Josephine Clay "Dody" Ford (July 7, 1923 – June 1, 2005) was an American philanthropist and the only granddaughter of Henry Ford.

Early life

Josephine was born in Dearborn, Michigan, on July 7, 1923. She was the only daughter and the third of child of Edsel Ford and his wife Eleanor Lowthian (née Clay) Ford. Her siblings included Henry Ford II, who also served as chairman and CEO of Ford Motors, and William Clay Ford Sr. Her father was the only child of Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motors.

Personal life

In 1943, she married Walter Buhl Ford II (1920–1991), not a relative, whose family were prominent in the chemical business in the downriver suburbs of Detroit. He was a descendant of the other prominent families of Detroit including the banking Fords, the Buhl family and Brush family. Walter Ford was himself involved in interior and industrial design and was the chairman and chief executive of Ford & Earl Design Associates. They lived in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, and together were the parents of two sons and two daughters: Dody and her husband were also art collectors and owned paintings by Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Pablo Picasso. Walter died in 1991 of pancreatic cancer. Dody died on June 1, 2005, at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

Philanthropy

In 2001, Time magazine estimated her net worth at approximately $416 million. In 2005, at the time of her death, she owned more than 13 million shares of Ford Motor stocks. Josephine and Walter Ford were major contributors to the College for Creative Studies (a $20,000,000 donation in 1997) and the Detroit Institute of Arts among other institutions. Dody donated Van Gogh's Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin, which was valued at $40,000,000, to the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1996. She also donated large amounts of money for cancer research leading to the formation of the Josephine Ford Cancer Center.

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