DEA continues heritage of bringing leaders together
By Mary Rodrique | DAC News
Every Thursday afternoon,
business leaders from across
the metro area converge at
the DAC for lunch, camaraderie and
networking as part of a longstanding
tradition of the Detroit Executives
Association (DEA).
The DAC has had a prominent
role in the organization’s success – not
just as the weekly meeting spot for
an elegant luncheon and speaker’s
forum, a role it has played for the
past 30 years. Club members
founded the DEA and at
least one early meeting was
held in the Madison Avenue
Clubhouse.
In addition, nine of the
organization’s first dozen
presidents were also DAC
members. Many more served
in that capacity through the
years and DAC members still
play an active role today.
The DEA is a microcosm of society,
with representatives from all walks of
life. Careers are as fluid as the members
themselves and currently include
representatives from auto leasing,
carpet cleaning, funeral services and
home remodeling to name a few.
The idea is for members to grow
their customer base by utilizing each
other’s professional services.
It’s a formula that has worked so
well that the DEA, founded in 1926,
is still going strong nearly nine decades
after the first organizational meeting
was held at the old Statler Hotel on
Washington Boulevard.
“It’s another opportunity to meet business people with the sole purpose of exchanging information,” said Tom Rost, a 31-year DAC member who is president of the R.G. and G.R. Harris Funeral Homes and Cremation Society of Michigan.
“There are a lot of members whose services I can use: interior design,
heating, office supplies, auto repairs,”
said Rost, who joined the DEA in 1980
and served as president in 1990. “When
I came in we had really big companies.
We’ve drifted to smaller organizations
but that’s fine. I try to make it every
Thursday. The social aspect is nice but
we stay focused on business.”
DEA membership provides
exclusivity within the group. Members
promote each other’s businesses, seek
advice from other professionals and have a built-in test market for new
products and services.
“I’ve made some incredible contacts
for business advice, partnerships
between companies and gotten over
a dozen business clients out of being
a member of the group,” said Mark
Stackpoole, a 12-year DAC member
who served as DEA president in 2011.
“We’ve used it to find our contacts for
office supplies and employee savings
program, and set up our financial
documents for the company,”
added Stackpoole, of Global
Telecom Solutions. “I value
being able to utilize people we
already know and trust, people
we feel comfortable with.”
A newsletter published by
the non-profit DEA in 1958
shows that the focus hasn’t
strayed. “An executives club
is not a social club, a service
club or a fraternal organization,” it
noted. “It is simply a business getting
organization. Members are associated to
exchange business information.”
The organization dates to 1926,
when DAC members George Klein,
a founding partner in the downtown
Detroit law firm now known as Clark
Hill, joined W.H.C. Burnett, an
insurance agent with Canada Life with
offices in the Buhl Building, to establish
a Detroit chapter of the International
Executives Association (IEA). The men
served as the DEA’s co-presidents in
1926 and 1927.
Klein joined the DAC in 1917 and
was a member for over 40 years. Burnett
joined in 1913 and resigned in 1932.
The first organizational meeting of
the DEA was held at the Statler Hotel
on Feb. 26, 1926. It included election
of officers and adoption of articles of
association. “It has the earmarks of
being the best of its kind ever organized
in Detroit,” Burnett noted at the time.
Early on, there was a split between
the co-founders of the Detroit chapter
regarding belonging to the international
association. The IEA wanted $50 per
member for each of the first 50 members
in Detroit. Just $10 per member
would stay with the local chapter with
$40 going to the IEA to subsidize
newsletters, an annual convention and
an inter-city lead program.
The Detroit chapter had reached
its quota of 50 members by the end
of 1926 and Burnett wanted to honor
the IEA commitment while Klein
thought it too expensive. According to
a history posted on the IEA website,
the movement began in San Francisco
in 1915 and by 1928 spread to 26 cities
in the U.S. and Canada.
In a letter Burnett wrote to Klein in
1926 he referenced an earlier meeting
held at the DAC where IEA Executive
Secretary Worth Caldwell of Portland
fully explained to DEA members present
– “that we belong to the international
association on their regular terms.”
In a letter to Caldwell, Klein noted
“the charge to members is out of
proportion to the amount of business
or benefit to be derived.” The Detroit
membership sided with Klein and never
did join the international group.
In fact on Jan. 26, 1927 the name
of the association was officially
changed from the Detroit International
Executives Association to simply
the Detroit Executives Association.
According to the IEA history, after the
1927 convention, resignations were
received from a number of local groups.
To boost its stature locally, Burnett
decreed that the first annual DEA
banquet be held at the DAC “all expenses paid by him with the understanding
that he invites the press.”
Other DAC members who were
affiliated with the DEA in the
beginning include 1928 president
James Vernor, Jr. of the iconic Vernor’s
Ginger Ale and R.B. Gotfredson of
Gotfredson Trucking. DAC members
Charles Bennett, William Davis,
Joseph Hickey, T. Mel Rinehart, Ralph
Thomas, and James Hopkins were early
DEA presidents.
In 1931, an executive association was
launched in New York City as the result
of a DEA member. New Yorker Jesse
Perlman, while visiting his brother-inlaw
Ralph Wilson in Detroit, attended
a DEA meeting and was impressed by
the idea and its methods. Both men
were life insurance agents. According
to IEA history, Perlman launched the
New York association after he secured
a copy of the Detroit association’s bylaws.
During the 1930s the DEA staged
an annual fashion show at the Statler
Hotel for members and guests before
Christmas. Retail merchants in the
association displayed their wares –
including Himelhoch Brothers and
Company women’s wear, Hickey’s
Men’s Wear, Fyfe’s Shoes, Wright Kay
Jewelers and Dietrich’s Furs. After
the fashion show, Mrs. George Klein
hosted a tea.
“George Klein believed that there
should be an association of prominent
Detroit businesses that could meet
to discuss doing business with one
another and business topics in general,”
explained Doug Rasmussen, who
represented the Clark Hill law firm for
several years as a member of the DEA.
Rasmussen, the DAC’s president
in 1997, recalls being taken to his
first DEA meeting in 1965 in the old
Statler Hotel, which became part of the
Hilton chain in 1954. The hotel closed
in 1975 and was demolished in 2005.
“The DEA met there for several years
until the hotel closed and then met for
awhile at the Masonic Temple. It was
in the 1980s that the DEA moved its
meetings to the DAC,” noted Rasmussen,
who served as DEA president in 1988.
“The premise was you won’t get
business from your friends and colleagues
unless you are willing to give business
to them,” said Rasmussen. “Thus the
exchange of business contacts, orders,
engagement and sales made the group
flourish even to this day.”
Clark Hill is the longest surviving member business of the
association, dating all the way back to founder Klein. Today
its representative on the DEA is DAC Board Director Tom
MacFarlane. MacFarlane, who was DEA president in 2007, notes that
unlike similar groups, the association doesn’t penalize members
if they fail to meet a certain quota of referrals.
“A referral organization is still a big part of what DEA is all
about, but it’s evolved into more than that,” said MacFarlane.
“It’s a group of friends who meet for lunch, socialize outside
of the DEA several times a year, and recognize an outstanding
executive of the year annually.”
Last year, Detroit Red Wings general manager Ken Holland
was feted as DEA Executive of the Year. Past recipients of the
award, bestowed annually since 1979, have included DAC
members Richard Manoogian, chairman of Masco Industries;
Keith Crain, chairman of Crain Communications; and Ivan
Ludington, Jr., who served as DAC president in 1988 and was
president of the Ludington News Company.
DAC members whose companies are currently affiliated
with the DEA include Corporate Fleet Services, Clark Hill,
Conner Park Florist, Burton Brothers General Contractors,
Standhardt Design, Global Telecom Solutions, Frisbie Moving
and Storage and The Reaume Company.
Today under current president Chris Ingoglia, the DEA
is part of the global IEA network, with chapters across the
nation, Canada and Great Britain. The international group is
run by a volunteer board with equal representation for each
chapter.
“For years the chapters met for an annual conference but it
wasn’t until 1996 that a number in attendance voted to make
the IEA more than a loose grouping,” said Betty Adams,
managing director of the IEA in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Detroit finally joined the international association in 2001.
Closing in on 90 years, the DEA is still helping business
leaders connect.
