Gus was a hands on type of guy. He made a model of the firearm and then
sent the model to the engineers to make drawings.
He would go out with the crew for late night bowling and drinking. (High
Standard supported several athletic clubs including baseball, golf, archery,
bowling, basketball and others.) Late one night/early morning Gus had was
making his way home after being over-served at a bowling league. He reportedly
commandeered a milk wagon to get home without permission.
During WWII Gus hired a "colored" engineer for the plant. This upset the
other engineers to the point that they went to his office with an ultimatum.
"Either you fire him or we all quit."
Gus responded "Sorry to hear that, I will sure miss you fellows."
Here is a story not related to Gus.
High Standard produced silenced .22 caliber pistols for the OSS in WWII.
That is fact.
The head of OSS was Medal of Honor recipient Wild Bill Donovan. (This
Donovan was never a High Standard employee.) The story circulated is that
Donovan took one of the USA Model HD M/S pistols and a sand bag into the Oval
Office where President Roosevelt was dictating a letter to a typist. Reportedly
Donovan was able to fire a magazine of bullets into the sand bag in a trash can
without the President noticing. Donovan withdrew the magazine and presented the
pistol the Commander in Chief. Roosevelt said "Bill, you are the only
******Republican I know who I would trust to do something like that."
One of the M/S pistols went to Roosevelt's home for some time until it was
discovered that it was still a classified military weapon. It was subsequently
returned to OSS.
Good tales. Possibly based in truth.
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In a message dated 12/20/2015 6:11:31 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, charliepetty@windstream.net writes:
ReplyDeleteI heard the milk wagon story from two different sources and believe it. In those days milk wagons were horse drawn and there was some question as to his driving skills.
I also was told that Swebilius had a good voice and enjoyed singing which may have also happened when “over served”.
I also believe the Donovan story to be true. The late Harry Sefried told me that one and also the milk wagon. Harry was working at Colt at the time. But he and I were well into a fifth of Jack Daniels at the time FWIW so I’m just saying…
One of the best for which I have no proof involved Donown (the HS one) and a 55 gallon drum of some sort of cheapening solution. They wanted to dispose of it and took it to a local lake with the intent of sinking it. Unfortunately it wouldn’t even after they shot some holes in it so someone got a stick of dynamite and threw it out beside the drum. When the dynamite went off it allegedly created a tidal wave of soap suds that made a nearby street impassible.
This one Harry told me personally. Right after the war surplus garage balloons were common and one was floating over a new hot dog stand across the street from the Dixwell Ave. plant. Harry went out back and shot several holes in it with a .22 and went back to his desk. Some time later George Wilson came in yelling at Harry… “I know you did it… etc.) because the deflated balloon had descended upon a group of visitors.
With his permission I used that tidbit in a story. Harry did a lot of expert witness work and an enterprising lawyer found the story and used it against him as an example of “recklessness”.
Jon, those are interesting stories. It is hard to imagine that most of these could happen today. On a related note, the HSCA DVD of the photos of the High Standard plants during WWII show an interesting corporate culture. It was a lot different then.
ReplyDeleteInteresting stories, for sure. Those must have been interesting times!
ReplyDelete