the goRtons And sLAdes 15
not Tom or Tommy. He had a small hole in his palate, the source of the
distinctive little cough that punctuates his speech to this day. By first
grade, when his nose was buried in books, they also discovered he was
blind as a bat. He acquired his first pair of thick glasses, a Gorton trade-
mark in the years to come.
When Slade was a year old, his father founded his own wholesale fish
business with $1,200 in working capital. He set up shop at 735 West Lake
Street, in the cold gray shadow of Chicago’s elevated railway—the “El”—
six weeks before the Stock Market crash of 1929. Gorton’s net profit for
that first year was $148. Grandfather Gorton was mad as hell that he’d left
the company, predicting he’d lose his shirt. Eventually the two stubborn
Yankee fishermen made up. Gorton-Pew Fisheries was less forgiving. It
tried to put Tom Gorton out of business by dumping seafood in Chicago.
He outsmarted them. Friendly with the fish broker, he promptly cooked
up a dummy firm, XYZ Company, and bought frozen and salt fish right
back at below-market prices. The broker didn’t care. Gorton also made
friends with the bankers, who were delighted to have someone making
deposits rather than withdrawals. He prided himself on having friends of
all ethnicities. Jewish merchants particularly admired his work ethic and
his fish.
seno oAtRg Rton’s MAteRnAL gRAndfAtheR, Edward Everett Israel, was
a hard-shell prohibitionist Presbyterian of Welsh extraction. He is also
the only other documented elective office-seeker in the history of Slade’s
family. Grandpa Israel ran for senator and governor several times in Loui-
siana as a candidate of the Prohibition Party. “He got maybe 3,000 votes
in a statewide election,” Slade says, but was undeterred.
Grandpa was a huge baseball fan. He had a tryout as a major-league
catcher in the 1890s. His major weakness in the secular world, in fact,
was the St. Louis Cardinals. But he couldn’t go to a baseball game—even
listen to one—on Sunday. The Sabbath was a holy day. Slade’s kid brother,
Mike, says grandpa used to fudge. He’d turn down the volume and put his
ear right next to the radio so grandma wouldn’t know what he was up to.
The Israels also believed fervently in the power of education. Slade’s
mother and Aunt Dorothy were graduates of Louisiana State University in
an era when few women finished college. Slade’s mother had a strong
independent streak. “First, she left Louisiana, went to New York City and
became a medical technician. Second, she left the Presbyterian Church
and became an Episcopalian. And third, we would occasionally have wine
with dinner when we were growing up,” Slade remembers. When his