He is not famous but he enjoyed ninety nine years as a happy man. Ted was “Uncle Sam” for 17 years in the Forth of July parade in Leland. It gave him great pleasure to be seen with children in pictures.

He enjoyed introducing himself as “Old Ted with the Bald Head” because it helped people remember his name.

Ted was born in Indianapolis Indiana on July 19, 1925, the grandson of immigrants from England. His grandfather was a railroad mechanic “in the yards.” His mother’s family were farmers in east central Indiana.

School started when he was five years old, and he loved it. On his first day there he met, among others, the girl he married twenty years later, a very pretty redhead named Natalie Borreson.

Airplanes were his lifetime interest. He built models from age six, owned and operated a model airplane supply shop in high school, and enlisted in the Army Air Corps to become, hopefully, a pilot. It was not to be. He became an airplane mechanic, talked his way into gunnery school, and flew thirty missions as a flight engineer/gunner in B-17 aircraft over Germany in World War II.

The G.I. bill financed him through Purdue where he hoped to become an aeronautical engineer but was advised into another curriculum which could provide job opportunities after graduation. He finished as an electrical engineer and was hired by an electric utility in Fort Wayne, Indiana as a specialist in the design, promotion and sales of heat pumps for comfort conditioning. He left that job to join two other young men starting their own business in comfort heating, electrically. The year was 1954.

Those three men were business partners 1925 ~ 2025

for nearly thirty years, starting three different businesses, two of which prospered. They retired in 1981, still close friends.

The marriage of Ted and Tali (Natalie) produced their son David and lots of good times.

Ted learned to fly in 1959 and enjoyed aviation into the mid-nineties. Having destroyed a plane in an accident at the Northport airport, he proceeded to restore first a Piper Tri-Pacer, then a Cessna Cardinal, and then, along with his good friend Lou Aug of Cedar, built a small two place homebuilt plane. He gave up flying reluctantly to, as he said, stop scaring people.

Airplanes were still in his mind. He chanced upon a group flying radiocontrolled model soaring gliders at a field west of Traverse City and caught the bug seriously, eventually becoming the Little Finger Thermaleers vice president.

Airplanes were not his only interest. He loved fly fishing, and he enjoyed making odd yard art with old farm machinery parts, and wood carving. He loved canoeing and restored at least a dozen canoes, several of which remain in the county today. Ballroom dancing with Tali was a thrill for him although they never became “show class” dancers. The land they bought in 1976 always thrilled him. He and Tali donated a conservation easement to the Leelanau Conservancy covering a large portion of their property. He could not have done these many things without a love for people.

Ted is survived by Tali, his wife of 74 years, and his son David, who resides in Cedar MI.

Memorials are to be sent to the Little Finger Thermaleers, by care of Phil Diamond, Treasurer, 200 W Harbor Ridge, Maple City MI 49664