Walter B. Gleye

Page 455-456 - Walter B. Gleye was fortunate in gaining careful discipline in the various details of the hardware business through close association with his honored father, whose partner he eventually became in the substantial business of this kind that his father had established in Grand Rapids, and upon the death of the latter he was well equipped for assuming control of the large and prosperous business which is conducted at 62 Ottawa street, northwest. Mr. Gleye was born in Bay City, Michigan, April 6, 1890, and is a son of Paul H. and Minnie (Widman) Gleye, the former of whom was born in Germany and the latter at Bay City, Michigan, where their marriage was solemnized. Paul H. Gleye was born in the year 1859, and was eleven years of age when he was left an orphan, and he came to the United States in 1870. For three years he was employed in a sawmill at Bay City, and he then became errand boy in a hardware store in that city, where he worked indefatigably, gaining thorough knowledge of all details of the business and won advance by various stages until he became the virtual manager of the business. Realizing that in this connection no opportunity was offered for his further advancement, he came with his family to Grand Rapids, in the year 1912, and opened a hardware store of his own, at 216 Pearl street. He forthwith incorporated the business under the title of Gleye Hardware Company, and made his son, Walter B., his coadjutor in the enterprise. At the expiration of three years the business was removed to the present larger and better equipped quarters, and here Paul H. Gleye continued executive head of the business until his death, in 1921, when he was but little more than sixty years of age, his widow being still a resident of Grand Rapids. In the public schools of Bay City, Walter B. Gleye continued his studies until his graduation in the high school, and he then, in 1910, entered Michigan Agricultural College, at Lansing, where he completed a course in the engineering department, not to prepare himself for work as an engineer but to fortify himself the better for active association with his father’s business. As a boy and youth he had worked before and after school hours and in vacation period as an assistant in the Bay City hardware store of which his father was the manager, and after leaving college he forthwith became his father’s partner in the business in Grand Rapids. He is one of the vital and progressive young business men of this city, where his circle of friends is limited only by that of his acquaintances. Mr. Gleye married Miss Mabel Gibson, of Muskegon, and they have three children: Gibson, Paul and Eleanor.