[klondike98]

I opened up this Arvin radio today. For those who are interested, here is the schematic LINK.

I love this part of the restoration. Looking the radio over in detail, getting to understand what's wrong with it, what you might be able to do to fix it, what you are going to need to order and the best part...finding the surprises inside the radio. On the bottom of this radio there was a name that was probably written by a repair tech at some point in the past. In this case it was: "Mrs Luis Gilbrick".    

Also on one of the tubes, the tech has put in grease pencil, OK 1-3-52.    

I bought the radio at one of the many antique shops nearby in Aurora, Oregon. One of my pastimes is genealogy so just for fun I thought I'd see if Mrs. Gilbrick was in the area in the 1950s.

Lo and behold, the 1950 Federal Census revealed a Louis C. Gelbrich age 55 and his wife Lucile D. Gelbrich age 50 living on Lone Elder Road between Aurora and Macksburg Oregon. Louis was a conveyer operator at a sawmill as well as a farmer. The 1950 census also had a selective sampling of people who were asked extra questions and Lucile was selected for those questions which revealed her mother was born in Germany, her father in Ireland; she had gotten through 8th grade, worked for 4 weeks in 1949 earning $90. It turns out that the Gelbrich's lived in Bend Oregon during the 30's and 40's (about a 3 hour drive southeast from Aurora on today's road) but in the 1920's, Louis and Lucile, at the ages of 25 and 20, were living with Louis's parents on the family farm somewhere near the very same Lone Elder Road.

I think I have Lucile's radio! Thanks Lucile.

For a bit of closure...Louis died in 1977 and Lucile in 1982. Virginia, their daughter, married Henry Masterson in 1942 and she passed away in 2013. It turns out there is still a Masterson family member owning the property along Lone Elder Road! Sometimes these radios come along with stories.