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| Clock that W.D. "Don" Knight received from the University of Wisconsin - Madison when he retired in 1986 |
Before I get to that Mayville connection in the next post, bear with this family history preface which is my tribute to W.D. "Don" Knight (1916-1988). On this blog you will find that I like to reflect on the history which these kinds of objects bring to mind, as discussed in previous posts on the iron parlor stove, and on the five-cent drink token. This clock is an artifact which is important to Katy, because it was a gift to her father, Don Knight, given when he retired in 1986 from his job as a Professor in the School of Business at the University of Wisconsin, after 40 years there. We make fun of these kinds of "inexpensive" parting gifts which employers give out when people retire, but as the years pass, they become important. Now we are glad that after Don and Maureen died, we didn't throw out this clock. The clock with the Badger plaque is hands-on proof for our children of what their grandfather did for a living.
Don Knight grew up in Beloit, Wisconsin located along the Illinois border about 80 miles west of Chicago. Beloit was a tough industrial city in 1920's and 30's when Don grew up there. People seeking factory work moved to Beloit to work at Fairbanks Morse & Company (now Fairbanks Morse Engine), Beloit's largest employer at that time, a huge enterprise which manufactured pumps, industrial supplies, engines, parts, washing machines, windmills and many other products in Beloit and in other locations. (The company website reports that the company was famous for being the first company to successfully market a gasoline engine in 1893.) At Beloit High School Don used to tutor some of the toughest students in the school. He taught a boy there how to read, and to say thanks the kid gave Don a book, but he couldn't keep the book because, as it turned out, the kid had stolen it from the library. Don just dropped the book in the library return box with nothing said.
After high school, and now it's the Depression, there was no family money for college but Don lived at home found a way to quickly work his way through Beloit College, and then with a scholarship he moved on to the University of Michigan where he took a Ph.D. in finance in 1939. Through these student years Don kept in touch with Beloit, and after finishing school and the military Don married Maureen McKenna who had been working there as an industrial nurse at Fairbanks Morse.
This family history is all good. Don was a big-shot in the family, to his parents and sisters, and to all the cousins, because he was the first Knight or Quinn (mother's side) to ever attend college. But what interested us most about the Don Knight early years were the stories of poetry and literature which Don knew by heart. He used to recite Shakespeare in the college bars for drinks. I first experienced the residue of those lyrical student years about 40 years later at the Knight dinner table, when I would hear him break into song from time to time, but by then the melody was pretty shaky, pretty much at what I would call George Burns level. At Don's funeral in Madison after he died on April 15, 1988 I met cousins Don's age who came up from Chicago, and I was jarred by that because the cousins looked just like Don, tall Irishmen with thick white hair and broad smiles.
Go back to the start of the 40 year career which is noted on the plaque, to 1946 just after the end of the war when Don got out of the service and started at UW-Madison at age 29. He took on a side job which brought him to Mayville where he investigated and reported on Mayville's industry. That will be the subject of future posts.
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2018 supplement to this post: In 2018 I finally got to Don Knight's study of Mayville industry after the closure of the iron works in 1928. See the three 2018 posts on this subject.
T.S. 12/15/2018
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