Local history: Statue is a giant in Goodyear’s success

The gentleman gazes toward the horizon as he waits on the corner. Dressed in a three-piece suit and overcoat, he holds a hat in his left hand and clutches a roll of blueprints with the right.

Passing motorists can’t help but notice the fellow. He’s 9 feet tall and greenish blue.

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The bronze statue of Paul Weeks Litchfield (1875-1959), former president and chairman of the board at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. in Akron, has stood for 60 years on a granite pedestal at Goodyear Boulevard and Martha Avenue.

Company executives unveiled the 3,000-pound sculpture with great ceremony Nov. 8, 1962, paying final tribute to the respected executive who helped transform the rubber industry.

“People have two ways of going through life,” Litchfield once said. “One is the selfish way in which they swell to big proportions. The other is the rendering of service in which you grow great. The future is what you want to make of it with your own skills.”

A giant in Goodyear history

Litchfield, a Boston native known affectionately as P.W., joined Goodyear in 1900 at age 24 only two years after Akron brothers F.A. Seiberling and C.W. Seiberling founded the company as a manufacturer of bicycle and carriage tires.

The city had only 42,000 residents when Litchfield arrived. Hired as plant superintendent for $2,500 a year (about $86,000 today), he rose to vice president in 1915, president in 1926 and chairman in 1930.

Litchfield and his wife, Florence, had two daughters: Katherine and Edith. In 1925, the family built The Anchorage, a 14-room mansion on Merriman Road.

As an executive for nearly 60 years, Litchfield led the development, research and production of tires for autos, trucks, tractors and other vehicles. He designed the first pneumatic tires for airplanes and formed Goodyear’s aeronautics department, dotting the sky with balloons, blimps, planes and dirigibles.

He oversaw construction of rubber facilities worldwide, established the Wingfoot Clan newspaper, directed efforts into synthetics, plastics and chemicals, wrote four books, appeared on the cover of Time Magazine and founded the Arizona cities of Goodyear and Litchfield Park.

His career began in the horse-and-buggy era and ended in the atomic age.

In October 1958, Litchfield stepped down from active leadership, maintaining the title of honorary chairman and retiring to Arizona. He was 83 when he passed away March 18, 1959.

“The death Wednesday night of Paul W. Litchfield at Phoenix, Ariz., brought to an end one of the foremost chapters of world history,” the Beacon Journal reported. “The name Litchfield — even the initials ‘P.W.’ alone — is synonymous with rubber with big industry, with progress.”

Flags flew at half-staff across Akron and Goodyear plants worldwide.

Sculptor hired for lasting tribute

Wanting a lasting tribute to the industrialist, Goodyear hired sculptor Walker Hancock (1901-1998), commissioner of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, to create a statue.

The artist’s best-known works at the time included the Soldiers Memorial in St. Louis, the Pennsylvania Railroad World War II Memorial in Philadelphia and President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s inaugural medals in Washington, D.C. He also sculpted likenesses of such famous Americans as President Woodrow Wilson, naval commander John Paul Jones, composer Stephen Foster, poet Robert Frost and banker Andrew Mellon.

Hancock spent two years on the Akron project. He chatted with Litchfield’s friends, watched movie footage of the industrialist and studied hundreds of photos before starting work at his studio in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

“The qualities of character which account for a man’s achievements must be analyzed and expressed in his statue,” Hancock explained. “In contemplating these qualities in Paul Weeks Litchfield, the foresight and vision that made him the wise and daring planner and builder were at once apparent. But many months spent in studying his life and work brought realization of a wide range of powers and enthusiasms, of will and wisdom, that combined to produce a truly great man.”

Hancock made a dozen 1-foot models in various poses, before selecting the one that he thought best captured Litchfield’s spirit. He then created a detailed 3-foot model and used that as a guide to sculpt a 9-foot plaster statue that he sent to a New York foundry to be cast in bronze.

Litchfield statue unveiled

A big sheet covered the statue as hundreds gathered outside the Goodyear Research Building for the 1962 dedication. The shrouded figure stood on a polished base of rainbow granite quarried by the Cold Spring Granite Co. in Minnesota.

Landscape architect Ralph E. Griswold of Pittsburgh had designed the park setting, a granite-paved circle about 26 feet in diameter with a backdrop of English yew trees and Canadian hemlocks.

The Goodyear Youth Band provided patriotic music for the ceremony. The Rev. Harry D. Rose, pastor of Goodyear Heights United Presbyterian Church, gave the invocation. Goodyear President Russell DeYoung served as emcee.

A hush fell over the crowd as widow Florence Litchfield, accompanied by Goodyear Chairman E.J. Thomas, approached the statue. In the audience were Litchfield daughters Katherine Hyde of Hudson and Edith Denny of Toronto, Ontario.

Florence Litchfield tugged on a lanyard and the sheet fell away. There stood a giant likeness of her husband, Paul, in a suit and overcoat, hat in his hand, blueprint under his arm. It was hard not to be emotional. The audience applauded.

Thomas, who joined Goodyear in 1916 as a clerk, hailed Litchfield for his leadership and humanitarianism.

“He was truly one of the great men of our time,” Thomas told the crowd. “The principles by which he lived and worked are firmly woven into our company and organization and will be remembered as long as there is a Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.”

DeYoung said Litchfield’s statue symbolized “the lasting nature of his work.”

“Those of us who were privileged to know him need no spark to kindle the warmth of the memories he left us,” DeYoung said. “Those who did not know him personally need only look around this section of Akron to see the solid substance of his work. Throughout the free world, every Goodyear installation is a monument to him.”

R.S. Wilson, retired executive vice president for sales, said Litchfield was a man of integrity and idealism who led Goodyear to the top of the rubber industry.

“In these days when expediency seems to be the vogue, it is a fine heritage to Goodyear folks to have as their guiding star the career of this man who made his business decisions not on what was expedient, not on what was best for any single individual or group, be they stockholders, customers or employees, but always and ever on what was best for Goodyear.”

R.P. Dinsmore, retired vice president for research, saluted Litchfield as a genius in business.

“He had an uncanny faculty for noticing gaps and deficiencies in new approaches and for selecting those channels of investigation which Goodyear could attack with high probability of success, in making new ideas and methods practical,” Dinsmore said.

In a cable from Rome, sculptor Walker Hancock noted: “It is my hope that this statue has embodied in bronze at least some measure of these ingredients of greatness in the character of its subject that revealed themselves so clear to the sculptor.”

Litchfield’s likeness gazed to the horizon as the ceremony ended and the crowd parted.

Hancock’s next project was to supervise the Confederate Memorial at Stone Mountain, Georgia. He went on to create many notable statues, including Abraham Lincoln at Washington National Cathedral, Gen. Douglas MacArthur at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and President James Madison for the Library of Congress.

He sculpted busts of Chief Justices Earl Warren and Warren E. Burger for the U.S. Supreme Court, busts of Vice Presidents Hubert H. Humphrey, Gerald R. Ford and George H.W. Bush for the U.S. Capitol and a bust of civil rights leader W.E.B. DuBois for Harvard University.

He also presented a bust of P.W. Litchfield to Akron’s Litchfield Junior High School in 1962.

“As time goes on, people remember the person by the image the artist has created,” Hancock said.

He died in Gloucester in 1998 at age 97.

That man on the corner

For 60 years, Litchfield has stood on that corner, keeping an eye on the company that he once guided. The 1950s-style clothing and hat are reminders of a bygone era. The bronze has oxidized over the decades, taking on a greenish-blue patina.

While Litchfield’s name isn’t as well known as it used to be, Goodyear reports nearly $20 billion in annual sales.

Those who need a reminder should stop to read the gold inscription on the base of the statue on Goodyear Boulevard:

PAUL WEEKS LITCHFIELD

1875-1959

PRESIDENT 1926-1940

CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD 1930-1958

HONORARY CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD 1958-1959

LEADER OF INDUSTRY, WORLD CITIZEN, PIONEER IN HUMAN RELATIONS. HE JOINED GOODYEAR, JULY 15, 1900, AND GUIDED THE COMPANY TO WORLD LEADERSHIP IN THE RUBBER INDUSTRY

It takes a great statue to remember a great man.

Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com.

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This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Local history: Statue is a giant in Goodyear’s success