Gail Helle: "Delbert always had time for me and always made me feel important. All guys have to have an older pal and he was it. I could tell him my tales of woes and he would listen. He must have really loved kids. That must be why the good Lord saw that he had the most. I also remember Delbert tinkering with his homemade radios and his interest in electricity."
Helle Sawmill Hydraulics, http://www.4helle.com/history.html - By 1950 Delbert Helle had built an impressive sawmill operation in Farmington, Illinois. A left hand #5 Corley mill, a dry kiln, a planing operation, tongue and groove machine, pallet line, molder and joiner. The operation fed him and his wife, eight kids, two grandparents, and a hired hand. As he approached his fifties, he realized that turning logs by hand was detrimental to his health and hard on productivity. So, he went to the major manufactures and asked about a log turner. Well it seemed that the only thing available was a ram device that required a pit for the cylinder. He observed that it would fill up with water and freeze in the winter time. So he built his own Helle Log Turner. Today over 600 oft hese were operating wherever logs are sawed!
Source: "Frederick Helle and Katherine Krauser" by Alice Riley: "DelbertVernon Helle, considers 25 January 1932 as the most important day in his life when he married a wonderful girl. During the first ten years of their marriage, Delbert and Nellie moved 13 times; usually in a farm house near the sawmill. Nellie recalls: "We had running water in only two homes before our present home. I have drawn water from a well with a bucket, dipped it from a spring and a few times had a pump at a sink in the house. However, I never had to wash clothes on a washboard. Our most unusual home was an 24 square foot cabin beside the Mississippi River in Joe Daviess County, Illinois in 1935-36. The weather was 35 degrees below zero for the first few days and we had a lot of snow. Our cabin was built above the mark of the previous high-test previous flood and when the spring flood reached its crest, only the three chimney tops were visible.We never went back." (Sharon Bearce)