As we entered our seventh week yesterday, I found myself overwhelmed with the worries, the dust, the noise, the constant people, and, just the whole process through which—so far—we can’t really see a significant payoff. Today I’m trying to resurrect some sense of equanimity and refocus on how the results will be well worth the pain. And I just learned that we get a new toilet to replace the one we just installed in the basement! Why? The plumber accidentally cracked the tank while he was working to remove more of the old piping and installing new ones. It happens. What’s awesome is that he immediately went to get and install a replacement. These folks are great at service. I’ll catch up at little and shed some historical light on the “miracle” of asbestos.
We hit a slight delay last week because the team realized we had a real puzzle to install a powerful-enough range hood. Their solution meant the old pipes above the kitchen, which had been planned to be removed and replaced when we started the renovation of the master bathroom, had to be replaced ASAP to make room for the range hood ducting. That, in turn, meant the team couldn’t finish installing the walls in the kitchen and downstairs bathroom. That delay—which is perfectly understandable—helped increase my angst. The team warned us these would happen so I just have to learn to roll with it!
It is a beautiful day this last full week of May—80s, sunshine, and a light breeze. Our regular crew is finishing the exterior of the addition, including matching the paint to the rest of the exterior. They also painted the exterior wall with the back door out of courtesy and the ensuring cohesiveness of the rear view: very nice of them.
Of course now the rest of the house looks even worse because it badly needs a new paint job. Unfortunately the back yard will be a construction site at least until August, so we won’t be able to get paint crews in that area until then. We will explore options with potential painters.
In the best of worlds, we would re-roof the house before we painted, but we are going to forestall that because the roof tiles are asbestos and the quotes we received last year to remove the tiles was unbelievably outrageous—astronomical, actually. The 86-year-old roof, however is still solid, just as promised to homeowners of the 1920s and 1930s.
Asbestos shingles were lauded for being lightweight, “indestructible”, protecting the home from fire, and as beautiful as slate (it is not). During the construction of the nearby Sunnymede neighborhood beginning in 1925, developers and builders Whitcomb & Keller specifically highlighted the use of the new and fashionable shingles made with asbestos and concrete. Construction in the neighborhood included “new types of material (sic) new styles of brick and stucco, new roofing material such as copper clad shingles, multicolored and rough-texture asbestos shingles .…” (South Bend Tribune, 1925). Another ad highlighting the “highly restricted” house at the corner of Eddy and Wayne streets using “Johns Manville rough-texture shingles”. In fact, one of the first houses in Coquillard Woods that I have written about before, 1709 E. Madison, was also advertised with this miracle roofing that would “last indefinitely”. It was, at the time, as expensive as slate tile roofing.
Johns Manville, Inc., still exists today, but without the asbestos that first made the owners fabulously rich, and later forced the company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. For decades after the company learned that asbestos was making their employees sick in the late 1920s, it suppressed the reports, including from its own workers. Starting in the 1960s, however, the company faced thousands of lawsuits for asbestos related injuries, including lung cancer and mesothelioma. The company formed the Mansville Trust to pay injury claims and then emerged from bankruptcy (Thompson and Cole, 2007).
Back in the heyday of the 1920s, the use of asbestos had made the families of purveyors extremely wealthy. Asbestos was an every day item from gas-burner pads to even out heat (asbestos is nearly fireproof), to dining table pads to protect wood finish from hot serving dishes, to theatre curtains, to paint, and to roofing. When Thomas F. Manville died in 1925, his estate was $23,572,844, or $408,635,924 in today’s dollars (South Bend Tribune, 1935). How did this New-Yorker’s death make news in the South Bend Tribune? His two children and beneficiaries were big celebrities of the day. His daughter, Lorraine, was a theatre star and his son, Tommy, (likened by Rodgers to a current-day Kardashian) was a ne’er do well who was married a Guinness-World-Book-Record holding 13 times (Rodgers, 2018). His reported reasons for serial marriage were for two: first, it gained him notoriety, and second because his paternal grandfather, Charles Manville, had set up a trust fund to help his then teenage grandson “settle down”. In the trust, Charles promised to pay Tommy between $250,000 and $1,000,000 ($4.4 million to $17 million in today’s dollars) when he married. The trust didn’t, however, specify how often it would pay that marriage bounty, so when Tommy needed more money, he would find another woman to marry and paid the woman a portion of the proceeds (as well as increasing his alimony burden to previous wives).
Perhaps I should ask Tommy’s progeny, should there be any, to pay to remove my roof!
References:
Rodgers, R. Sam, 2018. “Do You Tru$st Your Children: A Parent’s Final Dilemma”. Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Vol. 28.
Thompson, David, G. Marcus Cole (2007). “The Intersection of Bankruptcy and Mass Torts”. In Robert Rammusen (ed.). Bankruptcy Stories. Foundation Press.
South Bend Tribune.
1936into2023 
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