Elmer final 02

Final version of Elmer LeSuer's role at the Highland Park Model T plant, coming from Riverside Engine in Oil City, Pennsylvania to Highland Park with Edward Gray, Henry Ford's Chief Engineer in 1909. Ford hired Gray after first purchasing the first power plant engine for the plant. Then Ford decided he should hire the designer of that engine to design larger, more powerful engines as that plant grew. It was at this plant that Gray, working with Albert Kahn, designed the layout of the plant for the first auto plant to make cars using the assembly line, to simplify production and reduce the cost of a car that many, many Americans could finally afford their own car, a luxury item before that time. But in 1914, Edward Gray left Ford Motor to devote his time to his Grayhaven community, designed for those that would love to have their yacht next to their home for easy access to the Great Lakes around the Detroit area
Then when Gray died in 1939, grandpa worked full time for Gar Weed, a very famous speed boat racer, the first to go over 100 miles per hour on water. He would also design and have built luxury speedboats for others, boats that are prized to this day.
But the pressure of designing outboard boat engines for the Storm Boats, small landing craft for eight man crews to quickly and secretly enter enemy territory drove him to drink, finally basically killing his kidneys. He died in 1945, before I was born. Thus to research to find out more about his career was based are two main clues that my mother and grandmother left, my mother’s note about grandpa working with Edward Gray in the early days of Highland Park and grandma’s note that Elmer (grandpa) knew Edward Gray ‘from their Oil City days’.