A Hoosier's Journey

By Donald J. Almquist

At age 17, I went home from work and told my mother that I had received an appointment to study engineering at GMI. She said, “I didn’t know you wanted to be an engineer.” I said, “I do today!” I didn’t even know where GMI was located. On October 1, 1951, I entered Flint, Michigan to start my education with General Motors Institute.

When Dad died, Mother was not employed. She said we were all going to stay together. The state would separate us if we couldn’t survive without Dad. I can still see her taking a knife and putting a slit in the top of that baking powder can, and we all contributed to it. We all put whatever we could earn in that can.

During Mother’s last year, I would go over to see her, and she always wanted me to take something home. When I was checking her food supply, I found the baking powder can. I told her I would like to have it. She said there were a number of times she would look into it and see a dime, which meant she would have to be creative for supper. We never went hungry. She was one of my two most admired ladies. I married the other one.

In March 1990, I flew into Moscow. All of the flights from out of the country came into Moscow in those days. After we landed, the intercom came on and asked for me. I remember this scared me. I wondered what was wrong. When I arrived in Tolyatti, two of my engineers met me and said, “Lets take a walk.” I thought this was strange since it was raining. They said you couldn’t talk in the rooms; they were bugged. They told about a session where they were planning the next phase of their work. The next morning the Russian engineers acted as if they had been in the meeting.

Don Almquist has traveled the world doing business for GM. In this memoir starts with life on a small farm in Indiana, continues through his education and career at both Delco Remy and Delco Electronics Corporation. He talks of his personal life and career with stories from all over the world. He shares his beliefs on management and leadership and reflects on the last 90 years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Apr 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9781665757430

Donald J. Almquist

Donald J. Almquist is a retired GM executive who served as President and CEO of Delco Electronics. He was also EVP of GM Hughes Electronics. He worked for GM over 43 years in various divisions and capacities. He served on various boards including: Indiana Corporation for Science Technology Corporation, Trinity Consulting, Aladdin Industries and Business Modernization and Technology Corp for the state of Indiana. He has received a number of honorary doctorates and state and national recognitions. He is a widower living in Georgia with his dog Peaches.

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A Hoosier’s

JOURNEY

DONALD J. ALMQUIST

Copyright © 2024 Donald J. Almquist.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5742-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5744-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5743-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024904127

Archway Publishing rev. date: 03/27/2024

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Family

Growing Up in Alexandria

Education

Our Homes

Vacations

Trailer Travel Log

Europe 1972

Oktoberfest 1977

Scandinavian Cruise 1990

Alaskan Cruise 1992

African Safari 1997

Belgium and the Netherlands 1999

Stories along the Way …

My Career

The History of General Motors

Formation of Unions in Madison County

Delco Remy

Delco Electronics

Countries

I Believe

How do you change the culture of an organization?

Civic Activities

Aid to Education

Community Activities

Recognitions

People Who Have Crossed My Path

A Conversation with Dad

Heading to Ninety

For my grandchildren,

great grandchildren and beyond

Foreword

A few years back, I gifted Dad with an online program that would email him a question about his life every week. He’d respond to the email with his answer. At the end of the year, the program would put it in a book and send it to him. At first Dad would only write a few sentences with each question. After some encouragement, he wrote more, and once we determined he could write whatever he wanted without questions, he started to take off. He typed his answers with a stylus on his iPhone—tens of thousands of words. Toward the end of the year, I subscribed for another year and told them to hold off on printing a book because we’d do our own. The weekly reminder was good to keep him in the habit of writing.

As this project evolved, more and more memories seemed to flood out. My brother, Greg, and I learned things about our parents’ life that we never knew. Finally, it was decided to put it into a big book format, with photos, and it would be a gift for Dad’s grandchildren, great-grandchildren and future generations.

In searching for photos, we came across Mom’s travel log from the sixties when we trailered all over the United States, often with the Ward family. I also found Mom’s journal from our trip to Europe in 1972. With losing Mom in 2019, reading her words was heartfelt. I could hear her saying each word that was written. Mom had always journaled and written in a diary, every day, her whole life. The journals were for her, not meant for public reading. They were her memories captured on paper to reflect on. To date, we have yet to open the big boxes of her diaries. She said, toward the end, to be gentle with them and realize they were written for her alone. For now, they’ll stay sealed.

Dad and I decided others might want to read these two travel journals so I’ve added them. It’s important to realize that Mom, and Dad, wrote as the thoughts popped into their minds and didn’t think about grammar or being correct by today’s standards. I’ve tried to leave everything as it was written in her logs and journals. As for Dad, he just typed as he thought of stories. He added names of people as he remembered them. Once again, other than minimal editing, I chose not to rewrite any of his words and to try to keep everything as close to how it was written. If you know either one of them well, you can hear them telling these stories.

Dad wrote about my brother Greg and me as well. Though I wondered about adding this, he felt it showed his support as a parent along with fun stories of our achievements and asked them to be left in.

Though written for family, we recognize some close friends and others might enjoy reminiscing. The stories are as Dad remembered them, right or wrong. He remembered more than I ever could. The chapter with the travel log and the trip to Europe in 1972 were written by Mom from her journals.

The chapters are titled and subtitled so you can skip over areas. I hope anyone reading the book will read it with loving eyes and recognize that a substantial part was never meant to be shared, let alone published.

With that, reflect on life over the last ninety years in our family, especially Dad’s. I love you Dad.

Tracy

In order to write about life, first you must live it.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Preface

I have had a long, productive life. I had a wonderful wife, two great children, and a career that took me all over the world.

I was always telling a story about something I had done and who I did it with. Everyone kept telling me I should write my memoir. I thought about it but never got around to doing it.

I got involved in writing this because our daughter, Tracy Richard, got me started on an activity called StoryWorth. Each week they would send me an email asking me some question. I would answer the question, and at the end of the year, they would bind up the answers into a book.

After a few weeks, I began to write about my career and where my jobs had taken me. I got so I enjoyed it. I would type out the answer on my phone and send it to Tracy, who would type it up.

It was a good therapeutic exercise. I had to scratch my head to remember most of it.

This is a collection of my thoughts. Perhaps it’s something my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will read to better know who their grandfather was. I hope you will enjoy it.

Don Almquist

Family

I didn’t grow up around my grandparents. My mother’s parents lived in Minden, Nebraska, on a farm. My grandfather, David Jones, was an ole mule skinner or person who raised mules. He raised mules for the mines in Colorado. When he had twelve ready to sell, he took two rows of six each, tied nose to tail, along with his favorite dog and horse, and rode thirteen miles to the Kearney railroad to send them to Colorado. He took his dog to help keep the mules in line. He was a tough guy. His father was in the Union Army during the Civil War. He lived in Kentucky. I have my great -g randfather ’s discharge from the Civil War on our wall. It’s dated 1864.

My grandmother, Laura or Loura (Layton) Jones, was a teacher who was born in Illinois. My mother was very close to her, and it bothered my grandmother greatly when my parents moved to Indiana.

My father’s parents were farmers in Nebraska, who then moved to Alden, New York, and purchased a dairy farm. They milked thirty to forty cows twice a day. They had a milking system where they hooked up cows to a machine that sent the milk to a cooling tank which had milk cans in a tank of cooling water. A milk truck would come by daily and exchange full milk cans for empty sanitized milk cans. All they had to do was hook up the cows. The dog was trained to go back in the woods and bring the cows to the milking barn. The cows would automatically walk into their assigned stalls. Someone would come along and close the stanchions.

Grandad, Joseph Leonard Almquist, was a first-generation Swede whose parents immigrated from Sweden. He was a redhead who my mother loved dearly as a father-in-law.

My paternal grandmother, Esther Peterson, was a big lady whose parents were born in Sweden. She was a great cook who made a lot of Swedish recipes. After Grandfather Almquist passed away, Uncle Babe was running the farm alone. After Babe and Jerry were married, they moved downstairs in the big farmhouse. They fixed a nice apartment for Grandma upstairs. It had a nice, big kitchen, a living room, and several bedrooms. They got her two wirehaired terriers. They were beautiful dogs but too wild for her. She also took in two foster boys to live with her. They were in high school and nice guys. They were good help for her and good company. They stayed with her until she died. One of the boys became a plant manager for Chrysler and even ran into Merrill at an auto purchasing meeting.

Later, we would go by car from Indiana to Nebraska one year and then the next year to New York. My grandparents usually came to Indiana on the off years. These trips were our vacations.

None of them had electricity in their Nebraska farmhomes. There were kerosene lamps and wood stoves to cook on. It took us two days of travel to see either set of grandparents. We stayed in the Cleveland, Ohio, area on our way to New York, and we stayed in Iowa when we went to Nebraska. We always took our little fox terrier dog with us.

My mother, Gladys Ione Jones, was born on February 8, 1908, in Minden, Nebraska. She died on October 25, 1996, in Alexandria, Indiana. She was the oldest of four children: three girls and one boy. Her siblings were Cleo, Eula, and Kenneth. Cleo lived to be in her eighties. Eula died from ovarian cancer in her thirties. Kenneth fell ill after taking a load of cattle to the Omaha market and passed away from polio the next week. He was also in his thirties. Losing two siblings so young was really hard on Mother. Since her brother was the youngest and she was the oldest, she grew up working on the farm with her father. When Mother was ten years old, my grandfather had her riding farm implements that were pulled by two to four mules.

She plowed right behind her dad. Mules can be stubborn and would sometimes stop. If she couldn’t get them started, her dad would come back and hit the stubborn mules in the head with a club. Mother said she would just pray the mules would start moving before her dad got to them with his club. She helped her dad with all the farm chores. She also helped her mother in the house.

Along with kerosene lamps, they had a large wood range to cook with. They regulated the oven temperature by the amount of corn cobs they put in the stove. They had a windmill close to the house, which was their water source. There was no irrigation, and they had frequent sandstorms. During storms, they placed pillows in the windows to keep sand from coming in around the frame.

The crops they raised were primarily corn, wheat, and oats. When they had threshing crews working the fields, the family was expected to prepare a large dinner for them. When she was about ten years old, my mother was helping her mother cook for the crews. She pulled a large pot of boiling water down over her legs. This left her legs badly scarred.

My mother graduated from Minden High School. She would stay with her Layton grandparents, who lived in town. She did this as long as she was going to school.

One day she had her appendix removed on their dining room table. They made the room as dust free as possible. They hung sheets up over all the windows to help keep the dust out.

When Mother was a senior in high school, her grandmother dropped dead as they were washing dishes together! She was quite close to her grandmother, and this bothered her greatly. After high school, she attended what they called normal college. This was the equivalent of what we would call community college today. I don’t know how long she attended before she earned her teaching certificate.

My mother taught in a one-room schoolhouse. She rode her horse, Midge, three miles to school. She had a center stove to heat the school. She would get coal from a shed behind the school where she kept her horse. She taught first through eighth grade. After school she would close up the building, saddle up the horse, and load her homework in saddlebags. She said the horse knew they were going home and galloped like a bat out of hell. She would just hang on. Mother said she never liked that horse.

I remember her talking about an experience where a cyclone was spotted heading for the school. She led the students to a neighbor’s storm cellar. The school, fortunately, was not damaged. She was commended for her quick action. As a reward, Mother was told she could have a lifetime license to teach in Nebraska.

She talked about a trip to southern Illinois, where her mother came from. Her family would camp out on the way there. The car had wooden-spoke wheels. When they were stopped, rattlesnakes would sometimes intertwine in between the spokes. Her dad would kill them by hitting them with dirt clods.

I don’t know how or where my mother met my father. They were married in her home on December 24, 1927. Her maid of honor was her sister, Cleo. Dad’s best man was his cousin.

My father, Elliott John Carl Almquist, was born on August 24, 1908, in Axtell, Nebraska. He died on November 8, 1950, in St. John’s Hospital in Anderson, Indiana.

He was the oldest of four children. Like Mother, there were only three boys and one girl. His siblings were a sister, Lucille, and twin brothers, Reuben and Rolland, who we called Dobe and Babe. Lucille lived to be ninety. Lucille was the treasurer of Alden State Bank, and she worked there all her life. Reuben, or Dobe, worked for Bethlehem Steel in Pennsylvania. I think he passed away from cancer. Babe was in the hospital in Buffalo, New York. I had a customer just outside Buffalo, so when I flew in, I stopped by to see Babe. He wasn’t expecting me, and he welled up with tears when he saw me. I always felt I was his favorite. He passed away within days of my visit. Both twins died before they were sixty.

As for Dad, he didn’t finish high school. He went to work on the family farm. Mother always said it was too bad he couldn’t have gone back to school. She said he was quite the math student. I know that he was always studying for the rest of his life. He was always trying to gain more knowledge.

When my dad was young, he became ill with rheumatic fever. I think it was quite severe, and I imagine there were limited medications. As a result, he would fight this illness his entire life. It was the forerunner of rheumatoid arthritis.

Besides working on the family farm, he graded roads with a horse-drawn road grader. I know at least one fall he was in charge of a threshing crew. They would take a large steam engine and work from Canada down to Kansas threshing oats and wheat.

My dad was very knowledgeable about horses. His family farmed with draft horses. I have seen photos of him when he won the 1927 state fair horse-judging contest. I still have his judging cane whose handle he carved his initials into.

Though I didn’t know how my mother and dad met, I do know that Minden and Axtell are small communities in Kearney County. They were not far apart. I remember hearing them talking about farming in the Sandhills. I imagine it was difficult to raise crops without irrigation.

After my parents were married, my dad’s parents, sister, and brothers moved to Alden, New York. They had purchased that dairy farm. My grandfather’s brother had a large farm about a mile away, and he was the one who found the dairy farm for his brother.

Dad and Mom moved into the family farm in Kearney County. I think they lived there less than three years. They battled the elements to raise crops. My dad’s uncle, CW Davis, who was vice president of the Mantle Lamp Company of America, told him that when my dad was tired of putting seed on the ground and having it blow away, he should call him. He had a job for him in Indiana.

My older brother, Chuck, was born in Nebraska on October 15, 1929. Shortly thereafter, Mom suggested that Dad should make that call to Uncle Cort. Cortland, or CW as he was known, told him to be at Aladdin Industries in Alexandria, Indiana, on January 1, 1930. My parents immediately began to dispose of the farm and other assets. They had a large farm auction and prepared to leave Nebraska with a new baby. Mom said telling her mother goodbye was one of the hardest things for her to do. They took a train to Alden for Christmas. Dad’s family had not seen the new baby, their first grandchild. After Christmas, they took the train to Elwood, Indiana, to start a new life. CW and Laura Davis—we called them Aunt Lolly and Uncle Cort—were our only relatives in Indiana. They had a nice home in Alexandria. They got an apartment for Mom, Dad, and Chuck nearby.

I remember my favorite Christmas. I think it was 1945. Uncle Ed and Aunt Cleo as well as Rosalee and Russell, my cousins, came to Indiana. We had a lot of snow that year. One day before Christmas, Dad and Uncle Ed saddled up a couple of horses and left. I remember wondering where they were going. A couple of hours later, they came home riding in a sleigh pulled by our horse, Duchess. She had sleigh bells on her back. We were so excited to see them. There was a sleigh in a yard as a Christmas decoration. We would go past it and admire it, and then one day it disappeared. Dad bought it from the owners and took it to a blacksmith to have it put back into its original shape. I don’t know where he got the harness. I know he was able to borrow the sleigh bells. We spent that week riding around town. Sometimes we would tie a rope on back and pull small sleds. It was great fun.

Christmas at the Almquists’ was usually the same each year. We celebrated on Christmas Eve. We usually had a beef roast and all the trimmings early on Christmas Eve. Dad would help Mom cook the meal. He was a pretty good chef. After dinner we would have the family Christmas exchange. Christmas Day was really a nonevent. We ate leftovers and played with our new toys. I think this was an old Swedish custom.

As for religion, Dad was a member of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. He had extensive Bible training. He was given the biblical name Carl when his training was completed. Mother was a Methodist and they became Presbyterian in Alexandria. Dad didn’t use the name Carl after his training. In Nebraska, he went by Elliott. Uncle Cort thought he should use the name John in Indiana. Dad was John Almquist after that. His signature was EJ Almquist. He was always Elliott to my mother.

In 1931, Uncle Cort and Aunt Lolly took their Packard automobile and went to Europe for six months. He was starting Aladdin businesses in various countries. Some were manufacturing and others were sales and service. Dad, Mom, and Chuck moved into their home on Lincoln Avenue.

When they returned from Europe, they moved back into their Alexandria home. Mom, Dad, and Chuck moved into the new house on the farm CW had purchased in Summitville. It was called Boone Center Farm. That’s where they lived when I was born. I was born on August 30, 1933, in Elwood, Indiana, at Mercy Hospital. I was twenty-three inches long and over ten pounds. We lived on the farm until Uncle Cort decided he wanted to move to the farm and do experimental farming. It became a picture-perfect farm. He purchased two farms nearby, built homes, and moved two couples from Nebraska to farm them.

We moved into a rental house on Madison Avenue and Canal Street. We didn’t live there long and then moved to 219 West Tyler Street. They rented it first, and then were eventually able to purchase it. This became our forever home. We grew up in that house, and Mother passed away there. It had the telephone in the entrance hall to call Central. Sometime later the house number changed from 219 to 305.

I remember when my younger brother, Merrill, was born in Mercy Hospital on May 1, 1937. Chuck and I were driven to Elwood to see our new brother. We were not permitted in so Mother came to the window to see Chuck and me. I remember crying because we couldn’t go in. I was not quite four.

Back to Dad. As I said earlier, he was good in math so Aladdin started him in the accounting department. He finally became the personnel director. Besides hiring employees, he fell heir to all activities involving employees. I remember he signed all the hourly pay checks. If they were not ready Thursday afternoon, he would go back to the plant after supper and sign them. He would take one of us with him. The rules were pretty loose back then. I remember I would head for the glass house and watch them blow glass. Some of the glass blowers would let me up on the platform and blow glass. When Dad was through, he would find us and we would go home. It was a different world back then.

In the spring of 1937, Aladdin workers had a sit-down strike. They wanted the same benefits that the GM employees in Anderson received. This wasn’t possible at Aladdin. It became ugly and violent. They declared martial law in town. Dad purchased a small revolver and a tear gas pistol and would go in the factory with bodyguards. More about this later.

I also remember shortly after the strike was settled; we had a big dog who was quite a watchdog. One rainy night, the dog was barking at a tree outside my dad and mom’s bedroom. I guess Dad used a flashlight and saw where the dog had cornered a drunk up in the tree. Dad told the guy to make his peace with the dog. When the sun came up, the guy was still in the tree, quite sober. Dad called off the dog, and the guy ran away.

The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, also known as the Burke-Wadsworth Act, was enacted September 16, 1940. It was the first peacetime conscription or draft in United States history.

In anticipation of another war, an actual draft operated from 1940 until 1946. The Selective Service Act required that men who had reached their 21st birthday but had not yet reached their 36th birthday register with local draft boards.

After December 7, 1941, when the U.S. entered World War II, all men from their 18th birthday until the day before their 45th birthday were made subject to military service, and all men from their 18th birthday until the day before their 65th birthday were required to register. During World War II, over 49 million men were registered with over 10 million drafted.

My dad was told his participation in World War II, as a Director of Personnel of a large company, was to head up the process for an area of Indiana. This wasn’t a job you could turn down. This meant that in addition to working long hours and handling a farm, he was required to oversee others who would make sure all eligible men were registered.

Traditionally, the lottery system was based on a registered males’ month and day of birth. 366 (in case of leap year) tokens were put in one container, each giving a month and a day. One was pulled, when required, and paired with another token from another capsule listing 1-365 (or 366 during a leap year). If January 19th was pulled from container one and 32 from container 2, that meant that all men turning 20 on January 19th would be drafted after groups 1-31. Somehow this process was done, without computers, during WWII.

Initially service was limited to no more than 900,000 men being trained at once with a maximum required service of 12 months. As WWII went on, service requirements got longer, some up to the end of the war. The age bracket of men required to register widened as the war went on.

Not knowing exactly how the names were drawn, it was known that dad oversaw the draft for our area. There were over 6000 of these boards across the country during the war. He hated the job. Though I’m sure that he administered the program per the government guidelines, when a family member, friend or neighbor was drafted; dad felt that others looked to blame him for their sons getting called up and often killed.

After the war a large envelope was delivered from the White House. It contained a large certificate signed by the head of the selective services, along with President Harry S. Truman and others, recognizing dad for his role. It came with a medal. I remember dad tossing the medal into a bonfire burning in the backyard. The certificate turned up 50 years later when Tracy had taken one of my parents’ old dressers to