UPDATE II: This post was originally posted in January of 2011 (yes, hard to believe it was eleven years ago!). The post covers some of the history about Willis Ray Willey, which is a pretty cool name for a site about vintage jeeps. Who else had a name that includes both “Willis” and “Willey”? Anyway, this post is full of some great and useful comments. It’s taken on a life of its own.
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UPDATE: Thanks to Mike for sorting out Willis’ real name. He was Willis Ray Willey, while his twin was Willard Roy Willey.
It might not surprise you that my interest in history has led me to become the family historian. As a part of my self-assumed title, I make it a point to look through the family albums and scan images whenever I’m visiting. This morning while looking through my grandmother’s album, which contains images from Fighting Creek, Idaho, the place her parents homesteaded in 1911 (they actually won a land lottery), I stumbled upon the unusual photograph of a man in an early motorcar that I show below. I called mom over and asked her if she recognized anyone in the photo, as I didn’t. She said she didn’t either.
About mid-day I was talking to my aunt (mom’s sister) and briefly described the photo. I described the guy as ‘wild looking’. Well, my aunt said that there was once this guy with the name of Wild Willy or something that used to be a colorful character around the Spokane area. I got curious about who this guy might be and why the unusually nice photo, for a photo taken in 1933, ended up in a family photo album.
So, I powered up Google’s image search feature and input a variety of search strings until I spotted a picture of a guy who looked like the guy sitting in the car. The story accompanying the photo said his name was Willis Ray Willey and, while he didn’t have a jeep, he had quite the unusual, adventurous story. So, I thought I’d share a brief summary of it.
To read more about Willey, visit this article from Nostalgia Magazine. Willey reminds me of the Camel Man, who Hein ran into a few months ago in Australia.
In the picture above, we appear to have Willis Ray Willey in his 1904 REO, the first year that the Ranson E. Olds Automobile Company built a car. This photo was taken in 1933 (note the ’33 on the license plate). The photo is taken with the Monroe Street bridge and the Spokane Falls in the background. Willey planned to drive this car from Spokane to the 1933/1934 World Fair in Chicago.
You’ll note that Willey is only wearing shorts. It turns out that Willey was a sickly youngster. After examining him, a doctor suggested that he improve his constitution by exposing himself to the elements. So, over time, he reduced the clothes he wore, eventually only wearing shorts whether winter or summer.
Apparently, that did the trick, as he never got sick, at least not until he was on his trip to the Chicago World’s Fair. See, it turned out that simply wearing shorts wasn’t very common practice and, in fact, wasn’t tolerated. People complained when they saw him and police would arrest him, with many arrests occurring on his way to Chicago. According to Nostalgia Magazine, he did make it to Chicago, where he was arrested again. However, this time they cut off his hair and beard and he promptly got sick and remained sick for 3 months.
Now in the photo above, you’ll note that along the side of the seat it reads “Postcards 3 for 25 cents”. One of the ways Willey made money was by selling postcards of himself; I guess he recognized just how much of an oddity he was.
If you look below, you can see two of the postcards he sold. One is of him on Treasure Island in San Francisco, with a dog, a coyote, a turtle and multiple possums (click on photo and scroll down to see closeups). The other is of him ice skating at LIberty Lake (thanks Jerry).
Yes, quite the character indeed!
