Edward Lamb, 85; Millionaire Once Accused of Communist Sympathies

TOLEDO, Ohio —  Edward Lamb, a maverick multimillionaire whose business sphere ranged from heading industrial monoliths to representing common laborers before the U.S. Supreme Court, died Monday at 85 at his home in suburban Maumee.

He first became known as a champion of the working man when, in 1941, he filed suit on behalf of employees of the Mount Clemens (Mich.) Pottery Co. over a company rule that laborers report to work 14 minutes before their official starting time without being paid for the extra minutes. The high court ruled in the workers’ favor in 1946.

But by the 1960s the other side of Lamb’s pursuits made news when he began to acquire control of the former Seiberling Rubber Co. He became the Akron-based company’s board chairman in 1962 and had gained a majority of the company’s common stock by 1964.

Position in Industry

In 1965, Seiberling Rubber reorganized as Seilon Inc. and its stockholders approved the sale of the company’s tire division to Firestone Tire & Rubber Co.

He also was owner and chairman of Great Lakes Communications Inc. and chairman of Nevada National Bancorporation and Bancorporation Leasing Co. His Lamb Enterprises owns WICU-TV in Erie, Pa., and he formerly owned television stations in Cheyenne, Wyo.; Scottsbluff, Neb., and Sterling, Colo.

But Lamb’s outside activities offset the stereotypical view of the orthodox, aggressive businessman. He was an admirer of Cuban leader Fidel Castro and traveled to Cuba often to meet with that Communist chief and his aides.

He also was one of the original signers of the Humanist Manifesto II, along with feminist Betty Friedan, dissident Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov and radical psychologist B. F. Skinner.

During the so-called Red Scare era of the 1950s he was accused of Communist sympathies and the Federal Communications Commission challenged his TV license in Erie.

If Red, a Rich One

He was vindicated after a four-year legal battle, prompting an associate to remark that “If Ted’s a Communist, he’s the only one in the world worth $60 million.”

Lamb’s books included “Planned Economy of the Soviet Union” and “The Sharing Society.” The latter, published in 1979, advocates a world community and predicts that uncontrolled, unplanned nations with extremes of wealth and poverty cannot exist much longer.

He wrote that pro-United Nations book, he said in a 1979 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, because “I have become increasingly aware of the appalling gap between the very rich and the very poor.”