Runaway to Robber to Regular Guy: Making a Better Choice
Ellison Laird: 1914-1993 (Maternal First Cousin 1x Removed)
Everyone has made mistakes as a teenager—it’s how we all
grow and learn. But some mistakes are worse than others. It can be a question
of scale—how big was the mistake? Did it hurt other people? Did it have long
term consequences? My grandfather’s nephew Ellison Laird made a whopper of a poor
decision as a young teen that could have completely derailed his life. But he
made the hard choice to change course and build a solid future.
Ellison James Laird was born October 20, 1914, in Mankato,
Minnesota, to parents James Laird and Gertrude Macbeth Laird. He was the second
of their eleven children. James was a teamster employed by the city as of 1920,
but by the census in 1930 he was taking odd jobs. Obviously something happened that
changed the family’s situation for the worse between 1920 and 1930. The Great
Depression began around that time period, and probably led the city to lay off
employees. So in 1929, the Laird family was probably under stress, and as the
second oldest child who would be expected to assume more adult responsibilities,
Ellison probably shared that stress. Family life must have been rough, because
he chose to run away from home at age fourteen, heading west to Fargo, North
Dakota in the spring of 1929.
On April 24, 1929, Ellison was arrested in Anoka, Minnesota,
along with a fifty-year-old man named Frank Williams. They were charged with the
burglary and attempted burglary of multiple stores in various Minnesota towns.
The initial news reports listed Ellison’s age as seventeen. He finally
confessed his true age to police the following day, admitting he was a runaway.
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| St. Cloud Times Headline, April 24, 1929 |
After reading the various news articles on the pair’s crime
spree, it appears that Ellison met Williams in Fargo. Ellison told police that
Williams “had offered him a job at $3 as a salesman’s assistant.” Obviously the
much older Williams took advantage of Ellison’s youth and naivete. Police
determined Williams was a career criminal from Chicago.
According to Ellison Laird, he and Williams stole a car in Fargo,
and used it while committing burglaries there before driving into Minnesota to
continue the burglary spree. They robbed four stores in Clear Lake, Minnesota. The
St. Cloud Times reported as follows:
“After being in St. Cloud Monday night, and failing
successfully to rob any stores here, Williams and Laird went to Clear Lake.
Shortly after midnight, they broke into the Dingmann Hardware store there…and
took a quantity of merchandise, in addition to a number of loose keys. With
these keys in their possession they also are charged with having robbed the
Weis barber shop and restaurant, the McDonald meat market and the LeBlanc
grocery store. They attempted to enter the office of the Central Lumber company…but
were unsuccessful.
Tuesday evening, police brought young Laird back to Clear
Lake where…he showed them how the stores were robbed and how entry was made.”
In addition to Clear Lake, they also burgled several stores
in Rothsay, Minnesota.
The pair were captured in Anoka due to a humiliating reason.
The St. Cloud Times noted:
“Imbibing too freely of the contents of a bottle of hair
tonic stolen at Clear Lake resulted in the arrest of the pair at Anoka Tuesday
afternoon. The two suspects, when they pulled into an oil filling station at
Anoka, were noticeably intoxicated and slightly sick. The attendant at the oil station
notified the police of two drunk drivers and the police made the arrest, later
finding in the car a large quantity of merchandise alleged to have been stolen…”
I wondered why they hadn’t stolen liquor or bought some with
money they had stolen—drinking hair tonic seemed a bit desperate. But I quickly
realized that in 1929, Prohibition was still in force, so there was no liquor
to steal or buy. People resorted to all sorts of liquor substitutes, in this case
hair tonic. No wonder Ellison and Williams were slightly sick.
Ellison made the hard choice to confess everything to the
police. Williams denied Ellison’s account, but the evidence the police
recovered, both in the vehicle they were driving and in a hiding place Ellison
led them to in Sauk Center, proved Williams’ guilt.
Ellison’s confession led to the police taking pity on him.
The newspaper noted, “Because of the youth’s age, and the fact that apparently
he had been duped into a life of crime, Sherburne county officials were
inclined to be lenient with him and he may be returned home without charge
placed against him.”
I hypothesize that he did avoid facing charges, because a
year later Ellison appears on the 1930 census at age fifteen, living at home in
Mankato with his parents and siblings. James and Gertrude obviously took him
back, and he seems to have left criminal activity behind. The census showed he
was back at school, while his older brother had, at age seventeen, already left
school and was working as a laborer in an effort to help support the family
since father James no longer had steady work.
Ellison probably followed his brother’s example the
following year and left school to try to find paying work. The 1940 census
showed him still living with his parents, and it listed his last year of
schooling as “HS1” which means he only completed his first year of high school
before dropping out.
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| Albert Lea Tribune article Jan 1942 |
Ellison registered for the World War II draft the same year,
stating that he worked for his father in Garden City, Minnesota. He was 5’10,
150 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair and a dark complexion.
Apparently, Ellison was eager to serve his country. A news
article in the Albert Lea Tribune in January of 1942, reported that Ellison had
finally been inducted into the Army after being rejected twice for bad
eyesight. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, he had returned to the draft
board a third time, stating that he “would keep on trying until the army ‘let
him in’”, and telling the draft board he could “see well enough to hit a Jap.”
He was inducted on January 17, 1942, and was discharged from
Camp McCoy in Wisconsin at the end of December 1945, holding the rank of T/5
(or Tec 5). T/5 stood for Technician Fifth Grade, a rank used from 1942 to 1948
that equaled the pay of a corporal but carried no command authority. It appears
he was called “corporal” anyway. He married Mary Jane Pollock in March of 1944
in Pine River, Minnesota, and the marriage notice referred to him as Corporal
Ellison J. Laird. Ellison was 29 years old, while Mary Jane was 20 on their
wedding day.
Following the war, Ellison farmed in Cass County, Minnesota
near Pine River. He and Mary Jane had one daughter, Trudy, who was born
September 7, 1948. At some point after 1950, they moved to St. Paul. I was able
to find Mary Jane’s obituary, which stated she worked at the General Electric
plant in St. Paul, and in Chicago, before the family moved to Seattle where she
was employed for many years at the Boeing plant as an aerospace worker. I don’t
know if Ellison also worked for those companies. I need to find an obituary,
which may require a trip to Minnesota.
Ellison seems to have been a vintage car buff. I found an
article from the Longview Daily News in Washington about a classic car competition.
Ellison and Mary Jane were there in his 1928 Chevrolet sedan. He came in second
place in a balloon-breaking event.
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| 1928 Chevrolet Sedan. Lars-Göran Lindgren Sweden, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons |
Ellison died in Seattle on July 17, 1993. He was 78 years
old. Sadly, his daughter preceded him in death on June 7, 1987.
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| Beautiful headstone marking graves of Ellison, wife Mary Jane and daughter Trudy Laird. |
Ellison Laird made some bad decisions as a desperate
fourteen year old boy. But he then made the hard choice to take responsibility
for his crimes, which led authorities to treat him with leniency and give him a
second chance. He took that chance, served his country, and built a solid life.
It is encouraging to see that mistakes don’t define a life.
Sources:
Cemetery photo courtesy of lavoiesr1 on Ancestry.
“Oldtime Cars in Competition.” Longview Daily News,
Longview, Washington. Aug. 3, 1972. Newspapers.com.
Photo of 1928 Chevrolet sedan. Lars-Göran Lindgren Sweden,
CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via
Wikimedia Commons
“Tried to Rob St. Cloud Stores Monday, Younger Suspect
Asserts Today”. St. Cloud Times. St. Cloud, MN. Apr. 24, 1929.
Newspapers.com.
“Suspects Held to Answer for Many Robberies”. St. Cloud
Times. St. Cloud, MN. Apr. 25, 1929. Newspapers.com.
“Two Suspects Held in Anoka”. Austin Daily Herald.
Austin, MN Apr. 24, 1929. Newspapers.com.
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