The upside of an uprooting — the journey of a Lebanese-American Detroit expat
MARY KRAMER
CRAINS DETROIT
Tony Bennett left his heart in San Francisco. I once left a piano in Buffalo, a casualty of yet another move during the early stages of my career. So when consumer electronics innovator, iPod godfather and Grosse Pointe South High alum Tony Fadell told me he had attended 12 schools in 15 years growing up, I winced, thinking about how much energy uprooting takes.
“We moved around a lot,” he said with a laugh. “It was exhausting.”
He apparently recovered. Today, Fadell lives in the Silicon Valley area and runs the company he founded, Nest, which Google acquired in 2014 for $3.2 billion. A leader in developing the first generation of the iPod, he has been described by Fortune magazine as “the only disciple of Steve Jobs to achieve outside post-Apple success.”
Detroit can claim him honestly as an “expat,” exactly the type we’ve been inviting to the annual Detroit Homecoming event in September since 2014. Crain’s Detroit Business produces the invitation-only event, which is supported by private foundations and local companies who believe in the concept of re-engaging successful “expats” in Detroit’s revitalization. (See related fact box at right.)
Fadell hasn’t made it to Homecoming — yet. But we’re starting to tell the story of other Homecoming expat/alums and how they’re re-engaging with their hometown. Maybe Fadell will be part of the alumni group.
The Lebanese-American community can claim Fadell, too, especially since he was honored last week by the American Task Force for Lebanon in a Washington, D.C., gala dinner. (The task force also has strong Michigan ties: Leslie Touma, a veteran in automotive communications, is the group’s executive director. Spencer Abraham, a one-term U.S. senator from Michigan, chairs the board.)
In a telephone interview before the awards, Fadell said that the dizzying series of moves — including stops in Detroit, Toledo, Long Island, Dallas and Grosse Pointe — were tied to his father’s sales executive jobs with Campbell Soup Co. and, later, Levi Strauss.
But throughout it all, family ties mattered. Both his parents were born in the U.S. His father’s large Lebanese-American family was based in Toledo, where, Fadell says, the Lebanese surname Fadell was as common as “Smith in the Detroit phone book.” His mother, a hospital administrator, hailed from a Polish-Russian family centered in Detroit; her father served as superintendent of Hamtramck schools in the 1960s and her mother once worked as Lee Iacocca’s executive chef.
“Holidays were Christmas Eve in Toledo eating all this Lebanese food,” Fadell said, “and the next day in Detroit, eating Polish-Russian.”
Today, ethnicity — and immigration — hold a more compelling urgency and meaning.
Fadell thinks immigration has been politicized. “This country was built on immigrants, and if I look at my team now, it’s multicultural, it’s diverse,” he said. “Of course we can’t have open borders, but we need H-1B visas (for skilled workers). Caucasians aren’t the only smart brains out there. We have some of the best talent in the world attending the University of Michigan and Stanford, and then we send them home because they can’t get visas. We need strong brains; we can’t let those brains go away.”
He credits his maternal grandfather for teaching him how to take things apart — and put them back together — while living with the Fadell family after his wife died.
“He was an educator, and at night a truant officer in the 1950s. And he also ran the metal shop, the auto shop, the wood shop at the high school. He’d take kids off the streets in the 1950s and give them training and careers — before jail. He did all kinds of things. So he took my brother and me into the garage; we fixed lawn mowers and built birdhouses. I knew how things worked.”
After graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in computer engineering, Fadell moved west. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Last week’s awards event also honored Jackson native Paula Faris, co-host of ABC’s “The View,” and Victoria Reggie Kennedy, an attorney and widow of U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy. Other well-known Lebanese-Americans honored in the past include singer-songwriter Paul Anka, actor Tony Shalhoub, opera singer Rosalind Elias and Westland native and actor Greg Jbara. Jbara and Faris could be great Homecoming prospects, too.
The key to Homecoming — or awards events like last week’s gala — is to engage successful, high-profile people in a cause or initiative. Touma was already thinking of that the day after the gala. So Fadell just might have some ideas for creating e-learning opportunities for those thousands of Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
“Tony is one of the biggest thinkers of his generation,” Touma said. “And he’s proud to be Lebanese.”
Source: www.crainsdetroit.com