| Notes |
- (Research):Provided by Mike Johnston, Ancestry World Tree, The Whisher Shaffer Project:
Born in Van Wert County, Ohio, he moved to Toledo, Ohio as a young man where he worked for the E.I. Dupont de Numours & Co. Inc. as a millwright. He was a charter member of the Trilby, Ohio Volunteer Fire Department and served a term as Chief.
A Short Biography of Ray Wisher
A short biography of Ray Wisher as told to Steven J. Stevens, his grandson. This information was gathered during Ray’s trip to Phoenix, AZ in November 1998, at the age of 95 years.
EARLY LIFE
Ray Wisher was born to Charles Emmett Wisher and his wife Flora Belle (Wolford) Wisher Feb 26, 1903 in Van Wert County Ohio. Ray was born in the farmhouse on his Uncle Tom Berry’s farm, which Charles was renting at the time. Tom Berry was Flora’s oldest sister’s husband and was a state senator. Ray was the fourth of what was to be eight children, and he outlived all of them. While he was still a baby the family relocated to Allen County, Ohio to his grandfather George Wolford’s house where his mother had been born. He went to school across the road from their farmhouse through the eighth grade. His big sister was the schoolteacher there after getting her certificate from a teaching college in Ada Ohio, after one year of study. When he quit school he went to work on the farm with his dad and brothers.
One time Ray and his older brother Ory, (who was two years older) were walking through a neighbor's field when they saw a skunk coming up to them. Ray picked up a two by four board and hit the skunk in the head, killing it. Of course the skunk sprayed him right in the face and he ran to a horse-watering trough and washed right away. Ory stopped to pick up the skunk and carried it home. In the end Ory had the smell on him and Ray didn’t!
Ray remembers the Erie Canal used to go through Spencerville. As a boy he used to play with the unattended locks, raising and lowering the water in them.
While growing up, Ray remembers one black family that lived in Spencerville. He used to play with their kids. The father of the family used to collect trash and old rags, etcetera, which he would sell. One of the kids grew up to become a preacher.
He lived there until he was twenty years old. During this time he also worked as a janitor in the nearby school. He would open the school in the morning and start the coal fires and shut the building down and clean up in the evening.
All through the years of growing up the Wishers were Methodists. In the Converse Church next door to where Glenna was raised, Ray remembers a picture of all the people lead to the Lord by the same preacher.
DETROIT
At the age of twenty he moved to Detroit, Michigan to work at the Fischer body plant, which at the time was the largest body plant in the world. The auto bodies were wood frames covered with sheet metal. His first job was on an assembly line, putting a tool plate in for the floorboard. His second job was putting the deck on the top of the body. He would fill his mouth full of tacks and use a hammer to tack the top onto the body. He worked piecework where he would get paid by the number of bodies he finished. In 1923 he would make $2.10 and hour. Some times he would go to work on Saturdays, then clock out at noon and catch the inter-urban electric train from Detroit to Lima, Ohio where his Dad would pick him up for the weekend.
THE SHAFFERS
Charles Mealy Shaffer lived in Allen County, Ohio but was sickly much of his adult life. He and his wife, Minnie Ella (Miller) Shaffer, owned a small six-acre farm. Charles pumped oil wells for a living. He suffered from a congenital disease that caused him to loose his balance. This was seen in many families and there were other members of Charles’ family that had it too. When he would walk down the road people would think that he had been drinking, but it was the disease. He died leaving Minnie with two boys and two girls to raise by herself. The oldest girl Eva (called Dolly) had a bad heart that is now thought to have been caused by a leakage. Minnie took in sewing and laundry to make ends meet and get by.
In 1924, there was a farmer’s market sale at the school in Elgin, the Ladies-Aide Society served a lunch. Ray’s mother took some milk from her cow to the sale and when there was some left she gave the remaining portion to the Shaffers. (The Shaffers did not own a cow.) She instructed Ray to stop by the Shaffers and pick up the jar on his way home from the market. When Ray went over to collect the jar, he met the youngest daughter, Glenna, and they began to date.
One time Ray went over to the Shaffers' and they were complaining about the taste of the water coming from their well. Ray took a few pipe wrenches, pulled the pump out of the well, threw a can with a string down the well and when he pulled it up there was a dead mouse in it!
When Minnie Shaffer got old she turned her land over to the state and went on welfare. When she died they sold her land, which raised enough to pay for her funeral.
Ray and Glenna were married two years after their introduction, on the 24th of June 1926. Nine months later, March 30, 1927, their first child Retha Fern was born. She was the first of three; Howard Ray was born, April 1930 and Carolyn Jean December 1932. They were married 59 years until December 10, 1985, when Glenna passed away from Alzheimer’s disease. Ray remembers Glenna used to have arthritis in her hands. She used to keep a pan of paraffin wax on the stove and when she felt bad she would dip her hands into the wax and let it cool and then peel it off and re-melt it.
THE COAL BUSINESS
In 1926, Ray was working for his brother. He was driving a truck with solid tires, hauling stone. In the fall the job was eliminated so he went to work for Bill Amsbeuchler at the Hiawatha sweet shop. He sold ice cream, candy, patent medicines, and drugs. His wage was $25.00 a week with all the ice cream and candy he could eat. Many a day he went without meals except for a malted milk for lunch. Mr. Amsbeuchler also owned a coal business, delivering to houses and schools that burned coal in their furnaces. Ray drove the coal truck to make deliveries. He remembers putting planks on the piles of coal and then backing the truck up the planks to dump more coal on top, thus getting a higher pile. When he first started working, there was a warehouse in back of the store where they used to put the freight. They brought the coal in and left it there. He had to climb up steps to read the scales to measure a load of coal until he decided that he would move the industrial scales himself. He built them into the ground and recalibrated them and from then on he didn’t have to climb stairs to read the scales. He said he knew how many shovels full of coal it took to make a ton and could accurately shovel a ton onto the scales before weighing it. One day he shoveled fifty tons of coal onto the truck and off it again for a total of 100 tons. He said he was used to that kind of work and never got sore from it. On another day there was a train car which was parked on a trestle with a coal truck below it. The coal would fall through a chute into the truck below. The coal became lodged and he went into the car to dislodge the coal. When the coal starting flowing, he fell through the chute into the truck below and as soon as he hit the truck he scrambled to the front and was not hurt a bit. Ray worked in the coal business until 1941, when fuel oil became a popular method for heating. It put the coal sellers out of business and Ray was laid off. He worked the coal business from 1926 to 1941.
DUPONT FIRST TIME
After the coal business ran out, Ray had two choices of work. He could have gone to work for Champion Spark Plugs but he chose Dupont in Toledo, Ohio. He said it was because it was closer to home and Kenneth Hill stopped and recommended that he go to work there. He worked for them from January 19, 1942, until the start of World War II. When the war started he was laid off.
WORLD WAR II and NATIONAL SUPPLY
Ray was classified 4F as a result of a blind spot in his eye, and because he was a married man with children, he was exempt from the draft. During the war he went to work for National Supply, a company that manufactured gears for landing ships and gearboxes. It was during this time that he first worked as a millwright. Never one to be satisfied with the way things have always been, Ray constantly strove to find a new and better way of doing his work. While at National they had to shut down a drill press while they drilled holes for anchor bolts. Ray invented a device that would suck up the drill shavings and allowing the machines to continue drilling with no loss of time.
POST WORLD WAR II and DUPONT
A week after the war ended Ray went back to work for Dupont. His experience as a millwright at National Supply qualified him to work in the shop at Dupont, where he worked until he retired in 1967. While at Dupont Ray continued to innovate new processes and to invent tools and devices to make work more efficient and safe. He was in charge of all the safety equipment for the plant, which included fire doors, extinguishers, and chemical wagons that had soda and acid in fifty-gallon tanks to refill the fire extinguishers. He also was in charge of the fire hoses. During this time he invented toe guards for electric forklifts. Dupont had grinding mills that were set on concrete slabs. When they wanted to move them they had to get a crane and dismantle the floor. Ray suggested that they make the slabs out of steel instead and it saved a lot of time and money to move them after that. Ray was the only one in the plant to move a mill and set it up all by himself. Dupont awarded Ray with some money for his idea.
He also remembered helping to improve the process for grinding pigments to make white paint and for making rolling mills used in making body putty. He remembers improving the process that sorted sand by redesigning the sorter and by designing a tool to pull off discs for repair rather than disassembling the whole machine. Ray also invented a snow shovel pusher that allowed him to push and shovel snow at the same time, but the idea was thought up by someone else later and was patented.
THE FIRE DEPARTMENT
In 1927 he helped form the Trilby Volunteer Fire Department. At that time, Trilby was in the suburbs of Toledo, Ohio and could be considered just a crossroad of Alexis and Secor, an unincorporated area. He became the first Assistant Fire Chief for one year and was Drill Captain for many years. In 1930 he joined the Northwestern Ohio Volunteer Firemen’s Association of which he was president from 1960 to 1961. He was also president of the Ohio/Michigan Firemen’s Association and president of the Washington Township Firemen’s Association. They had the first fire school that Northwestern had and Ray taught ladders. Now it is held every year in Bowling Green, Ohio.
THE HOUSES AND HOMELIFE
Just before the depression Ray and Glenna were buying a house from Nelson Brock. Ray didn’t feel that they could afford the house. Nelson owed his brother one thousand dollars so Ray gave the deed over to Nelson’s brother. Later while working in the coal business, Ray and Glenna rented a house in Trilby. While in that house Carolyn brought home the mumps and Ray caught them from her. He was laid up for a week. He tied a string of yarn around his neck because he thought it would keep the mumps from going down into his testicles! He claimed it worked! He remembers that this was about the same time that Social Security went into effect. They bought a lot on Coral Avenue for fifty dollars and had to pay back taxes of fifty dollars. He then bought the second lot right next to it for one hundred dollars (but the taxes were paid). He borrowed a team of horses and a scoop shovel and dug the basement and foundation for a home. He and his brother-in-law, Dan Davies, then laid most of the block for the basement. He got two masons to help lay in the corners. He also borrowed a tractor from Morrie Miller with a scoop that he used to grade down the yard. The largest mortgage he ever had on the property was one thousand dollars. That money paid for the front room. All the rest of the house (except for $50 he borrowed for the first lot) was pay as you go. At the end of World War II Ray’s plumber had to pull some strings to get a bath tub to install because they were rationed and in short supply. (At the same time his new neighbor, Brondes pulled some strings and got enough steel to build a whole car dealership right next to Ray’s lot.)
ON THE TRILBY SOFTBALL LEAGUE
Trilby had the first lighted softball field around and Ray was involved with the installation and maintenance of the lights. He especially remembers using a climber safety belt and climbing up the light poles to maintain and repaint the reflective surface of the lights. In the winter they would turn the ballpark into an ice skating rink by flooding the field through sprinkling the area. He designed a scraper to clear off the rink. The park was located across the street from the coal business where Ray worked and Ray took care of the field as part of the business. He remembers that the lights took so much power that the fuses wouldn’t hold up. They took solid brass wire and by-passed the fuses to keep the lights on. During World War II, the lights were taken over to Whitmer High School and put on 60-foot wooden posts. The Trilby Fire Department had a ball-diamond at their station and the Trilby Sportsman’s club had a team that went to state finals. Ray never played due to the blind spot in his eye.
ON POLITICS
Anyone who knows Ray knows about his politics. He was always ready to give his opinion about the Government, and his opinion is decidedly Republican and Conservative. He felt that the Democrats caused the great depression under Herbert Hoover, who had a Democratic House and Senate the last two years. When Roosevelt came in he spent lots of money and got us into World War II to get us out of the depression.
HIS HUNTING AND TRAVELING
Ray went "out west" a number of times to go hunting. He hunted in Wyoming, Montana, Oregon and California among other places. He frequently went with his little brother David and Dave’s wife Helen. Glenna went with him quite a few times, especially when she could go see Howard, who was living in California much of the time. They would buy elk tags and with that they could take an elk, deer, or bear. Ray and Dave took their dad out to Wyoming when he was eighty years old to go antelope and deer hunting. On that trip Ray remembers shooting two antelope with one bullet. He gave one to the rancher and the other he took home. They drove their Oldsmobile through the ranches, the gullies, and the arroyos while hunting. They didn’t take their mother because she had previously been "out-west" to Florence, Colorado, where at one time, she had two sisters living. Ray’s Uncle Bill took Ray’s Aunt Daisy out there to help her arthritis. When her condition improved they returned.
THE TRILBY SPORTSMANS CLUB
Ray was a charter member of the Trilby Sportsman’s Club where he served as president a few times and was president when it was dissolved. He is the last living charter member. The building had been used for club meetings and was rented out for weddings and events. When they closed the club, they sold their land and building to the American Legion, and the money was given to Whitmer High School for scholarships.
POSTSCRIPT
Ray Wisher died 30 July 1999 at the age of 96 years, in Toledo, Lucas, Ohio. He is buried alongside his wife Glenna, in the Toledo Memorial Cemetery.
Ohio Deaths, 1958-2000 Online
Name: RAY ABNER WISHER
Gender: Male
Date of Death: July 30, 1999
Birth Date: February 26, 1903
Volume: 32081 Certificate: 068031
Autopsy: N
Social Security Number: 299093847
Father's Surname: WISHER
Time of Death: 10:15 PM
Marital Status: widowed
Hispanic Origin: Not Hispanic
Place of Death: nursing home
Years of Schooling: 8
Certifier: Physician
Branch of Service:
Method of Disposition: Burial
Mother's Surname: WOLFORD
Race: White
Birth Place: VAN WERT, Ohio
Residence: LUCAS, Ohio
Age: 96 years
SSDI
Name: Ray A. Wisher
SSN: 299-09-3847
Last Residence: 43623 Toledo, Lucas, Ohio, United States of America
Born: 26 Feb 1903
Died: 30 Jul 1999
State (Year) SSN issued: Ohio (Before 1951 )
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1903 - 1999 (96 years)
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