I interviewed Floyd Bolin at his home in Alexandria, Minnesota, in May, 2003. He was 94 years old at the time, slight of build, ramrod straight, a little hard of hearing, and funny. I was a few minutes early when I arrived for the first of my two interview sessions with him. I rang the doorbell and got no answer. I knocked loudly and got no answer. The door was not locked so I opened it and called Floyd's name and got no answer. I stepped into the house a couple of steps, far enough to see Floyd in the living room, tipped back in his recliner, a blanket on his lap, his eyes closed, an alarm clock on the blanket. "Floyd," I said, "it's Tom Montag." Floyd opened his eyes, looked at me, looked at his alarm clock, and said, "Tom, you're a few minutes early. You'll have to go away and come back at 4:00 p.m." That's the sense of humor Floyd has, and that quick. My thanks to Ione Jensen and the Douglas County Historical Society for this transcription.
Vagabond: You said there was a plane manufacturing plant here?
Floyd: I was in the dairy business enough so that I was pretty well known by that time. There was about four or five other businessmen in town that were the top guys - Orrie Olson, Paul Anderson, Oscar Englund, the oil man down there, Otto Tessmer. Then there was one other guy. About five guys. We were sort of the nucleus of Main Street. I was one of them together with the rest of the guys. We would meet together, we had an organization in town. When this aircraft company came, two boys who were in the service in World War II, they were wide awake guys. The one was Don Petterson and the other was the son of the auctioneer out here. Anyway, they came back all excited, and came uptown and told this group of five that "Here’s an opportunity available for the City of Alexandria. The franchise, the inventory and the whole works for the Bellanca Aircraft Company is up for sale."
I had learned of Bellanca when I went I went to aircraft school. Bellance was a hero already when I was going to school way back then in the 20s. He was the guy that invented the Bellanca. He was like others starting up from scratch and when the war came along he had a plant in Delaware, Ohio, that’s where he was building his aircraft. During the war, I don’t know what you would call this, many private aircraft manufacturing was stopped. He had all that going business and when the war was over all his men had scattered to the wind and he was by then an old man. He just simply offered the franchise. Those two boys discovered it somehow. They came running into Alex here and looked us guys up and said this franchise of Bellanca Aircraft is available. They said "You guys should take that over and bring it to Alexandria." So we owe it to those two boys that had the foresight to see that and bring the news to Alex.
We had a meeting on it, did some research on it, and we said we’ll take it. Together with another fellow who knew something about aircraft. We got together and formed a little corporation and bought the thing and brought it to Alex.
Vagabond: And it’s still operating today? Where is it?
Floyd: Still operating today. It had all kinds of problems. That’s where I came into the picture. These four or five guys, we were the nucleus of that company because we each put in $2500 a piece to buy this franchise. I think there were five of us. We had these meetings up in the Farmers National Bank, and we depended on them to run the factory. They had a man in town here that came, he was an old guy who had flew an airplane. That was all the experience that he had. But they made him manager of the plant. He didn’t know much about that. They started it and then immediately they started coming running to us guys again for payroll. You know they didn’t make any money in the beginning. First they had to have one ready to sell. That took them way too long. Now the thing grew from guys that I was involved with. We had to start ponying up payroll.
Well, this went on until we had to draw the line. What would we do about that. I was already with the investment company then and I was the only one who could stop and do something else. So I called my supervisor and told him we’ve got a problem with Bellanca Aircraft here. He asked me if I would take it over and I told him I would do it if I could take a leave of absence but hang on to my territory. I asked for a leave of absence. They want me to go in there and take over the plant. He said, "More power to you." The investment company already had a Bellanca Aircraft and they wanted protection of that. He said, "Sure, I know you can handle it. You go ahead and get that thing going." They liked that aircraft. So I went in and took over.
It was atrocious. It was the awfullest thing that you ever saw as far as layout. Organization was nil. Something just had to be done. So I had a meeting with the boys and told them what I found. I said "We need to get somebody to run it or something." So we started looking around and my friend Paul Anderson, who knew me very well, said "I guess Floyd’s going to have to do it." I called the company I worked for that night. We were at the that table up there, 9 o’clock in the evening. I called the president of the company. I said, "We ran into a snag here with this aircraft company. I’m with the group of fellows who are responsible for the aircraft company. Can I get a leave of absence, because they want me to take over?"
That was in 1964, and I was in there for six months. What an improvement. I stepped on toes of big shots from the cities but I just cleaned house.
To be continued....
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