16 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
grandfather—they called him “Pa”—came to visit, he would regale them
with stories of his boyhood adventures rafting on the Mississippi and
exploring caves. “He had us on the edge of the bed, telling us how he’d got
lost in a cave and followed the flickering light of a candle, shades of Tom
Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn,” Mike Gorton says.
wong15–KR i houR dAys through the depths of the Depression and World
War II, the senator’s father made a success out of Slade Gorton Company.
He was a sharp businessman—Chicago was one tough town—but un-
waveringly scrupulous. During World War II, the Office of Price Admin-
istration regulated seafood prices. Gorton knew the regulations so well
that the Chicago OPA Administrator would frequently phone him to ask
him questions. Gorton refused to overcharge or sell on the black market
to boost his profits.
Much has been written over the years about Gorton’s “patrician” back-
ground. He guffaws at the characterization of himself as an Ivy Leaguer
with a tennis racket and a roadster. He grew up in the mostly middle-
class Chicago suburb of Evanston, the oldest of four children—Slade,
Mary Jane, Mike and Nat. “Probably by the late 1930s my father was doing
pretty well, but it all went back into the business, except what was neces-
sary for the family to live decently. He still loved the East and did most of
his buying in New England, so we would go back in the summer to
Gloucester for sometimes as long as six or eight weeks.” On those mean-
dering, thousand-mile drives, Slade was fascinated by the diverse land-
scape of America. He liked Massachusetts, devoured history and loved
hearing about his ancestors, yet the family business held no allure.
“I was the first son, the one who would inherit the business,” Slade
says. When he was around 12, he started going to work with his father
every Saturday morning. “Pop loved to talk about the business. It was his
life. It was the way he had grown up. He had suffered that devastating loss
and he just tested himself against the family history.”
Slade pitched in to help unload trucks, work in the freezer and slice
fish. To the tourists at Seattle’s Pike Place Market, fish-tossing looks like
great fun, but the real world of the warehouse “was a grimy, slimy, smelly
place, and I knew very early that I wasn’t going to work 15 hours a day, six
days a week at the fish business. So for that I was a great disappointment
to my father. Two strong personalities collided. It is my great good fortune
that my brother Michael, who followed me to Dartmouth, got his MBA
and went to work with my father.”
Mike Gorton, a savvy businessman with a warm smile and manners