It’s April 19, 2024—71 years since Ronald Tammen disappeared from Miami University—and it’s wonderful to see you again. I’m truly honored that you’ve made a point to stop by this website on this day to see if there are any updates concerning the story of Ronald Tammen. It’s taken us seven years to develop the level of trust we have going on here and I will do my best not to disappoint.
And we do have updates.
Today’s topic has to do with an elephant that’s been occupying the room since this time last year, when I broke the news that, shortly before he disappeared, Ronald Tammen had cashed a check written on Oxford National Bank by a woman named Dorothy Craig, a long-time employee at Champion Paper and Fibre Company, in Hamilton, Ohio. My theory was, and still is, that someone from Champion—quite possibly its President Reuben B. Robertson, Jr.—had helped fund the work of St. Clair Switzer in Miami’s Department of Psychology and had assigned check-writing duties to Dorothy.
But, as I say, there’s a ginormous question wafting in the breeze that’s in need of some attention. It concerns how a person who’d been politely described by one colleague as “somewhat brusque”; another colleague as “difficult,” “very private,” “very military,” and “not overly friendly,”; and another colleague as “not one of everybody’s favorites” would have intersected with the warm, gracious, and perpetually personable Reuben Robertson, Jr., whose principal interest was papermaking and whose office was 11 or so miles from Oxford on North B Street in Hamilton.
No, I’m serious—how did the paths of these two total opposites cross?
Doc Switzer’s life consisted mainly of his faculty position at the university as well as periodic stints with the Air Force Reserves. Otherwise, as far as I can tell, he didn’t socialize much. He wasn’t a member of any men’s groups like the Kiwanis Club or the Rotary Club or the Y. He didn’t seem to have outside hobbies, such as woodworking or photography, nor did he engage in sports like bowling or tennis. He didn’t mentor young children or some other noble cause that would put him in touch with fellow members of his community.
When he was an undergraduate at Miami, St. Clair Switzer had joined a fraternity, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, and according to a bio written after he died, he served for a time as president. Letters he wrote to mentors and fellow grad students during his young and hungry years sound perfectly congenial. He even had a sense of humor. But people change as they grow older. Some people mellow. Others become full of themselves. Still others, resentful. I think Doc had developed into a toxic blend of the latter two by the time he reached 50, when Ron was a student at Miami.
Doc Switzer wasn’t a chit chatter. He didn’t confide. One of his students said he gave off impatient vibes when she stepped into his office seeking advice. Maybe I’m being too harsh, but I can’t exactly picture him smiling at a stranger on the street or taking a quick break from whatever he was doing to pat a dog on the head. Switzer’s social interactions consisted mainly of the everyday maneuverings of work, whether in Old Main (aka the old Harrison Hall), where the psychology department was located, or on some military base. At the university, he attended departmental meetings, he served on committees, and he taught. While doing so, he tended to make lower-level people feel smaller while kowtowing to the bigwigs.
But despite Doc’s deference to people in power, I can’t envision him picking up a phone and cold-calling Reuben Robertson, Jr., to see if he might be willing to support a government project involving Ron Tammen. He was more of a letter writer than a cold caller, and this wasn’t the sort of ask that could be put into writing. Plus, how would he have known that Reuben Robertson might be a good fit?
No, in order for Doc Switzer to come into contact with Reuben B. Robertson, Jr., or one of the top-tier managers at Champion Paper, I’m inclined to think that it would’ve happened in a manner that was more organic and less, um…weird. Put simply, I think someone probably served as a go-between.
But who? For starters, I think the middleperson would have to be someone who did get out into the community. They’d be someone who genuinely liked people and enjoyed reaching out to a fellow human and getting to know them. In addition to their general outgoing nature, I can think of three primary criteria for this person: 1) I think they’d have to be familiar with Doc Switzer or at least have a warm spot in their heart for Miami’s psychology department; 2) It would be helpful if they served in the military—WWII ideally—with bonus points if they had connections at the tip top levels of national security or intelligence or even the White House; and 3) Most of all, I think they’d have to be on a first-name basis with one or more officials at Champion Paper and Fibre.
I can think of two such individuals.
Before we continue, I’d like to state unequivocally that the two people I’m about to name, now deceased, were well known and highly respected in their fields. Also, we don’t know for sure whether one of these persons stepped in as a middleperson between St. Clair Switzer and Champion Paper and Fibre. We only know that, given their visibility and business connections, it’s possible that one of them was involved. Also, if either of them did provide a personal link between Switzer and Champion Paper, they would have believed they were doing so in service to the U.S. government, as their patriotic duty. Plus, there’s no law against it.
And so, here we go: let’s talk about the two common denominators who had the means and wherewithal to help Doc Switzer get from Point A, a prickly psychology professor in need of funding for a secret government project involving Ronald Tammen, to Point B, or, rather, North B Street, in the Office of the President at Champion Paper and Fibre.
The two people we’ll be discussing today are John F. Mee and John E. Dolibois (pronounced DOLL-uh-boy], both of whom were esteemed alumni of Miami University. Interestingly, both men also happened to be psychology majors when St. Clair Switzer was a member of the faculty.
Note that we’ll be primarily focusing on the period of time leading up to 1953, when Dorothy Craig wrote a check to Ron Tammen. To learn more about each man’s life, both of which were full and fascinating, I’ve provided links to their university bios below their background write-ups.
First, a little background on John F. Mee and John E. Dolibois:
John Frederick Mee
John F. Mee was born on July 10, 1908. He grew up on a farm in Darrtown, Ohio, a rural community about 5 miles outside of Oxford. His family was wealthy, thanks in large part to Mee’s grandfather and namesake, who raised stock (cattle and such) and was good with money. But just as money has never solved everything, it managed to instill some father-son tension between Mee and his dad. Mee’s father, R. Kirk Mee I, was a cowboy-hat-wearing character who enjoyed rubbing elbows with politicians great and small. (He looked almost exactly like Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard, which is kind of amazing since he predated that show by more than three decades.) FDR visited their house when Roosevelt was a nominee for vice president. Although Kirk Mee held respectable positions—he was the sergeant at arms for the Ohio Senate under two governors and he even ran for the Ohio Senate himself in 1942—his son John, perhaps unfairly, felt that his father lacked the drive to pursue a career in which he would generate his own wealth. He was always closer to his mother. (You can find photos of the Mee family, including R. Kirk Mee I and John F. Mee as a young man on this webpage.)
Mee was six years and one day younger than St. Clair Switzer, who was born in 1902. As an undergrad at Miami, he’d been an assistant in the psychology department’s experimental laboratory, which is how he and Switzer had gotten to know each other. They were practically contemporaries. Mee graduated from Miami in 1930, just as Switzer was completing his first year as an instructor. Thinking he wanted to be a psychology professor too, Mee went on to obtain a master’s degree in psychology at the University of Maine. He was on track to pursue a Ph.D. in psychology at Ohio State, when something fluky happened. He was visiting the campus to sign up for graduate courses, but first stopped off at the business school to say hello to someone. As it turned out, the business school professors liked him and made an offer he couldn’t refuse. He took classes while serving as placement director at Ohio State. In 1939, Mee was hired as the placement director at Indiana University’s School of Business in Bloomington as well as assistant professor of management. Strangely enough, he didn’t earn his Ph.D. from Ohio State until 20 years later, in 1959, which was…unbelievably late. (To be honest, I thought it was a typo in his bio, but I guess life had gotten in the way for him. That, plus the rules were laxer back then.) Nevertheless, it didn’t seem to tarnish his career, as you’ll soon see.
A photo of John F. Mee from a 1940 news clipping can be found here:
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-indianapolis-star/145625208
John Ernest Dolibois
John E. Dolibois was born on December 4, 1918, in Luxembourg, the youngest of eight children. Tragically, his mother had died of the Spanish flu shortly after his birth, so he never really knew her. Though he recalled his childhood as a happy one, the family experienced a lot of hardship. In 1931, his father decided to start a new life in the United States. John’s oldest sister had moved to the States after marrying an American soldier she’d met during WWI, and his father decided that he and young John should join them. Their ship arrived in New York Harbor on the most iconic day possible—the fourth of July. John and his father settled in the North Hill community of Akron, Ohio, a historically multicultural neighborhood that had been a welcoming destination for immigrants and refugees since WWI. It still is.
Dolibois was a quick study in his new country. He mastered English early on through the sink-or-swim method, and, by high school, he’d managed to rise to the top of his class. He was voted senior class president, and, come graduation time, he was also named valedictorian. (He graduated in 1938 at the age of 19, so he was a little older than his classmates.) Dolibois never passed up an opportunity to praise the organization that he believed helped him adapt so well to his new country: the Boy Scouts. He adored scouting. He became an Eagle Scout—the president of Goodyear Tire and Rubber pinned on his badge—and he went on to help mentor other Boy Scouts for the rest of his life. In an interview conducted in September 2006, he proudly stated that he was still involved in scouting—he was 87—and was the oldest registered “scouter” in his community.
Dolibois continued to excel after high school. His brains and exceptional people skills helped him obtain a four-year scholarship to Miami University. He joined the fraternity Beta Theta Pi, where he would become president of that organization too. Although he was a psychology major, he decided to load up on business courses during his senior year, and, after his graduation in 1942, he was hired as a management trainee with Procter and Gamble.
But the year 1942 had other plans in store for men of a certain age. John Dolibois and John Mee, not to mention St. Clair Switzer and Reuben B. Robertson, Jr., would leave their positions to serve their country in WWII. That momentous war, which we’ll discuss more shortly, would be a turning point for both men.
A photo of Dolibois from a 1950 news clipping can be found here:
https://www.newspapers.com/article/madison-county-democrat/145624622
Criterion 1: Ties to Doc Switzer and Miami’s psychology department
John Dolibois
It’s unclear how well John Dolibois might have known Doc Switzer during his undergraduate years. The only thing we know for sure is that Dolibois was a psychology major, so he most likely knew the department chair, Everett Patten, as well as a few other professors in the department. Although it’s probable that he would have met Switzer then, it doesn’t really matter. In 1947, Dolibois was hired as the first alumni secretary for Miami University. It was in his job description to know the university’s programs inside and out as well as any of its funding needs. It was also his job to tie potential alumni donors to those needs. So even if John Dolibois didn’t know St. Clair Switzer all that well from his undergraduate days, and we don’t know that that’s the case, he would have at least been acquainted with him through his position at the university. And if Doc Switzer was experiencing a funding need, John Dolibois would have likely been brought into the loop.
John Mee
We already know that John Mee and St. Clair Switzer knew each other at least somewhat, since Mee was an assistant in the psychology laboratory when Switzer was a newly hired instructor. But I also have evidence that he and Switzer were friends, and that friendship continued until at least July 1950, when Mee wrote a letter to Doc. Among other details, Mee told Switzer that he’d be visiting Darrtown for three weeks in August, and that he planned to help Switzer paint his house during that time. He credited Switzer with influencing his career path in management, telling him with an implied wink, “Looks like you may have started me on a steady job.” In addition, Mee let Doc know that he’d provided a “glowing letter of recommendation” to the University of Tennessee for him, so apparently Doc was putting out feelers again. Finally, Mee had just edited a book, titled “Personnel Handbook,” and Doc had authored the chapter on testing. Mee wanted to bring him up to speed on that endeavor as well.
In 1961, after receiving a promotion to be the Mead Johnson Professor of Management at Indiana University, John Mee donated $1000 to Miami’s psychology department, an amount that would exceed $10,000 in today’s dollars. According to a news article, an accompanying letter he’d written to Switzer and Patten said that: “While he had ‘some very superior teachers’ in many fields at Miami as an undergraduate, ‘the giant step in my education and eventual decision to enter the academic profession’ had resulted from his association with Switzer and Patten in the psychology laboratory.” In 1962, he donated another $500 to Miami’s psychology department.
So, I think we can say with confidence that both John Dolibois and John Mee were well acquainted with St. Clair Switzer and/or Miami’s Department of Psychology at the time that Dorothy Craig wrote a check to Ronald Tammen.
Moving on to Criterion 2…
Criterion 2: Ties to WWII and national security, intelligence, or the White House
John Dolibois
John Dolibois had perhaps one of the more extraordinary experiences during WWII, as he would eventually come face to face with some of the most notoriously hard-core Nazis the world has known. Because of his language skills—he was fluent in German, as well as French and Luxembourgish—he was transferred to military intelligence (known as G-2) and sent to Camp Ritchie in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Maryland, to receive specialized training in the interrogation of prisoners of war. (He was one of the celebrated “Ritchie Boys.”) Dolibois was soon part of the Army’s elite group known as the IPW (Interrogation Prisoners of War), and he became so expert in the methods of interrogation that he was called upon to train others in the skill as well.
In May 1945, after V-E Day, Dolibois was chosen for a special assignment: to interrogate some of the highest-level Nazi prisoners in preparation for the first trial at Nuremberg. Working for the Nazi War Crimes Commission, he was stationed at the Central Continental Prisoners of War Enclosure 32, which, serendipitously, was a location he knew well as a child. The POW enclosure had formerly been a resort known as the Palace Hotel of Mondorf-de-Bains, in Luxembourg. When Dolibois arrived, the once magnificent edifice had been made over into a bare-bones prison, with armed guards, barbed wire, and the sparest of accommodations. In an open swipe to the people who were interred there, it was given the nickname Camp Ashcan. Dolibois’ job was to engage with the Nazi prisoners, encouraging them to talk about their horrific deeds throughout the war so that the War Crimes Commission could determine who should be tried before the International Military Tribunal. Dolibois’ people skills came through for him again. Referring to himself as Lieutenant John Gillen—he decided it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to give the Nazis his actual name—he came to be known as a listening ear, earning the prisoners’ trust, and often getting them to dish on each other. Among the prisoners he would come to know were Hermann Goering, Karl Doenitz, Hans Frank, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Robert Ley, Julius Streicher, Alfred Jodl, and Alfred Rosenberg.
After 24 prisoners had been identified for indictment, they were moved to Nuremberg Prison in preparation for the first trial. Dolibois was transferred there as well and put in charge of prisoner morale. Because of his translation skills, his overall likability, and perhaps a little of the psychology he’d learned in college, he assisted Army psychiatrist Douglas M. Kelley as Kelley analyzed the prisoners to ensure they were mentally fit to stand trial. (Kelley’s tragic story is detailed in the book The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, by Jack El-Hai, which is currently being made into a film starring Russell Crowe and Rami Malek.) Dolibois left Nuremberg Prison in October 1945, ahead of the first trial, though he attended several of the sessions.
Interestingly, during his time at Camp Ashcan, Dolibois also got to know a man named General “Wild Bill” Donovan, director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which oversaw U.S. intelligence activities during the war. In his post-wartime role, Donovan became involved in the interrogation procedures that Dolibois and others were doing. In his book “Pattern of Circles,” Dolibois said that Donovan “spent a lot of time with us. He stressed the techniques of getting and evaluating information. We were urged time and again to study closely the personal relations of the various internees with a view of playing them off against each other.” Donovan, who had a degree from Columbia Law School, also served as assistant to Robert H. Jackson, a Supreme Court justice who was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. After the war, the OSS was disbanded, but reemerged in 1947 as the CIA, though Donovan had moved on to other legal pursuits.
After Dolibois’ time in the war had ended, he went back to Procter and Gamble. He’d been placed in their Fatty Acid Division to handle personnel matters, but his heart wasn’t in it. He was an extrovert of the highest magnitude, and he needed his innate skills as a networker extraordinaire to be put to use. He was approached by a friend with strong Miami connections about a new position that he felt Dolibois would be perfect for: alumni secretary. Dolibois threw his hat into the ring, and of course he got the job, beginning May 1, 1947. Because this was the first time the university had such a position, the people in charge of the purse strings didn’t understand why he’d need a budget to cover the costs of travel and refreshments—two essential line items for anyone who hoped to foster fruit-bearing relations between a university and its graduates. Dolibois soon began giving talks about his experiences in WWII—with provocative titles such as “Recollections of an Interrogator” and “I Knew the Top Nazis”—and donating his speaker earnings to his alumni activities. In doing so, he also managed to build a highly visible brand for himself in communities throughout the tri-state area and well beyond.
Several news articles describing Dolibois’ WWII experiences mentioned that he held a reserve commission as captain, including one article that was written on February 27, 1953. I presume he still held his reserve commission at the time that Dorothy Craig wrote a check to Ronald Tammen.
John Mee
John Mee’s experience in WWII focused less on Nazis per se and more on the staffing of a U.S. Army that, in the build-up to America’s entry into the war, had been multiplying exponentially. After stepping away from his responsibilities at Indiana University in the spring of 1941, he was doing for the Army what he did for IU’s graduating business majors: finding the right person for the job. Specifically, his role was the commissioning of officers, which he did in the Office of the Adjutant General in Washington, D.C.
Mee, who started out at the bottom of the ladder, found a way to quickly move up: by making himself into an authority. He studied up on pertinent topics that no one else knew much about…topics like whether a person could become an officer if they’d been convicted of a felony or if they weren’t a natural-born citizen. In an oral history interview he gave in 1985, he said “…then I learned something that I didn’t know. You know, I was a psychologist. People, when they got accustomed to coming to you for one thing, they started coming to you for other things.” As a result of his self-made indispensability, he was put in charge of the appointments section, which, according to Mee, was responsible for the commissioning of officers for the entire Army, “from the military cadets at West Point to the ROTCs to the training courses,” etc.
Mee eventually tired of D.C. though. He didn’t want to have to go back to Indiana University without having seen some overseas action. He requested to be transferred to the Army Air Corps and was named assistant chief of staff in charge of personnel at the European Wing of the Air Transport Command. He later went on to become chief of military personnel in the entire Air Transport Command. By the war’s end, he was a colonel who’d been stationed in Europe, India, China, and the Philippines.
When Mee returned to Indiana after the war, things had changed for him and the other faculty members who’d served. He could no longer live the simple, genteel life of a professor in a quaint college town. Once the military knew where he lived, they didn’t forget.
Said Mee: “…they traipsed up and down the corridors, knocking on the doors, see, because here’s where the knowledge was. And they drew those college professors out of those classrooms to give them knowledge in psychology, botany, _____ business, anything, see. And the college professors came back to their classrooms and offices, but the doors remained open, see. And today, see, in many areas the college professors have one foot on the campus and one foot in the government, or one foot in the firms, you see, and all this. See, the World War II spoiled the dreamy life of a college professor.”
He said that in 1985. Imagine what it was like in 1953.
In 1950, Mee was approached by someone he’d met while he was in the Air Transport Command, a man by the name of Donald Dawson. Although Dawson was born the same year as Mee, he was rather low in the Army’s hierarchy, a second lieutenant compared to Mee’s lieutenant colonel. Nevertheless, Mee was nice to Dawson.
“I took care of him,” he said, and Dawson hadn’t forgotten about that kindness.
After FDR died early in his final term of office, Harry Truman became president. Truman apparently didn’t give a rat’s patooty about military hierarchy as far as the Oval Office was concerned. Somehow, some way, Donald Dawson became one of his six principal assistants.
After his election to a second term, Truman felt he needed new ideas for presidential appointees. He wanted to put politics aside and find the names of actual experts in the various areas of specialization. He turned to Dawson to head up a group that would propose and vet the experts’ names, and in May 1950, John Mee was called upon to serve as the staff director. The group was referred to as the Little Cabinet, and it included such heavy hitters as the deputy undersecretary of state, the assistant attorney general, the assistant secretary of labor, the assistant secretary of the Air Force, and the assistant secretary of the Army.
According to Mee, the group needed to find people to fill hundreds of posts, including the head of the Atomic Energy Commission, the Civil Service Commission, and many others. Mee would scour his contacts and his contacts’ contacts for the right people with the right credentials and give the name or names to Dawson. Then this convo would happen:
“He’d say, ‘Do you know him?’”
“And I’d say, ‘Yah.’”
“’Well, call him up and see if he’ll serve,’ you see.”
“So I’d call the guy up and he’d…of course, they all say ‘yes’ and that, because everybody wants to have a presidential appointment. And then they’d come in and meet Dawson. And if Dawson approved them, they’d get about ten minutes with President Truman, and never see him again, you see, but then start off to be these other things.“
Mee served in this capacity from May 1950 until the end of Truman’s second term, which was officially January 1953, likely a few months before Dorothy Craig wrote a check to Ronald Tammen. But that doesn’t mean Washington had forgotten about John Mee or that he’d stopped caring about topics of national import. In early July 1954, Mee was under consideration for the position of assistant secretary of the Air Force. I kid you not. He’d traveled to D.C. to meet on the matter with Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson and Air Secretary Harold Talbott, an aviation engineer and industrialist with strong ties to Dayton, Ohio. (Talbott had worked alongside Orville Wright!) Mee would have accepted the job too—he said so when his possible nomination was made public. To quote the news article:
“’It depends upon my clearance and the approval of the two senators from Indiana,’ Mee said. ‘If everything goes through, and it is agreeable with Indiana University, I will accept.’”
Something must have gotten in the way though because, as it turns out, he didn’t get the job. A guy named Lyle Garlock became assistant secretary instead.
One last thing: Remember John Mee’s letter to Doc Switzer? It was written on July 30, 1950. So, John Mee, who was serving as the staff director of President Truman’s Little Cabinet, had written a letter to Doc Switzer at that time, letting him know that A) he’d be spending three weeks in Darrtown in August, and B) he was still planning to help Doc paint his house. Props for that.
Moving along to Criterion 3…
Criterion 3: Ties to Champion Paper and Fibre
Perhaps the most critical question we need to ask on this blog post is: did John Dolibois and/or John Mee know someone important at Champion Paper and Fibre at the time in which Dorothy Craig wrote a check to Ronald Tammen? Because without a previous relationship, there’s no introduction to St. Clair Switzer, and with no introduction to Switzer, well, there’s no check from Dorothy.
John Dolibois
Obviously, Miami University officials knew all about Champion Paper and Fibre Company. The earliest example of a working relationship that I’m able to find is that Alexander Thomson, Sr.—chairman of the board of directors at Champion, son of Champion founder Peter G. Thomson, and husband of Mary Dabney Thomson—was a member of Miami’s Board of Trustees beginning in June 1938. His term was supposed to last until 1947, however he abruptly died from complications of pneumonia one year later, in June 1939. Then there’s Mary Dabney Thomson, who was connected to Champion by way of her marriage to Alexander Thomson, Sr., and who’d served as president of the Western College for Women, just across the road from Miami University, from 1941 to 1945. But those obvious ties precede John Dolibois’ hiring as alumni secretary in 1947, and I doubt that Dolibois knew Alexander and Mary Dabney Thomson when he was a student at Miami.
But Dolibois did know several officials at Champion Paper, and he knew them quite well, thanks to the Boy Scouts. Despite evidence of earlier attempts by others, Dolibois is credited with organizing the first Boy Scout troop in Oxford—Troop #30—soon after he arrived at Miami in the fall of 1938. In 1939, he was named its scoutmaster. (He would have been named scoutmaster sooner, but there was a rule that you had to be 21.) In the summers of 1940 and 1941, during Dolibois’ junior and senior years, he was the camp director for the Fort Hamilton Boy Scout Camp, a 50-acre rental property near Somerville. During that same period, he was hired as a “cubbing commissioner,” and he traveled around Hamilton and organized Cub Scout packs in the elementary schools. He’d been hired for both positions by the Fort Hamilton Boy Scout Council, which oversaw all scout troops in the region, and which, at that time, was led by two Champion officials: Calvin Skillman, who was president of the executive committee, and Alexander Thomson, Jr., who was vice president.
This is probably a very good time to say that Champion Paper LOVED the Scout program. The company believed so hard in scouting that it sponsored its own Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, and it even had its own camp on Darrtown Pike, Camp Chapaco. The company’s news magazine, The Log, celebrated scouting’s 40th and 50th anniversaries with splashy spreads that drew praise from the Boy Scouts of America’s (BSA’s) PR director and the regional executive of the BSA’s National Council.
Let’s get back to 1940 and 1941 when Dolibois was by and large working for Calvin Skillman and Alexander Thomson, Jr. It’s pretty obvious who Alexander Thomson, Jr., was: he was Alexander Thomson, Sr.’s and Mary Dabney Thomson’s son, and a vice president of Champion Paper and Fibre. As it turns out, Alexander Sr. had also been a big proponent of scouting, so Alexander Jr. had ostensibly picked up the reins from his father. Sadly, Alexander Jr. passed away from a recurring illness in 1944, five days before his 36th birthday.
Dwight Thomson, son of Alexander Sr.’s brother Logan Thomson and another of Peter G. Thomson’s grandsons, would carry on the Boy Scout tradition—perhaps more enthusiastically than anyone else in the family. In 1950, he served on the development committee for the Fort Hamilton Council’s new camp lodge at Camp Myron Kahn, the council’s official camp that had opened in 1942, and he spoke at its dedication on Sunday, June 24, 1951. He was president of the executive board in 1954 and ‘55, both of which Dolibois sat on. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, both Thomson and Dolibois sat on the executive boards of the Fort Hamilton Boy Scout Council and, after 1959, the Dan Beard Council, based in Cincinnati, when the two councils had merged. In 1965, Dwight Thomson was named president of the Dan Beard Council. By that time, his credentials included serving as chair of region IV, which encompassed Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia, and sitting on the National Executive Board.
What I’m trying to say here is that John Dolibois and Dwight Thomson were both very passionate about scouting in the 1950s and 60s (and beyond), and even though I haven’t been able to locate any pics of them sitting at the same table at some 1952 chicken dinner or solemnly standing side by side at some circa 1953 awards ceremony, I have documents putting them on the same council in 1954, with Thomson serving as president. Do I think that John Dolibois, former director at the Fort Hamilton Boy Scout Camp, attended the dedication of Camp Myron Kahn’s new lodge in June of 1951? I do! Do I wish a newspaper photographer had snapped a candid shot of him chatting away with Dwight Thomson as evidence? I wish that very much! Nevertheless, I’m positive they knew each other by the time Dorothy Craig wrote a check to Ronald Tammen.
As for Calvin Skillman—Cal to his friends and colleagues—he’d managed to work his way up into the upper echelons of the company despite his not having the last name of Thomson or Robertson. In 1940, while he was presiding over the Fort Hamilton Boy Scout Council, he was the personnel manager at Champion. In 1945, he was supervisor of employee relations. In 1949, he was named assistant director of public relations, working directly under Dwight Thomson, who was vice president in charge of Industrial and Public Relations. Skillman was also serving in an editorial role for The Log during those years. In 1947, he was managing editor, in 1948, he was editor, and in April 1953, at the time when Dorothy Craig wrote a check to Ron Tammen, Cal Skillman was still assistant director of PR and one of three editorial advisors for The Log. The other two were Reuben B. Robertson, Jr., and Dwight Thomson.
Something else I find interesting about Cal Skillman is that he was in the same class as Dorothy Craig at Hamilton High School—the graduating class of 1920. Granted, Dorothy dropped out after her sophomore year, but I’m sure that the two of them knew each other fairly well, especially since they’d worked for the same employer, in the same building, for years.
I’ve made a couple other discoveries worth noting about Champion Paper and Miami University—discoveries that happened long after Dorothy Craig wrote a check to Ron Tammen. One is that Champion Paper and Fibre was a leading fundraiser for Miami University’s Hamilton campus in 1966. Remember Karl Bendetsen, the man who’d overseen the deplorable internment camps that imprisoned Japanese Americans during WWII, who went on to become president of Champion Paper after Reuben B. Robertson, Jr., was killed in a traffic accident? Bendetsen organized a fundraising effort in which Champion Paper offered matching funds of up to $250,000 toward the university’s million-dollar campaign.
Another fascinating tidbit is that Karl Bendetsen’s former home, which had been nearly decimated in a fire on January 24, 1961, was rebuilt and, according to information gleaned from two news articles, had been donated to the Miami University Foundation in 1969 by the Champion Paper Foundation, a charitable arm of the company that was established in 1952. The university used Bendetsen’s former home as a conference center for several years before selling it in 1973.
John F. Mee
We’ve already established that John Mee was the director of placement in the business schools of two large state universities—first at The Ohio State University and then at Indiana University, where he was also a professor of management. The job of a placement officer is to get to know people in corporations and industries where students can seek employment. He was from SW Ohio. He would have made it his business to know whom to call on at Champion Paper and Fibre.
Also, featured on page 777 of John Mee’s “Personnel Handbook” is a reproduced letter from Reuben Robertson, Sr., to “All Champion Employees.” The letter was used as an example of the proper way for a business to communicate with its employees about controversial issues. (In Reuben Sr.’s case, he was discussing the Taft-Hartley Act.) So again, John F. Mee was well acquainted with the powers that be at Champion Paper.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Of course he was. But did he know anyone there really well, on a first-name basis?”
I believe he did, and evidence indicates that he knew the big cheese himself, Reuben Robertson, Jr. What’s more, I’d venture to say that, if John Mee had contacted Reuben Robertson, Jr., in early 1953 about the possibility of funding a government project led by his friend Lt. Col. St. Clair Switzer, Reuben might have felt as if he actually owed John a favor.
Here’s why:
John Mee had been named staff director for Truman’s Little Cabinet beginning in May 1950. Shortly thereafter, he was in Washington, D.C. brainstorming names for presidential appointees to run by Donald Dawson. In November 1950, the Wage Stabilization Board was completed. Do you remember who was appointed to the Wage Stabilization Board? Reuben Robertson, Jr., for one.
I believe that John Mee was the person who suggested Reuben Robertson, Jr.’s name for consideration to that board, and I also believe that John Mee was the person who called Reuben on the phone to ask if he’d be interested in serving. I also believe that this appointment made Reuben Robertson, Jr., much more of a household name to other agencies in need of smart and savvy people. After serving on the Wage Stabilization Board, Reuben was invited to be part of the Commerce Department’s Business Advisory Council (January 1953), the Mutual Security Agency’s lead representative in Germany to assess the economic situation there (February 1953), a member of a Hoover Commission task force to study the organization of the Department of Defense (January 1954), and last but not least, deputy secretary of defense (July 1955).
Thankfully, we actually have evidence to support this theory. Here’s a link to the subjects in the files of Martin L. Friedman at the Harry S. Truman Library.
Martin L. Whonow?, you may be asking. Sorry, I realize I’m introducing his name late in the game, but Martin L. Friedman was Donald Dawson’s go-to assistant on the Little Cabinet. Don’t worry—this takes nothing away from John Mee, who was still the staff director and still very much overseeing the process by which the names of potential appointees were added to the pool of candidates. According to an oral interview, Friedman appeared to handle most of the security issues—running the names of prospective nominees by the FBI and figuring out what to do based on the results. The reason I’m bringing up his name now, so late in the post, is that most of Friedman’s file folders have to do with the commissions and boards that required the Little Cabinet’s input. In box 7 is the Wage Stabilization Board.
So, I think it’s safe to conclude that the Little Cabinet was responsible for the presidential appointees on the Wage Stabilization Board, which means that John Mee was the person who called Reuben Robertson on the phone and asked him if he wanted to join. You might say that Reuben Robertson, Jr., entered the national arena thanks to John Mee.
I’m going to start wrapping things up here, even though I’m skipping over one additional criterion—that of a potential association with Oxford National Bank. In part 1 of my April 19, 2023, post, I talked about how both A.K. Morris (president of the bank) and Don Shera (vice president) had extremely close ties to Miami University that, at times, ventured into conflict-of-interest territory. There were a couple other people at the university with close ties to the bank as well, one of whom was Ron Tammen’s academic adviser, J.B. Dennison, who was on the bank’s board of directors when Ron disappeared.
I’d simply like to add that John F. Mee’s grandfather had been one of the founders of the Oxford National Bank. John’s younger brother, R. Kirk Mee II, would sit on its board of directors beginning in 1956.
There’s one final discovery about Oxford National Bank that I can’t keep to myself, even though it’s a little off topic. And that discovery is: At the time that Ron Tammen disappeared, one long-time Oxford National Bank employee had two sons, both of whom had very close ties to the FBI. One son had worked as a special agent in the Cincinnati field office for two years before quitting in 1952, the year before Ron disappeared. The other son, who was older, had become a special agent for the FBI in the late 1940s and he would continue his life-long career with them in Washington, D.C.
You’d think that they’d have an interest in Ron’s story, especially since both men were Miami graduates.
OK, I’ve probably said too much.
****
As always, I welcome your comments about any of the above. Because we are discussing people who are well known and because lots of people will be reading this post, I will be a little more selective in posting comments publicly. If I don’t post your comment on the website, I will respond to you directly by email. Thank you!
