Member
Eileen Gilmore says -- "I grew up on a farm in Lenawee County,
Michigan. I helped put up hay every year. Since my brother was
younger, I would drive the tractor as the hay loader picked up the wind
rows of hay. My job was to drive the tractor as dad set the hay fork to
put hay up in the barn. We had a large garden and fruit trees. We had
all of our food and meat raised on the farm.
Wes worked for Hoyt Whelan's John Deere Dealership
in Tecumseh, before going into the Air Force. When Wes was in the Air
Force, we were married and lived away for three plus years. He worked
for Whelan's before going to Capital Airlines to work as a mechanic.
Several years later he started working at Ford Motor Co where he retired
from. While working at Fords, he was farming. I would get on my John
Deere and work in the fields getting the ground ready so Wes could plant
the field when he came home from work. I cultivated all the crops with
a brand new JD cultivator. No tractors had cabs those days. When the
crops were harvested, my job was to help haul the grain to the grain
elevator. We raised three children and they all helped on the farm. I
worked with John Deere Tractors on the farm and that is how I became to
know and love those pop'n tractors. Those years were special years in
my life. We attended our first meeting of the Tri-County Two Cylinder
Club in 1992 in Belleville, Michigan and became the 32nd member of the
club."
Eileen currently is the Tri-County Two Cylinder
Club treasurer and provides much on-going help with club event
organization. Also, she has been her church organist for 57 years, is
the handbell choir director and serves her Lord in many other areas. In
2005, Eileen had a barn built in memory of her husband, Wes, to house
his collection of antique tractors (shown in a picture
to the right taken from the club calendar cover).
The upper left picture on this page shows Eileen at
the club February Anniversary celebration meeting (in 2006) displaying
an album of club, family, and tractor pictures.
