It didn’t make life any easier for the Ingram family when, as Bronson Ingram lay dying last June, his ex-con brother reappeared in town and called public attention to a sordid episode in the family’s history. xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxFrederic B. (Fritz) Ingram is still waiting to collect on the $6 million judgment he won June 10, 1995, against former Commerce Union Bank Chairman Bill Earthman—$5.6 million in damages and $400,000 in legal fees.
Earthman has signed over to the court a brokerage account at Morgan Guaranty Trust Co. in New York and a farm in Beersheba Springs. The court will hand the assets over to Ingram if the judgment is confirmed. The Tennessee Court of Appeals will hear the case June 11.
The lawsuit against Earthman brought Fritz Ingram, Bronson’s brother, into the public eye locally for the first time since he went to federal prison in 1979. He was convicted of bribing Chicago officials to obtain a sewage-hauling contract for the family barge company. President Jimmy Carter pardoned Ingram in 1981 on the strength of his assurances that he would return to philanthropic activities in New Orleans, where he lived. Instead, Fritz Ingram renounced his U.S. citizenship and moved to Monaco.
For a family that has spent generations avoiding the spotlight—even for its myriad good deeds in the community—Fritz Ingram’s cameo appearance on the Nashville stage must have seemed horrifying. But brother-in-law Henry Hooker reported to Bronson Ingram on each day’s developments in the two-week trial. According to Hooker, Bronson was fully supportive of his brother. Bronson Ingram died five days after the verdict came in.
Fritz Ingram has gone away again. He has not been in business with Bronson’s wing of the family since the brothers split their holdings in 1978. Fritz got the richer half, the oil business, and destroyed it by losing $100 million in six unpleasant weeks in 1983.
Bronson got the stepchild business of distribution and turned a mere fortune into a massive one.
E. Thomas Wood
