Edward T. Nowak
Edward T. Nowak, or Ed as his family called him, was ten years old in 1906, having been born in the city in 1896 in a house on Medbury street near Chene and Harper. His father had come to the city directly from rural Poland to avoid conscription into the German army. Employed initailly as a laborer, he rose to the title "blacksmith-mechanic" and found steady employment with the rising Ford Motor Co.

Ed probably did not venture outside the confines of his eastside neighborhood very often, replete as it was with church/school and even a farmer's market. When he did go downtown, it was undoubtedly by streetcar and probably for special shopping or events. In 1908, he would become a regular on the downtown streets when he became a student at Cass Technical High School, Detroit's premier secondary school.

Sometimes after school, he would hawk newspapers on the city streets when breaking stories made for "extras", a common phenomenon in the pre-radio era. Perhaps he would have qualified to use the swimming pool that the Detroit News sponsored for newsboys, left.

One day in 1912 (perhaps skipping school?), he took a joyride out E. Jefferson on the streetcar. When he saw the new buildings going up for the Hudson Motor Car Co. near Conner (then outside the city limits), he got off and on an impulse went in to ask for a job. Thus began a career that would end 50 years later when he retired from the American Motors Corp. as an executive vice-president. It was his one and only full-time job.

He met Evaline Corcoran in the 1918 or 1919 and romanced her on weekends on the promenades of Belle Isle, Detroit's island park. They married in 1922 and raised three children, one of which is the writer's mother.