September 26, 2013

Finest Hour 104, Autumn 1999

Page 30

BY RICHARD M. LANGWORTH

FRED Farrow was the most unforgettable Churchillian I ever met. His uniqueness lay not so much in his numerous accomplishments, but in the way he continued accomplishing at a very old age. “I am blessed by coming from a line of long-lived people,” he said four years ago, behind his desk at Century Instruments in Livonia, Michigan, the company he founded and built up from nothing. “I come in every day and keep an eye on things, and I intend to keep right on doing so.” He was then 89.

The phone rang. It was 7PM. “Excuse me,” he said, and, picking up the phone: “Century Instruments….I’m sorry, you’ll have to call back tomorrow. We’re having a meeting right now. Mr. Farrow isn’t available.”

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What corporation can you ring up in the middle of the evening and find yourself talking to the president, who is too busy to chat?

Fred arrived in the United States from England with an engineering degree and not much else in 1929, of all years. Three years earlier, loading British Gazettes on London docks during the General Strike, he had met Winston Churchill. Hearing Fred talking to his mates, the Chancellor of the Exchequer walked over to him: “Young man, you don’t sound like a Londoner—what part of the country do you come from?” Fred pitched his bundle of newspapers into the truck, stood as tall as he could and said, “County Durham, Sir!” The grin on Churchill’s face widened and he stepped closer, put his hand on Fred’s shoulder and said, “Jolly good. Carry on. God bless you.” Fred was hooked.

His other hero was Henry Ford, for whom he did engineering work at the Ford Rouge Plant and Greenfield Village (“Henry’s Ford Museum,” as wags call it). One day during a glass-blowing demonstration for a Greenfield Village crafts exhibit, Mr. Ford signaled to Fred who was standing nearby. “Farrow, why can’t we see the blessed thing?” “Because, Mr. Ford, there’s too much light streaming through that big window.”

“Follow me,” said Henry Ford, and the great industrialist marched off down Rouge corridors with Fred in tow. Finally he stopped in front of a closet and gestured: “In there.” Fred entered and found an enormous black tarpaulin, which together they hauled back to block the light in the glass-blowing room. “What astonished me was that Henry Ford, of all people, knew exactly where to look in that huge factory for the thing he needed.”

Century Instruments manufactures industrial measuring devices. Fred’s motto was: “If it can be measured, we can control it.” He didn’t talk much about his business; we were there to talk Churchill. But I couldn’t help but notice the big map covering one wall of his tiny office, sprouting dozens of red-headed pins. “Are those all your customers?” I asked. “Yes,” he said. “I’m particularly proud of Mexico City.” Mexico City?

“We were flustered trying to develop a market in Mexico,” Fred explained, “so I went down myself to have a look. I asked, ‘How many sausage makers are there here?’ The Yellow Pages listed sixteen. So I made up a little brochure, in Spanish, explaining how much our instruments would save the sausage makers by measuring quantities and reducing waste. I would have been astonished if we got two replies—flabbergasted if we got four. We got seven! Today almost all the sausage makers in Mexico City are using Century Instruments!”

TIME is running out and I haven’t told you the half of it. After his beloved wife died, Fred refused to grieve. “I was not going to become a recluse, eating TV dinners every night,” he said, “so every night I  go home and cook myself a full dinner.” He drove himself in his beautifully maintained, 18-foot-long 1991 Cadillac Brougham (“I don’t like the new round ones”), which scared me because he was, after all, pushing 90. Later I learned that his major handicap was hearing. I never realized it, because Fred had taught himself enough lip-reading to make you think he could hear every word you said.

Fred believed deeply in The Churchill Center, particularly its work with young people. His generosity was manifest, but he asked no acknowledgement, no praise, no glory. “I am only a catalyst,” he said. “I just want to get the ball rolling.” How good it was that he lived long enough to see the endowment he helped start roll on up and over its first million dollars. If there is still a long way to go, the road is that much shorter, not only because of his generosity, but that of others he inspired.

Like his hero, Winston Churchill, Fred never feared death. But I do regret that more of our people, besides those who met him at conferences and tours, were not aware of this giant among us. The first thing I turned to after learning of his death, on November 11th, was Churchill’s piece about Arthur Balfour in Great Contemporaries. It could have been written for Fred Farrow:

“As I observed him regarding with calm, firm and cheerful gaze the approach of Death, I felt how foolish the Stoics were to make such a fuss about an event so natural and so indispensable to mankind. But I felt also the tragedy which robs the world of all the wisdom and treasure gathered in a great man’s life and experience, and hands the lamp to some impetuous and untutored stripling, or lets it fall shivered into fragments upon the ground.”

Fare thee well, my gifted, true and many-sided friend.