Finally, mercifully, we get to the last of the drawings from Tillotson Construction Co. records, and instead of dark, hard-to-read copies of blueprints, we offer these scanned copies of a “blue line.” They’re for a main slab and tunnel at Gurley, Neb.–which we assume has something to do with an annex–and were completed by Ted Morris on April 18, 1958. The scale is indicated as one-quarter-inch to one foot.
These are among the most detailed drawings in our possession, with abundant dimensional markings and figures for steel reinforcing bars. There are also many notations, some comprehensible and others begging for clarifying comments. In the upper right, the note, “Knock out Exist. Endwall in Tunnel” seems to suggest a conveyor that would connect the annex to the elevator.
Above that, an 11.0-foot gap is indicated between slabs with the note, “Wall to Wall (to Clr. Car Puller). Hmm!
Another one, between the Number Six and Number Four tanks, says, “Truss Bars next to Tank Opg’s. Str. Bars next to Inner Opgs.”
And in Number One we read, “Main Slab Steel to be 2″ Clear from Face of Slab Shown. Main Wall Steel to be 3/4″ clear from Face of Wall Shown.”
Others are far trickier. For example, “Print Walls for Roof” is written in Number Eight, and that’s pretty obscure.
Gurley is located in the Nebraska panhandle a few miles north of Sidney and Interstate 80. A satellite view reveals the annex and main elevator quite clearly amid Crossroad Coop’s complex at 501 Lincoln St. and ought to satisfy reader Suzassippi’s desire to match the two-dimensional drawing with a photographic view.
Readers may please feel free to contribute their own interpretations via the comments feature.
Mary Ann (Parrish) Davis is the daughter of Art Parrish (b. 1921-d. 2012), who was a superintendent for Mayer-Osborn Construction Co. The family–Art, Flo, Alice, Mary, and their dog, Tuffy–went from job to job, living for weeks or months at a time in places ranging from Wyoming to New York. They had many marvelous, dramatic, and even tragic experiences. Mary was married 44 years to James Davis until he passed away in 2007. They had three children. Today she is known as Mary Mentel from a subsequent remarriage in 2011. We spoke to Mary by phone from her home in Oklahoma City on May 11, 2021.
Art Parrish
Mary: When he [Art] started working on elevators, he was only 18 and had just married my mom and worked as a laborer. In fact, his first day of work, he worked for his father-in-law, John Berle Fowler [Mary’s grandfather], he climbed into a big storm drain and fell asleep, so he [Fowler] fired him. After he forgave him and gave him another chance, he taught him to read blueprints. He [Art] worked real hard, and after a certain time he became a carpenter. When he was working as a carpenter, he was called to the Army in November of 1944. So from 1940 to 1944 he worked as a laborer and carpenter. Called into the army during the war, he was injured and sent home. He went back, and the war was over: they dropped the bomb. After the war he went back to work on an elevator because he already had experience and could read blueprints. He always thanked his father-in-law for that. It was in 1945 when he got out of the Army and started working on this big job that was in Enid, Oklahoma. (That was his hometown.) He worked as a carpenter. His superintendent was Bill Grammar. So my dad was a carpenter for a year. Bill came to him and asked, “When this job is done, I have a small job in Oakland, Kansas. Do you think you can handle a foreman’s job?” The company from Hutchinson, Kansas, sent Bill up there. My dad said he didn’t know if he could do it, but sure would like to give it a try. Bill said it would pay $1.50 an hour. Now this was in 1946. The laborers got $1 an hour, the carpenters got $1.25, and a carpenter foreman got $1.50. Bill had been a superintendent for many years and–he was as old as his [Art’s] dad–and he only made $150 a week as a superintendent. He was on a steady salary. That’s how things were in those days. But you could buy a new car every other year, which my dad always did that. He said with that kind of money, things were cheap then.
There was an old man that worked with my dad. His name was Roy Snodgrass. He kind of treated him like a son. My dad was still limping. He’d been shot in the leg a couple of places with a machine gun in the war. This old man said, “Are you getting your pension?” My dad said no. Well, he forced him to go downtown and sign up for that. My dad was always thankful. He said one day it was raining, and when that happened they would go into the toolshed and play poker. And Roy told my dad, “Come on, we’re going to go get you signed up for your pension.” So they did, and about a year later he started getting his pension in 1946. This doesn’t have anything to do with elevators, but his pension was $42 a month. By 2006 it was $800 a month. But then in 2007 the government cut it in half for any vets over 80 years old, which I thought was really sad.
Myrl Davis, who was Mary’s father-in-law, with crew at an undetermined job site.
He said he never did see Roy again after that job. Then from 1946 to 1952, Art worked for six years as a carpenter foreman. He was all over the Midwest on different jobs, all grain elevators. There was just one time he worked on a cement plant. Then he was hired in 1952 as a superintendent when I was eight years old.
My grandfather, J.D. Fowler, worked construction on the elevators. My father-in-law, Myrl Davis, he worked for Mayer-Osborn. In 1952 we were in Rudd, Iowa. It was population 400–you probably never heard of it. The elevator was the only tall building in town. It was really a big deal. There were about 10 kids in my third-grade class, and my dad invited the teacher and the children to come up on top after it was finished. So that was a big deal for me and my class. There was a small elevator on the outside of the [grain] elevator. That’s what we got in to go up. I think he called it a manlift. I don’t know if they used ropes or it was electric. On that job his foreman was Ray Rogers. There were like three families of us that traveled, and we would see each like every other year. We kind of grew up together. Myrl Davis, Ray Rogers, and Art Parrish–those three families. And I ended up marrying Myrl Davis’s son and was married for 44 years before he died. He had one sister and 10 brothers, and all the boys were named with girls’ names. One of the brothers worked on one of my dad’s elevators, I’m not sure which one, but he had a heart attack on top. They all died before they were 65 of heart attacks; they were all kind of heavy drinkers. The one that died on top, he had a heart attack on top of the elevator. My dad carried him down. By the time he got he down, he was gone. My dad never told me these things till I was old.
We went to Rochester, New York, and that was where my dad worked on the cement plant.
[Mary raises the question whether it could have been a Mayer-Osborn Co. job, and we discuss the range of their work throughout the Plains, down to Texas, points in Iowa, and even Tempe, Ariz.]
My dad worked an elevator in Tempe, Arizona, when I was in first grade. If I was in first grade it would have been probably 1948 or 1949. I remember Tempe. When we drove into town everybody was wearing coats. It was like 65 degrees and raining. Everybody was shivering. We were laughing at them. I learned to ride a bike in Tempe. I liked it there.
Flo, Art, Mary (front), and Alice and an Oldsmobile
After Rochester–that’s the first place I ate pizza; it was wonderful–we went to Iron Mountain, Michigan. It was way out in the country and really cold. We went ice fishing. We saw the biggest ski jump in the whole world. And then when I went to school there, I went in and the teacher told them I was from New York, and they all applauded. This was a little bitty country school and I guess they thought I was from New York City or maybe they thought everybody from New York was a celebrity.
In 1955 we lived in North Canton, Ohio, and built an elevator there.
In 1958, when I was 14, the elevator we built in Limon, Colorado, was right across the field from where we lived in a trailer court. So I saw it go up, and that was really interesting. It seemed like it took most of the summer for the foundation. When they poured that, my dad always worked–even when he was superintendent–he worked 48 hours straight when they poured that concrete. The other guys would be on a shift, eight or 10 hours, but a lot of times he had to call people in to help because they wouldn’t show up. He started getting ulcers because he was worried a lot about different things. I’d walk outside at night, after dark, and you could see across the field from our trailer court, it was bright out there. They’d string lights above and have floodlights shining down so they could keep working constantly for 48 hours. Then they’d get to go home and sleep for maybe a day so it would dry real good. Dad was superintendent, Myrl Davis was foreman. A lot of times on different jobs, either Myrl or Ray Rogers would be foreman. Some jobs he had both of them working, one as carpenter, one as foreman. I was surprised after they did that foundation. It shocked me how fast that elevator went up, like one day it wasn’t there and the next day it was. Of course then they had all the inside and everything else to do. But it just went up so fast. I always knew he was on a time limit because they were on a contract, and if they didn’t finish within a certain time, they didn’t get as much money and they got in big trouble. My dad was real good about getting it done and doing it well. He said as far as he knew, in his whole life, he never had problems with his elevators. A lot of different companies, it crumbled or they had problems. His were always really well built.
Mary Ann Parrish Davis, now Mary Mentel
I’m not sure where we were going in 1954, but our trailer turned over when we were pulling it on a wet two-lane road in Wyoming. These two big semi-trucks passed us real fast, and from the air pressure the trailer started weaving and my dad lost control and it turned over. It was the only one we had. It was brand-new, extra wide and long and like a split-level. That was a scary time, real traumatic for my parents. We had to live in apartments for a while until we bought a used trailer. I think back on my favorite Christmas. It was when that happened. Because we had no money, we were in a motel room. So they got these big Christmas stockings full of toys and candy. And the next year we made our own Christmas decorations.
The last job that my dad worked on was in Commerce City, Colorado. That’s near Denver. It’s like a suburb. That was in the 1960s. He quit building the elevators. He painted the old ones, put the names of the towns on them. They stayed in Denver because my sister and I had gone to over 30 schools when we were growing up. [Art and Flo were divorced during this period in Denver.] Even after he retired my dad never quit working. He built his own house. He poured patios and driveways for people all around Denver, and he painted houses with his stepson and his family. He loved getting together with Ray Rogers and Myrl Davis and laughing and talking about old times.
After we kids got married and moved out, he married my stepmother. They moved back to Commerce City. She had a house there.
Art Parrish
My dad died in 2012. He was 91 years old. He was told he had cancer in 2007 and had six weeks to six months to live. My mother died, my husband died, my stepsister died. My dad was still alive. I was grieving everybody, and I said, “I’m not going to grieve him any more.” He lived until 2012–that much longer. The doctor said, “What do you want to do with the time you’ve got left?” He said, “I want to make a liar out of you.” And he did.
Ronald Ahrens and Kristen Cart spoke to Marvin Keele, of Blencoe, Iowa, on April 20, 2021. Marvin is 88 years old. In 1954 (above) he spent a few weeks working on construction of the Mayer-Osborn elevator in Blencoe. The interview starts with Ronald’s explanation about use of the voice recorder and typing a rough transcript during the phone call.
Marvin: Well, I hope I can answer your questions. (Hearty laugh.)
Ronald: How did you get the job working on elevator construction in Blencoe? What was the connection? How old were you? What did you do?
Ronald Ahrens and Kristen Cart at BMW Performance Center West, Thermal, California, April 22, 2021. We are just a few months from observing the 10th anniversary of Our Grandfathers’ Grain Elevators.
Marvin: I’d just turned 21 the fall before. I worked for the school with the buses, but they didn’t hire me during the summertime. I had to have a summer job. Word got out in town that they were hiring, and I and a guy from a nearby town were the first two hired. His name was Dale Vrainburg (sp?). He passed away at 100 here just a year or two ago.
Ronald: So you had been colleagues since 1954. Have you been in Blencoe all this time?
Marvin: Yep. I was born outside town here, and I’ve lived here all my life.
Ronald: You heard through the grapevine that they were hiring. What did they call your job?
Marvin: Well, they hired us as carpenters to build the forms. When we went to work the wage was 75 cents an hour. But for every week you stayed with them you got a dime raise up to $1.25. That was top wage. It was awful good money because they paid time-and-a-half over 40 hours. We worked 10 hours a day, seven days a week. So we had three days that we got time and a half. In ‘54, that was awful good money. I worked there from first part of June to a little bit into August, and I had to go back to work at the school. But we saved enough money that we could buy some furniture and go with my brother-in-law to Oregon on a trip.
Ronald: You and your wife?
Marvin: Yeah, Mary. We’re the M&M kids. We were married in Nov. ‘53. So we got married in November the year before, and I went to work at the elevator in the summertime.
Ronald: Was your young bride concerned about your safety?
Marvin: No, huh-uh. Nothing to be concerned about over there. The first thing they did was build a big deck so they could draw out the shape of the bins. We made a big deck. The engineer chart drew out the shape of all the bins. When they got to building the forms, we just followed the shape on the deck.
Ronald: Was this all an adventure for you?
Marvin: It was something I’d never done, being as young as I was. I just got out of the Air Force the year before, then went to work at the school. After they hired Dale and I, people would come to apply for a job and when they’d take their name down and say, “Well, we’ll let you know,” then they’d call Dale and I into the shack there, the timekeeper’s shack, and they’d say, “You know these guys? Would they be good workers? So Dale and I, we kind of could steer some of our friends into jobs that the other people didn’t have a chance to get.
Inside the excavation at Blencoe: rebar mats, welder, and formwork for pits
Kristen: My name’s Kristen Cart–Kristen Osborn by birth. The Mayer-Osborn Company, that was my grandfather. I know my dad was on that job that summer. Jerry Osborn was there just for the summer. He was at pouring stage, putting in rebar.
Marvin: I just mailed copies of some pictures I had. It’s showing all the rebar they put into the base of it, into the footings. I sent four pictures, and it shows all the rebar that went into the base. And in the center of one picture, you can see the dump bit, or the boot pit–we called it the boot pit–that was put in where they dumped the grain.
Kristen: Do you remember the name of the superintendent on that job?
Marvin: Ernie Mendoza was the foreman. That’s who we worked with.
Kristen: Do you remember somebody named Dick Osborn on the job?
Marvin: No, not really. I know there was an Osborn that was in the time shack and was the boss.
Kristen: OK, that would have been him.
Marvin: I’ll tell you something interesting about that. We had three guys that came to work, and they’d been working in another town for a local contractor. They were getting 75 cents and hour, no raises, no time-and-a-half. They came and got a job, and by the third day they was there, they got talking among themselves that Dale and I and a few others were getting more money per hour than they were. So they went over to time shack, and they went in and said, “Those guys, we’re doing the same job those guys are, and they’re getting more money. I imagine Dick Osborn, I think, was running it and I don’t know, whoever the Osborn was that was running the time shack said, “I’m sorry you feel that way.” He pulled their time cards, wrote them out a check and said, “It’s been nice knowing you.” They came back about two weeks and said, “Can we come back to work?” He said, “Yeah, if you start out at 75 cents an hour and work your way up, you can come back to work.” And another thought that came to my mind today, they hired quite a few high school seniors, kids who were going to be seniors in high school in the fall. One was my cousin, Eric Keele. He was going to be a senior in high school that fall. He showed up for work, I think it was the second day, third day. I went by and he was.digging a hole. I said, “What are you doing?” He said, “I’m digging a hole for the outhouse.” That was in the days before Port-a-Potties.
Ronald: We don’t have any photos of those outhouses. That would be a new department for us.
Marvin: There wasn’t a city water system at that time. One of the pictures I sent you, I wrote on the back that there was somebody, I couldn’t tell who it was, you see back, and he was at the water pump evidently cleaning up or cooling off. They just put a point down, and had a water system that we drank out of and things.
Ronald: Did you ever work the night shift? They went 24 hours a day.
Marvin: I quit before they started up. I worked nights when we were pumping water. See, we live out here on the Missouri River bottom, and the water level is most times about 10 to 15 foot. When they got ready to put the boot pit, or dump pit, down I think around 80 two-inch points all around the perimeter, and they had two big Hercules engines–I think they were propane powered–and they pumped water 24 hours a day out into the ditch. They never shut ‘em down. They had somebody watch the pumps all the time–they had a sight gauge on the side with oil in it. That’s how they checked the oil level in the pumps. They never shut down.
Ronald: We wanted to ask you, there were some problems with this job. You wrote a little bit about that when you commented on a post. Could you go into any more detail about what happened? They had to tear part of the elevator back down, right?
Marvin: I quit and went on the trip. What they told in town, whether it was right or not, they had some of the forms were upside down. The forms had to be a little bit wider at bottom than they did the top so they’d slide. That’s what they told in town. They got up about 14 feet or something like that. When we got back from our trip they were tearing it down, but I didn’t go back to work because I had to go to work at the school. As I said, they put down all of those two-inch points to pump water. Then they built a coffer dam that was bigger than the dump pit. They built it out and dug down and stuck it in the ground. It was about eight-, 10-foot tall. Then they built another section on top of that, and they stuck it clear down in the ground and kept pumping the water out around the perimeter. Then we went down in there and built the forms for the dump pit.
Kristen: Dad said that the concrete was slumping underneath the form, so they tore it down and started over.
Marvin: Yeah, they tore it down and started over. They had quite a few high school kids working on that. They had one kid, they got going, they were up about 15, 18 foot. Ernie Mendoza did not know kids, when he wasn’t around, they were jumping off of the deck down into cars of sand, they had the railroad cars, and these kids were jumping down into the cars of sand. One night, he told this one kid to do something, and the kid just pretended to be mad. He said, “Well, I’m tired of you telling me what to do, I’m just going to jump off of here. He went over and jumped off into that car of sand. I guess Mendoza looked down and he said, “Don’t you come back up on this deck tonight.”
Ronald: That’s funny. We were wondering if there were any accidents.
Marvin: Not that I know of. I never heard of any.
Ronald: Is the elevator still standing in Blencoe? Is it in use today?
Marvin: Oh, yeah. It’s there.
Ronald: Does the co-op still use it?
Marvin: A big co-op from Fort Dodge, Iowa, had bought it. They put up, the one that we worked on, a few years later, they put up some bins beside it to expand it. And then they put up another one. A few years later they put up another one. Now this New Co-op–the name is New Coop[erative]–that took over here a couple years ago, they put up a $750,000 bin, they put up a new dryer, and they put up a big fertilizer plant for dry fertilizer. Now this year they have built a barge unloading and loading on the river, and reportedly they spent $7 million building that. We were just out there over the weekend and they got their first load of dry fertilizer on three barges. They emptied them out, and they’re going to ship three barges of soybeans back down the river.
Ronald: Can you remember the buzz when the elevator was built. It was such a tall building that comes out of nowhere–kind of a big event for the town. Do you recall any commentary about that?
Marvin: No, not really. We had some people pass through town the other day, and he hadn’t been here–he was raised here as a kid and left as a kid, and he said, “I never remember seeing that elevator from the schoolhouse.” I said, “Well, the reason you never saw it is because it wasn’t there when you were a kid in school.”
Ronald: That was an older gentleman then, I guess. Anything else you want to tell us about your adventurous summer of ‘54.
Marvin: Well, it was probably the hottest summer we’d had in years. It was really hot. In fact, I sent you a picture that I’m in, and I noted on the back, “Notice how tan I was.” We really got suntanned over there. In those days you never had sunscreen or thought about skin cancer or nothing.
Kristen: That elevator that they put in later also had a problem. They had a blowout under one of the doors during construction. Do you remember that?
Marvin: No, I don’t remember that. But they were building an elevator, the same company was building one at Odebolt that summer. They had problems at Odebolt. When they put the dump pit in, they run into a lot of big rock I guess. That’s the story we heard. They ran into some huge rocks they didn’t know about.
Kristen: That’s when they were building the dump pit?
Marvin: Yeah, they run into rock. Now this elevator over here, it sets on sand. There was no pilings put down. They said that sand was so solid that they just dug down about seven, eight feet, and then they put the base of it on that. There was no piling used in the construction of it. This blow sand–they call it blow sand–it’s wet and packed. When they put that elevator up they said, “That’s the best base there is.” That’s what they told us anyway.
Kristen: That coffer dam that was built–was that left on-site and then filled in?
Marvin: They just built the boot pit inside of it and covered it up. After they got the boot pit made, then they filled the boot pit with water to let it cure. We went out and walked on catwalks out over the water to work on different things. Like I say, it was primitive according to today’s construction because the jacks they used to move it up, they were all screw jacks, they weren’t hydraulic or anything. They had a water line that run around the perimeter to level it. And they had guys, that’s all they did, was go around and make sure the water level, they were level.
Kristen: That’s interesting. I wondered how they did that.
Marvin: There was a plastic pipe that went all the way around to each screw jack.
Kristen: They said they filled the concrete into the forms with regular wheelbarrows.
Marvin: Up on the deck they had wheelbarrows that they moved the concrete around the deck. In these pictures, you can see how much rebar in in the base of that thing. There’s just tons of rebar in it.
Kristen: That’s why it’s still there.
Marvin: There were two levels of rebar, a bottom level and they put up on blocks, I remember maybe eight, or 10, 12 inches off the base, and they laid a mat down, a rebar mat, and then they built another one above that, about three foot above it. So there was two mats of rebar put in there, and it’s all fastened together and welded together. You can see in those pictures, there was an electric welder setting out in the middle there, that they welded a lof that rebar together with.
Ronald: Did they bring in a specialist to do that welding, or was it just the local guys and they got some training?
Marvin: I don’ know, I don’t remember, because I say, Dale and I were hired to be carpenters and that’s all we did was build things, build forms and things. Then after that, then they put you to work doing other things. When the forms got done, I was done, I quit. I went on a trip, and then I had to go back to school to my job there.
Ronald: You did what for the school district?
Marvin: It wasn’t that big a district, and later on our district consolidated with another district. I had a lot more buses. I worked for the school 36 years.
Kristen: What did you do in the Air Force?
Marvin: I was in motor pool. I was in the Air Guard in Sioux City. In fact, today is our 70th anniversary of reporting to Dow Air Force Base in Bangor, Maine, the 20th of April. They called us to active duty. I always laugh that I was one of the few people that served on active duty and never went on active duty and never went to Lackland Air Force Base for basic training. I joined the Guard, and they activated us. And they said when we get to Maine, we’ll send to Lackland for basic training. We got up there, and they said, “We’d be short-handed if we sent you down there. We’re going to give you a week of basic training here. They marched us around the block, took us out to the rifle range, and said, “You’re in!”
The contract to build the 100,000 bushel elevator on the old Wiebe Lumber Co. property has already been let, August Grell said last night. He stated that the contractor is Ted Morris, Grain Storage Construction Co., Council Bluffs, Ia. They have materials on order and are ready to go to work, he stated. The Beatrice Concrete Co. has a sub-contract for furnishing the concrete for the structure, which is to be built at an estimated cost of $250,000.
Editor’s note: There is a discrepancy in capacity of the elevator as recorded in the two articles. We believe the 340,000-bushel figure is more likely correct.
The Lincoln Star, Dec. 27, 1958
Beatrice, Neb. — Construction has begun here on a new 340,000 bushel capacity grain elevator by the Farmer’s Co-Op. Being built by the Grain Storage Construction Co. of Council Bluffs, Ia., the elevator will consist of 8 concrete bins, 120 feet high with a 40-foot high headhouse on top to house lifting machinery.
We thank our friend Susan Allen for unearthing this and other clippings.
The Helena (Oklahoma) Star, Thursday, Jan. 22, 1959
Mr. and Mrs. Francis Dawson have moved into the former Thompson house, recently vacated by the Carl Jantz family, and Mr. and Mrs. Austin Brown live in a trailer house on the back of the lot, there.
The men are employed by the Tillotson Construction Co., that is building the new elevator at McWillie.
They came here from Texas.
We thank our friend Susan Allen for unearthing this and other clippings.
Editor’s note: The previous post about Charles Hauber, an employee of Tillotson Construction Co. in the mid-1950s, raises a question: What were a timekeeper’s duties on a grain elevator construction project?
The timekeeper’s duties were often directly proportionate to the project size. On small projects the timekeeper’s duties were performed by the job superintendent. If the size of the job warranted a full-time person, his duties would require him to daily monitor the laborers on the job and their hourly rate of pay, either by requiring each individual laborer to personally check in with him in the morning, thereby “starting the clock” for the labor to be performed for that day.
On larger projects with a given steady number of workmen on the job with constant types of duties being performed each day where personal check-in would take up too much time, the timekeeper would merely check out each laborer’s hours, task, and hourly rate for each workman via personal observation and contact throughout the day.
The timekeeper was also responsible for recording the hours worked by the on-site administration and supervision personnel, but usually the pay rate for these people, including himself, would be held confidential.
In any regard, no matter the job size, the responsibility of the timekeeper was to accrue, on a daily basis the name of each laborer, his hours worked, his job and his rate of pay. This daily tabulation for all labor and supervision personnel would then be transmitted to the accounting department in the Tillotson Construction Co.’s home office in Omaha.
The Accounting Department would then convert this information into the individual payroll checks to be issued to each workman. This was usually on a weekly basis. In many cases, where the job was in a remote area and there wasn’t enough time to transmit the payroll physically, the payroll checks were written on the job site by the timekeeper after receiving the amount of each check via the telephone from the Accounting Department.
The timekeeper’s job was a very important position requiring a person of integrity, honesty, and dependability–for without those key characteristics the possibility of achieving a successful and profitable project couldn’t be accomplished.
DALLAS CENTER, IA–Charles Hauber, 21, timekeeper on a grain elevator construction project here, is living proof that “a weak chin” is not visual evidence of a lack of determination.
Seven years ago Hauber’s lower jaw suffered a major injury in an auto accident. A nerve was severed and, as a result, the natural growth and development of his chin was retarded.
Two years ago, Hauger spent a month at University Hospitals in Iowa City, where physicians and surgeons estimated his possibilities fro reconstruction of his lower jaw and chin.
By using bone from his hip, surgeons are hopeful that they can build a normal mandible for Hauber. Through use of cartilage, the youth’s chin would be rebuilt to normal appearance.
Long self-conscious about his receding chin, Hauber developed a plan for accomplishment of normal features. He left Loras College in Dubuque, where he had been enrolled two years studying for Catholic priesthood, to build a bank account for the surgery.
Studies Languages
Surgeons have assured Hauber that a series of operations would be necessary. The surgery will be expensive. When Charles has saved $1,000, he’ll submit himslef for the initial work. The accumulation of savings is slow–but Hauber already has more than $400 in the bank.
Hauber is a most unusual construction timekeeper. He has had three years of Greek and four years of Latin. He has had three years of German and a year of French. He even has had six months of Spanish.
Besides his interest in languages, Hauber is an enthusiastic amateur short story writer. He has written several stories–without ever submitting any to editors for professional judgment. And, as a student of people and human nature, he’s constantly alert for character studies and incidents he can incorporate in fiction writing.
Worked on Elevators
Eldest of six children of Mr. and Mrs. Carl Hauber of Emmetsburg, Charles–known to co-workers as “Chuck”–for two years attended a Catholic seminary at East Troy, Wis., a school conducted by the Society of Divine Word. He also had a year at Epworth College, near Dubuque.
When Hauber first was employed by the Tillotson Construction Co. of Omaha, he worked on an elevator project at Bancroft. Then the crew shifted to the Farmer’s Elevator Co. at Ralston. After a “repair job” at Aurora, Neb., he was assigned to the elevator construction project at Boxholm.
Here the Tillotson company is building the $151,000 addition on the Farmer’s Co-Operative Co. elevator.
Hauber likes his work–but his dreams go beyond a career in construction business. Whether he’ll return to studies for the priesthood, he hasn’t determined. His interest in languages–which he continues to study after working hours–has kindled thoughts of becoming an interpreter. Possibilities as a writer are not overlooked.
Whatever he heads for, be assured Hauber will give it the old college try–and he hopes to have “a determined chin” to show with it.
From the Des Moines Tribune, Friday, Dec. 16, 1955:
Worked On Elevators
Eldest of six children of Mr. and Mrs. Carl Hauber of Emmetsburg, Charles–known to co-workers as “Chuck”–for two years attended a Catholic seminary at East Troy, Wes., a school conducted by the Society of the Divine Word.
He also had a year at Epworth College, near Dubuque.
When Hauber first was employed by the Tillotson Construction Co. of Omaha, he worked on an elevator project at Bancroft. Then the crew shifted to the Farmer’s Elevator Co. at …
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.
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.
Our Grandfathers' Grain Elevators 