They met at Wayne State University Bookstore in September of 1947.� Lynn (Dad) was a student and worked as an assistant manager of the bookstore.� Evie (Mom) was a recent high school graduate who had just been employed there while my Dad was on a short vacation.� She told me she noticed him right away because when he got there everyone was so glad to see him and it seemed that every question and decision was referred to him.� He'd already completely redesigned the filing system she always bragged to us kids.� About three weeks after they met, he finally asked her to go with him to get doughnuts for everyone at the bookstore and asked for a date.� She'd "known him a few short weeks and yet; somehow he made her heart forget all other men she had ever met" (with a tip of the hat to "South Pacific").� The others were just boys and Lynn was an "older man" with decided views and interests and, besides, he had dimples.� When it came to Mom, if Dad thought something was interesting then she was convinced it was fascinating. �She stayed like this actually for all their life together!� Lynn, who told me once he was a pragmatist rather than a pessimist, was entranced by this beautiful brunette sylph who was upbeat and fun-loving, a great dancer, quick to learn and seemed to think he had hung the moon.
They married after two years and moved into a small apartment in the Detroit area. In 1950, a great year, I was born, the first of six children. Lynn worked in a small tool and die shop, but longed to own his own company. Though he had a teaching degree, he preferred the workshop to the classroom. In 1951, with the postwar boom going on, and hisGI loan handy� they bought a small house on a double lot in the "no-down-payment" area of Dearborn township, Michigan. Almost immediately Lynn began to enlist the help of three of his eight brothers, Keith, Dwight and Conrad, and Mom's brothers, Donny and Danny, to help add on to the house. Making a large, exotic breezeway, extra porch and attached garage, he made it an unusual and attractive house (especially for that neighborhood of cookie-cutter houses). In 1955 Lynn set up his own company with his brothers and called it Arbros. They not only did tool and die work, but began a side business to manufacture and retail quarter-midget race cars. They loved making them and loved racing them as well, Lynn and Keith acquiring a broken leg and a broken arm, respectively. Evie even took her turn driving these race cars (the first time she drove across the street and partway up a tree before finding the brakes) Arbros all but foundered several times and it was just down to Dad and Dwight as partners when they renamed it Spinster Corporation in honor of the "Spinster" racing car they made. The fifties were fun years for us kids, but Lynn and Evie struggled financially and personally during those years. Carolyn was born in 1952, Greg, in 1954, we lost one sister, Dawn, in 1955, she was stillborn; Debbie was born in 1957. By 1957 there was a slight recession going on, my father and Dwight held on to the their business with their teeth, but Lynn had to have more money in the meantime. In 1959 he went to work for Burroughs Corporation as a "paper-pusher" (that's what he called it), working at his own shop in the evening hours. Then Lynn broke his leg in the aforementioned racing accident. Meanwhile, back at the ranch house, Evie had her hands full and was wondering if they'd ever have another vacation or she'd ever get out of the house. Of course, most women with children were stay at home moms then and I believe our family was the better for it. But my mother paid the price sometimes. She kept our home spanking clean, cooked all the meals, did our laundry, nursed us, read to us, wiped our noses, showed us how to cut out paperdolls, make a Kool-Aid stand and draw for fun. My parents were putting three of us at the time through a Catholic school that had just opened in time for me to start first grade there. Evelyn wanted us to attend this school if possible because she felt the education she received in a parochial school in her early years had been of great help to her. So times were tough for a while and money was tight. Evie didn't worry unduly, one, because she believed totally in my father, and two she was not someone who fretted by nature. She knew he would be a big success, she just wished she could see him a little more often. Finally, after Debbie was born, Evie joined an afternoon bowling league with her sister, Ginny. "Big deal" I suppose, but she was getting out and socializing with people who called her Evie instead of Mumma or Hon. She could see the light at the end of the tunnel.
My Dad was handy at home (when he was able to stay at home) and he was always making unique things for us kids. In the bedroom that Carolyn and I shared from the age of 4 and 2 until we were 8 and 10, he made a special table for us to draw on. We absolutely loved to draw! We already had a small tea-party table they bought for us out of wood and made with drop down sides like a "grown-up" dining table. But Dad took a solid wood inside door and cut off the strip with the hole in it for the door handle. He put rectangular wood slabs around the edges and then laquered it heavily. At each end, about a foot from the end, he put a wrought iron pole, painted flat black, that fastened underneath the door and went straight up and right through our ceiling. Now we had a long table, free and open underneath, at one side of our bedroom where we could draw to our hearts desire. We went through so much paper that Dad began bringing home reams of scrap paper from the shop for us to draw on. It had typing on one side but the other side was blank. One time he brought home a huge roll of manilla paper that looked sort of like a super gigunga paper towel roll only the paper on it was pale yellow and strong. Another day, he brought home what we called the "barrels". They were strong big cardboard tubes, about an inch thick. He painted them pastel colors in glossy paint and gave them to us kids to play with. No one on our block had anything remotely like them. When we wanted swings in the "kid's yard" instead of bringing home the rickety hollow metal kind (which he probably couldn't afford) he built us the kind of wooden swing set that parents pay a lot of money for now and then have to assemble themselves. There were wooden swings hung from extra heavy scratchy ropes and the frame for them was as high as the big metals ones at elementary school and sunk down into cement in the ground. It seemed we could swing up above the houses and it never got rickety or rocked when we swung on it. It's true that sometimes we wanted our things to be exactly like the other kids, but we still knew we had something unique. We loved our swings but we missed having a slide. While Carolyn, Greg, Debbie and I were having a happy though not perfect fifties childhood, Lynn and Evie had to pinch pennies and worry about the economy, the fledgling business and whether there were more children on the way.
In 1960 my sister Kimberly was born, in the labor room, just Mom and her, and she was deprived of oxygen just long enough to make her borderline retarded. We didn't know that at first, however, all we knew is she spent the first year of her life in and out of the hospital because she couldn't digest her food so she couldn't grow. I don't know if it had anything to to with the way she was born or not. Finally she seemed about to die from complications of pneumonia. The hospital had done a hundred tests on her and wanted to do more. They admitted she was dying. So Evie said no, if she must die, she'll die at home with her family around her, including her sisters and brother who hardly know her because she's been in the hospital so much. My Grandma Simon hustled over and brought all the old-time remedies and they brought Kim through it and eventually she seemed to get a little better. Nevertheless, she always talked clearly and a lot and from an early age. She was slower to crawl and then walk than most children are, but somehow she persevered. Read more about Kim here.
The fifties had been a tough time in many ways for Lynn and Evie, but as the sixties began things seemed to be looking up again. We moved to Farmington, Michigan in 1961 to a newer and bigger house and Dad eventually moved the company, now called Tool Craft Die & Engineering, to a newer and bigger building. The business seemed to grow now pretty much as we children did. Evie and Lynn now found a hobby together. Lynn's two brothers, Dwight and Keith and their wives wanted Lynn and Evie to go with them to take square dancing lessons and join the club. This was a little slice of heaven to Evie and they went once a week and occasionally they went to special Saturday night dances. By now we had Jacki Babe, born in 1963, an easy, healthy baby, that we somehow knew would be the last one. We older girls could now help a little with the care of the younger ones. We no longer followed the quarter midget race car circuit, Lynn and Dwight were now sticking to simply tool and die and doing well enough at that. For fun, they had made something the whole family could use, something more stable, slower to replace the go-karts for fun, but only for the family. We called these our dune carts. They were bigger, with huge tires that could climb anything. They only went about five miles an hour but would mow down anything in the woods and climb up hills and go through shallow water. The brothers, Keith and Dwight and Dad amended them as they fancied. Uncle Keith's had a reverse gear and headlights for night. Uncle Dwight made a double seater that actually three kids could squeeze into. These were the days before OSHA or Ralph Nader etc., so we kids wore no helmets, knee pads, or anything. Many Sunday afternoons we spent at some woodly property Lynn owned running up and down the hills in the "duney carts". Kids under 12 only drove in a circle on the flat part. Adults went up and down hills and exploring everywhere. Kids (like me) of 11 or older rode on the back on a seat above the engine with big metal tube that came up between our legs that we could hold on to. You virtually could not be thrown out if you were the driver but a few of us 12 to 14 years old fell off into a bush in the woods because our dads were driving like maniacs around trees and across creeks. (By the way, walking to the bigger bushes on one side of the cleared area with a roll of toilet paper was what sufficed for bathroom service) Older teens could try their luck driving with the adults. The worst I received was a jillion mosquito bites when we stayed into the evening. We tromped down a flat open area at the top of the hill. There we kept babies in playpens, cold drinks in coolers, later we cooked hot dogs, hamburgers and marshmallows over an open fire. When it got too hot in the summer, we brought this same gang, Uncle Keith, Aunt Zona, Peggy and Don, my Uncle Dwight and Aunt Sandy (at that time they had only one, Glenn) and our brood out to Kensington Park for swimming and a little boating (Dad had bought a second hand outboard motor from Mom's brother Danny). After only a couple years of this, we ceased taking out the dune carts. The woods on either side of us were being filled up with houses. The noise of our engines bothered them. Dad sold the property and we looked for more property that would fit the bill, but we never could find just the right piece. And now Dad had found a new interest. It was still involved with vehicles, but they were a lot bigger and much older...
Yes, around this time Lynn took Greg with him to Indiana and they bought a dilapilated 1931 Cadillac Town Car and another one in even worse shape for parts. They drove home the first one, toting the other one behind. This car was something Lynn's father could only have dreamed of driving, never mind owning. Now antique cars became his focus instead of the race cars. They'd practically been outlawed because they made so much noise. The engines had to be smaller, less powerful and quieter. Boring... Evie was jubilant. Lynn wanted to join the Classic Car Club of America, this meant he wouldn't break any more limbs and that maybe they'd get to go out. As for Lynn and his restoration, the problem was all the rubber on the Cadillac was deteriorated or missing: grommets, gaskets, pedal covers, weatherstripping around doors and windows and even runningboard matting. You could paint the car, get new tires, reupholster the inside (which my father did himself) and even have the chrome repaired and re-chromed. But what could you do about the rubber? No one made any new stuff, no one knew how to restore it. Lynn checked with cronies who worked in the rubber And he began to believe that he could reproduce the rubber parts, designing them from the old distorted rubber parts and making them in new aluminum hot presses. He planned to make just what he needed for his car, but when others in the car club saw his, they all wanted ones for their car. Soon he was busily making up aluminum molds for not only Cadillac rubber parts, but Chevy, Olds, Buick and even Chrysler and Plymouth. All from the 1930's and 1940's, of course. Evie became an important part of the business now. They were busy with the car club and even were Activities Chairmen a couple years. Mom wrote a monthly newsletter column, "The Torque Wench" that she won an award for later. (There's a photo on Mom's page of Evie with her "Cinderella Award".)
In 1967 Dwight decided he want to get into the real estate business and Lynn bought out his share of the company. Now it was down to this, it was only a small shop, three to five employees besides Dad, could he make a go of it? He had a large family to provide for; I was just sixteen, Jacki was only four.The tool and die business seemed to be dying out, tool, Lynn felt, or soon would be. Evie wasn't worried, she knew all along that he would get what he set out to get. Lynn thought, well, he was getting older, 48 years old, wasn't he ever going to get in the big leagues? Still he never was the usual type to have climbed the corporate ladder, he kept his cautionary way with his wallet from his childhood in the depression. He wasn't much for fancy cars, fancy clothes or keeping up with the Joneses. It was more that he had to leave some small imprint behind him, to show he made a difference somehow. A family friend came to show some home movies he made while in the mountains and piedmont area of North Carolina. Having experienced two of the worst winters in Michigan for a while, Lynn leaned forward and watched this film closely and began to wonder and to talk to my mother late at night about a what to do.. By 1975 he'd made up his mind, he would move the business and family down to North Carolina that summer. The tool and die part would be left behind and we'd concentrate on making the side mail order rubber parts business into the main business of the company. Lynn believed the business could support about three to five other employees besides he and Evie. They both worked long hours once we moved to North Carolina. All four older children had graduated from high school. Debbie and I were both working for the company. Greg had spent a year in California and then remained in Michigan, working in a tool and die shop himself and saving money to marry his sweetheart, Linda. Carolyn had married Matt in early 1975 and after their first look at North Carolina, two months after we left, they decided they loved it to and Lynn wanted Matt to help him in the business. Several times a year, all through these years, Lynn and Evie went with the company to swap meet-fleamarkets in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Dunkirk, New York; Dunedin, Florida and Ft. Worth, Texas. After having seen a little of Europe in the early seventies, now they would see a bit of the U.S. in the late eighties.
The company, now called Steele Rubber Parts expanded far beyond what my father had hoped for in 1975; he hoped that this small rubber parts mail order business could keep he and his family decently employed for another twenty years. By the time of Lynn's retirement party in 1990 the company was known all over the restoration world. It was still small, about 36 employees by that time, but it had grown past his expectations all the way to his hopes. Greg moved his wife and son down in 1986 and became a vital part of the business. One small, but worthy item of interest here is that my mother had always been terrified of dogs, in fact, all animals even birds (my grandma had pet parakeets). The fact of her phobia embarrassed and distressed her but she couldn't seem to overcome it. Until one cold winter in 1984 I came across a stray mongrel dog that I couldn't keep in my apartment along with my four cats. I was bereft as I could not find a sould who would take him. He was not full grown, but already quite big, but so quiet and friendly. My mother showed up (actually while I was in the middle of praying for me to find someone for him!) and wanted to take him as her pet! I near fell over. He was her darling "Friendly" for almost 13 years and she was never really scared of dogs again.During the last fifteen years of their life together Lynn and Evie traveled up and down the west coast with his brother Jerry and wife Ruth. They explored different parts of the west on the way out to Seattle every year where Jerry and Ruth lived. They took a couple of cruises, including one to Alaska. Collecting art glass and antique cameras became an obsession for a while with Lynn, but his family now became ever more the focus of his life. When he retired he became a board member emeritus, but he missed some of the board meetings because he and Evie were out having the time of their life. He trusted the group he'd put together to take the business and run with it. Matt became President and CEO and it was still a closely-held private company that now hoped to weather the storms a company goes through in the second and third generation.
Dad retired in 1990 but had several ongoing uncompleted projects, including a photographic trip out west with my brother scheduled for spring. They hadn't had a trip alone together since Greg went to retrive that first antique car from Indiana. They never made it. Dad ran out of time. Cancer had had been ravaging his family, already taking five of the thirteen and Dad was suddenly diagnosed with renal cancer in January of 1994. He underwent surgery, but never came out of it, he would have been 74 that May. Evie had suffered a stroke in October of 1993, shortly before Lynn was stricken and it seemed for a while we would lose both. She had mitral valve stenosis, a common problem for people who survive childhood scarlet fever and/or rheumatic fever. But her health stabilized and for two years after Lynn died Evie lived at the big house and traveled and did as she pleased. It seemed she was finding out who Evie was; something she never really did before she got married and needed to do now. After a couple more strokes and a bad fall though, it was time for her to move out of the big house with the woods behind and around it.. Luckily, she is not paralyzed, but has some sight and memory related problems and, of course, the heart-valve problem. She can no longer drive, can't read very well, but still loves to keep busy. She has to use a walker now, but wouldn't you know, it's on wheels! (She couldn't go fast enough with the other kind). I will never get over the loss of my father, whenever I'm at the shop it still seems as though he must just be in another room and will soon come in, jingling his keys and looking for a cup of coffee. We finally sold the house. I did not live there, but Jacki and Kim did and for all of us it is full of the memories of my father and twenty years of parties and problems and love. It used to comfort me to go over there and sit in Dad's chair and see the things he loved. Of course, I really see the things he loved most whenever I look into my mother's face or talk to my sisters and brother.
NOTE; We just lost my mother on December 19, 2004 after only 2 months of rapid decline. I haven't been able to even announce this on my website until today...October 28, 2005. I would like to talk a little more about it eventually, but right now it is still too painful.
All of what I've written are just facts and details, I don't know how to capture my father or mother in words. Perhaps someday someone who knew them too will do it for me. In the meantime, this is the only way I know to tell you about them. They were not perfect, our family was not perfect. They tried to instill good things in us and they tried to live by what they taught us. They are a point of reference in everything I do. All good things in my life came to me from our Father in heaven, but I believe He filtered most of it through my parents.
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