percent of the things he did could be managed by his trusted secretary, Barty. For the other 20 percent, “no one but a fool would have the courage.” Meanwhile, his friends Charlie Fletcher and Thurston Ross were flying around the world on secret missions and organizing invasions.12
Ahmanson's perspective changed when it seemed he might get a position in the office of the undersecretary of the navy, but he was torn between ambition and a deep desire to return to California. Gross wrote to say that with the growth of aircraft manufacturing in Southern California, the navy was going to open a new procurement facility in Van Nuys. Ahmanson could hope for a senior management position at this facility.13
FOXHOLE AT THE SHOREHAM
With housing in short supply and Dottie coming to live with him in Washington, Ahmanson secured a room at his old haunt—the Shoreham Hotel. Missing their usual Christmas festivities in California, he and Dottie bought a “two for a nickel” eighteen-inch tree for their hotel parlor and piled presents around it.14 Howard wrote to the staff at National American back in Omaha that he was sorry to miss the annual Christmas extravaganza. He said he had started to feel a little sorry for himself, but “all of a sudden I thought of ten million other guys spread all over creation wondering what goes on when the fracas is over, and I decided that I'm the luckiest guy in the world—as usual.”15
Indeed, midshipmen in the Pacific avoiding the gunfire of Japanese Zeros would hardly have recognized the sailor's life that Ahmanson led. Tongue in cheek, Howard wrote his college classmate Joe Crail, the head of Coast Federal Savings and Loan, “I know that my discomfiture and self-sacrifice at fighting the war from my foxhole in the Shoreham would wring from you deep expressions of sympathy.” Then he jokingly chastised Crail for growing his business “while I'm not around to keep track” or “defend myself.”16
In Washington, Howard and Dottie bonded with other Southern Californians. Charlie Fletcher and his wife, Jeannette, had moved their family from San Diego to Chevy Chase, Maryland. Jeannette managed a house full of kids while Charlie flew to Europe and the Pacific organizing logistics to support the invasions of North Africa and later Saipan.17 The Californians often gathered together. In May 1944, Howard attended a dinner party hosted by Colonel and Mrs. Ed Shattuck. A longtime Republican activist in California, Shattuck served as general counsel to the Selective Service System. After the war, Shattuck would become deputy city attorney in Los Angeles and run for attorney general of California. That night, the Shattucks’ guests included Major General Lewis Hershey, the head of the Selective Service; Harold Judson, an attorney from Los Angeles who had joined the Solicitor General's Office and would soon be promoted to chief counsel to the president; as well as Howard's longtime business mentor Morgan Adams, the head of Mortgage Guarantee. (After Ahmanson had told Adams to “jump in a lake” rather than allow him to buy out H. F. Ahmanson in the late 1920s, the two men had become friends again and Adams had returned to the occasional role of mentor.) Adams was in Washington to serve as an advisor to Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, who oversaw shipyards across the country that were furiously producing vessels for the war.18 Lieutenant Harrison Chandler, son of Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler, also joined the party. Charlie Fletcher should have been there but he was overseas on a special mission.
From the company at this dinner table, as well as his day-to-day work at the Aeronautics Bureau, Ahmanson gained considerable insight into the growing military-industrial complex. This perspective helped him understand that aviation and aeronautics would be important in the postwar economy. These social interactions also deepened his connections with a group of Southern Californians in Washington who would play a pivotal role in the region's postwar development.
Howard moved out of the Shoreham after Dottie returned to Los Angeles. He rented a large house, brought in a piano, and told Dottie that he had been spending “99.44 percent” of his waking moments playing music. To complete his life of Riley, he had his butler, Marshall, come from Los Angeles to live with him.
Howard wrote to Dottie multiple times a week and cajoled her to write him more. Although both of them consumed prodigious amounts of alcohol, Howard never seemed outwardly drunk. Dottie, however, seemed increasingly dependent. He worried about her state of mind and encouraged her over and over not to live alone.
New responsibilities in May 1944 kept him working late and skipping lunches. In June, he visited the radar school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.19 The work sparked ideas, which were resisted all too often by his superiors and his subordinates. He tried to suppress his own entrepreneurial bent and his growing commitment to the collective war effort. His own “gremlins,” he told Dottie, were buzzing around 10 percent too fast in his head. “Each night I resolve—no more of this monkey business. . . . [H]undreds of guys are sitting on their fanny—you're a [lieutenant] j.g.—the war effort was doing dandy without you et cetera, et cetera—and damn it the next morning at 0805 something comes up that looks kind of important to me and we're off.”20
At night in his splendid rented home near Rock Creek Park, he played the piano and the organ. He listened to his favorite radio show—Amos ‘n’ Andy. He drank and he smoked. He socialized and flirted with college girls.21 His wife and his mother worried about his “morals.” Florence accused him of dragging the Ahmanson name through the mud with his drinking. Dottie was sure he was having too good a time in Washington with other women, despite his constant assurances to the contrary. They argued on the phone and then wrote contrite letters apologizing. Often these tensions were rooted in Howard's larger ambitions.
HONOR THY FATHER
Florence may have accused him of abandoning the morals she and Will had tried to impart to their two sons, but Howard had not forgotten his father's lessons or legacy. Howard remembered the pain his father experienced when he discovered in 1919 that National American's stock promoters had oversold the company and when farmers and merchants who had purchased the company's stock for one hundred dollars discovered that it was worth only one-fifth of that price. He remembered how his father had worked to redeem his good name and had sought to deliver high-quality service to insurance customers and earnings to stockholders. At the time of Will's death, National American had only just begun this process of redemption.
Seventeen years later, National American was in trouble. The men who were running the company were the same executives, led by James Foster, who had taken control after Will's death in 1925. From 1921 to 1937, they paid dividends to shareholders in all but one year—1933. From 1938 to 1943, the company paid a dividend only once. When the state of Nebraska's Department of Insurance examined the company's records in October 1943, it found that the total amount of dividends paid had “consumed the earnings of the company together with a considerable portion of the original contributed surplus.”22 The company was still growing, but not by much. Total net assets increased only 4.4 percent between 1940 and 1943 to just under two million dollars.23 Attempting to adjust to declining circumstances, the company had slashed executive pay beginning in 1939. Hayden's salary was cut nearly 20 percent.24 But cost cutting was not turning the company around.
For years, Howard had worked to secure control of his father's company. National American's stock was not traded on any exchange. Local brokers in Omaha handled sales and purchases privately. All through the 1930s, Ahmanson had purchased stock from farmers and merchants scattered across Nebraska and Iowa. By 1943, he had accumulated 33 percent of the outstanding shares, but there were still approximately six hundred shareholders who held various blocks of the company's twenty thousand outstanding shares.25
Before entering the navy, Howard had traveled to Omaha to investigate the situation. “Everyone has a different idea” about what needed to be done, he reported to Dottie. Top management wanted to
