Martin W. Tanner
1906 - 1969
Businessman, athlete, artist, boatbuilder, sculptor, automotive engineer, bridge champion, race car driver: Martin Tanner was the closest thing to a Renaissance man that Saginaw has ever known—and everything he did, he did brilliantly.
He was born May 20, 1906, and attended the public schools, graduating from Arthur Hill in 1923.
At the University of Michigan, he was a member of the swim team and of Phi Gamma Delta. After his graduation in 1928, he worked for a while at Saginaw’s M. W. Tanner Company, a firm owned by his family, but left to gain advertising experience in Detroit. Returning to Saginaw, he founded the area’s first advertising agency, Price Hedrick and Tanner, with Robert Price and Jack P. Hedrick.
He was active in community affairs, was an excellent golfer and was a member of the Saginaw, Rotary and Saginaw Country Clubs. A fine tennis player, he was instrumental in arranging for Jean Hoxie to instruct younger players.
In the 1940s he began painting and won all the top prizes in the area, although his distinctive modern style aroused a storm of criticism from self-appointed art critics. At one time, the vituperation against him, the Saginaw Museum and the Saginaw Artists Guild was so intense that he offered to stay out of a regional competition he had won in the two previous years. Fellow members of the Guild insisted that he enter—and he took the top prize for a third time. His work is in the permanent collections of the Saginaw Art Museum, the Castle Museum of Saginaw County History and the Detroit Institute of Art. He was elected to two terms as president of the Saginaw Museum. A long-time member of Pit and Balcony, he created two magnificent murals for the playhouse in 1951. Unfortunately, they were painted over some years later.
He was an excellent bridge player, and when he took up the difficult challenge of duplicate bridge, he became a life master and he and partner Sam Ellis beat the redoubtable team of Helen Sobel and Charles Goren.
His uncanny memory and powers of concentration stood him in good stead, both at the bridge table where he knew the location of every card, and in sports car racing, where he quickly memorized every aspect of the course during practice. Martin knew exactly where every corner was and how fast he could take it without spinning out. At first, competitors were inclined to dismiss the slight, gentle-faced grandfather. They soon learned. Martin was a tiger on the track.
Dissatisfied with production cars, he designed and built his own race cars: cars that were works of art as well as frontrunners. In 1958 he won the National Class H Modified race car competition of the Sports Car Club of America.
Through all these extra-curricular activities, he continued his daily work at the advertising agency and was responsible for a great deal of its finest work. In 1947 his cover design for the Photo Engravers Bulletin was named the year’s best cover. In 1961 he was named to Ferris Institute’s Professional Advisory Committee. After retiring from advertising and from race car driving, he embarked on a new career as a kayak builder.
In 1928 he married Margaret Traphagen, a charming woman who shared many of his interests and was warmly supportive of his activities. They had two daughters, Clarissa and Barbara.
Shortly after he died on February 28, 1969, Saginaw News arts editor James Henderson wrote,
“That was it with Martin Tanner, the consciousness of beauty, beauty in light, in color, in memory, in human association. To many people who do not understand versatility and lack of pretense, Martin Tanner may have been a peculiar man…He was no fashion plate and didn’t try to be. When you met him, as likely as not there’d be a residue of gearbox grime on his fingers…but he was never too busy to chat, never too intense to smile, never too accomplished to be friendly…he thought more of simple things and elemental values than he did of show and pretense and facade. He was sort of timeless, a man who could—but not often enough does—happen anywhere at any age. A man of broad knowledge, sophisticated tastes, refined values, he was content to let these characteristics evidence themselves naturally and without fanfare.”