Handbook N-P - Fulton County Public Library

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Mentone pioneered in its treatment and in time Dad became one of the first to be cured by
Urschel's procedure.
Illness or injury never kept Dad idle for long, only in 1945 when his car and a milk truck
collided on a county road and he was bedfast eight weeks recovering. During World War II, he
put his clectrician's talents to work at the Kingsbury Ordnance Plant near LaPorte. He also sold
the East Sixth Street house, hatchery and feed mill to a Royal enter buyer. “I went to his. home,"
writes Dad, "and he went upstairs and brought me down $7,000 in currency in a paper sack. He
had been taking it out of his hatchery receipts the past years to avoid paying tax on it.”
Dad never missed a chance to exercise his inborn trading instincts. In 1940 he traded the
farm for cash and a general store in Wheatfield, Indiana. That he later exchanged for a threeapartment
building in Indianapolis, which in another trade brought him the house at 1017 Main
Street. The family lived there until 1951 when they moved to their new farm on Road 500E,
where my Mother died in 1957.
Dad's entrepreneurial spirit was not subdued by his undulant fever treatments. He began
a Minneapolis -Moline farm implement dealership, later combining it with Packard auto. The
building he erected for it on State Road 14 across from the airport is now occupied by Fulton
County Tire.
Dad's memoirs do not discuss his 20 years as a realtor beginning in 1958, years of
pleasure for him. There was pleasure in his new marriage, in his grandchildren and
stepgrandchildren, in his Grace Methodist church work, in renewing old friendships and making
new ones while dealing in real estate.
My father always was a bit of a maverick; independence was his game and he practiced it
determinedly. As a realtor, for example, if he felt a young couple to whom he had sold a house
were short on money, he charged no commission.
That was a typical act of my Dad, who also never criticized me or gloated over my
frequent foolish mistakes. His daughter-in-law, my wife Howdy, says that Pop, as she called him,
"was the kindest, gentlest and most likable man I ever met." (I assume that she meant, except for
me.)
The memoirs he has left are a magnificent heirloom that my family should cherish unto
its latest generation. Perhaps his recollections have enabled you to appreciate him, as we did, and
have enlightened your understanding of life in a past generation.
[Rochester Sentinel, Tuesday, August 31, 1999]
OVERMYER, DAN [Fulton County]
UNCLE DAN HAS FOUND ONE
Uncle Dan Overmyer, the rich wife hunter, was at the State Fair last week according to
previous announcement and there met the apple of his eye and will probably marry her. She is
Miss Mildred C. Smith, of Noblesville, aged 36 years and a good looker and unmarried.
They attended the state fair together one day, and each seemed well pleased with the
other, so much so that a marriage is most likely to soon result. Mr. Overmyer, when he left home
last week had already received 264 letters from women, but 50 of them he has not had a chance to
read. One day last week he went to the postoffice at Monterey and received 49 love letters and one
business letter, and when he went to the postoffice again to mail one the postmaster gave him
another one, which had come in on the fast mail. Mr. Overmyer, when his duties on the farm
permit, travels around and makes a personal inspection of his correspondents, but upon meeting
Miss Smith, of Noblesville, suspended all further work on the matter. He met a good looking lady
residing at Angola, with whom he was well pleased, but on account of an injured wrist, rendering
her incapable to milk the cows with both hands, she could not pass muster and he passed her up.
[Rochester Sentinel, Tuesday, September 22, 1903]
IS NEW WIFE GONE?
Married four days and separated?