Product Description
This is the story of rubber, of Thomas William Coyne, and his daughter, the author of Gum-Dipped. Employed for thirty-seven years by the Firestone Tire & Rubber Coompany in Akron, Ohio, young T.W. Coyne moved his family in 1952 to a small Tudor house in Firestone Park, the residential community built in 1916 by Harvey S. Firestone for Firestone employees. Everything in the Park bore the Firestone name--the school, the streets, the stores, the bank, the tires, the clubhouse, the stoves and radios. A huge bronze statue of the founder, Harvey S. Firestone, stood--and still stands--at the entrance on a hill.
Working for Firestone and living in Firestone Park, T.W. Coyne thought he and his family were safe, "set for life." But the final act Firestone wrote for Mr. Coyne was very different from the happy scenes early in his career. It comprised demotions, a firing, a union rally cry, a flirtation with suicide, illnesses from chemicals, and despair, and the razing of the plant where he had spent his life.
The author discovers her own Firestone legacy as she thinks about her father. It is one family's story, but also a chapter in a larger story about industry and family at a deceptively comfortable time in American History. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Explaining a reviewer's negative impression
Matt (a reviewer of this book) either did not grow up in the Firestone Park area, or he is too young to remember the "bubble" in which its residents lived during the 1950-60s. In light of that possibility, he might well have found Joyce's book weird because he couldn't relate to the mindset of the huge community of Firestone workers and their families. Coming from the same graduating class as the writer, and knowing the fine education level that Garfield Senior High offered, I would have expected the reviewer to appreciate how well-written the book was. Unfiortunately, the substance of Joyce's material was lost on that reviewer. Thanks, Joyce, for your fine efforts and rememberance of a time and experience shared by many. A lesson for the future.

My Old Hometown
Frustrating? Annoying? You Bet.....

This is Joyce Dyer's heartfelt (at times Slavish) tribute to her father..Thomas Coyne....and His slavish devotion to Firestone Tire & Rubber Company (Akron, Ohio) and Harvey S Firestone, Sr

Thomas Coyne was a COMPANY MAN..through and through...he believed that Firestone Tire & Rubber..and Harvey Firestone would care for him & his family for life...unfortunately, that was not the case...RUBBER left Akron in the 1970s..and left Thomas Coyne behind

I was born and raised in Akron, Ohio..my father spent his entire working life at Firestone Tire & Rubber Company..but he was NOT a Company Man..we did Not live in Firestone Park..and my Dad always said that Harvey Firestone Sr was "a crook" and a Robber Baron..

Ms Dyer, in spite of her slavish devotion to her Father, eventually presented a clear-eyed picture of the man..and his blind trust in a Company that let him, and so many others, down..in a shameful way

this was a tough read for me..Ms Dyer and i grew up in different circumstances..different "classes"...and my father retired as a Systems Analyst..but "got out" when he could in the late 70s...but i felt for her in reading this book. Her dad bought the Company Line totally..and he paid dearly...and so did she, in a way. I envy her close relationship with her father..to a point.

i won't recommend this book..unless someone grew up in Akron, when it was the Rubber Capitol of The World...but it is a heartbreaker of a book..the tale of Industry's control of a city..but it's disregard of its workers...and the price everyone paid..

4 Stars

A daughter's blazingly honest tribute to a flawed father
It began a bit slowly, I thought, but soon realized that Dyer was trying too hard to do perhaps too much in this book. Because she is trying to give you something of the history of Akron, as well as the history of the rubber industry and Firestone Tires in particular, while at the same time writing a memoir/biography combined. That's a pretty tall order for a book that runs just a little over two hundred pages. However, once she began to concentrate more on her father, the book picked up speed and chugged right along to its somewhat bitter end. I ended up admiring the book, as well as its author and her writing skills. The saddest part of this book - which is intended to be a tribute to her father, a thirty-seven year "company man" at Firestone - is not just the way that he was treated (used up and discarded) by Firestone, but the fact that Tom Coyne appeared ultimately to be a not very likeable guy, indeed a man without friends. Joyce Dyer is brutally objective in describing her father and paints him as a man lacking in the most basic of social graces and skills, a braggart and a loudmouth and probably something of a racist to boot. And yet she loved him and appreciates deeply the sacrifices he made for her, and has written this book to keep his memory alive. She certainly did not write it to praise Firestone. When she writes of her father's long slide downward in the good graces of the Firestone heirarchy and then of his final illness and death, I couldn't help but remember that line from Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, after Willy Loman has cashed in that life insurance he always kept up, the line spoken by his widow: "Attention must be paid!" Because that is what Joyce Dyer is saying in this portrayal of her late father, T.W. Coyne. By his deeds she shows, in spite of his many faults and shortcomings, how completely devoted he always was to her and her mother, and how he kept on working and doing the best he could, until his health gave out and he was finally forced to retire. This is not as happy a book as another Ohio memoir I read and enjoyed - Michael Dirda's An Open Book - but it is a blazingly honest and heartfelt tribute to a man who always loved his family. I plan to pass the book along to my wife, whose father labored for over forty years in the steel mills in the service of Ford Motor Company. I'm sure she'll find some things here to relate to. This is a good book. - Tim Bazzett, author of LOVE, WAR & POLIO

Gum Dipped
As a former rubber worker who also grew up in the shadow of Harvey Firestone, I found the book to be accurate and compelling.

No No No
Depressing, and weird.Not my kind of book.Well written gramatically but as for substance and material it was a bore and a nuisance to read. ... Read more

Product Description
Reprint of 1885. 927pp plus later index of names. ... Read more

Product Description
In the fall of 1938, Alfred Winslow Jones, a Columbia University graduate student, interviewed 1,705 Akron, Ohio, residents in order to gauge attitudes toward large corporations. Jones selected Akron because it was "crucial," a hotbed of labor unrest and conflict between large manufacturing firms and their employees, where the sit-down strike in particular had polarized the community. If rigid class lines existed anywhere, they ought to be evident in Akron. Jones discovered, however, that the polarization so evident in the workplace and in local politics had had only a minimal effect on underlying attitudes and values, even on controversial subjects such as the rights of corporations. One reviewer described his findings as "a most heartening testimonial to the vitality of our democracy."

Life, Liberty, and Property reports the actual comments of a broad range of Akron interviewees. Their statements provide a compelling and often colorful commentary on life in a divided and anxious mid-western city. By 1938, the worst of the Depression was over, but jobs remained uncertain. The international turmoil that would lead to World War II was beginning to be a source of concern. Most of all, the appropriate roles for government and big business in a democratic society troubled Akron residents. Jones' interviews illuminate the whole range of public issues at a critical juncture in American history. Life, Liberty, and Property is an invaluable source on Akron, on Ohio, and on American society. ... Read more

Product Description
A very wide-ranging overview of the history of the settlement of Clark County, and biographies of leading citizens, from the first settlers to some still living at time of compilation in 1908.Accounts of government, churches, businesses and more. ... Read more