Enthusiast of the Month – Avery Hall

Adding to our roster of Vermont Automobile Enthusiasts, this month the “BIG E” goes to someone who is already a “Hall” of Famer… R. Avery Hall. When you stop and think about it for a minute there are few who have devoted as much time and effort to the VAE as Avery. In addition to his club contributions, he has also managed to pretty well preserve several worthy vehicles.

His work is an inspiration for us all and having a national prizewinner at many of our meets is a big plus for members, guests and the hobby. None of this happened overnight. R. Avery (think “our” Avery) has had the bug for some time. Although he now tends to deny it, there is evidence in the 40th anniversary publication of an early interest… Avery appears in print in a Model A Roadster.

He denies a Ford-inspired old car career but we know better… Ford has always outsold Packard, Avery and look what a used Model A has done for you! This writer remembers Avery first attending VAE meets in 1954 at the Lincoln Inn in Essex Junction… often in the inspiring company of John (Hawkeye before Alan Alda) Hawkinson. Avery had a military crew cut, wore a black sweater and smoked a curved-stem pipe. Sort of a cross between Marlon Brando and Albert Einstein. John Hawkinson was revered as an auto guru and drove the cars to prove it. Avery was his quiet and wise sidekick. Time has confirmed the wise part. I wonder what happened to the quiet?

Avery grew up in the Charlotte / Burlington area and has long-term connections here. As a younger enthusiast he drove his “old car” as daily transportation. I remember running across Avery in the ’28 Packard sedan on a back road somewhere in south-central Chittenden county as he was transporting folding metal chairs… the Packard was stuffed with them… off to a church supper or wake somewhere. Always the organized and helping volunteer.

As I saw more of Avery, and Mahlon Teachout joined our car interest group, we had some interesting times together. Avery told us one time about moving back to Vermont with the family vehicle (think old Packard). The weather was very warm and Avery had questionable tires. Always the engineer, Avery told us that out on the highway in the daytime (it was cooler at night but then there was the issue of headlights), he always tried to drive so as to keep at least 2 of the tires on the white line.

He reasoned that the highway temperature would be lower on the reflective white line and that would be easier on the tires. Fortunately for all involved he made it back and has stayed to become VAE President, Board Chairman, Director and Meet Co-chair of major events at Essex and Shelburne.

Avery has raised money, written advertising, represented us to the media, judged, and attended hundreds of meetings. In odd moments he has operated Avery’s Garage, taken driving courses, attended technical schools for engine rebuilding, and produced some really nice restorations.

He has an additional interest in old boats and I saw him looking with considerable interest at an old airplane at Basin Harbor awhile back… and then there are sports cars. We have many great Enthusiasts in our VAE but few have proved it like “Our” Avery. A big collective thank you comes with this “BIG E” award.

Women in Automotive History

Florence Lawrence

Turn signals and brake lights are standard on all automobiles manufactured today—in fact, it’s hard to imagine cars without them. The inventor of the earliest versions of both was Florence Lawrence, who was, at the time, the highest-paid film actress ever.

Lawrence was born in 1886 in Hamilton, Ontario, as Florence Bridgwood. Her surname was changed when she was four to match her vaudeville actress mother’s stage name. Acting was, apparently, in Lawrence’s blood: she started in silent films in 1907 and by 1910 was so popular that she became the first actress to have her name used to advertise a picture. At the height of a career, playing heroines on the silver screen, she invented two key automobile safety devices.
According to Kelly R. Brown’s 1999 biography Florence Lawrence, the Biograph Girl, Lawrence was an automobile aficionado at a time when relatively few people owned cars. “A car to me is something that is almost human,” she later said in an interview, “something that responds to kindness and understanding and care, just as people do.”

She soon set about improving the vehicles she loved. By 1914, she’d invented the first turn signal, called an “auto signaling arm,” which attached to a car’s back fender. When a driver pressed the correct button, an arm electrically raised or lowered, with a sign attached indicating the direction of the intended turn. Her brake signal worked on the same principle: another arm with a sign reading “stop” raised up whenever the driver pressed the brake pedal—the essential concept behind today’s brake lights.

Lawrence’s mother, Lotta Lawrence, got into the act, too: she patented the first electrical windshield wipers, which used a system of rollers, in 1917. But her daughter’s inventions weren’t properly patented, and others soon came out with their own, more refined versions.

By the time the first electrical turn signals became standard equipment on Buicks in 1939, Lawrence’s contributions were long forgotten.

Alice Ramsey

Thanks to the re-enactment at the Shelburne Show we all know who made the first cross-country trip by auto in 1903. In 1909, however, the same trip was attempted and completed by Alice Huyler Ramsey; who made automotive history by becoming only the tenth person and the first woman, to drive across the United States. Ramsey made her trip in a sedan made by the Maxwell-Briscoe Car Company, and the trip took her and three female companions just 59 days, which was faster than any other crossing before that time. Her route took her from Hell’s Gate in New York City to the Golden Gate in San Francisco for a total of 3,800 miles. The same trip that took Ramsey nearly three months almost a century ago would be a mere 8 days today.