Personal life
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In 1943, she married Walter Buhl Ford II (1920–1991),[5] not a relative, whose family were prominent in the chemical business in the downriver suburbs of Detroit. He was a descendant of the other prominent families of Detroit including the banking Fords, the Buhl family and Brush family.[5] Walter Ford was himself involved in interior and industrial design and was the chairman and chief executive of Ford & Earl Design Associates.[2] They lived in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, and together were the parents of two sons and two daughters:[1][6]
- Walter Buhl Ford III (1943–2010)[7]
- Eleanor Clay "Nonie" Ford Sullivan (b. 1946),[4][8] who was married to Frederic Avery Bourke Jr. in 1967.[9] Bourke is a part owner of Dooney & Bourke, the leather company.[10] They divorced and she remarried, to John Sullivan Jr., and lives at 960 Fifth Avenue in New York City.[11]
- Josephine Clay "Joey" Ford Ingle (b. 1949),[4] who married John William Ingle Jr. in 1971.[12]
- Alfred Brush Ford (b. 1950),[4] who joined the Hare Krishna movement and renamed himself Ambarish Das.[13]
Dody and her husband were also art collectors and owned paintings by Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Pablo Picasso.[2] Walter died in 1991 of pancreatic cancer.[5] Dody died on June 1, 2005, at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.[1]
Philanthropy
In 2001, Time magazine estimated her net worth at approximately $416 million.[14] In 2005, at the time of her death, she owned more than 13 million shares of Ford Motor stocks.[15]
Josephine and Walter Ford were major contributors to the College for Creative Studies (a $20,000,000 donation in 1997)[16] and the Detroit Institute of Arts among other institutions.[13] Dody donated Van Gogh's Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin, which was valued at $40,000,000, to the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1996.[13][17] She also donated large amounts of money for cancer research leading to the formation of the Josephine Ford Cancer Center.[14]
