JOHN LORD BOOTH A.k.a Jack Booth

(1907-1994)

Only son of Ralph and Mary Booth

Accompanied his father Ralph Booth to Denmark when his father assumed the position of U S Minister to Denmark where he met and married his first wife Winifred (Winnie) May Wessel in April, 1931. Winnie was the daughter of Enrique Luis Wessel, the Chilean Ambassador to Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The wedding of the children of these two important diplomatic families was quite the royal event attended by the Kings and Queens of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.
The wedding of his sister Virginia to William D. Vogel took place the previous month of March 1931.

Constructed and managed the Detroit Boat Basin. When it was built it was the largest private yacht basins and marine railways in the Great Lakes located on Jefferson Avenue in Detroit adjacent to Water Works Park on a large parcel of land purchased by his father running along Motor Boat Lane from Jefferson Avenue to the Detroit River.

NOTE : The name “Motor Boat Lane” refers to the location of a long row of private wooden boat houses where private racing motor boat were stored. Following the sale of this row of boat houses to the Ralph Booth Corporation and their demolition, the owners of these boat houses organized and built the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club, using the successful financial model of the Detroit Yacht Club. (During the bank crash of the 1930’s the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club failed and was reorganized as a broad based membership club.)
The Detroit Boat Basin in addition to servicing private yachts also constructed and sold a class of six meter racing sailboats with a design borrowed from Denmark.

NOTE : The Detroit Boat Basin was commandeered by the U S Navy in World War II to construct wooden hulled submarine chase boats under the management of Alfred Fisher, Jr. The Detroit Boat basin was sold to Gregory Boat Works.

Purchased a minority interest with George B. Storer, being the majority owner, in Detroit radio station WJBK-AM.

NOTE: George B. Storer built a substantial radio and television broadcasting company known as Storer Broadcasting. The Flagship station was WJBK-TV, CBS, Channel 2 in Detroit.

1939: Sold his 50% ownership in The Detroit Boat Basin to purchase a controlling interest in radio station WMBC and changed the call letters to WJLB (AM 1400). Sold his minority interest in WJBK because the Federal Communication Commission’s Duopoly Rule which forbade joint ownership of two or more radio stations licensed by the FCC to serve the same radio market.

Jack’s began negotiating to purchase the shares of Mr. and Mrs. E. J. Hunt, who together owned 62% of the Michigan Broadcasting Company, licensee of WMBC, 1400 AM, Detroit, in the summer of 1939. This company was founded when WMBC first went on the air on February 1, 1926. The negotiations were successful. Jack on December 1, 1939, purchased the remaining 38% of the Michigan Broadcast Company from minority shareholder E.A.Wooten. These negotiations were not exclusive as Jack had strong bidding competition from Alfred Glancy, Jr. of the General Motors large shareholding Glancy family. Having purchased the Michigan Broadcasting Company, Jack renamed the company John L. Booth Broadcasting on October 5, 1940.

NOTE: The reasons for the decision of the Hunts to sell were several. While the company was in debt, the real reason for the owners’ reluctance to continue their ownership of WMBC may have been the murder of the host of their most popular talk show. In 1930 Gerald Buckley, one of early radio’s ‘good guys’, an evening commentator on WMBC, exposed the corruption in Detroit city government and led a successful recall election against Mayor Charles Knowles. “Jerry” Buckley campaigned on air against Mayor Knowles, stating that the mayor had ties to numerous gambling houses in the city and that Knowles took his orders from the Public Works Commissioner Joseph Gillespie, who was the true mayor of the city and in the pocket of Detroit mobsters. The night of the election recall Jerry Buckley was gunned down in the lobby of the LaSalle Hotel where the studio was located by gangland assassins two hours after the recall election results were announced. No one was ever convicted of Buckley’s murder. The Detroit Police Commissioner Wilcox alleged that Buckley was a know extortionist and racketeer, which tells you all you need to know…Those in power blamed the victim and buried the case. It remains an unsolved murder.

While he was beginning his career in broadcasting, Jack Booth’s family was expanding. He and his first wife Winifred (Winnie) Wessel had two daugthers: Doreen, born 1932, and Winifred (Winkie), born 1934. They built a very large neo-georgian house at 226 Provencal Road in Grosse Pointe Farms completed in 1940, across from the Country Club of Detroit and near the Grosse Pointe Hunt Club where his wife Winnie could ride. Then in 1942 a third daughter Jacqueline (Jackie) was born. Then…. when Jack faced the threat of being drafted into the U S Army being just 35, the maximum male age subject to the draft, he instead enlisted in the U S Navy, taking courses in Boston and New York to qualify as a Lieutenant, Junior Grade. Then having managed a private boat yard and harbor in Detroit , his first posting was to the naval yards in Norfolk, Virginia.

While his cousins put one of the very first FM radio stations in America on the air, WWJ-FM, Jack put the ninth American FM radio station on the air in 1941. At the time the experimental call letters were W49D.

WJLB-AM which began broadcasting radio programming to Detroit’s African American audience in early 1940 and continues to this day, holding the record for the station which has broadcast programming (talk, gospel, urban music and news) the longest continuously for a major market radio station in the country. It should be noted, however, that the stations call letters were transferred from Detroit’s AM 1400 to FM 97.9, on NEW YEAR’s Day, 1980. This station and its music director Ernie Durham were chosen by Motown records in the 1960’s to introduce all of its recordings [See Ernie Durham tribute video, 50th anniversary of WJLB].  This station was extremely important in the making of its famous hit music and recording stars such as Steve Wonder, The Supremes with Diana Ross, The Four Tops, The Temptations, Aretha Franklin (whose father the Rev. C. L. Franklin hosted a Sunday gospel show on WJLB), Michael Jackson, Smokey Robinson, etc.

NOTE: Barry Gordie, the creator of Motown Records, was a close associate of Ernie Durham, WJLB’s long time afternoon drive announcer and Music Director.

Jack was commissioned into the US Navy in 1942 as a Lieutenant, Junior Grade. Jack spent the war in harbor management in Norfolk, Virginia, where he met his second wife Louise Preston Camper, whom he married in 1944 following his assignment to the Panama Canal naval base. After his wedding the couple lived for several years outside Roanoke, Virginia, while Jack commuted by train periodically back to Detroit. Then in 1948 Jack and Louise moved back to Detroit renting a suite at the Whittier Hotel during the construction of their new house at 309 Lakeshore Road overlooking Lake St. Clair in Grosse Pointe Farms. The couple moved in during Thanksgiving 1950, six weeks after the birth of their first child John.

NOTE: Louise Booth, born March 15, 1920, continues to live in this house, where she has now lived for 74+ years. She is 104 + years old as of June 2024. She has beaten the previous Scripps/Booth age record holder, Suzanna Booth Harman, who died at 102 in 1907.

Following his naval service Jack Booth and his marriage to Louise, together they decided to apply for additional radio licenses and were granted a license for a new radio station in 1947 for Flint, Michigan. Jack went on to purchase more radio stations in Saginaw in 1950, and in Jackson, Michigan; South Bend and Kokomo, Indiana; and Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio.

Jack Booth was a pioneer in UHF Television in the 1950’s when this new medium was just beginning. He was awarded licenses in Battle Creek and Saginaw, Michigan, which broadcast for a short time until they failed due to the slow take up rate of television sets equipped to receive these signals.

In the 1960’s WJLB played a critical role in race relations in Detroit. Race tensions peaked in the Detroit race riots of the summer of 1967, when over a period of nine days 33 African Americans and 10 white people were killed, 7,200 people were arrested , and whole sections of the city were destroyed. The Detroit Police Department was overwhelmed and lost control of the city. Governor Romney of Michigan mobilize and sent in the Michigan National Guard. President Lyndon Johnson sent in U S Army paratroopers to occupy the city. WJLB with its leading show host Martha Jean “The Queen” (Steinberg) stayed on the air with Detroit Police Chief John Nichols pleading with the station audience to stay calm and not provoke the security forces. This heroic and innovative partnership of the station and the police department is credited with significantly reducing the racial tension and violence that initially occurred. Following the riots, Chief Nichols and Martha Jean hosted a regular program on WJLB called “Buzz the Fuzz” in a concerted effort to improve community police relations and to address the concerns of black Detroiters.

NOTE: In 2002 Universal pictures released a full length movie entitled “8 Mile”. The movie contained autobiographical elements of the life of a white Detroit rapper and musician named Marshal Matters, a/k/a Eminem. In the story the lead actor played by Marshal Matters is trying to break into the music charts as a rapper who grows up in a trailer park along 8 Mile Road, the boundary and dividing line between (Black) Detroit and the (White) northern suburbs. The lead character dreams of making it on the city’s leading black or Urban music radio station which is identified as WJLB. The problem is that the lead is white trying to compete against other local rappers, all of whom are black. The lead’s protagonist is a leading black disc jockey, the star of WJLB. However, this black disc jockey has an interesting back story. He comes from a well off suburban black family and was educated at CRANBROOK SCHOOL as compared to the economically disadvantage white lead. Ultimately the lead succeeds and realizes his dream of becoming a national rap star. The irony of course is that the story represents the polar opposite sides of the Booth family interests: WJLB, located in urban black Detroit, vs Cranbrook School, located in suburban, privileged white Bloomfield Hills!

During the 1980’s under the leadership of General Manager Verna Green, the first African American female General Manager of any major marketing radio station.  WJLB climbed the market audience radio to become the sustained number one radio station in the Detroit metropolitan area.  In addition, it became a market institution, shining the light on Detroit.  [See Verna Green/WJLB audio and video tributes July 2024].

Jack next pioneered in community antenna television (CATV), now referred to as cable TV. His first cable television franchise was awarded in Pulaski, Virginia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in western Virginia, where his wife Louise’s family resided and where she had relatives that could influence the granting of community franchises.
NOTE: early cable television was a service which improved television reception where viewers’ reception was difficult to receive the three television networks at the time: CBS, NBC, & ABC.

After applying for and being awarded a number of cable television franchises to construct new systems in Virginia, Indiana, and Michigan, only a few systems were constructed and operated in Virginia and Michigan. Unfortunately, once again, the timing of this enterprise was too early and many of the franchises awarded were never built, having to be sold or even abandoned to reduce corporate debt, which had been personally guaranteed.

With his entry into the cable television business, Jack changed the name of the company from Booth Radio and Television Stations to Booth American Company, which thereafter operated two divisions: Booth Broadcasting (Radio) and Booth Communications (CATV).

In addition to his investments in radio stations and cable television systems, Jack was able from time to time through the 1950’s and 1960’s to add to his share holdings in Booth Newspapers, eventually becoming the largest individual share holder of his father’s business. He joined the Board of Directors of Booth Newspapers in the 1950’s and was a member of it’s executive committee in the 1960’s. Jack played an important role along with James Beresford, a former President of Booth Newspaper who was married to Florence Booth, Jack’s first cousin and the youngest child of George and Ellen Booth. These two large shareholders in Booth Newspapers were the major holdouts, who along with the officers of Booth Newspapers refused to sell to the Samuel Newhouse newspaper syndicate which made a hostile tender offer for 100% of the company stock following their successful purchase of the Cranbrook Educational Community’s Booth Newspaper stock which constituted a large percentage of its endowment. The combined stubborn refusal of Jack Booth and Jim Beresford to sell supported by the legal advice of Joseph Flom of the major NYC corporate law firm of Skadden, Arps, and Flom were successful in doubling the price Newhouse eventually agreed to pay for the balance of the company stock to complete his take over of Booth Newspapers in 1976. It was the money that the company Booth American as a shareholder received from this BOOTH NEWSPAPER sale which allowed it to restart its cable television system expansion. Opportunity and preparation had crossed.

On or about his 75th birthday Jack Booth stepped away from active management allowing his two sons, John and Ralph to take over the management and direction of Booth American Company. It was also about this time that Jack was diagnosed with late stage prostate cancer, an illness which he successfully managed. He spent the last fourteen years of his life spending time at his winter home in Gulfstream, Florida, and staying in touch with his company.

Jack Booth is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Detroit at Woodward Ave and Eight Mile Road in a family monument/belvedere or mausoleum designed by his son John and located facing the red marble “Ross” mausoleum, erected for the mother of Motown legend Diana Ross.

Following the death of his mother Mary Booth in 1951, Jack became a major art donor to the art museums in Flint, Saginaw, and Grand Rapids, Michigan, donating artwork from his parent’s art collection. Two of his major donations from his parent’s art collection were a large oil painting by Schmidt-Rottluf entitled “ Farm Hands” given to the Grand Rapids Art Museum and a huge, Tang Dynasty white marble seated Buddha now in the museum sculpture solarium at the Saginaw Art Museum. This early 8th century Chinese Buddha was purchased by Ralph Booth from CT Loo and is one of a pair, the other being in London, England. Jack was also a significant donor to the Detroit Institute of Arts where he served for many years as a member of the Board of Directors of the Founders Society. He was instrumental in stopping a plan to center a proposed staircase that would have created a large hole in the center of the Rivera Court and seriously damaged the esthetics of that space. For his efforts in preventing this plan, he was thanked by Joe Stroud , the editor of the Detroit Free Press.

In 1976 following the sale of Booth Newspapers Jack donated to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the best picture he received from his parent’s art collection, a Tahitian oil painting by Paul Gauguin, dated 1904, and very possibly his last picture, finished just before his death in May 1904, entitled “L’ Invocation”, depicting Gauguin’s deceased daughter welcoming him to heaven. This picture was donated in memory of his daughter Winkie (Winifred Wessel Booth).

Jack late in life , having attended Detroit University School its predecessor school, became a major donor to the University Liggett School where he funded the renovation and expansion and renaming of the main school library and science center. A large portrait of Jack hangs in the school just outside the entrance to the library.