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:
Early life
The Bugas family originated from Slovakia. 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.
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:
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.
Federal Bureau of Investigation
"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.
Bugas and Hoover would remain close friends until Hoover's death in 1972.