Harvey Albert Yearke

Biography

Harvey was born on Sunday, September 23, 1900, in Buffalo, NY, the son of Albert and Rosa Yearke, and spent his early years in a two-family dwelling on 179 Peckham. The family moved to their home on 23 Viola Park, in the Hamlin Park area, sometime between 1905 and 1910.

He quit school in ninth grade to help support the family. His first job was on a four-horse wagon that drew barrels of Iroquois beer to local taverns. After that, he worked for the Chicago Bridge & Iron Company, which rebuilt blast furnaces at Republic Steel. He was a carpenter, and they could only stand the heat for 20 minutes at a time. For a timer, they would tie pieces of 2x4" wood to the bottom of their shoes with wire, and when they would start to burn, they knew it was time to get out.

Following a brief period selling Met Life insurance with his brother Frank, he joined an electrical company owned by his brother-in-law, Wilbert LaCroix (his sister Lora's husband). The company installed electrical appliances for families who could afford them, and Harvey drilled the holes in the walls and ran the wiring. Unfortunately, it failed during the Great Depression, as people could not afford to purchase appliances.

On Saturday, August 25, 1928, he married LeElla Caroline Doster. They honeymooned in Bath, New York, which is about as far away as Harvey would travel. In 1930, according to the federal census of that year, they were renting part of a two-family home located at 355 Newburgh Avenue in Buffalo, and he was employed again as an insurance agent (probably with his brother Frank). During the Depression, he also worked for the city, doing maintenance work such as repairing broken windows in water towers, for $5/week (not bad for that period).

From Newburgh, Harvey and LeElla moved to Leonard, in the Bailey-Kensington area, then, around 1935, to Mt. Vernon in the same general area.

In 1938, while on a Sunday drive, he saw a sign advertising homes off of Cleveland Drive. He found $100 for the deposit on the lot, talked to Babcock, the builder, and made the deal. The family home was built at 17 Manlon Terrace, in the Cleveland Hill area of Cheektowaga, and LeElla would live there for over 60 years.

Harvey was a hard worker, but enjoyed vacationing with the family at Rushford Lake, where he and his sons would spend many hours fishing. He didn't believe in going far for vacations, and never left New York State, except to go to Fort Erie, Canada, several times a year. He was a man of simple pleasures: A typical Saturday night consisted of getting together with his brother Ray, getting a case of Iroquois and a bottle of Three Feathers whiskey, and playing pinochle.

Starting in 1939, and continuing throughout World War II, he worked for Curtiss-Wright. He was an electrician, and after 1942 worked in Experimental Hanger Number 3, where the P-40 was developed (This hanger would be remembered in later years as being owned by the BAC). Several pictures of him during these years can be found here. During the war, pay went way up, he worked double-shifts, and by 1945 he had the new home paid off ($4800!). Not only did he work 16 hours per day, he often walked from Manlon Terrace to the airport and back because of gas rationing, and only got 2-3 hours of sleep per night.

After the war, Curtiss-Wright closed their Buffalo operations. The company's chief engineer, Frederic Flader, formed his own company on Sawyer Road in Tonawanda to develop jet engine technology, and Harvey went to work there along with other Curtiss-Wright co-workers from the group in which he worked. Greg Goebel has a web page which provides this information about the company:

The Flader company only produced one jet engine, the "J55" or "Type 124 Lieutenant", which was a turbojet for expendable missiles and drones. The J55 had a single-stage axial compressor, an annular combustor, and a single stage turbine. It was 2 meters (6 feet 7 inches) long, had a diameter of 40 centimeter (15.7 inches), weighed 136 kilograms (300 pounds), and produced 4.9 kN (500 kg / 1,100 lb) thrust at an SFC of 1.6.

It is unclear what machines were fitted with the J55, though there were a lot of experimental missiles and drones built in the early postwar period and it was probably used on a number of them. The company also worked on a turboprop, the "XT33", which was to have an output power of more than 5,590 kW (7,500 hp), but work on it was abandoned.

He worked for Flader from about 1947 until around 1960, after which he, and the same group of co-workers who had gone from Curtiss-Wright to Flader, went to work for Joy Manufacturing, working on the testing of turbine blades for jet engines.

He passed away from a sudden heart attack on Thursday, October 24, 1963, and is buried in Ridge Lawn Cemetery.

Notes and Anecdotes

Harvey Yearke was a good horseshoe player and a good pinochle player.

He enjoyed Iroquois beer, Three Feathers whiskey, and simple "meat and potatoes" dinners. A classic German-American diet. :-)

Favorite Saturday night dinner: Steak and French Fries.

As a boy, he used to go the park on Main and Jefferson (where the Sears building now stands), and would catch frogs in Scajaquada Creek. He and his friends would build a fire and cook the legs on the lid of a coffee can.

I found this pin in the same box with the two Curtiss-Wright pins shown above. We have no idea what it means; he was not a particularly religious person, which makes it all the more peculiar. If anyone reading this page has any ideas, I'd really appreciate it if you'd drop me a line and give me whatever information you may have.

Quotes

On not being a regular church-goer: "If you were dying in the gutter, people would step over you so they wouldn't be late for church."

On taverns: "Always drink from the bottle."

On in-laws: "Marry an orphan."

On (not taking) far-away vacations: "A tree here looks the same as a tree there."

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