OK. Let’s get back into the swing of things and talk about an individual who paid lots of taxes, created countless jobs and bestowed honor on the community of Morton. He was born in Wolcott, Indiana and married a Morton girl in 1941. Two of their four children reside in the Morton area, one resides in a neighboring state and a fourth deceased at an early age.
My first personal encounter with our mystery man was in the late 1960ties when he met me in his shop wearing a welder’s uniform covered with black soot. It seems that his shop was the only one in town that could fabricate a beam we at Morton Buildings needed for an airplane hangar we were building in Lacon, Illinois.
Our hero was born in Wolcott, Indiana on March 10, 1910. He moved via Cissna Park and Fairbury to Morton and married a Morton girl on October 18, 1941. They had four Children of which the oldest passed away at a very early age. Two of his brothers reside in Morton and the girl in the family takes care of her mom in Kansas. He was drafted on January 16, 1941 into the United Air Force, and as such was sent to Italy for fourteen months. Beings that I am a draftee myself I was curious to see when the law conscripting people into the military took effect. Google here we come again.
September 16, 1940. On this day in 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Selective Service and Training Act, which requires all male citizens between the ages of 26 and 35 to register for the military draft, beginning on October 16. The act had been passed by Congress 10 days earlier.
1941 was the year my father also a draftee into the German army succumbed to WWII, even though he had been previously conscripted into WWI. I was four years old and my sister was still in our mom’s womb. On September 11, of that year President Roosevelt ordered to shoot on sight any German vessel nearing the continent. On December 5, in far away Russia the Russian Army stopped the Wehrmacht in its track near Stalingrad that some say was the beginning of the end for WWII. On December 7, 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. It wasn’t until December 12, 1941 that Germany declared war on the USA. Interesting chronological events if one takes the time to analyze.
Being that I was also a draftee into US Infantry and subsequently stationed in Munich I befriended a young fellow soldier who was an accomplished painter. I still have one of his originals. We came up with a scheme to take broken rifle stocks cleaned, sanded, varnished and mounted them and my artist friend then write the name of the officer on it to display on his desk, such as Colonel Sander, United States Infantry or similar.
Our Morton male protagonist beings that he was a welder, welded a water heater out of airplane parts for his tent to keep warm in the brutal Italian winter where he was send to. Superior officers found out about it and naturally had to have one made for them. Together with that skill and the fact that he could weld together shot up airplanes saved him from being cannon fodder.
He returned to Morton in 1945 with the rank of staff sergeant and together with his brother he opened up a welding shop, which the two had acquired from the Hofer family for the exuberant sum of $1,000.00 with a$25.00 dollar down payment. Imagine that from money squirreled away during his military service, without government assistance, EDC recommendation, stimulus money, or what want to be politicians trumpet as job creation. I don’t know what the pay rate was in WWII, but when I was drafted in 1961, we were paid $50.00 a month. Out of that I put $25.00 aside purchasing an e-bond that after five years of service was enough for a down payment on our first home when we came to Morton.
He was in his shop from 1945 to 1996, when his 90,000 square foot facility on Jackson Street became too crowded and the firm built a new facility on the grounds occupied by the White Elephant. Caterpillar had created a new industry that of out sourcing and our hero business grew rapidly into 250 or more employees.
On August 21, 1987 while having breakfast with his family in Pok’s dinner he was informed that he was selected as Parade Marshall for the 1987 Pumpkin Festival, which caught him totally of guard so he said. Now POK’s dinner I have a personal interest in. You see at that time our Commercial Building Business at MBI was picking up momentum and our astute, benevolent and adorable President Henry Getz issued a challenge to our over 140 company stores of the time “that if you can’t get a commercial building into the town where you do business, you have not yet been accepted into that community”. Anyway I took the challenge personal and planted a Morton Building into the center of Morton on the corner of Main and Jefferson – POK’s diner. It was later remodeled into a two-story office building.
Any idea who I am talking about.
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