Carl W. Wiley

Pages 519-520 - Carl W. Wiley is one of the vital and progressive business men of Grand Rapids, where he is one of the principals of the Reed & Wiley Company, growers of hothouse products, and where also he has done a prosperous business in the handling of real estate, besides which he conducts a well ordered service garage. The large and well equipped main plant of the Reed & Wiley Company is at 2180 Madison avenue, southeast, and a supplementary greenhouse is maintained by the company on Eastern avenue. The business of the concern is of substantial order and special attention is given to the raising of lettuce and tomatoes, the trade of the company being widely extended and thus contributing to the frame of Grand Rapids as a distributing center. The greenhouse and propagating grounds of the Reed & Wiley Company are of the best modern order and the excellent service has proved the best advertising medium for the concern. In a little log house near Pine Lake, Kent county, Michigan, Carl W. Wiley was born December 21, 1879, a son of Nathan and Mary (Lacey) Wiley, the former of whom was born in the state of New York and the latter at Rockford, Kent county, Michigan. Nathan Wiley was a small boy when his parents came to Michigan and established residence in Detroit, whence removal was made to Grand Rapids a few years later, his parents having thus gained a goodly measure of pioneer precedence in Kent county, where Nathan was reared to manhood and where he was long and successfully identified with the lumber industry, including his connection with the retail lumber business in Grand Rapids. He was affiliated with the Masonic fraternity and was long a member of the Park Congregational Church, of which his widow likewise is an earnest member. Nathan Wiley was seventy-nine years of age at the time of his death. Reared in Grand Rapids and given the advantages of the public schools of this city, Carl W. Wiley has here found ample opportunity for successful business achievement. For many years he was engaged in shipping potatoes in carload lots, and he became one of the leaders in this line of enterprise in thus handling the fine potatoes raised in western Michigan. In the meanwhile he had become associated with Charles L. Reed in the ownership and operation of a greenhouse, and eventually this business grew to such proportions that he found it expedient to retire from the potato trade and give his undivided attention to the greenhouse enterprise, which is now one of the foremost in the Grand Rapids metropolitan district. Mr. Wiley gives his political alliance to the Republican party, and he is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, in the former of which he has received the thirty-second degree of the Scottish Rite, besides being a noble of the Mystic Shrine. He and his wife reside at the Cody hotel in Grand Rapids and pass their summers in the attractive cottage at Silver Lake. In 1924 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Wiley to Miss Martha Hughes, daughter of Philip Hughes, of Grand Rapids, where Mrs. Wiley was born and raised.