Densho Digital Archive - Bill Hirabayashi Interview (denshovh-hbill

<Begin Segment 17>

MA: Okay, so I wanted to ask you a little bit about Mr. Byfield, and how did he make his money?

BH: He was, oh, there's a long story on that one. I'll try to cut it short. But his father used to be a hotel man, and they owned the Hotel Ambassador East and Hotel Ambassador West in Chicago. And also the Sherman Hotel, which, it's been torn down since now. And then he owned different businesses, and one of them was... it's another hotel at Guaymas, Mexico. But he was, during the Depression, his father lost everything and the bank took over the hotels and all that stuff. And Mr. Byfield had just graduated college, and he went to the bank and he said, "Look. I've got this education," this and that, "and I'm raised on the hotel business. I can get it out of the red." So they gave him the chance to take it out of the red. But he had so many ideas, and he did take it out of the red and then became a millionaire again himself. Well, one of the things that he did, and everybody knows what a Bloody Mary is, and I don't drink, so I don't know what all... all I know is it's got tomato juice in it. Well, Mr. Byfield introduced the tomato juice in his hotels. And you know, you always see your beverages, and nobody ever saw tomato juice on the beverage. But because of his doing that, the Campbell's company, their tomato juice, I guess it doubled or tripled it in a real short time. But he was the instigator of a lot of things like that. And he's the one that started the, they put all these food on the swords and they light, they put liquor on there and light it, and they march through with it. But he had that, doing it, and that started with him at the Hotel Ambassador East.

MA: And did he live at the Grassmere Farms estate?

BH: No, that was just his weekend place to retreat.

MA: So he lived in Chicago?

BH: Yeah, he lived at the Hotel Ambassador.

MA: And did you and Anice live on the farm?

BH: Yeah, on the farm, but it was a separate house especially for the caretaker. And so we had our separate home. We had our own car garage and our own... well, everything was just our own, and we had our own lawn and stuff. It was just all, like I say, there was a walnut grove between the main farm and our house.

MA: And how often did you go into Chicago? How close was Barrington to Chicago and how often would you go?

BH: About thirty-five, forty miles. But I never went to Chicago except when we went grocery -- not grocery, but shopping for, my wife went shopping or I had to pick up something at the hotel for Mr. Byfield. A lot of times, I'd take the truck to go into hotel to carry, bring back more booze for the bar room, that kind of at thing. But otherwise, I went to Chicago when my friends from the Seattle area, high school friends that came into Chicago to go to school, then we invited them out to visit us. We used to have visitors almost, I would say, almost every weekend.

MA: But Anice spent time in Chicago, right? She took classes?

BH: Just to go to school, but she took the train every day. She caught the train every morning and came back on the train, and her mother took care of my son at the time, 'cause he was just a kid then.

MA: How often would Mr. Byfield come to the estate?

BH: Oh, he'd come out every weekend. And so that was... and if he didn't come up for any reason, if he was out of town or something, then the estate was still open, 'cause Mrs. Byfield and all that, their friends would come out and they'd all use the swimming pool and all that sort of thing.