The number 13 is ominous to some.
For others, it’s a reason to celebrate. The Anti-Superstition Society of Chicago was founded in the early 1930s to debunk the idea that specific actions would cause bad luck. For 13 days leading up to Friday the 13th in January 1933, each of the club’s 13 original members promised to partake in 13 activities that were commonly believed to conjure danger.
“Then they are going to sit down, thirteen exactly, at one table and laugh because no bad fortune has befallen them,” the Tribune reported. “This gathering is, of course, based on the expectation that the breaking of mirrors, the looking upon cats in the new moon over the left shoulder, and the spilling of salt will not prevent the attendance of any anti-superstitioner.”
The crew was so elated with the public’s reception to their antics that they decided to meet on Friday the 13th going forward.
“We started this society as a joke, but the last thirteen days we’ve become so impressed with the idea that fear is the cause of many of our economic ills that we all think it a good plan to make the group a permanent organization,” founding member and group secretary Herman T. Powers told the Tribune. “Every one will agree that what the country needs most is a positive attitude. Less fear and a saner point of view are the big step out of the depression. Certainly it is the devil Fear that has caused nine-tenths of the bank runs.”
The society’s 13 charter members, some whose names might not be familiar, were prominent members of Chicago’s business community and avid philanthropists:
- Nathaniel Leverone, father of the modern vending machine, founder-chairman of Canteen and founding member of the Chicago Crime Commission
- Herman T. Powers, owner of an estate analysis and planning firm
- Henry Field, explorer and assistant curator at the Field Museum
- Wallace Rice, historian and creator of Chicago’s iconic flag design
- Sidney N. Strotz, president of Chicago Stadium, then an NBC executive
- Wheeler Sammons, publisher of “Who’s Who in America”
- Joseph Triner, Illinois Athletic Commission chairman, U.S. Football Association president, boxing judge, veteran of World War I and II, and beer distributor
- Graham Aldis, chairman of Aldis & Co. real estate firm and University of Chicago trustee
- William C. Boyden, attorney
- J. Clarke Coit, president of U.S. Radio and Television Corp. and the Radio Manufacturers Association
- Robert J. Dunne, judge
- Wirt Morton, vice president of Morton Salt
- Alfred M. Bailey, naturalist and staff member at the Field Museum and Chicago Academy of Sciences
Though the Tribune reported lots of hijinks during the society’s 50-year run, no adversity came as a result of their well-publicized meetings.
Unconventional things did happen, however, to some of its key members. A furnace explosion caused Strotz’s home in Lake Forest to catch fire in 1934, but he and his wife escaped without injury. Sammons suffered a heart attack while driving downtown and died in 1956. Leverone, founder of the society, was twice the victim of burglaries — once at home and another involving his car — and was also a passenger aboard an airplane that was hijacked in Florida by an armed gunman and forced to land in Cuba. If anything, it was one of the few times Leverone appeared fearful.
“A nut, a loaded gun, and a plane load of people in the sky spells danger,” he told the Tribune in December 1968.
Superior Court Judge John Sbarbaro, a later member of the society who was meeting his wife in Miami, was among 63 people killed in a plane crash in Indiana on March 17, 1960.
Members gathered at least once not to celebrate, but to mourn one of their own. The wake for public relations executive Winfield Green was held on Friday, Nov. 13, 1987.
Jan. 13, 1933
“Almost every omen of misfortune save a black cat figured in the festivities,” when the society’s 13 charter members met at Gaston’s La Louisiane restaurant.
The festivities were concluded with a ceremony in which Powers spilled salt and Triner smashed a mirror while Strotz sat beneath an open umbrella, “burning a mystic object known as a Louisiana hoodoo,” the Tribune reported.
Sept. 13, 1957
From 5:13 p.m. to 7:13 p.m., about 100 members engaged in smashing mirrors symbolizing seven years of bad luck, signed their names on page 13 of a guest register, then partook in refreshments from a bar decorated with a witch’s broom.
Dec. 13, 1957
Guest of honor Chicago Bears owner George Halas was presented with a gadget called a “Seater Heater” and a watch that displayed the number 13 in place of the regular numbers.
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“Now you have proved you are not superstitious and are unafraid that what has happened to the Bears will rub off on you,” Halas told the group.
The Bears record was 5-7 that season, prompting Halas to dispose of Paddy Driscoll and reinstall himself as head coach.
June 13, 1958
Meeting promptly at 5:13 p.m., more than 100 guests — including aldermen, judges and business leaders — gathered at the Chicago Athletic Association. Probate Judge Dunne said the atmosphere wasn’t quite as spooky as when the group met in a mortuary and sat around an open coffin with 13 candles on it (unfortunately, the Tribune has no record of that one).
On the walls of the room were greetings from “Mississippi Black Cat Society” and “Salem Witchcraft, Inc.” The guest of honor was Ward Quaal, vice president and general manager of WGN, whose contact information was jokingly given to “all those who wanted world series tickets at Wrigley Field,” the Tribune reported.
Jan. 13, 1961
More than 300 people — the largest in the group’s history — gathered at McCormick Place to eat, drink and balk at irrational fears. Everyone entered the room by walking beneath an open ladder with an umbrella perched on top.
Illinois Secretary of State Charles Carpentier was honored for being elected to a third term — breaking the two-term jinx that previously prevailed for the post.
Though the meeting was not political, Carpentier said, “Republicans won’t need magic to win back the state — just good old hard work.”
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