A lot of things had to break, and a lot of things had to come together, for my sister to marry a Chicago Bull. And for me — a high-school kid who lived and breathed basketball — to suddenly have a Chicago Bull for a brother-in-law.  

People talk about fate like it’s a single event, some lightning bolt, some cosmic phenomena. But I’ve learned it’s usually a long chain of circumstances. A budding Detroit music scene. A drummer. An American industrialist’s son. A Saturday in late February when my sister was running late — again.

I was in the thick of high-school basketball back from an early morning practice when Mary Alice burst into the kitchen, heels in one hand, winter coat in the other. 

“I’m late. I’m dead,” she said. “You have to get me to Metro. Now.”

She’d been hired by New York’s Ford Models Agency (not associated with the Ford Motor Company) to promote at the Chicago Auto Show — the huge one at McCormick Place. She was assigned to a rotating platform with a Ford concept car, to smile and engage with the crowds while the platform made slow rotations under the blazing convention center lights. There was one rotation in the very near future that would change her life.

I grabbed my keys, and we tore down I-94 like the state line was closing behind us, ironically in a jet black Ford Mercury Cougar. I loved that car and it felt as comfortable as an old pair of jeans. I hit ninety more than once — the kind of speed where you’re praying no one makes a sudden lane change. She kept checking the clock; I kept checking the rear view mirror for the cops. Neither of us said much. We both knew she had to make that flight. This was a high profile assignment. As it turned out getting her to the airport on time was a high profile assignment in its own right. All those late nights sneaking the car out of the driveway onto Windmill Pointe Drive to practice driving at fifteen — paid off. 

Looking back now, that drive feels like the moment the universe took the wheel. Because if she hadn’t been on time… if she hadn’t needed me… if we hadn’t hit every green light… she might never have met Jim Fox. And the long, unlikely sequence of events that had been quietly assembling for years would have never locked into place.

A few years before she had ended things with Mike Morgan — drummer for The Underdogs, one of Detroit’s great garage band success stories of the mid-60s. That breakup hit me hard. Mike wasn’t just my sister’s boyfriend and fiance. He was my friend too. I had spent many evenings with him and Mary Alice at our house on Windmill Pointe, parked on the couch watching shows like the F.B.I. and Bonanza, laughing, teasing and horsing around. I’d pictured him as my future brother-in-law. Life seemed ready to go a certain way.

And then, just like that, it wasn’t.

But here’s the thing: if she doesn’t break up with Mike, she’s never introduced by Edsel to his father Henry Ford II and wife Cristina and never befriends them, and she’s never encouraged to pursue modeling. Henry never introduces her to the modeling agency in New York. And if that introduction doesn’t happen…

…she’s never standing on that platform at McCormick Place on February 20th, 1971.

And if she’s not on that platform…

Jim Fox — 6’10” center with the Chicago Bulls — never strolls by at the exact moment her platform spins toward him.

I wasn’t there, but I’ve imagined it many times: the lights, the car, the soft hum of the motor turning her around, the crush of people moving past. Jim Fox emerging from the crowd with a teammate, pausing, seeing her. Something in the air about ready to change two life trajectories.

People say fate writes in straight lines, but I don’t believe that’s true. It seems that fate scribbles. It loops back. It stutters. It relies on small moments — a last-minute ride, a breakup, a modeling job, a very tall man strolling through an auto show.

That flight she barely made…
That platform she stepped onto…
That first glance from an NBA center…

It seems that it was all in the making long before any of us realized we were characters in a story already unfolding.

What follows — is the backstory.
And it starts years earlier in Detroit, in the electric noise of the Hideout Club.

Before my sister ever met Jim Fox, before there was a rotating platform, before the Bulls and Lakers battled through a seven-game playoff war…there was the Hideout.

If you grew up in Detroit in the 60s, you remember it — the Hideout Clubs scattered around the suburbs, including the one on Harper in Harper Woods. Teenagers packed wall-to-wall, sweating under colored lights, gyrating, shouting over guitars and drums that shook the walls. It smelled like Coke, cheap perfume, cigarette smoke, and possibility.

And the Underdogs were one of the bands that owned that stage.

They were loud, talented, and had the kind of Detroit veneer that made even Motown take notice. “Man in the Glass” and “Love Gone Bad” their regional hits blasted out of Hideout Records and later the Motown label itself came calling. Hideout Records also produced Bob Seger and his early bands Doug Brown & The Omens and The Last Heard — the group that cut “Heavy Music,” the single that nudged him toward the big time.

Mike Morgan sat behind the drums of the Underdogs, pounding them with a mix of unrestrained abandon and rebellion. That’s the guy my sister dated. And that’s the guy who unknowingly started the entire chain reaction.

One night during a break at the Hideout, Mike struck up a conversation with a shy, polite guy who didn’t quite fit the sweaty teenage chaos. That guy was Edsel Ford — great grandson of Henry Ford, son of Henry Ford II, “Hank the Deuce” as he was affectionately called. In the family tree Henry II was the son of the first Edsel, the only child of Henry Ford and Clara Jane Bryant.  He wasn’t there with an entourage. He wasn’t being flashy. He was just a kid who liked music and liked the scene.

Somehow — fate intervened again — Mike and Edsel clicked.

Through that new friendship, Mike introduced my sister to Edsel one night. She was there with her friends, including Marylou Ball, drummer and singer with The Pleasure Seekers — the all-girl powerhouse band that Suzi Quatro fronted before she crossed the pond and embarked on her phenomenal career and eventual stardom in Europe and Australia with multiple number 1 hits there in the 70s and Stumblin’ In, number 4 on the U.S. Billboard – Hot 100 in 1978.

And from that moment, there was a little orbit — Mike, Mary Alice, Edsel, Marylou, and a rotating cast of Detroit characters. They hung out across the east side, drifting between music clubs, restaurants, homes, and hidden corners of the city. It was innocent, friendly, fun — but it was also the birthplace of the next step in my sister’s life.

Once introduced to Edsel’s father the Fords took a liking to her.
My sister made many journeys along the lake down to 475 Lakeshore to spend time with Henry and Cristina. 

That chemistry turned into an introduction.
That introduction became a contract.
That contract became the job in Chicago.

And that job… well, that job placed her exactly where fate would work its magic.

The breakup with Mike a few years earlier — painful, disorienting, unexpected as it was — cleared the last obstruction on fate’s highway. 

A little more than a month after Mary Alice and Jim Fox first met, Jim and the Chicago Bulls faced the Los Angeles Lakers — Chamberlain, West, Goodrich — in a brutal seven-game Western Conference Semifinal. Jim had a terrific series, including his best game in Chicago: 15 points and 10 rebounds in a one-point thriller, 113–112, forcing Game 7. It appears that a budding romance had upped his game.

That romance evolved and became a story worth telling!

All because she needed a ride to the airport one Saturday morning.

All because Mike Morgan played drums at the Hideout.

All because Edsel Ford liked local music.

All because Henry Ford II and Cristina saw something in her.

All because fate — clumsy, quiet, relentless fate — was already arranging things long before any of us recognized the pattern.

On a fast track — Mary Alice and Jim were married on June 12, 1971 on Lake St. Clair at our family home on Windmill Pointe in Grosse Pointe Park. It was a grand occasion with a guest list sprinkled with Chicago Bulls and auto industry royalty.  They had found soulmates in each other so there was no reason to wait. The season was over and what better thing to do than tie the knot. 

Mary Alice and Jim returned to Grosse Pointe on a road trip about a year after they married. They pulled up in the circular driveway in a 1969 427 C3 Corvette, one of the last serious big-block Corvettes. I was salivating to take that thing for a ride but of course I knew not to even ask. Mary Alice and Jim went out to dinner with my parents that night going in their car. That Corvette just sat in the driveway beckoning to me. Jim had left it unlocked so I went over to just sit in it. Damn if he hadn’t left the keys in the ignition. Now was this a test or just an oversight. What was I to do?

That beautiful, balmy summer night was just daring me to make it count! I flipped the ignition on and let the night decide the rest. I shot over to my high school sweetheart’s house on University in Grosse Pointe City and Kathy and I took, I guess — what one would call a “joy ride.” Feeling that raw power was unforgettable — my first time driving an automobile like that! I have to say I burned a little rubber that night and maybe in all 4 gears. We drove down some of the fun streets to drive down in the Pointes like the curvy part of University. Jim knew — the mirrors were adjusted for a kid 5′ 8″ from a guy 6′ 10″. He let me off the hook. No harm no foul —  borrowing the language of the new family business. Writing this now, I can’t help but think I’d earned that joyride — I was the guy that got my sister to the airport doing 90 a little more than a year earlier —  setting up a date with destiny!

Jim played in the NBA another 7 years or so until 1977 and then retired from basketball to the Phoenix area with my sister Mary Alice.