Republican Party, Democratic Party? How about the Donner Party?

• Author: Kaelble, Steve
• Position: Brief Article

Lessons on choosing your leader wisely

Election Day is near...would you pick the best leader if your life depended on it?

Not necessarily. Consider the case of the Donner Party. Those on the pioneer wagon train had a clear choice between two dramatically different potential leaders. The one they chose ended up guiding many to their deaths in the Sierras, where some had to resort to cannibalism.

That leader was George Donner, an affable, grandfatherly, 62-year-old one-time Hoosier farmer. "Grandpa George," as his fellow pioneers called him, had lived in Jefferson County and outside Greensburg before moving to Illinois, where his ill-fated journey West began in 1846.

George Donner also happens to be the great-great-great-great-great-grandfather of Karl Ahlrichs, director of business development of Marsh & McLennan unit Marsh USA in Indianapolis. Ahlrichs traces his roots to Donner's second marriage; it was the third wife who accompanied Donner on the doomed trek.

According to Ahlrichs, who has studied the Donner Party story in great detail, his ancestor was chosen to lead the journey over a 45-year-old visionary named James Reed. "These wagon trains were democratic," Ahlrichs says. "If a leader became unpopular, he would be deposed and a new leader elected."

Reed and Donner had jointly pulled the mission together, though of the two, Reed was the one who was "more intense, focused and results-driven," Ahlrichs says. But, he adds, "James Reed rubbed people the wrong way. Donner had more 'soft skills' than Reed, and soft skills win elections."

Many factors apparently converged and left the Donner Party stranded in the snow and forced to look upon one another as sustenance. Ahlrichs offers one example that might have made the difference. "A wagon train ahead of them had abandoned a sick person. George Donner picked him up and slowed their progress so he wouldn't be shaken...