Before the United States entered World War I, John Closey Virden Jr. (1897–1981), then a student at University School, attempted to join the French air corps. His desire to serve would have to wait until May 1917, a month after the U.S. declared war on Germany, when Cleveland’s volunteer Lakeside Hospital Unit was the first to arrive in France. He was attached to the French army for training, winning his pilot’s wings, then transferred to the U.S. air corps. The war ended shortly thereafter, along with Virden’s dreams of aerial dogfights. He returned to Cleveland and joined the manufacturing company founded by his father. In 1929, he formed the John C. Virden Company, which became one of the nation’s leading manufacturers of electrical lighting fixtures.

During WWII, Virden was regional director of the War Production Board and in 1946 served as central field commissioner for Europe in the Office of Foreign Liquidation Commissioner. In that same year, he was elected a director of Eaton Manufacturing Company, and in 1958 was named company president. Under Virden’s leadership, Eaton significantly expanded and diversified through acquisitions. In the meantime, he became director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, later rising to chairman of the board. Virden’s civic accomplishments were equally varied. He was a trustee of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, University Hospitals, Carnegie Tech and the Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund. In 1954, he worked to establish the Cleveland Development Foundation to assist in urban renewal, serving as its first president.