The Life Of Willie Willey by Keith L. Yates

After examining him, a doctor suggested that he improve his constitution by exposing himself to the elements. It turns out that Willey was a sickly youngster. You’ll note that Willey is only wearing shorts. Willey planned to drive this car from Spokane to the 1933/1934 World Fair in Chicago. The photo is taken with the Monroe Street bridge and the Spokane Falls in the background. This photo was taken in 1933 (note the ’33 on the license plate).

In the picture above, we appear to have Willis Ray Willey in his 1904 REO, the first year that the Ranson E. Willey reminds me of the Camel Man, who Hein ran into a few months ago in Australia. To read more about Willey, visit this article from Nostalgia Magazine. So, I thought I’d share a brief summary of it. 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 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. 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. 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. She said she didn’t either.Ībout mid-day I was talking to my aunt (mom’s sister) and briefly described the photo. I called mom over and asked her if she recognized anyone in the photo, as I didn’t. 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. 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. It might not surprise you that my interest in history has led me to become the family historian. He was Willis Ray Willey, while his twin was Willard Roy Willey. UPDATE: Thanks to Mike for sorting out Willis’ real name. Who else had a name that includes both “Willis” and “Willey”? Anyway, this post is full of some great and useful comments. The post covers some of the history about Willis Ray Willey, which is a pretty cool name for a site about vintage jeeps.

UPDATE II: This post was originally posted in January of 2011 (yes, hard to believe it was eleven years ago!).

The Life Of Willie Willey by Keith L. Yates