Henry Norton Torrey (1880-1945)

He was born in Creston, Iowa, and studied at Knox College, the University of Michigan, and John Hopkins University. He came to Detroit in 1906 to practice medicine, becoming one of the city's best known physicians while also being prominent in Civil Affairs. During World War I, he served as a Major in the Army Medical Corps at Base 17, and afterwards became surgeon and then administrator of the Harper Hospital in Detroit, and a senior associate of the Detroit Hospital. He was an enthusiastic sportsman and was well-known as a yachtsman and big game hunter.

He lived with his family at Clairview in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and wintered first at Greenwich Place in Savannah before it burned down in 1923 and they bought Ossabaw Island where among others they entertained U.S. President Herbert Hoover and industrialist Henry Ford. He married Nell Ford, grand-daughter and heiress of the entrepreneurial John B. Ford, of Pittsburgh. They were the parents of two children.