Wood Workers

So long, so successfully has Garfield Arthur ("Gar") Wood raced his Miss America that many people think he has done nothing else since he was born in the landlocked town of Mapleton, Iowa, 55 years ago. Fact is, the bronzed, silver-thatched speed-on-water champion (124.91 m.p.h.) is the head of a Detroit industrial family which is as tightly-knit, if not so potent, as the Fisher Brothers. There are twelve children in the Wood family, nine of them boys. One is a retired contractor. The other eight own and run Gar Wood Industries. Inc., which is no misnomer. Last week the Brothers Wood let the public in for the first time with an offer of 320.000 shares of their company's 800,000 shares of stock.

Both Gar Wood Industries and Gar Wood's expensive motorboat hobby date from 1911 when Gar Wood, then an automobile distributor in Duluth, Minn., thoughtfully observed a big truck being dumped by a hand crank. Setting to work, he invented a hydraulic hoist to dump trucks by power, founded a company to make it. His invention made him rich.

From hoists, Gar Wood slipped naturally into the manufacture of dump-truck bodies, then to truck and tractor appliances like cranes, ranches, road scrapers. Another Wood "industry" includes tanks for milk, fuel oil and gasoline trucks. Still another ''industry'' is air conditioning, which the Woods entered in 1930 with the first oil burner furnace designed and built as a unit. Additional space wall soon be added to the Woods' Highland Park plant to take care of its booming air-conditioning business. The Woods also make automobile accessories like heaters, and last year acquired rights to William B. Stout's light, streamlined 24-passenger bus body. Only Wood enterprise not included in the "industries" is Gar Wood, Inc., the boat company at Marysville, Mich.

All working Woods are active in Gar Wood Industries, led by Gar Wood, who is president. Brother Winfield is manager of the Minneapolis branch. Brother Logan is vice president & general manager. Brother George is the industrial engineer, Brother Edward the experimental engineer. Brother Louis the chief engineer. Brother Philip is manager of the Canadian subsidiary across the Detroit River in Windsor, Ont. Brother Clinton, baby of the family, is manager of the Highland Park plant. And the Brothers Wood make money. Last week they announced that their business for the past twelve months ran 40% above the same previous period, that profits for the first half of 1936 exceeded $600,000.

Gar Wood considers himself a mechanic. On the top of his Miami Beach home he built a mechanized observatory which is an amateur astronomer's dream. He calls speedboat racing a "mechanic's game." To the Chippewa Indians on a Canadian island opposite his summer home in Algonac, Mich., Gar Wood is Chief Kezhee-Neebe (Swift Water). Lanky, gaunt Chief Swift Water attends tribal festivities regularly, though in his initiation, which included finger pricking and the usual peace pipe, the feathers were omitted because the Gar Wood pate is never covered.

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