Today’s featured photo is sort of a "Who’s Who" in Milan. Anybody who was anybody in our town is included in this interesting picture.

It was taken to commemorate the day in 1949 when the Milan Rotary Club visited the Kaiser-Frazer auto plant at Willow Run. The club boasted at least 28 members in those days because that many guys are in the picture. This is another Bill Squires photo and I chose 1949 as the probably year it was taken because the company was born right after the war in 1946 and Frazer sold out to Kaiser in 1950. At that time, the factory name was changed to Kaiser Motors. Notice the name printed on the door is Kaiser-Frazer, so the picture must have been made before 1950. I doubt the company was giving tours of its facility when it was just getting started in 1946, so 1949 seemed to be a reasonable year to date the photo.

All of you who agree, raise your hand. If you disagree, tell me why and if I’m having a "great day" like everyone continually tells me to, I may decide to make a correction.

Henry J. Kaiser was a builder of ships during W.W. II and he likely got a good handle on production methods at that time. He built a whole bunch of boats for the merchant marine people who transported supplies to our troops. When the war ended, he chose to begin a peacetime business rather than rest on his laurels. Henry decided to muscle in on the car industry which was highly competitive at the time. He bought the former Willow Run Bomber Plant from Ford Motor Co. and they were probably happy to dispose of the potential "white elephant." It was a huge industrial complex and its post-war uses were decidedly limited. Kaiser incredibly had the new auto plant up and running in time to market cars in 1946. I don’t know how much his partner, Jacque Frazer, helped in the initial push to get rolling, but I’ve always suspected he was more of a silent partner who didn’t want to get involved. The original Kaiser autos were a scaled down version of the Frazer, which was a luxury car. It didn’t sell as well as the Kaiser, which may have been the reason Frazer bailed out. Kaiser made it in the market until 1954 before he went belly-up.

I was always sorry that production ceased. I thought it was an innovative, quality vehicle. By the way, did you know that Kaiser production was moved to Argentina and that facility only recently closed its doors this year? But enough of the car company and on to our photo.

I’m sorry the photographer didn’t line the guys up in even rows so they could be easily identified. He failed to do so, so I’ll just have to do the best I can. Bill was able to name everyone except three. The front row is easy because everyone is in a straight line. When you read the names of the others, make sure you stay in the second row, the short third row and the four-man top row. If you "older" folks are like me, you’ll enjoy seeing them as you knew them in 1950 because I believe they have all gone to that big Rotary Club in the sky, except Bill.

Here goes and I hope you are able to figure this out. In the front row are: unknown (left), but he was the chaplain at the F.C.I., Gerald Heath (Home Market), Thurlow Bodley (Milan Truck Line), Robert McLeod (Milan Coal and Ice), George Steidle (shoe store owner), C.J. Shuttlesworth (warden at the F.C.I.), Ray Frisbie (barber), George Shine (Beauregard’s Department Store), Don Wanty, Frank Draper, and Nick Miller (Miller’s Drug Store—no relation to founder).

In the second row are: (be sure to follow across) Harry Dicken Sr. (Village clerk), "Gramps" Hensley (Dr. DeTar’s father-in-law), Hubert Ross (Milan F.C.I.), Arthur Cox (Milan Dentist), Oren Vedder, unknown, and K-F host at right end.

In the third row are: G.C. Van Orman (Van’s store), unknown, Eli Bassett (Bassett’s store), Justin Dunmire (dentist), Grant Jones (Jones Insurance), and John Bruckner (Bruckner Oldsmobile).

In the back row are the last four: Aubrey Robson (Dodge, Plymouth dealer), Rev. William Johnson (Marble Memorial Church) Bill Squires (Squires Manufacturing), and "Doc" LaDoucer (Doc’s Chevrolet?).

I have no idea what the Kaiser-Frazer photographer said to get these Rotarians to beam so broadly. He couldn’t have asked them to "say cheese" because the smiles are too big. There was a great Kaiser joke making the rounds at that time, but I doubt that he told it because two men of the cloth are in the group. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned the joke because I can’t print it in a family newspaper. If you can’t stand not knowing, give me a call and if I can remember it by then, I’ll tell you.

The lensman could have gotten a big laugh by telling the group their lunch would consist mainly of road-kill and collard greens, which would have been truly laughable, unless you liked road kill and collard greens.

The main thing is that, regardless of the cause, this is the happiest bunch of guys I’ve seen since I announced I was quitting the M.H.S. football team in 1945.

Notice that the two diehards in the front row, Jerry and Thurlow, opted to keep their hats on for the photo, perhaps because they didn’t know what else to do with them. George Steidle held his in sort of a Pledge of Allegiance mode and the warden’s hat looks as if he had sat on it before clutching it in a three-fingered, left-handed grip. George Shine has his chapeau firmly grasped in a four-fingered, right-handed grip which he bolsters with his left hand, and Nick Miller has his lid turned over and ready to take up a collection for the road-kill lunch.

In the 1950s, nearly all men wore hats, so I’m sure the other guys have their tucked in front of them out of sight. The only time when my Dad didn’t wear a hat was in the house. He had a felt hat for winter, a white straw hat with a navy blue band for summer, and a typical farmer-type, straw hat he used while gardening that looked like it really was made of straw.