Where did it all begin?
Where Did the 100 Club Concept Come From?
Who Had The Idea First?
There are a number of origins and we tried to incorporate them together as well as we took a little creative liberty.
The story reaches back before 1950, when a police sergeant in the Palmer Park area of Detroit was wounded by an attacker’s bullet. Bill Packer knew the sergeant and considered him a friend, as he did most of the policemen and firemen in the area of his home and nearby business. He thought they did a good job in a friendly way, and he visited the sergeant in the hospital and talked to him about his work and the risks that went with it, Packer concluded that it was a rough deal and that citizens like himself should be pretty grateful.
Bill Packer went to the hospital to see Esther Mellert and was so touched by the collapse of her bright family plans that he sat down and wrote 100 friends, asking them to contribute to a fund for the policeman’s widow. He also enlisted the interest of columnist Jack Carlisle, of the Detroit News, who published a moving column about the expectant young mother in the hospital and the posthumous child of the police hero waiting to be born. Before Mrs. Mellert and newborn Kathleen Mellert left the hospital, Packer, Carlisle and Commissioner Boos handed Esther Mellert a bankbook with $7,800 standing in her name. Andreas was killed on November 17, 1950. Kathleen was born on New Year’s Eve.
Of the first 100 invited to join, only two failed to respond promptly, and they joined later. Then other Detroit businessmen, approving the idea, demanded to be let in.
Another story:
Here is an excerpt from a short history from a Saturday Evening Post article by Arthur W. Baum, which appeared on April 7, 1956.
A policeman is slain by a cornered gunman. A fireman dies in a flaming building. Are the families of these public heroes forgotten? Not in your community, thanks to the Hundred Club.
The Bluecoats’ Best Friends
“Not all the superior products of Detroit have carburetors and wheels and windshields. One of the city’s finest developments of the last few years has been a nonprofit organization called the Hundred Club, something that deserves to be copied by other large American cities. The Hundred Club is unorthodox. It has no clubrooms, no paid employees, less than a drawer full of records and the dues are high. It scrounges free talents and services from willing members who are invariably among the ablest and highest-priced in the Detroit area. The club meets only twice a year, at the members’ expense, and the concern of those who belong is not with each other but with complete strangers. The Hundred Club has few assets – nothing but a big fund of money, a growing reservoir of good deeds, and the largest heart in town.
It is stated in the club charter that its purpose is to help provide for the widows and dependents of policemen and firemen who lose their lives in the line of duty. This is an understatement. For one thing, the city of Detroit maintains a program of death benefits and pensions for this purpose that is inferior to few and better than many similar big-city systems. The widows, in short, are provided for without the Hundred Club. Yet the club is known and loved throughout the police and fire-fighting communities. In the words of one bluecoat, “It has given all of us a real wonderful lift in our emotions.” For the club has put a soothing finger on a tender spot that cannot be touched by a set formula of benefit or pension.
As it now functions, the Hundred Club stands as assurance to every policeman and fireman in its territory that if he should die [in the line of] duty the following things will happen within twenty-four hours: His widow will have $1,000 in cash in the house, current bills will be paid, and if a debt or mortgage exists on his house, arrangements will be under way to clear it entirely. It is not expected that this will lessen the shock and grief of sudden, tragic widowhood. It is a contribution designed to lift from distracted households the specters of financial worry that are too often born of and compound the tragedy. The widow must face the loss of her husband, but she need not face also the loss of her home, the burden of debt, and possible deprivation for the children.
The Hundred Club does not require that a policeman or fireman die in violence or as a public hero, nor that his widow be threatened with impoverishment.
It is stated in the club charter that its purpose is to help provide for the widows and dependents of policemen and firemen who lose their lives in the line of duty.