In 1954, in September, I was discharged from the army. At that time, [my wife Holly’s] father, Walter Walpole, had started Walbro. He’d actually started Walbro in 1950. The family lived in Fenton, down by Flint. In early 1954, he got the first contract to make the small carburetors that had been invented by the company, and he needed more space. The company was, at that time, headquartered in an old Quonset hut down in Fenton and not suitable for manufacturing. So, long story short, someone in Cass City had a friend in Fenton and the two of them happened to mention to each other that Wally Walpole was looking for a factory building, and contact was made. He came up and made a presentation to what was then the Industrial Development Corporation here in Cass City.
The company had been going since 1950 primarily on [Walpole’s] own money and the investment of two or three friends, so it was not plush by any means. The time was spent inventing the carburetor that they sold. He came up to make a presentation to this industrial development group, which included the two main bankers, Mr. Pinney and Mr. Auten. Being totally honest, he showed a balance sheet which was very much in the red, and at the end of his presentation, Meredith Auten stood up and said to the rest of the group, “This man is bankrupt and doesn’t even know it” and walked out. The other banker stood up and followed him out. The other members of the group of maybe 15 or 20 were angry at Meredith for that reaction, and it spurred them to greater efforts. They finally found an insurance company that would loan them money to build the original building. So that’s how we came to be in Cass City. Wally actually moved the factory into Cass City in late August of ’54 and, as I came out of the army on September 8, he offered me a job as a bookkeeper. My college degree was in economics and a very little bit of accounting. I stressed that I was a bookkeeper, not even an accountant. Of course, it was a very lean organization. We had an engineer, me as the bookkeeper, and Wally as the president. We hired mostly women to build the project. The company succeeded. The first contract was succeeded by others and within a year there were 150 people working at Walbro building carburetors, primarily for Clinton Manufacturing, which was a manufacturer of lawn mowers and lawn mower engines. That was my introduction to Cass City. Neither Holly nor I expected to stay. I wanted to go back to school and get a master’s degree and that’s what she wanted me to do as well. But one thing led to another and I found the work interesting and then our first child came along within a little more than a year, so we stayed. And we’re still here, from 1954 to today. Mr. Walpole, among other tenets of his existence, wanted to hire the very best engineers and managers that he could. Knowing that he would ask them to come live in Cass City, which was a pretty small town and still is, he felt a responsibility to participate and have his staff participate in the community and help to build it up, help to improve the community, to be active in the schools. His wife, after she came in the middle of ’55, was elected to the school board. While he never held any specific activity, he was always interested in what was going on and encouraged us to get involved. So, when somebody asked me, in ’63, to run for the [village] council, I decided that would be something of interest. In 1963, I think Fred Auten, suggested that I run for an empty seat [on the village council] that was there. I did and got elected. At that time, I walked in full of Roberts Rules of Order and the way you do things. I found around the table, for the most part, the seven people—the president and the six councilpeople, who were sort of a “good ol’ boys’ club”. They didn’t really follow any particular procedure. They sort of did things informally. As I recall, there wasn’t a clear budget. I started making motions and the village president at the time didn’t know what to do with a motion. I found myself at odds with the way things were going. And two years later, the village president chose not to run again, so I ran for village president and was elected in 1965, after just two years on the council. I went through, for the first four or five years, a number of village managers. In fact, we really didn’t have a manager at that time. We had various department heads, and they had various levels of ability and training. I felt we needed more organization and more formality to the way things were done, so that process took a few years. Then, we did decide to formally create the position of village manager. I ultimately hired Lou LaPonsie for that job. Lou and I had a great relationship for 25 years. For most of our time together, which was 25 years, he and I met every morning at 7:00. I’d go down to his office, we’d have a cup of coffee, and we’d discuss the events of yesterday and the upcoming events of today or tomorrow. I thought we worked very well together. I think one of our greatest achievements was the development and construction of the water treatment plant, which was completed and opened in 1980. Not only the plant itself, but the financing of it, which was done through the Department of Agriculture in a loan similar to the one we’re working with them on for the hospital expansion right now. We also formalized the police activities and lent structure to that organization. During that period of time, we still had a fair number of gravel streets at the beginning of that time in the mid-‘60s, and within the next 25 years we pretty much got all the streets paved. There was a period of time when a couple people in town were very unhappy with me. They ran someone against me and I lost. I had been in the seat 19 years at that point, and the person that they elected found out that it wasn’t all what he thought it was. He only stayed the two-year term and didn’t run again. The council appointed someone to fill his vacancy and that person was a General Cable person, and he got shipped to California with his job about six months into his term, so the council came to me and appointed me. So I ran and finished out the next 14 years or so, then in 2000 I figured it was time to retire. I was out of Walbro and really ready to do some other things, so I stepped down. I was out about 3 years, and again there was a vacancy. And I came back for another 3 or 4 years. So it adds up to 35 years all-together. It’s very disappointing to me that, as hard as I worked and others worked to improve the community, that we’ve come to the point where people are not as willing to become involved, or not as interested. I blame that, in part, on our general life today, the distractions that are present.
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