LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Gregory Eaton moved around the room, busing tables, shaking hands. He was wearing a white shirt, slacks, and an apron tucked in front of him.
He’s checking to see if anyone needs another drink. If they need a menu. If they’re done with their meal.
He may stop to chat, but the task at hand is to make sure everyone is taken care of.
Eaton is the owner of Gregory’s Soul Food in Lansing.
If you’re a first-timer at Gregory’s, you may not know that Eaton was the first black lobbyist in Michigan to work for a multi-client firm.
You may not know he owns Detroit-based Metro Cars, a nationwide curbside transportation known for black cars at Detroit Metro Airport.
You may not know about the dozens of people he’s mentored.
To the Lansing area, he’s just “Gregory.”
When Kenneth Cole thinks of Gregory Eaton, he thinks of his favorite poem, “If,” by Rudyard Kipling.
“He mingles with everybody equally,” said Cole, a partner at Governmental Consultant Services Inc. “Doesn’t matter if you are a king, or president of some big time corporation, or the bartender at a local watering hole. He’s able to walk with crowds and keep his virtue, and is able to keep the common touch. And I think that’s a testament to what is inside him, which is really just an abundance of humility.”
Cole first met Eaton while working as a journalist for the Detroit News sometime between 1991 and 1995. It was just a cordial introduction.
Cole didn’t get to know Eaton until he became a lobbyist at GCSI. Eaton was a lobbyist with Karoub Associates. The firms, two of the largest lobbying firms in the state, were competitors.
“It was never about our firms competing on whatever the issue may be,” Cole said. “He was always really about encouraging you and I don’t think it was just me. If you look at it there are not that many black lobbyists.”
Eaton is a Lansing native. He grew up on Olds Avenue. His mother, Lela, was from Albion, and his father, Albert, who was known as “Abbey”, grew up in Lansing. His family has been in the city since 1880.
“We grew up in a mixed neighborhood, Lebanese and blacks, we all kind of grew up together,” Eaton told the Lansing State Journal .
Local developer and Michigan State University trustee Joel Ferguson was 7 or 8 years old when he met Eaton. They’re the best of friends.
They’ve known each other for close to 70 years. They played sports together, hung out at the Lincoln Community Center. They both worked at the Country Club of Lansing as young men, Eaton in the club with his father shining shoes, Ferguson as a caddie.
“One thing Gregory has that you can’t teach is great people skills,” Ferguson said. “I never met anyone who didn’t really think the world of Gregory. No one says a bad word about him, and the interesting thing is that he never spreads a bad word about anyone either.
“He’s not afraid to work, and he cares about other people, he always has. And he looks for ways to help people as opposed to why he shouldn’t help them.”
Eaton said he was named after Gregory Peck, the movie star. His mother liked the name.
“When people called me Greg, I would say, ’You wouldn’t call Gregory Peck, Greg, would you?’” Eaton said.
Eaton played high school football, basketball and track at Sexton, and over the three years was mentioned often in the newspaper. When the Lansing State Journal wrote about him, they called him “Greg,” ’’little Greg Eaton” (he was 5-foot-7) and “Greg Eaton the speedster.”
Eaton got used to the shortened version of his name. When he started his janitorial service in 1960, he named it Greg’s Janitorial Service. He was 20 years old.
“Our slogan was ’We search for dirt,’” Eaton laughed.
Eaton’s father was a porter and worked at several of the exclusive clubs around Lansing, including the Lansing Press Club, Country Club of Lansing and Walnut Hills Country Club.
“And he was a shoe shiner, had a shoe shine stand downtown,” Eaton said. “He did all the shoes for the shoe companies, stores, and then he had a shoe repair shop. So I was kind of raised shining shoes.”
“Abbey” started at the Press Club in 1945 as a club steward. He retired from the club in 1973, after 28 years, where he also served as a bartender and a manager.
“And I joined it, and my dad was so proud that I joined,” Eaton said. “Doc (Clinton) Canady was the first black, and I was the second, to be a member of the Press Club.”
When Eaton opened his janitorial business, he was able to pick up business through his father, who knew many of the business people in town. He worked for Lundberg Screw Products, John Henry Co., Dudley Printing, J. C. Waters Insurance, and Michigan Auditors Association, to name a few.
“Sometimes it has almost brought me to tears the things that Gregory has done for people that no one will ever know about,” said his cousin E. Sharon Banks, former Lansing schools superintendent. “Because he’s a quiet giver and a quiet helper. He gives to everybody.”
“From a person on the street who’s on the corner that needs a helping hand, that he’ll take home and let them help in his yard, to a person who needs a burial, to a person who needs a job, to a person who needs someone to vouch for them, he’s always helped everybody and that’s not just family. I just wish he could tell his story but it would embarrass him to no end to talk about how many people he’s really helped.”
Eaton’s grandfather, John “Son” Burch, ran a trucking company years ago, Banks said.
“I think that’s where Gregory’s real desire to own his own business came from,” she said. “Because we grew up with our great-grandfather having his own business in Georgia. And then the oldest son, having his own in Albion.”
Eaton never imagined himself as a lobbyist, not until Gil Haley, executive vice president of the Michigan Automobile Dealers Association, approached him with an offer.
“Haley’s family had a grocery store on Division and Main, a block from my dad, so I knew him,” Eaton said. “My dad taught him how to ride a bike. And I ran errands for him in high school.”
When Michigan Automobile Dealers Association built a new building in the mid-1960s on Kendale Boulevard in East Lansing, Eaton wanted the cleaning contract. And he got it.
Then Haley said he wanted Eaton to help him with some lobbying. He told Eaton he had been watching him over the years, he knew he was a hard worker, liked the way he handled himself. He could see how good he was with people.
“I told him, ’I don’t know anything about lobbying,’” Eaton said. “He said, you can count can’t you? You’ve got to be able to count votes. So I started lobbying through Michigan Automobile Dealers Association.”
“It really was exciting to me because it was dealing with issues. When I started representing Auto Dealers, there was a dealer in every city in the state, and there was the legislature, so I got to know people all over the state.”
Eaton started lobbying at age 24. But he had a few different businesses going and was working about 18 hours each day.
He worked at Oldsmobile for three years and never spent any of that money. He saved it.
“He was not afraid to work,” said Ferguson, who worked with Eaton at Oldsmobile. “And he was very frugal. He prided himself on not even cashing his check. He worked hard and saved his money.”
Eaton saved the money, he says, because he put everything back into his business.
“I remember my mother saying you’re killing yourself,” Eaton said. “I went to the bank when I was 20, to get a loan. I didn’t have any money, nothing to back it up with. No financial statements. When I started the janitorial service, Mr. Anderson had a supply company, and he’d give me stuff on time, and that’s how I started the company. So then, I’d borrow money, and pay it back quick, and build up my credit.”
Then he started buying real estate, houses.
Eventually he sold his janitorial service to his general manager for $1 and started lobbying full-time.
“Gregory’s terrific, he’s just a great man,” said Jack Schick, partner at Karoub Associates.
Schick met Eaton about 49 years ago working for Karoub Associates, a lobbying firm. He says Eaton has been like a big brother to him. And part of what makes Eaton such a good lobbyist, Schick says, is his work ethic.
“He’s been nothing but a very hard worker,” Schick said, “but he’s also got that magnetic personality and charm that you can’t help but like him.”
“We’re in the people business. We’re not a manufacturer making widgets. Our whole business is predicated on ideas and problems and hoping to help create solutions to those problems. And he just knows how to push people’s buttons if things start going south, which they sometimes do in our travels through life. He’s pretty good at negotiating those things.”
Eaton served for 37 years as executive assistant and legislative counsel for the Michigan Automobile Dealers Association.
He says he was inspired by several of the auto dealers he worked with, particularly those who did not have a college education. Eaton didn’t either, but they were all successful businessmen.
“Bud Kouts was a high school graduate, Max Curtis Ford, Al Edwards was just a high school graduate,” Eaton said. “So I learned a lot from them, being around them.”
Eaton is also dyslexic, something he didn’t realize until his 50s.
“I memorized a lot of stuff,” he said. “But I didn’t know I was dyslexic until later. Then I found out Einstein was dyslexic.”
He read an article and called someone at the Michigan Dyslexia Institute, got tested, then started taking classes there.
“That was probably 20 or 25 years ago,” Eaton said. “I sponsor kids every year to go to the Michigan Dyslexia Institute. If you’re dyslexic, you just have a harder time, especially spelling, which is the toughest for me. My three sisters all were college graduates. I’m the only one in my family without a degree. But I took care of everybody else.”
In 1975, Eaton became the first black applicant to the Country Club of Lansing.
Eaton had visited the club regularly as a golfing guest. He was there with legislators, but his membership application was tabled.
“I got the letter and everything,” Eaton said. “Jack Breslin was the vice president at the Country Club of Lansing. He never got to become president because he sponsored me. He was a great man.”
Breslin (an MSU executive vice president), attorneys Dick Whitmer and Michael Doyle, and restaurateur Archie Tarpoff all were involved in sponsoring Eaton.
“After five or six years, the president of the Michigan Dental Association sponsored Doc (Clinton) Canady, and he became the first black member of the country club,” Eaton said.
Eaton told the Lansing State Journal in 1976 that “It reaches a point where you say “’Why would I want to belong to a place where they don’t want me?’”
But, eventually, Eaton became a member, too.
Eaton opened The Garage in the basement level of the city-owned parking ramp at 316 N. Capitol Ave. in 1971, though the liquor license initially went to his parents.
When the drinking age was lowered to 18 in 1972, it became a hangout for Lansing Community College students.
It also fit well with his lobbying business. Being a lobbyist you meet a lot of people. And host and attend a lot of fundraisers.
“I spend a lot of money,” Eaton said. “That’s what a lobbyist does. Everything is political. I found that out early in life. That’s why I got involved in it.
“I really kind of loved it because you made a difference. There are bills where you can really make a difference. Lobbying is trust. Associations or whomever you represent, they usually testify because they know their business better than you. But you have to take their word that it’s right.”
Eaton, now a retired Karoub Associates partner, is a lobbyist and consultant with the firm.
“Gregory is the godfather,” said 54-A District Judge Hugh B. Clarke. “If you have a question, want to talk to, he’s there. He was the second person to see my son, Antonio, after we brought him home from the hospital. He still checks up on him. When he runs into him on campus, he’ll have positive words of support for him. But he’ll do that for anybody.
“Notwithstanding all his success, he is just the most down to earth person you ever want to meet. And he’s very humble. I always say, if you can’t get along with Gregory Eaton, you’ve got a problem, not him.”
Around 1989, Eaton started Metro Cars with his partner, Cullen Meathe, and 30 brand new Cadillacs. They trained their employees at the Ritz Carlton in Dearborn.
“You had to speak good English, say yes sir, wear a jacket, tie, shirt,” Eaton said. “I had a black American Express card, and I rented 30 Cadillacs from Enterprise and that’s how we formed Metro Cars.”
Eaton and his partners now service Detroit Airport, Grand Rapids Airport, companies in Reno, Vegas, Huntington Beach, California and others. They went from around 30 employees to 1,600.
As a child, Eaton remembers coming down for breakfast on Sundays and there was Don Coleman, MSU’s first black All-American football player.
“He could be lying on the couch or something sleeping,” Eaton said. “And then Dick Lord, a former MSU hockey player from Montreal, the first black athlete to play college hockey in the U.S., he’d be at our house every Sunday. So I kind of grew up on the campus and my family helping students. There was always someone at the house. And I sort of took that over. When I had my business, I started hiring the athletes, a lot of them. I became a booster.”
Earvin “Magic” Johnson lived a couple of blocks away from Eaton growing up and worked for him in high school. He cleaned the Jack Davis attorney building.
“I have one of his time cards,” Eaton said. “I think I paid him $1.65 an hour back then.
“This kid, Earvin, I’m just so proud of him, the things he’s done and gives back. He hasn’t changed.”
When Eaton does take time out to relax, he enjoys sporting events - football, golfing, championship fights.
He’s been to every Super Bowl since its inception. He’s been to the Master’s, around 100 championship fights.
And he’s been to five Olympics. Eaton attended the 1968 Olympics when Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who’d won gold and bronze respectively, in the 200-meter sprint, raised black-gloved fists during the medal ceremony in Mexico City.
“It was raining that night, kind of misting,” he recalled as he glances at the photo of the two men hanging on his wall. “And they got through and they raised their fists in the black power salute. It got quiet in the stands.”
Eaton has one son and two daughters. He also has eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Not only do they keep him busy, but they keep him working. He wants all of them to have an education and not have student loans to pay off.
“It’s too much pressure on young people to have those kinds of loans and debt at 23 or 24 years old, Eaton said. “I’m thankful. When I was 20, 21 years old, I was going around the country, I had my own business, I had money and no debt.”
He always believed in paying everything off, staying out of debt.
“My grandfather in Albion was like that,” Eaton said. “He had a hog farm, and I was driving a truck at 12 or 13. They used to call me ’mule’ because I was so strong. I’ve always worked and budgeted. I still budget today. If I can’t pay for it, I don’t buy it. I don’t borrow money anymore. I borrow from myself.”
And he tries to give back. That’s why he won’t close his restaurant.
“I don’t make money on this place, but I keep it open because it’s home for a lot of people,” Eaton said. “It’s hard to keep a business running. This place…I would never close it, because it’s a place that you can call your own.”
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Information from: Lansing State Journal, http://www.lansingstatejournal.com
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