Monthly Archives: May 2020

Tillotson family’s 1930s Omaha home at 624 N. 41 St is revealed

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By Charles J. Tillotson

“My oh my! The old house is still standing after all these years, which is at least 89 years.

“This is my Grandpa and Grandma’s (Charles H. and Rose A. Brennan Tillotson’s) home and where Dad and Mom (Reginald O. and Margaret I. Tillotson) lived intermittently for three years after they got married.

“I was born in 1935 in Creighton [University]’s St. Joseph Hospital and lived here for my first three years when Dad wasn’t on a construction site too far to come home. Dad built a small house-trailer so that he could take Mom and his kids along with him when going away. 

“When Dad finally decided to settle down three years later [after the death of Charles J. and formation of Tillotson Construction Co. with brother Joe], he bought a house with a fruit orchard located on the northern outskirts of Omaha. 

“I have a bunch of photos of the house while I was standing in front of it with my winter togs on, and of course it was painted white at that time.” 

In 1940, Bernard Blubaugh prepared the Clyde Co-op’s Medford, Okla., location for a concrete elevator

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The Clyde (Okla.) Co-operative Association filed its 21st-annual report in 1940 and listed Bernard Blubaugh (seen above) as general manager of its Medford operation.

The report named the nine directors:

L.E. Melka, President

B.F. Cline, Vice president

Otto Zeman, Secretary

C.E. Clark, Mike Hein, E.J. Best, J.R. Skalnik, C.S. Shellhammer, and Louis Droselmeyer, directors

Stogie in hand, Bernard Blubaugh walks an elevator site. Photos courtesy of the Blubaugh Archive.

Employees were O.L. Sturtz, local manager, Clyde; Phil Kenny, local manager, Renfrow; Lewis Dahlen, local manager, Deer Creek; E.L. Hampton, local manager, Nardin; Gary Cassingham, local manager, Salt Fork; Evelyn Dillon, bookkeeper, Medford; Elmer Huffman, elevator, Medford; Robert Wharry, gasoline and oil, Medford; Carl Dahlen, gasoline and oil, Clyde; Irvin Dester, gasoline and oil, Deer Creek.

Another co-op record shows that Tillotson Construction Co., of Omaha, was already familiar with the co-op. On March 11, 1936, the company was awarded the contract to build an elevator at Clyde. This would have been a wooden elevator: their first concrete elevator was in 1939 at Goltry.

The bid was $10,950. Two weeks later the company came back to the co-op board with a request.

“Tillotson ask if we would reconsider as he had left out $3,335 labor bill,” the record says. “Board did reconsider.”

And Tillotson went on to do additional, significant work for the Clyde Co-op, building the 212,000-bushel elevator of reinforced concrete at Medford in 1941. Presumably, the bid included labor costs on that one.

 

In 1941, Mrs. A.L. Luty managed an elevator complex in Kiowa, Kan.

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An item passed along to Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators makes us wonder if we may have found the first woman to manage an elevator.

“With a new 100,000-bushel, fire-resistive elevator now in operation, in addition to an older plant which adjoins it, Mrs. A. L. Luty goes about her managerial duties with renewed effort. Pictured at her desk in the new elevator of the O.K. Cooperative Grain & Mercantile Co., at Kiowa, Kansas, Mrs. Luty maps operations for the heavy run of grain which the plant will handle this summer. At the right is the new elevator. Antirfriction bearings throughout; standard electric power, including surge protection; modern dust control equipment and lighting protections–a splendid example of construction and engineering.”

Note: This is not a claim that Mayer-Osborn or Tillotson built the elevator at Kiowa.

Source: Bernard Blubaugh Notebook