BIO just arrived - The rest of the Story.

Hi John,

Enjoyed your article on the "P-P 1930 transmitter".   Here's some more info on Clinton Potter.  He was born on 15 Feb 1907, in Plainville, CT, the son of James C. Potter, a barber, and Sarah J.  Their home at 21 Canal Street in Plainville may have been the home of Sarah's first husband, William Williams, whom she married at the age of sixteen shortly after immigrating from England.  Young Clinton grew up there without a father; James died before the boy was three, so the family influences on his young life were his mother, his sister Ruth A., 2 years older, and two half siblings from Sarah's previous marriage, Bertha Williams, 19 years older, and Ralph Williams, 7 years older.
 
By the time Clinton was a teenager, his mother had taken in a boarder by the name of Edward Conlon, who was about the same age as she.  Conlon was employed as a bookkeeper in a factory, a profession that the father-less Clinton would eventually take up, thus perhaps he was influenced and guided by Conlon.  He remained with his mother until at least 1935, by which time he had graduated from his job as a clerk in an electrical factory, probably the Trumbull Electric Mfg Co., "manufacturers of equipment for power and light distribution and control," where his sister Ruth also worked as a clerk.  In 1935 he was working as a timekeeper in New Britain.   

It's interesting to contemplate on what happened to make Clinton "retire" the "P-P 1930 transmitter" to the attic in 1933.  As you know, he was licensed in December 1932.  He was 25 years old, single and probably still working at the electrical factory at the time, hence perhaps the electrical influence and the availability of parts.  If, according to his surviving log, he only operated a few months in 1933, what happened?  Did his mother, then 64, require too much care?  Both he and sister Ruth were still living at home at that time.  The depression was in full swing, times were hard, and he had recently started working at a new clerical job in New Britain.  Perhaps his new job consumed too much of his free time.  Or did he find a young lass and, as has happened to many youngsters in the hobby, did the warm glow of budding romance replace the warm glow of those two Type 45 tubes?   

Clinton left Plainville sometime after 1935, about the time that he married Clara Marshall.  His mother also is missing from Plainville at that time and presumably had died.  That same year his sister Ruth married Herbert Ewald, a foreman in the same Trumbull Electric factory, and had moved to 123A Broad St.  In 1938 Clinton and Clara were in New Britain, at 212 McClintock St.  He was a traffic clerk at the Stanley Rule and Level plant ("Stanley Tools") on Elm St.  She was a sales clerk. 

After the war Clinton and Clara were living at 454 Eddy Glover Blvd in New Britain, where he was now a bookkeeper at Stanley Tools.  Two years later they returned to Plainville, Clinton commuting to his job in New Britain.  They moved into 122 Broad St, next door to his sister Ruth, where they remained for about the next ten years.   By 1955 Clinton had been promoted to accountant and he and Clara had moved to 16 Peace Court and later, 20 Peace Ct, in Plainville, where he was living in 1981 when he died.  His sister Ruth Ewald died on 2 Feb 1997 at the age of 91, not too long before that precious transmitter first caught your eye.  Clara remained in her residence at Peace Ct for another three years; she died on 1 Jan 2000, at the age of 92. 

Bill Wornham, NZ1D
Lady Lake, FL

Hi John,

I also checked the Hartford Courant 4 Dec 1981 on line but it only listed the death notice, no obituary. I think it was a omission when the paper was microfilmed.

73,
John Malley N1LZI