Elmer Carl Kiekhaefer

Born in Mequon on June 4, 1906, and a Cedarburg High graduate, he was fired by Evinrude for arguing about design, then bought a bankrupt Cedarburg outboard plant in 1939 for $25,000 plus a pile of Thor motors a mail-order house had rejected. He rebuilt them, named the good ones Mercury, and spent the war stuffing drone engines into a plant with no room left for boats. When aluminum restrictions lifted, Western Auto doubled an order to 33,000 civilian motors; that backlog, not a civic love letter, is why he left Cedarburg.

In February 1946 Fond du Lac offered the old Corium Dairy Farm for $25,000: thirty-eight acres, a five-story barn, four silos, and ninety tons of hay. He pitched the hay himself. Silos became paint booths. Local businessmen tried to keep him out, fearing he would steal the labor pool. He stayed. Chrysler 300s won him NASCAR owner titles in 1955 and 1956; he folded the team when crowds started to hate how often he won. A 1957 endurance run put two Mark 75 six-cylinder sixty-horsepower motors through thirty-four days, eleven hours, and forty-seven minutes nonstop—more than 25,000 miles, refueled on the fly, at a 30.3 mph average. Brunswick bought the company in 1961 for a stock deal the New York Times put near $34 million. He fought the new owners, quit in 1969, and started Aeromarine down the road.

He died in Fond du Lac on October 5, 1983, at seventy-seven. Mercury Marine is still there and remains the city’s largest private payroll. Birth is Mequon, high school is Cedarburg, and the industrial life from 1946 to 1983 is Fond du Lac: a real stretch, not a suburban mailing address.