Frank B. Gilbreth - Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their Toes

MOTHER IS LILLIAN MOLLER Gilbreth, and Dad was Frank Bunker Gilbreth. Their consulting firm of Gilbreth, Inc., specialized in time saving and in making workers jobs easier to do. They were the originators of motion study, and among the first in the scientific management field.

Dad died in 1924, leaving Mother with eleven children, the oldest of whom was eighteen. He also left a good many wonderful memories and an efficiency system of family life under which the children helped Mother run the house. Without the system, without the esprit de corps which he had instilled, Mothers job might have been too much for her.

But it was Mother who made the system work. Mother became the family breadwinner, filled the place of two parents, guided her children individually through the growing pains of adolescence, kept the family together. In her spare time, so to speak, she became one of the foremost management engineers in the world.

This is a book about the Gilbreth family after Dad died. It is primarily the story of Mother.

Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their Toes

Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey

CONTENTS

Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. (19112001) and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey (19082006) were two of the twelve Gilbreth children, born to efficiency experts Frank B. Gilbreth Sr. and Lillian Moller Gilbreth. Both Frank and Ernestine were accomplished writers, and they collaborated on two classic memoirs of growing up in a very full house: Cheaper by the Dozen, which was adapted into two memorable motion pictures, and its classic sequel, Belles on Their Toes, which was also turned into a film. The coauthors received the French International Humor Award in 1950.

Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. was the eldest of the Gilbreth sons, though he had four older sisters. After launching his career as a journalist with the New York Herald Tribune, the Associated Press, and the Buenos Aires Herald, he served in the US Navy in World War II. Rising to the rank of lieutenant commander, Gilbreth participated in three invasions of the Admiralty Islands and the Philippines, and earned the Bronze Star and Air Medal.

Returning from the war, he worked as a columnist and reporter for the Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina, eventually moving there permanently. From 1947 to 1993, he penned the column Doing the Charleston under the pseudonym Ashley Cooper. The tireless Gilbreth also authored or coauthored the books Helds Angels, Im a Lucky Guy, Innside Nantucket, Of Whales and Women, How to Be a Father, Hes My Boy, and Time Out for Happiness.

Gilbreth was married twice, first to Elizabeth Cauthen until her death in 1954, and later to Mary Pringle Manigault. He died at the age of eighty-nine, survived by his second wife, two daughters, one son, three sisters, four brothers, six grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.

Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, the third of the Gilbreth dozen, graduated from Smith College with an English degree and worked for fourteen years as a department store buyer and manager. In 1930, she married Charles Everett Carey Sr., known as Chick, with whom she had two children, Charles Carey Jr. and Lillian Jill Carey.

The supremely accomplished Ern rounded out her professional success by authoring and coauthoring several acclaimed books in addition to her collaborations with her brother, including Jumping Jupiter, Rings Around Us, and Giddy Moment.

Ernestine Gilbreth Carey died of natural causes at the age of ninety-eight in Fresno, California. She was survived by two children, two brothers, six grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.

Frank B. Gilbreth Sr. and Lillian M. Gilbreth, father and mother of the dozen, in 1920.

The Gilbreth family as seen in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in 1923.

Ernestine Gilbreth at her Smith College graduation in 1929.

Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and his first wife, Elizabeth, pictured in 1942 after he entered the Navy.

Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. autographs copies of Cheaper by the Dozen in 1948 as his wife, Elizabeth, looks on.

Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and his daughter Betsy paint the dining room of the Shoe, his Nantucket home, in the summer of 1952.

Ernestine Gilbreth Carey at her home in Manhasset, New York, circa 1955.

Ernestine Gilbreth Carey with her family in 1955. From left: her son, Charlie; her husband, Chick; Ernestine; and her daughter, Jill.

Frank B. Gilbreth Jr., second from right, with three of his brothers in 1985.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Cheaper by the Dozen Copyright 1948 by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey

Belles on Their Toes Copyright 1969 by Laurie Lee

Cover design by Andrea C. Uva

ISBN: 978-1-5040-5389-1

This edition published in 2018 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

180 Maiden Lane

New York, NY 10038

www.openroadmedia.com