John Bugas

The parents of Jack Bugas, Andrew (Andrej) P. Bugas (born in 1867) and Helena L. Bugas (the name "Bugas" was then spelled "Bugos"), were both born in eastern Slovakia, in the village Lučina near Prešov.

Andrew Bugas immigrated to the United States in 1882 (following his father, John P. Bugos, who immigrated in 1878, though died back in Slovakia, at that time part of Austria-Hungary, in 1902) and became a naturalized U.S. citizen at age 26 in 1891.

In 1901, Andrew Bugas was elected to the Wyoming State Legislature (as a Republican) and served six terms until 1907.

Andrew and Helena Bugas married in 1902 and from 1903 to 1929 had a total of eight sons and two daughters.

John Stephen Bugas (April 26, 1908 – December 2, 1982) was the second in command at Ford Motor Company during the presidency and chairmanship reign of Henry Ford II (the oldest grandson of founder Henry Ford).

He is best known for taking control of the company away from Harry Bennett so that John could be in command of it—including drawing pistols on each other—following the death of Edsel Ford.

As the Detroit Free Press wrote of Bugas:

"When the historians write it down a century from now, they will be dealing with Louis Chevrolet, Walter Chrysler, the Dodge brothers, the Durants, Maxwells and others who put their names on the cars Americans drove or the companies that built them. But they will also have a tale to tell about John Bugas, who in his time had as dramatic a moment as any of them. [Bugas was] a giant of the auto industry and at a time when the industry itself strode around the world in seven-league boots."

The Bugas family originated from Slovakia.

Jack Bugas was born in 1908 in Rock Springs, Wyoming.

In 1909, the Bugas family moved to Wamsutter, Wyoming.

There, Andrew Bugas opened the first agency for the Continental Oil Company, operated a small hotel and post office, ran a road construction and trucking company, and developed a family ranch he would name the Eagle's Nest.

When Jack Bugas was in his early teens, his father's debts forced the family to mortgage the Eagle's Nest.

Bugas worked for years to help retire his father's debts, including quitting school at the age of 16 for two years when his father placed him in charge of a road construction crew—an experience which Bugas would later say was "the hardest and most important in his life" and "what gave him confidence and taught him self-reliance."

Bugas later recalled standing with his father outside the Eagle's Nest weeping as they burned the paid-off note.

Bugas had a favorite story about ranch life in Wyoming:

"You know, when I was a kid I never wore shoes or ate candy until I was 14. Finally my dad told me he would get me some on his trip to town. So 10 days later, I ran out a mile from the ranch house to meet him and he tossed me a couple of packages. When he found me under the bed at the house, I had chewed half-way through one of the hob-nail boots because I thought it was candy."

Bugas claimed that as a child he would punch cows for entertainment.

Bugas graduated from Laramie High School.

The "tall, rangy" Bugas (at 6'1" ) was a "star forward" for four years on Willard Witte's University of Wyoming basketball team (including the 1934 national championship team ), and was also on the baseball and track & field teams and a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. He graduated cum laude from college and law school (which he funded by working as a forest ranger, trucker, timekeeper and refinery laborer ) in 1934, and went to work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation the following spring.

"Adept at the art of fisticuffs while wearing a suit," Bugas rose quickly through the ranks of the FBI.

By 1938 J. Edgar Hoover appointed him head of the FBI's Detroit office, a strategically very important position as at the time Michigan counted "heavily in the national defense plans."

According to the FBI, Bugas "oversaw the shift in focus from violent crime to national security. As war loomed in Europe, concern about possible espionage and sabotage attacks on vital American industries like Detroit's automobile manufacturing plants moved to the forefront. Guarding the secrets of American technology and manufacturing were crucial to the war, and the Detroit Division played an important role in protecting these critical assets."

Bugas established a reputation as a "man with unlimited patience and efficiency" in his work on "notorious kidnapping, espionage, bank robbery and other major cases."

At the FBI, he most notably led the quashing of two Nazi spy rings (including German Countess Grace Buchanan-Dineen, whom Bugas "turned" to a double agent ) and personally captured Public Enemy Number One Tom Robinson at gunpoint.

Most of all, Bugas made a notable record when he "kept sabotage in war plants at 0."

Bugas was known in the bureau as "an 'agent's agent-in-charge,' a man all like to work for" ("the highest compliment in the service"), always leading his men personally on important cases.

Some say Bennett (who had originally been hired by Henry Ford to stifle attempts at unionization) targeted hiring the "tough-as-nails former FBI man" in hopes of neutralizing him, as Bugas's 1941 FBI investigation and discovery of theft from Ford's Rouge plant implicated some of Bennett's cronies.

Edsel Ford, Henry Ford's only child, once mentioned to Bugas "how vulnerable he felt his family was to Bennett's machinations."

Bugas quickly became an "Edsel loyalist," and with that an enemy of Harry Bennett.

Bennett once recalled that Bugas "seemed to sit around most of the day, his jacket off and his gun jutting from the shoulder holster beneath his arm."

When Edsel Ford died an early death in 1943 at the age of 49, his widow Eleanor blamed Bennett.

After Edsel's death, Eleanor struggled to get Henry Ford to step down and let Edsel's oldest son Henry Ford II take control of the company, including by threatening to liquidate her and Edsel's Ford stock—almost half of the outstanding shares in the company.

But according to Ford II, it was a few allies, most notably Jack Bugas, who ultimately swayed the senior Ford to step aside.

In 1944, Jack Bugas left public service to join Ford Motor Company.

Henry Ford, still deeply shaken by the Lindbergh kidnapping, hired Bugas away from the FBI to protect his grandchildren, Henry Ford II and his siblings.

Bugas began working under head of security Harry Bennett.

When 28-year-old Ford II was selected by his grandfather in 1945 to succeed him as president of Ford (at that time America's largest private corporation), Bugas was immediately put in charge of taking control of the company from Harry Bennett's entrenched gangster element in management, and of ousting Bennett.

When Bugas fired Bennett in his office, Bennett called Bugas a "son of a bitch" and drew a loaded .45 automatic on him (which Bennett kept in his desk drawer, often taking target practice into the wall over a visitor's shoulder ).

Bugas and Hoover would remain close friends until Hoover's death in 1972.