Steve Hannagan: Price of the Press Agents and Titan of Modern Public Relations

By Michael Townsley

Steve Hannagan was a highly-successful pioneer of public relations who built ground-breaking publicity campaigns for the Indianapolis 500, Miami Beach, Sun Valley, Las Vegas, the 1940 Presidential Campaign, and Coca Cola. He developed, tested, and refined many of the press and publicity principles commonly used today.

Along the way, Steve Hannagan knew or worked with most major figures and celebrities of his era. His colleagues and friends spanned business, Hollywood, Broadway, New York’s Café Society, the news media, politics, and sports.
Hannagan was a garrulous, charming, whip-smart press agent who never pulled a phony deal. His honesty and charm opened doors to the powerful. His press campaigns were sensational or subtle and always caught the eye of the intended audience. His success always brought him coverage in major news media like: Life Magazine, Fortune, Look, Colliers, Scribner’s, New York Times, and Movietone News.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Nov 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781662907227

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© 2018 Michael K. Townsley

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.

Published by Gatekeeper Press

2167 Stringtown Rd, Suite 109

Columbus, OH 43123-2989

www.GatekeeperPress.com

ISBN: 978-1-6629-0458-5

eISBN: 978-1-6629-0722-7

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to Helen Hannagan Townsley.

She was the author’s mother and Steve Hannagan’s first cousin. She knew Steve Hannagan as a relative and as a close friend. Helen Townsley was the communication hub for the Hannagan family and especially with Steve Hannagan. She kept the legend of Steve Hannagan alive for the author and for everyone in her family. Her stories about Steve Hannagan pushed the author to seek more information about him to tell his important story and his contributions to marketing and press relations.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1: Mr. Hannagan, Judge Landis on the Phone!

Chapter 2: The Boy from Bloody Plank Road

Chapter 3: Steve Hannagan: Boy Editor

Chapter 4: Steve Hannagan: Master Publicist of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Chapter 5: Steve Tests His Independence

Chapter 6: Miami Beach: A Natural!

Chapter 7: Land Bust, Hurricane, Capone, and Parting of the Ways!

Chapter 8: Steve Hannagan and National Sports

Chapter 9: Steve Hannagan Saves Samuel Insull

Chapter 10: Hannagan Opens on Park Avenue

Chapter 11: Steve Makes Sun Valley Shine

Chapter 12: Steve Rides His Growing Fame

Chapter 13: Politics: No Joy for Hannagan!

Chapter 14: Coca-Cola: Steve Hannagan’s Best Job

Chapter 15: Steve Hannagan: Friends, Loves, the Mob, and the Peccadillos

Chapter 16: Steve Hannagan Passes from the Scene

Epilogue

Appendix: The Hannagan Way

Bibliography

Author Biography

Endnotes

Frontispiece Photograph; Steve Hannagan in his Park Avenue, NYC, office. (Photo taken in 1950 by Loman/PIK Inc.; Time-Life Pictures/Getty Images (January 1, 1950); Getty Images 50712326.

Preface

I AM DEEPLY indebted to the work of Edward Ellis Ross, who was responsible for most of the research, interviews, and comments attributed to Steve Hannagan, his associates, and those who knew or worked with him. In 1961, Mr. Ross assembled his research into a notebook that was to be the foundation for a book on Stephen Jerome Hannagan but was never published.

MR. ROBERT KRIEBEL, former editor of the Lafayette Journal and Courier of Lafayette, Indiana, set me on the trail of Ross. Mr. Kriebel recalled that Ross had been in Lafayette in the early 1960s looking to track down anyone who knew Steve Hannagan. I subsequently found that the Ross papers were located in the New York University Library archives, where Ms. Laura Newcome copied his papers for me. Regrettably, Mr. Ross did not leave specific references to quotations found in the notebook. Some of the quotations were able to be supported by going to copies of newspaper columns that are available on the internet. The remainder of the quotations have to be taken at face value.

Ross’s contribution to this book is inestimable because he compiled Steve Hannagan’s life from interviews with his friends, coworkers, clients, professional colleagues, and several people who were closest to Steve, most of whom have passed. Ross claimed in his research remarks that I have done my best to present the truth in the face of conflicting evidence here and there. Not a single quotation in this [notebook] has been invented.¹ In his notebook he acknowledged the following documents and people as major sources about Steve Hannagan:

• Steve Hannagan’s remaining records (most of his files were later destroyed in a New York City warehouse where the files were stored):

Diary of appointments

Scrapbooks of newspaper clippings

Letters

Reports

Memoranda

Photographs

• Steve Hannagan’s Coworkers:

Joe Copps

Larry Smits

Paul Snell

Margaret Ray

Camille Street

• Steve Hannagan’s first close relationship

Mrs. Dorothy Rice Pearlman of West Lafayette, Indiana,

• Personages who gave depth to Ross’s research:

Dwight D. Eisenhower

W. Averill Harriman

James A. Farley

John Hay Whitney

Jack Dempsey

Bernard F. Gimbel

Cary Grant

Mrs. Clark Gable

Marie Oberon

Eddie Rickenbacker

Robert C. Ruark

Walter Winchell

Billy Rose E. Robinson

Jack Benny

Arthur Godfrey

Sherman Billingsley

Morton Walker

Stanley Walker

Mike Romanoff

William E. Lewis

Boyd Lewis

Daniel J. Mahoney

Adela Rogers St. Johns

Roy St. Johns

Samuel F. Pryor

Jane Fisher

Hal N. Thurber

Hank Meyer

Abel Green

Leo Dolan

Claude Renshaw

Robert Harron

Paul Sullivan

Elizabeth Nichols

Frank Farrell

Ned Moss

Robert Charnoff

Ross Young

Ed Weiner

Tom Mahoney

Mary L. Burch

Stephen H. Richards

Alan Bell

Sherman L. Brown

Vern Boxell

Eddie Hoff

• Others who were helpful to his research:

John A Clements

Emilie Holden

Earle Green

Stuart Gorrell

Audrey Pierce

Dickson J. Hartwell

Jack Tompkins

Ron Butler

Jennie Sweeting

Ross Downing

W. Grant Burden

Virginia Miller

George C. Frank

Rose Weiss

Louis Weintraub

Mrs. J. J. Vellinger

J. H. McKee

Isabel P. Hill

Nancy Heath

Sally Dawson

Terry Forte

Robert F. Early

Mrs. William T. Ball

Kimberly Wiss

Joe S. Dienhart

George Sonders

Nurburt J. Wheeler

Lola Leonard

Selma M. Fried

Don Johnston

Moira Johnston

Matthew Redding

Lauretta Ravenna

Ann C. Whitman

I wish to personally express my gratitude to several people who provided inestimable help in going through the archives in various libraries to help me locate personal documents on Hannagan and others. They were able to reconstruct many of Steve Hannagan’s missing documents:

• Laura Newcome: New York University Archives; Fales Library; Edward Ellis papers

• Jessica Kaplan: Library of Congress; Averill Harriman papers

• David Hovde: Purdue University; research and instruction librarian in the Virginia Kelly Karnes Archives and Special Collections Research; the George Ade papers

• Donald Davidson: Indianapolis Motor Speedway Historian

• Phil Mooney: the Coca-Cola Company; Heritage Communications; Steve Hannagan communications

• Louis L Round: Wilson Special Collections Library; Southern Folklife Collection; Robert Ruark papers

• Colleen Kelley: University of Iowa Library; Special Collections and University Archives; Ding Darling Collection; John Hills and Hills Knowlton papers

• Robert Kriebel: former editor, Lafayette Journal-Courier; local information on Steve Hannagan

• Lynn Farnell: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library; Joseph P. Kennedy papers

• Dwayne Cos: Auburn University; Special Collections/Archives; Eddie Rickenbacker papers

• Meghan Lee Parker: Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library; Adela Rogers St. Johns papers

• Albert Palacios: the University of Texas; Harry Ransom Center; David O. Selznick papers

• Bruce Tab: University of Oregon; Special Collections; Peter Bernard Kyne papers

• Richard Fraser: University of California, Los Angeles; Young Library; Jack Benny papers

• New York Public Library: Walter Winchell papers

The major obstacle to conducting research for this book, besides the loss of Steve Hannagan’s business and personal papers, was that with few exceptions, very few people are alive who met, knew, worked with, or were clients of Steve Hannagan. He has been gone from the scene since 1953, and six decades is a long time to overcome missing records and people who have passed from the scene. Moreover, private papers and business documents, unlike those for high government officials, are rarely retained or have little or no value when the person did not lead a large organization that continues to operate. Much of the personal correspondence and business records of Steve Hannagan were in the archives of other notable personages of his era, for instance: Averill Harriman, Eddie Rickenbacker, Robert Ruark, or George Ade. The limited number of original sources is why the Edward Ross notebook was so important to this biography.

Note: The book is formatted using the 16th and 17th editions of the Chicago Manual of Style.

Acknowledgements

I WISH TO extend my appreciation to my wife, Debra Townsley, who has been my mentor, my editor, and my counselor in starting this book, doing the research, writing the book, and making it ready for publication. She has taken on this work while holding a full-time top administrative position in higher education and remaining fully committed to her family. Her work in editing the book has been particularly useful because she has brought a different perspective to the manuscript, and she has provided clarity where clarity was needed.

The author also acknowledges the support by my sister Kathleen Townsley and extensive editing provided by Alice Osborn and the editors of Dog Ear Publishing, who also provided guidance in preparing the book for publication.

Introduction

STEPHEN STEVE JEROME Hannagan played a major role in the world of public relations and publicity, yet this top-heralded press agent during the first half of the twentieth century is little known today. In his time, he was the toast of Hollywood, Broadway, and executive suites across America. Collier’s magazine called him the Prince of Press Agents … a loud-shouting, belligerent, whip-smart press agent, who has never been known to pull a phony or a double cross.³ He was a major power broker who shaped the history of marketing, public relations, and business, and his contributions to modern business practices should not be left to faded memories.

When he died in 1953, his obituary was published in hundreds of US papers large and small, and in Europe and Japan. Businesses, governments, and Hollywood stars who wanted top-quality public relations representation had turned to Hannagan. His fame rested on the Hannagan Way, a common-sense approach to press relations: tell the truth, be bold but use finesse when appropriate, place your product in front of the audience, find a compelling theme to tell a story, help others to sell your product, get out of the way of the story, and write like a journalist.⁴ He also recognized that publicity and advertising by themselves were not enough; they had to be linked together to produce a strong public message. Many of Hannagan’s principles are now deeply embedded in the practice of modern advertising, publicity, and political campaigns. This book will show how the Hannagan Way came to be.

The Appendix has a summary of The Hannagan Way. Professionals in the field will find his principles are now standard conventions in the field of public relations and the management of press campaigns. In addition, the Hannagan Way can provide insights into practices that are not currently in use but could be a valuable addition to a professional’s tool box.

Mr. Hannagan, Judge Landis on The Phone!

¹

Mr. Hannagan, his executive assistant, Margaret Ray, leaned in the door. Judge Landis on the phone. Do you want to take the call?

Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis⁴

Yeah, drawled Hannagan.⁵

In 1938, Hannagan had not met the fabled Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis.² When Steve was a boy, Landis had levied a $29 million fine on Standard Oil. Later, as baseball commissioner, he had disciplined the Chicago White Sox (forever after known as the Black Sox) for throwing the 1918 World Series. Now, Landis was calling Steve.⁶

Steve answered the phone. Hello, Judge Landis.⁷

Hannagan, look! Some damn fools in the baseball industry want to spend $100,000 to celebrate the centennial of baseball next year. They have given me the money. I understand you’re honest and won’t try to steal it or throw it away. You probably won’t be able to do any good, but will you take this money off my hands and spend it?⁸

Landis’s reference to Steve’s honesty pleased him; Landis’s statement about Steve’s ability to deliver on the project, however, affronted him. When Landis called Steve in 1939, he was well-known as the super press agent acclaimed for his press campaigns for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Miami Beach, and Sun Valley. Nevertheless, Steve controlled his notorious hair-trigger temper and said, Sounds interesting to me, Judge … If we don’t spend all this money, we’ll return the unexpended portion at the end of the campaign.

Landis sneered, You boys always spend all the money you get, and I don’t expect you to return any!⁹ Apparently, crusty old Judge Landis did not trust either Steve’s integrity or his ability to deliver a successful campaign.

After a few final words with Landis about the centennial campaign, Hannagan hung up. As Steve turned back to his desk to ponder Landis’s remarks, he sat at a desk covered with phones (each phone a separate line) in an office reminiscent of a city editor’s office at a small-time town newspaper. On the walls were pictures of the great, near-great, and the women he had courted. Parked against one wall, there was a bookshelf filled with patent medicines, because Steve was both a hypochondriac and an early practitioner of exotic medicines to preserve his youth. Behind Steve was a sunlamp to maintain his Miami Beach tan.¹⁰ Steve’s sunny Irish face and disposition, despite his hot temper, was a major asset to his firm. His tanned face was offset by jet-black hair parted on the left side and raven-colored eyebrows that framed a pair of twinkling and sometimes mischievous eyes.¹¹

Despite Landis’s cutting remarks, Hannagan was going to take on the project and prove to the commissioner that he could do the job—and do it less expensively than the judge expected.

We will return to the Judge Landis story in a later chapter …

1 This story paraphrases a description by E. E. Ross of his interview with Margaret Ray.

2 Judge Landis was named after the Civil War battle where his father was wounded. He began his career in Logansport, Indiana, in the circuit court of Cass County. Landis said that he was better as a court stenographer taking shorthand than as a lawyer or judge (Kennesaw Mountain Landis; (retrieved April 25, 2013); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenesaw_Mountain_Landis).

The Boy from Bloody Plank Road

HANNAGAN WAS BORN on April 4, 1899, into humble circumstances in Lafayette, Indiana. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Lafayette was home to 18,000 inhabitants, with a small Irish section located between the Monon Railroad and the Wabash River. The main street through the Irish section was Wabash Avenue, popularly known as Bloody Plank Road.

Evident from its nickname, Wabash Avenue had a rough-and-tumble reputation due to it being the home to fifteen saloons and several houses of ill-repute, where sin, corruption, and mayhem were available day and night. St. Anne’s Parish, the only parish church for the local Irish neighborhoods, was located in the midst of this insalubrious maelstrom. While Bloody Plank Road was a source of amusement to men from Lafayette and visitors from up and down the Wabash River, it was an irritant to St. Anne’s priests.

The priests of St. Anne’s Parish³ worked mightily to rid Bloody Plank Road of its saloons and sin houses. They saw their holy duty as saving the souls of their parishioners—in particular, the men and boys of the parish. The priests prayed, sermonized, and led boycotts to drive these dens of inequity out. The priests were fighting a determined enemy, however, and one that seemed to be associated with the benighted nickname of the street.

When Steve Hannagan entered St. Anne’s Elementary School around 1906, the parish priest was Father Michael Byrne. He was an early practitioner of spreading the social gospel, in which priests preached about immorality and also actively campaigned to curtail public drunkenness. Father Byrne, along with the women of the parish, picketed houses of prostitution and saloons. He also encouraged parishioners with political clout to enforce vagrancy laws, file charges against the operators of the houses and saloons, and petition the city council to pass ordinances to outlaw houses of prostitution and limit the time saloons were open. His heroics successfully drove away most of the prostitution and changed the way saloons conducted their business. Father Byrne believed that he reduced the sinful temptations for husbands, fathers, and sons, and made Bloody Plank Road a safer place for wives, mothers, and their children.

St. Anne’s Parish nurtured the Irish community on Bloody Plank Road and was a bastion against the community’s fleshy enticements. It defined the community, helped fight their battles, cared for its parishioners, and forgave their sins. Most importantly for an Irish parish, it prepared their sons to defend the faith and to stand tall against the locals who tormented Irish Catholics. For the Hannagan family, St. Anne’s enveloped Steve’s mother with a purpose and provided a place to do good works while attending mass weekly—and when possible, daily.

Steve Hannagan’s Family

The Hannagan Family, 1920

Brother Frank; Father William; Mother Johanna; and Steve¹⁴

Steve Hannagan’s mother, Johanna, and his father, William, were solid members of the Irish community in the Bloody Plank Road section of town. They would produce four children; Steve and his elder brother, Frank, lived the longest. One son died in infancy. A third brother, William J. Hannagan, born in 1881 and christened with his father’s name, died under mysterious circumstances in 1912. He collapsed in his father’s arms as they walked to their Auntie Shea’s funeral.¹⁵ The stricken son was taken home, where his father, mother, and William’s wife administered to him, but he passed the next morning. Later in life, William’s widow, called Sis by everyone, became a caretaker for Steve’s mother after his father died.

Johanna Aunt Jo Hannagan

When Steve was born, his mother, Johanna Enright Hannagan, was forty-one, and his father was forty-three. Johanna was a short, cheery woman of ample proportions with a loving personality. Her parents came directly from Ireland, but their ancestry in Ireland is not available. This is typical of many Irish immigrants who left their country behind and never talked about their life in Ireland, what county they lived in, and what they did when they arrived in the States. It is often a mystery of how or why immigrants like Johanna Hannagan’s parents traveled from the East Coast to places like Lafayette. This mystery of the trek to a river town in Indiana is also true for the Hannagan ancestors.

Steve’s mother was known as Aunt Jo by her family, friends, and fellow parishioners at St. Anne’s. She lived under the precepts of church doctrine and from adages that followed her family from Ireland. For ancestors of the Irish like Aunt Jo, life was often a vale of tears. In those times, she turned to the church through daily mass, evening prayers, and her beloved rosary, worn thin by years of her fingering the beads. Her beads were always nearby and available for her prayers of supplication for the parish priest, her friends, her family, and for whomever the parish priest believed was deserving of God’s intervention. As a devoted member of St. Anne’s Parish, Aunt Jo installed herself as queen of the parish hall, organizing potluck dinners, cleaning the church, and serving the priests and nuns in their ministrations of the lonely, widowed, and lost souls of the parish.

While the church provided spiritual shelter for Aunt Jo, she also relied on Irish omens, fables, and fears to guide her and to use as sources of advice for her friends. Her sayings contained nuggets of wisdom that explained the vagaries of life and gave succor to her children and her friends when life tormented them.

Johanna dressed in the manner of an Irish matron. On Sundays, she wore clean white linens, but during the week, she wore dark clothing in the style of Irish women of modest income. As Steve became successful, however, his mother made a dramatic shift in her sense of fashion. A picture of Aunt Jo from 1935 shows her dressed in a fashionable frock with lively prints. It also appears that she regularly visited a hairdresser, something that she could not have afforded previously. Steve’s mother, as evident in the picture, had a skeptical eye and some trepidation about events in her small and isolated world. Aunt Jo, like many Irish women of her era, fit the pitiless description by one of Steve’s cousins that his mother had the map of Ireland on her face.

Johanna Hannagan, 1935¹⁶

If there was one thing that Aunt Jo loved throughout her life, it was dancing an impromptu Irish jig with the slightest excuse. A fancy Irish air at a parish hall affair, a happy moment in the life of her family, or just a hint of a tune would send her into a jig. Everyone who knew her delighted in the pleasure that she got from her jigs.

Aunt Jo also enjoyed a bit of whiskey, especially in the evening when her husband, William, would fix her a mixed drink. Her favorite saloon keeper was her husband’s brother, Steve Hannagan (the namesake of her son—Steve Hannagan), who was the only saloon keeper capable of making a mixed drink that met her approval. In contrast, her son, Steve, was a miserable failure as a mixologist, according to Aunt Jo. After one ignominious failure in his thirties, he dumped the drink down the sink, saying, Make it yourself if it is not right.¹⁷ Just as he finished the sentence, his mother slapped his face, declaring, And don’t waste good whiskey.¹⁸

Besides homemaking and the church, Steve’s mother had an artistic side, painting delicate flowers on pieces of china. She used Limoges blanks, mainly cups, saucers, and small dishes. Aunt Jo used her hand-painted china as dinner settings for her friends and as small gifts for friends and family. Her handiwork has been preserved by several relatives. One preserved piece was a moustache cup for Steve’s uncle Mark⁴, married to his father’s sister, Katherine Kate Miller.⁵ The mustache cup had a lip across the top to help a mustache remain dry when drinking hot liquids.

Steve was his mother’s favorite, and she was always available to him for advice, comfort, and a word of encouragement. His soul was more important to his mother than his fame and success. Aunt Jo, as a good Catholic mother with a strong Irish heritage, always hoped and prayed that one day Steve would become a good Catholic man and maybe, God willing, a priest. As we shall later see, the priesthood was not for her son.

Aunt Jo always made sure that Steve was turned out in his finest clothes, with his hair slicked down and his manners in place. As the youngegst child, Steve was pampered and smoothered with his mother’s love. He was known, as a rejolt, as a goody two-shoes to other neighborhood children. For Steve, the most important lesson from his mother was her wise advice to please others. She encouraged him to avoid the pranks and fights of his classmates at St. Anne’s. It was her tutelage that taught him how to make his way in life by pleasing others and avoiding trouble.

One of the obvious traits of Steve’s close ties to his mother was that many of his closest friends were women. It was his attachment to his mother that would remain steadfast to the end of his and his mother’s life. Even though he was a denizen of New York society, he was to be buried next to her in the family plot in St. Anne’s Parish Cemetery on the south end of Bloody Plank Road.

William Uncle Billy Hannagan

William Hannagan, Steve’s father and Uncle Billy to his pals and coworkers, was a small, wiry man with sparkling eyes and a splendidly bushy mustache. As mentioned before, Aunt Jo made several moustache cups⁶ for him with an inner lip to keep his moustache dry. Suspenders held his pants loosely from his shoulders, making look him as if he were wearing an old feed sack.

Uncle Billy’s father, Patrick Hannagan, was an Irish citizen who crossed into this country from Quebec. Like many Irish of his era, he left Ireland to escape the devastating potato famines of the 1840s. Patrick Hannagan died soon after the Civil War without any evidence he had participated in the war. In 1870, Uncle Billy’s mother, Johanna Kelley Hannagan, died, leaving five children, including Uncle Billy, to fend for themselves.⁷ Despite their childhood impoverishment, they led happy lives and found good work and good spouses. Two of Uncle Billy’s siblings died young from minor illnesses, a common occurrence prior to modern medical practices.⁸

Early in life, Uncle Billy regularly imbibed Irish dew and frequented many of Lafayette’s saloons, holding court at the Democratic Party Hall, telling Irish tales with a rich Irish dialect. He charmed his friends with his stories of the old sod, which he had apparently learned from his father and mother. His favorite storytelling venue was the saloon owned by his brother, Steve Hannagan.

Uncle Steve was an esteemed member of the Democratic Party and held numerous political offices in Lafayette. His saloon, conveniently located across the street from the Tippecanoe County Courthouse, was his bailiwick for the various offices that he held. Many children of Irish immigrants, like Uncle Steve, climbed the ladder of success within the friendly climes and ward healing of the Democratic Party. The party helped these descendants of Ireland escape the anti-Irish prejudice that had confined the hated Micks to Irish ghettos like Bloody Plank Road. The Democratic Party granted the perquisites of political power to Irish-Americans because the close-knit Irish families reliably delivered the necessary votes keeping the party in power.

As a favored member of the party, Uncle Steve found jobs for his family and their children, giving them a lift up the ladder. In one instance, Uncle Steve arranged for his nephew Harry Hannagan, blind since childhood, to hold the job of supervisor of weights and measures for the city. Sometimes in politics, the holding of the job was more important than doing the job!

By the time Steve was born, his father had taken the pledge and became a teetotaller. He still liked the conviviality of a saloon, however, especially his brother’s. Steve’s father would take him to Uncle Steve’s, set him on the bar, and give him a nip of Irish whiskey. He thought that it was good for the health of Irish lads to have a taste of the dew. Plus, it gave little Steve distance from his mother’s unceasing efforts to make him into a saintly young boy and maybe even a future priest.

Uncle Billy was a patternmaker at an iron foundry for the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville Railway Company, also called the Monon Railroad.⁹ Later, he moved to an independent foundry. Patternmakers fashioned molds to cast hot metal in the form of tools and other necessities in manufacturing and in repairing rail engines and industrial machines. During slack time at work, he often made castings of dogs, cats, and pigs¹⁰ for his friends and family. Some were simple doorstops, while others were nutcrackers or decorative knickknacks with no particular purpose.

Because Steve’s father had a valuable trade, the Hannagan family did not fit the mold of the stereotypical impoverished Irish families of the early 1900s. Prior to World War I, William Hannagan’s pay averaged fifteen dollars per week, which was good pay for a working man of that era. During the war, his pay shot up to seventy-five dollars per week. Aunt Jo, a frugal woman, took her husband’s pay and doled out three dollars per week for him to spend at his pleasure as long as he did not come home broke the night after a convivial night of beer and storytelling at his brother’s saloon. She kept the rest of the money for family expenses, keeping enough aside to dote on Steve and his brothers, especially taking care that they were well-appointed in their dress for school and church.

Uncle Billy was a quiet man who wanted his sons, especially his favorite son Steve, to learn the ways of the world and how to handle people. He feared that Aunt Jo was making them soft and that Steve and his brother would lack the keen edge needed to survive and succeed.

Steve’s father was not an ignorant man. He kept pace with the world with his daily reading regimen of morning and afternoon newspapers fresh off the trains from Chicago, Indianapolis, and other major regional cities in the Midwest, keeping a stack of newspapers and magazines next to his chair waiting for him. Steve and his brother Frank also read their father’s papers and learned that there was more to life than the shenanigans on Bloody Plank Road. Uncle Billy would take the two boys aside and, using what he read in the papers and his own experiences, would set his boys straight on how the world really worked. Through his father’s insights, Steve mastered the art of how to understand the world and how to motivate people to do what he wanted done.¹⁹

As Steve’s father worked with him to navigate the ways of the world, his mother nurtured him with praise and support to encourage him to do well. Both parents had a profound impact on Steve by giving him basic virtues of trust, honesty, and fair dealing that served him well and were the cornerstones of his success.

The Hannagan Home

The Hannagan home¹¹ was located at 259 Green Street in Lafayette, Indiana, just off Bloody Plank Road after crossing the main tracks of the Monon and Big Four Railroads. These tracks carried high-speed passenger express trains heading to Chicago, Indianapolis, and other points in the Midwest. Also near the Hannagan home were the main switching and repair yards for the Monon Railroad. Crossing the tracks took care and agility because train traffic was constant and warnings could be missed. The Hannagan family knew too well the dangers posed by these tracks because their beloved Uncle Charlie Hannagan, a train dispatcher for the Monon, was killed near their home in 1912. He died after he handed train orders to the engineer of a Big Four freight train and stepped directly into the path of a switch engine on a freight run. His wife saw his gory death while waiting to give him his lunch pail. This sad story was passed down through several generations of Hannagan women, who treated it as a precautionary story for their children that unpredictable dangers lurked everywhere.

Steam engines were not only dangerous to life and limb; they also spewed coal ash and grime as they passed the homes on Green Street. Homemakers like Johanna Hannagan must have been driven to distraction keeping her home tidy and her lace curtains clean. She successfully battled the grime of the railroad; pictures show the Hannagan house as a modest and neat two-story, one-bay white clapboard-style home. It was a practical home with few frills for a family that the Irish community saw as lace-curtain¹² and not shanty¹³ Irish. The latter lived further down Bloody Plank Road nearer the red-light district and saloons.

Besides the danger of the trains, there were springtime floods from the Wabash that regularly inundated the homes