at 0706 hours! No debris of any kind was observed floating on the surface off the coastline of Holland. The Zimmerman crew: First Lieutenant G.F. Zimmerman. Second Lieutenants R.S. Molnar, S.D. McCollum,. Staff Sergeants Y.P. Young, Jr., P.V. Bragg, and J.F. Cuthbertson” all perished.
“A drama was still unfolding on the waters off the coast of Holland. After parachuting from the burning B-26, Lieutenant Cyrus Eaton had landed in the water off Bergen op Zoom. A Dutch fishing boat Captain saw him and plucked the young aviator from the chilly water. The boat crew put him into a fish holding tank and covered him over with freshly caught fish. Shortly thereafter, a German patrol boat drew alongside and soldiers boarded the fishing vessel. They gave the craft a thorough inspection, even probing the fish tank with a pitchfork, but did not find the airman! Sometime after the Germans departed, the boat crew took the pilot out of the smelly fish tank and gave him a bath to remove the strong fish odor. The boat returned to its regular dock a bit after midnight; however, the Germans were on the dock as the fishing crew came in. The 553rd Squadron member was taken into custody by the enemy soldiers and led away.”
Cy claimed that luck and guts enabled him to escape from the burning aircraft. His German captors saved his life by getting Cy to a surgeon who operated to remove bullets and twenty-seven pieces of flak in a Dutch hospital run by Nazis. A bullet pierced his right lung, which deflated and filled with liquid and got infected. He had two weeks of convalescence. The news his family received was grim. First, he was reported missing in action and then dead. Instead, he spent two years in a Stalag Luft 3 in Sagen between Dresdan and Breslaw. With Willard (Bill) Brown around April 5, 1945, he made his escape while being marched to a different camp. It took them ten days to reach the American lines. He arrived home on May 1, 1945, and was reunited with his wife, Mary in Washington DC at the Pentagon. His love for his wife and dream of living at the family farm sustained him. His six-foot frame was emaciated at 120 poounds, his skin was covered with a terrible rash, and for the rest of his life, he endured stomach ailments and back pain from his confinement.
He began his service on April 29, 1942, as a lieutenant and he was discharged as a major on November 12, 1945 three-and-one-half years later. His number was 0 659 281. On July 13, 1945, he made claim for reimbursement of personal items. He spent time at the separation center in Camp Atterbury, Indiana until November 12, 1945. He had a chest x-rays on August 15, 1951 that confirmed some of the damage he had sustained. He received an Air Medal, a Purple Heart, and an EAME Theater Ribbon with two Bronze Stars. Around 2005, he received recognition from Russia. In his eighties, it was discovered that he still had a bullet lodged in his butt. In early 2000, his son John helped him received VA benefits that contributed to his well-being and medical care for the rest of his life.
After the war, Cy and Mary lived briefly at the guest cottage at Acadia Farms, and then they lived the next thirty-two years in Northfield, Ohio, the home where his mother lived in after divorcing his father. Arrow Cottage was Cy’s sanctuary. For recreation, Cy flew a small Bonanza Beach Craft, that he owned jointly with Bud Davis, on trips to Nova Scotia and Florida. Their first neighbors were Harvey and Catherine (Sissy) Barrett, Mary’s sister. They mourned the deaths of his sister, Lee, and the death of Mary’s father, Frank. His sister, Betty, wrote that “his return from the war brought the family together for the first time in many years – that and Lee’s death and their mother’s death” from cancer in 1956.
Career Cy initially worked for his father at Republic Steel as a salesman and then joined a friend within a year to start his own wire and display company, Coleman Petersen Company. His next company, a British Trading Company, sold cars, motorcycles, bicycles, china, and glasswork. His father, after a scare due to fainting, asked him to work on a project discovering iron ore in Ungava Bay in Northern Quebec. He traveled to Russia in 1950 before his father ever went. When his father pulled the plug on the project after six arduous years of work, Cyrus, initially devastated, rallied and turned his attention to courting the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as trading partners. He founded Tower International, which dealt with a series of products and involved bartering as a principle method of operation.
Cyrus hired Clara Reece (Day), who was his partner from the mid 1960s until Cyrus retired in 1985. He founded and was president of Tower Industries and Tower International. Cyrus was a pioneer and met with numerous groups to work collaboratively in communist countries. They had major successes and disastrous failures. Cy and Clara built The Dune Hotel in Budapest. A later enterprise involving a partnership with Armand Hammer ended poorly. They orchestrated the film The Fixer in Hungry and The Blue Bird in Russia with Jane Fonda, Ava Garnder, Elizabeth Taylor, Cecily Tyson and top ballerinas from Russia. George Cukor directed the film.
Cy became president of Sagamore Summit and Chertsey Corporation. He served as director of Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, West Kentucky Coal, Kansas City Power and Light, the Greenbrier, Premium Iron Ores, and First National Bank of Akron. He served as president of the alumni of Hawken School, President of the Kent School Board of Trustees, President of Pugwash Association and president of the Cyrus Eaton Foundation, and trustee of Cleveland Museum of National History and vice president of Trustees on the Council on World Affairs. He was very involved raising money for Cerebral Palsy, which his bunkmate, Peter Berkey from prison camp, suffered from. He was a member of YPO (Young President’s Organization), a member of the Zoning Board of Sagamore Hills, on the committee for the March of Dimes, and director of Western Pocohouter Co, and member of the Arctic Institute of North America.
At different times, Cy worked with Don Carmichael, his brother-in-law Fay LeFevre, and Bill Guinn, the man who ended up suing him. He explored partnering with Buckminster Fuller, but sadly Bucky’s mental facilities had started failing. His Farmland-Eaton World Trade and Cyrus Eaton World Trade Co led him to exploration in China where they again pioneered promising partnerships. He signed hotel deals, cattle deals, and oil drilling deals. Please read his memoires for much more extensive descriptions of the highs and lows of his business career. On September 2, 1985, Cy filed for bankruptcy. He said that more important to him than bankruptcy was the healthy birth of his grandson, Devon Murphy. He also explored a brief venture with Piper Company for small airplanes and also large retail complexes in Leningrad and Canada. On August 20, 1992, The United States Courthouse on Superior Avenue of Cleveland, Ohio declared the debtor has been discharged. General unsecured claims have been allowed in the amount of 5.7 million.
Family Cy and Mary, advocates for life-long learning, sent their children to private schools (Hathaway Brown, Hawken, and Kent School). Arrow Cottage was like a summer camp with a pool and tennis court. Cy encouraged his children to focus on riding competitively and took the family on ski holidays to Vail, Aspen, and Utah, as well visits to the Montreal and New York World Fairs. Each child enjoyed taking a business trip with him. Cy was proud of all his children and lauded their accomplishments, always encouraging them to follow their dreams: John competing in crew, Cathy traveling to Australia, Elizabeth working on the film, The Blue Bird, and Cyrus joining Vista and the Peace Corps. For five years, John worked with him in the Terminal Tower and then in San Francisco, gaining valuable business experience and being given considerable responsibility. Cyrus and Mary enjoyed spending time with their children and grandchildren. Cy taught all children and grandchildren to play chess. The nine grandchildren found a willing playmate with him while hunting make-believe tigers in the ravine, skipping stones, and making up stories on the bed in the loft about rafting down a river, Huck Finn style.
FRIENDS Cy and Mary’s friends were Jim and Dottie Hobstetter, Peter Burke, Bud and Phoebe Davis, Joe and Betty Fogg, Don and Mary Carmichael, and especially Joan and Wilbur Nordstom. They loved going to Pentwater, Michigan, to close the Nordstrom’s summer cabin and celebrate Mary and Joanie’s October birthdays.
GATES MILLS, OHIO Starting around 1980, Cy and Mary lived ten years on County Line Road next to Harvey and Connie Barrett in Gates Mills. They hiked and cross-country skied accompanied by their dogs Zamoya and Cricket. The grandchildren loved riding in the cart pulled by the small tractor that Cy used for mowing. Then Cy and Mary moved to Moreland Courts in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where despite being retired, Cy was busy reading. writing his memoires and compiling yearly photograph albums. Cy and Mary often read aloud to each other. They celebrated his seventieth birthday in Taho, California, with the children and grandchildren. During a traumatic period of time during 1978, Cy asked Mary for a divorce, planning to marry a distant relative named Margaret Eaton from New Brunswick. After much dialoging, heartache, and journaling but never stopping being best friends, Cy came to his senses and realized that he and Mary were forever soul mates.
TRAVELING THE WORLD Cy and Mary were avid travelers, traveling around the world in 1965 and spending a month each in Italy and Spain with their friends, the Brandees and Kemnas. In 1992, they celebrated their 50th anniversary in Lafayette, California, and again in Annapolis, Maryland, where they played miniature golf, went to the Vietnam War Memorial, the Smithsonian, the aquarium, played cards, picked blackberries, and played ping-pong. They enjoyed spending Thanksgiving with John and Beth’s family, where they cut down Christmas tree with the Morley family. After Mary retired from Hawken, they traveled to Sitka, Alaska, to visit Elizabeth’s family. They drove east to New York, New Hampshire, Maine, and Nova Scotia where they visited college friends, the Blackmores, Jim and Hilary Cleveland, Joan Page O’Hara from Hawken, his sister Farlee and brother Mac.
STROKE AND KENDAL IN OBELIN, OHIO Cy suffered a massive stroke on February 14 in 1988 when he was eighty, a year after he had cross-country skied eighty-nine days in a row. With constant support from Mary, he fought back and eventually went from not being able to crawl to sitting in a wheel chair to limping with first a walker and then a cane and finally to walking independently without assistance. A short documentary was filmed about Cy to use as a teaching tool for physical therapists showing how much could be accomplished with older stroke patients. Mary’s colon cancer and Cy’s stroke prompted them to relocate to Kendal in Oberlin, Ohio, where they could live in a cottage and not worry about being dependent on the kids. Their cottage looked out onto a pond where they could watch the geese swim, the rabbits frolic, and the birds feast on the bird feeders. It was a magical several years full of visits from family. When Mary died on December 15, 2003, after six months of declining health, Cy continued to live at Kendal buoyed by the daily visits of Tom and Clara Day, his best friends.
SECOND MARRIAGE: JOAN COTTON After a move to assisted living at Kendal in 2006, Cy thought he had found escape and independence by marrying Joan Cotton, a nurse’s aid, who shortly after their elopement moved him to Tennessee, where they purchased a house that her ex-husband had owned. Joan was known at Kendal as a good caregiver. She had a good sense of humor. Sadly, she suffered from being a hoarder, making a life together impossible.
SEBASTOPOL, CALIFORNIA; FINAL YEARS, DEATH, and FINAL TOAST Elizabeth and her son Isaiah rescued him in 2007 and brought him first to live with John and Beth in Lafayette, and then to Sebastopol, California, where Elizabeth lovingly provided a home for him over the next four years. Children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren visited him, and he loved the sunshine and not being surrounded by old people. For a brief time, he was hospitalized in the VA hospital in San Francisco due to serious infections resulting from removal of skin cancer lesions. As his paralysis returned, he became more and more dependent on others for even basic care. Hospice and the VA were central to his care. Finally, he decided in the spring of 2011 that he no longer wanted to keep living, so he chose to stop eating and drinking except for a few beers, some Dove dark chocolates, and Haagen DAZs ice cream. Elizabeth and Cathy with other family members supported his decision and shared his final journey. A hawk and raven kept vigil outside. He kept his humor until the end. He died on the morning of March 11, 2011. When his body was taken away, the family witnessed Canada geese fly away. That night, they toasted him with vodka and ate a square of dark chocolate. That was his real funeral, one that he would have highly approved. He donated his body for medical research.
Two years later, Cathy and Michael buried his ashes in Northfield-Macedonia Cemetery in Northfield, Ohio, he and Mary sharing one footstone. Cy was a risk-taker, a life-long learner, a world traveler, a pioneer, and he devoted love and care to his Mary, their siblings, children, and grandchildren.
In a letter he wrote in 1988 that over the years he had learned: “From my mother: An appreciation for the importance of family; From Kent School: Self-reliance and to “thine own self be true;” From war experience: To appreciate and live to the fullest every moment of life; From Camus: It’s the climb not the summit; From Ann Lindbergh: It’s the journey not the arrival; From Huck Finn: “To spit on conventional morality, to follow my heart which is what true mortality is all about;” From my father: “No regrets;” From Tennyson’s Ulysses: “I am a part of all that I have met;” “Tis not too late to seek a newer world;” “for my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until I die… To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield;” From Bertrand Russell: “The longing for love and the search for knowledge.”