REMEMBER THIS? Dodge Lodge

From the archives of the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library:

In 1938, newlyweds Daniel and Laurine were staying at their property on Manitoulin Island.

He was rich and American. She a telephone operator from Gore Bay, and what her friends described as “a handsome brunette… and an all-round athlete.” They had married apparently against the wishes of his family, although whether that was because of concerns she was after his money, religious differences, or something else entirely was the subject of mixed messages.

Not even two weeks into their marriage, tragedy struck.

Their lodge came with some leftovers from before Daniel had purchased it: sticks of dynamite. Daniel had always wanted to test if the explosives were still good and discover how they worked, although he’d been warned against it.

From the varied reports in the newspapers, it’s not clear what happened with the dynamite. The most prevalent account was that Daniel lit the explosive as an experiment and the fuse burned faster than expected. Others said that the hired hands were lighting dynamite, throwing the sticks through the window, and watching them explode. Daniel joined in the fun, but it quickly went wrong. He may not have thrown the dynamite in time, or he may have missed the window and accidentally bounced it back at himself. Another account claimed that Danny had picked up dynamite earlier in the day and, not knowing what it was, had begun to whittle it.

Either way, a stick of dynamite exploded, which then set off other sticks. The blasts sent people “hurtling in all directions, their clothes tattered and their faces bloody and blackened.” This left Daniel gravely wounded and in terrible pain. His wife and three others were also injured.

Laurine – not as severely hurt as some of the others – tried to get them to a doctor in Little Current. Worried about the winding roads on Manitoulin Island, she attempted to take them by speedboat, but the water turned, and she was soon dealing with choppy waters and whitecaps, with waves about four and a half feet high. There were conflicting reports at this point, but an exhausted Laurine may have had an injured hired hand take control of the boat. And that’s when things went from bad to worse.

Daniel landed in the rough waters of Georgian Bay. He may have been washed over the edge of the boat. He may have stood up, overcome by the pain, and lost his balance. Or, as the Globe and Mail initially reported, he may have been “crazed by pain” and leapt. The boat circled back to him as soon as they could, but Daniel “was making no effort to swim” and quickly went under. A ten-minute search yielded nothing, and the remaining members were forced to continue on their way; some still needed medical treatment.

A massive search campaign took place to recover Daniel’s body, largely funded by his family at a cost of thousands of dollars per day. Fishing boats dragged nets through the area, and at least one plane searched from above. Divers arrived at the scene to help the search before it was determined they would not provide much assistance. There was even a submarine brought in to help search, although it turned out not to be needed.

Daniel’s body would be found weeks after his death when swarming seagulls alerted nearby searchers to something in the water. Two fishermen would split the $1,500 reward for his recovery.

The media was thrown into a frenzy by the story. The Sault Daily Star sent a reporter to the scene of the explosion, the first member of the media there, and commented on the shattered glass, the pools of blood, and a friendly Airedale dog oblivious to all that had gone down. The phone line from Little Current was so in demand that it would often take over an hour to make a long-distance call. Manitoulin Island had to bring in telegraphers from Sudbury to help handle the increase in the amount of news copy being communicated.

You see, Daniel hadn’t merely been rich. He was Danny Dodge, heir to the Chrysler-Dodge fortune. His father and uncle had operated Dodge before their early passing in the Spanish Flu pandemic. His mother sold the business for over $140 million, and Dodge remained — and remains — one of the most well-known family names in the vehicle industry.

Danny was publicly known as a “rich prince,” an aristocrat. While the Sault Daily Star described him as being “the least spectacular of the news-making Dodges,” he still had a trust fund with a value that was rumoured as being over $9 million. His relationship with Laurine — daughter of a tugboat captain, working for $15 a week at the Gore Bay switchboard — was seen as a sort of Cinderella story, a “story-book romance.” They met on Manitoulin Island when they were teenagers and wed three years later.

Danny Dodge’s death made the papers across Canada and the USA, and the news attention put the spotlight squarely on Laurine. There had already been a media circus surrounding their engagement and wedding, with reporters tracking them down in Soo Michigan on their way to Manitoulin. Things only ramped up from there.

The Toronto Star ran an exclusive interview with Laurine, telling her version of events. But it turned out that no one identifying themselves as a reporter had even spoken to her. The story appeared to stem from a man who was associated with the coroner; he spoke to the young widow while she was still in the hospital, under the guise of being a lawyer taking a statement. The coroner was quickly suspended.

A criminal inquest found that Dodge’s death was accidental. However, Laurine became the subject of swirling rumours, particularly because of the wealth disparity between her and her late husband.

Under Daniel’s will, Laurine stood to inherit $250,000, thanks to a prenup she had signed that waived her widow’s rights. She sought an allowance of $33,000 in a legal battle with his family. While she was offered an allowance of $5,000 per month, she continued the hard-fought legal battle and was ultimately awarded a larger portion of the estate. Initial estimates put her share at $8,000,000, but she ultimately received closer to $2,500,000.

The Dodge family was livid at this outcome. As reported in Time magazine: “Two of the dead man's sisters, horsy Isabel Dodge Sloane and Winifred Dodge Seyburn (who inherited nothing), let it be known they would not let Annie get away with it.”

And even though she fervently claimed throughout their relationship that Danny’s fortune meant nothing to her – “Daniel’s money doesn’t mean anything. We’re happier without that” – many speculated that she had killed him for his money.

Laurine opted to go to school at Alma College in St. Thomas, Ontario, studying business administration; she also excelled in athletic activities. She eventually remarried twice and ultimately lived out her days in California. As for the property on Manitoulin Island, it was run as a B&B for a while, known as the Dodge Lodge, a tribute to its history and tragic connection with the Dodge-Chrysler empire.

Each week, the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library and its Archives provide SooToday readers with a glimpse of the city’s past.

Find out more of what the Public Library has to offer at www.ssmpl.ca and look for more "Remember This?" columns here.