DATE: Tuesday, March 21, 2017
SUBJECT: Tour of Airstream
WHERE: 419 West Pike Street
Jackson Center, OH 45334-0629
Phone: 877-596-6111
WHEN: 10:00 A.M. is tour start time. We will meet in
front of Springfield Mall by the Cinema at 8:15
A.M. for anyone that wants to carpool.
LUNCH: Local Restaurant.
RESERVATIONS: Call in your reservation to
Larry Borders 937-521-5342.
Or Email: larry.borders@mcgregormetal.com
By Monday, March 20, 2017.
AIRSTREAM
SELF-MADE MAN
Everything that Wally Byam got in his life was through his own
hard work and perseverance. Wally graduated from Stanford
in 1921, and if his family helped him pay for it, there’s no
record of it. It’s believed that he paid for college by working
several jobs. During the school year Wally would work in
concessions for Stanford football and basketball games, and
he was the house manager at his Sigma Chi fraternity. It’s
believed that in the summers, he earned money working as a
sailor, and that time spent on the sea fostered Wally’s love
of travel and of experiencing the world, and also inspired some
of Airstream’s early designs.
THE FIRST AIRSTREAM
In 1929, Wally Byam built the world’s first Airstream trailer. It started out as a tent contraption that he built on a Model T chassis, but it wasn’t a lot of fun in the rain (and Wally’s first wife Marion wasn’t a fan). So he replaced the tent with a teardrop-shaped permanent shelter – and added a stove and ice chest, too. It was easy to tow and caught the eye of other travelers, so much so that enough people asked Wally about it for him to decide it might be “a pretty good business to get into.” Good thing he did!
SME Dayton 