Named For Detroiters: Edwin Denby and His Loyal City

While walking the dogs at Gabriel Richard Park, I noticed a bronze* triptych-y thing over a door to a nearby Art Deco building. The building, I learned, is the Brodhead Armory. It was built in 1930 to serve as a drill/training facility for the Navy. The armory, although not as well-known as some other endangered treasures, is considered to be one of the most important candidates in the city for historic preservation. Inside, it has incredible Works Progress Administration woodcarvings and murals.
*(Thanks to dETROITfUNK for pointing out that this is bronze, not copper as I originally wrote.)

But I digress...back to Edwin Denby. Here is the portal that caught my eye. It turns out to be a door to Detroit's past, not an actual door....a memorial to the man that Denby High School was named for.

Why is he here on this Navy building? The inscription tells the bare bones of the story:

SAILOR AND SOLDIER

MEMBER OF CONGRESS

SECRETARY OF THE NAVY

IN WAR AND IN PEACE HE

DEVOTED HIS LIFE TO HIS

FELLOWMEN AND TO THE

SERVICE OF HIS COUNTRY

THIS TRIBUTE TO HIS

NOBLE CHARACTER AND

UNSELFISH DEVOTION TO

DUTY IS PLACED HERE

BY HIS MANY FRIENDS

The untold part of the story is best explained by his Associated Press newspaper obituary.

EDWIN DENBY, FORMER NAVY AIDE, IS DEAD

Heart Attack Is Fatal to Man Who Resigned in Oil Scandal.

{By The Associated Press.}

   Detroit, Feb. 8. - Edwin Denby, former secretary of the navy and one of the figures whose political careers were abruptly terminated by the Teapot Dome scandal, died at his home in the Whittier apartments here this morning. Death resulted from a heart attack.

   Following his resignation from the cabinet, the "sea going secretary of the navy" as he was termed, returned to Detroit and resumed his banking, industrial and legal activities.

   Denby arose as usual shortly before 8 o'clock this morning but complained of feeling ill. A physician was summoned but before he could arrive the former navy secretary was dead.

   After riding the crest of a wave of accomplishments that carried him to the cabinet of President Harding, Edwin Denby was drowned politically in the flood of oil scandal that boiled from the naval oil leases at Teapot Dome.

   One of the most popular men ever to sit as a member of an American president's cabinet, Denby virtually was compelled to resign the secretaryship of the navy in 1924 as part of the cabinet clean-up demanded when the country became aroused over the leases which led to the indictment for the conspiracy of Albert B. Fall, former secretary of the interior, and the oil men, Edward Doheny and Harry F. Sinclair.

Innocence is Claimed

   Unfortunate acquiesance rather than deliberate participation was the most for which Denby was blamed. He always insisted that his part in the leasing of the naval oil reserves was proper and for the best interests of the country.

   "Had I not taken the action I did," he said in a public address after he had resigned from the cabinet, "I would have been false to my trust and culpably negligent in the performance of my duties."

   Detroit, Denby's home town, long will remember Denby's return from Washington after he had quitted the cabinet with the gossip and condemnation of a nation sounding in his ears. He was feted as a hero, a day of celebration being climaxed by a great public banquet at which representative citizens sat and by their presence and by their words bespoke complete confidence in him.

Marines Express Confidence

   Tears glistened in the Denby eyes as he heard eulogistic words spoken that night. He all but broke down when three members of the Marine Corps - the branch of the service in which he enlisted as a private and rose to be a majority - walked up to him unannounced, saluted, spoke a few words of regard and confidence, turned on their heels, and marched out of the banquet hall.

   Whatever the nation may have thought, Denby never lost the esteem and faith of his townspeople. He had been out of the cabinet only a few months when he was chosen chairman of a $5,000,000 building program campaign of the Y.M.C.A.  He resumed his banking, industrial and legal connections and was strongly urged as a candidate for the United States senate.

   Denby's service to his country was full and varied. It ran the gamut from "gob" in the navy and "Devil Dog" in the Marine Corps to head of the navy department. His career, begun in his home state of Indiana, carried him to China, through the University of Michigan Law School, to fame as a Wolverine football star, to the decks of the U.S.S. Yosemite during the Spanish-American war, the Michigan legislature, to the national house of representatives, to important positions in Detroit's motor industry and to the cabinet.

   Denby was born in Evansville, Ind., Feb. 18, 1870, the son of Charles and Martha Fitch Denby. His father for many years was United States minister to China.

Eighty-six years ago today, the newspapers reported President Harding's announcement that he would appoint special counsel to investigate the Teapot Dome Leases. Denby resigned twenty-two days later, on his 54th birthday. History has shown his innocence. His actions in signing control of the oil leases over to the Secretary of the Interior were a result of concerns that the Navy would misuse the oil reserves. He seems to have genuinely thought that he was protecting the oil reserves and the people's ownership of them.

For more on Edwin Denby's story, including his inspirational speech to Marines charged with stopping attacks on the U.S. Mail,  and his legacy, read the Wikipedia article here. Denby High School has many interesting architectural details that are a tribute to Denby's service to the Navy.

The copper relief memorial was done by Samuel Cashwan, who was the head of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts, and also the head of Michigan's Works Progress Administration's sculpture and ceramics program, a very interesting fellow himself.