BIO: Frank McGuire, Tillard Pen Pictures, 1911, Blair County, PA Contributed April 2003 for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Judy Banja Copyright 2003. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/blair/ _________________________________________ Pen Pictures of Friends and Reminiscent Sketches by J. N. Tillard Altoona, PA: William F. Gable & Co., Mirror Press, 1911 FRANK McGUIRE, Molder and Merchant When His Destinies Were not Shaping Themselves to Suit Him He Cast New Ones THERE are many men who bewail their lack of success in life and attribute their failures to every cause but the right one, viz: Their own lack of application and failure to grasp such opportunities as come their way. They are sure that, if some one had sent them to college they would have become scholars, or had set them up in business, they would have been millionaires. The chances are that they would have been neither. Of course, all things being equal, the man with the largest opportunities should travel farthest in the journey of life, and he who starts out with the best equipment in the way of intellectual training has the best chance, but there are some men who will hew their own way through all obstacles and develop the best that is in them under the most adverse circumstances. They cannot be kept down. IŁ one path is hedged up by forces too great for them to control, they will find a new one, and there is always a place for the man who is fit. This city contains many men who have achieved success by virtue of their own inherent good qualities and strong manhood, in spite of unfriendly surroundings and hard conditions. Whenever it came to the point where they thought they were not getting a square deal, they shuffled the deck for a new deal, and when it came to the show down, they had a full house. This attitude toward the world, however, was not the result of hasty impulse or ill-advised and injudicious pique. As the years passed they had been thinking it over and marshaling their forces for the evil day. Forty-five years ago there came to this city a young molder named Frank McGuire. He was not a big, blustering man, full of truculence and self- importance. Quite the contrary, he was rather small in physique and mild in manner, unless aroused by insult or injury, and all he wanted of the world was a fair chance and no favorites played. He knew his business and was a faithful employe, always on the job, giving his undivided attention to the matter in hand. He turned out good work, because he was too honest to turn out any other kind. He despised the fake and the shirker, and was there to do his bit and hold up his end every day in the week. But while he was rendering good and faithful service he had some notion of his own rights in the matter and wanted his services recognized and compensated in accordance with their value. For seven years he toiled early and late and while he toiled he spent not his substance in riotous living, but prudently and economically husbanded the modest fruits of his industry. After he had served the seven years, he looked over the situation and concluded that he would widen his horizon and extend his borders. He felt that he had in him a mercantile talent and, though he did not see his way clear to immediately engage in large enterprises or manage great schemes, he had that most valuable asset, the ability to adapt himself to the situation and make the most of it. He lived in what was then the southern boundaries of the city and what is now the Sixth Ward was mostly open fields, and right there on the edge of things he set up a little grocery store. His native shrewdness grasped all the possibilities. He made no fundamental mistakes, but calculated to a nicety just what his chances were. In those days there were no local jobbing houses, with their advantages - and disadvantages - to the small dealer, and so he went to Philadelphia and invested all his savings in a stock of groceries. When he arranged them on his shelves, he knew to the fraction of a cent just what every article cost him, for he had been too many years working out their value in a hot foundry to be careless or indifferent about it. He was in deadly earnest in his business venture, for his whole future was involved in its failure or success. But fortunately he was not alone. He had a wife who was intelligent and capable enough to share in his hopes and second his efforts. Both of them workers, full of a single minded purpose to succeed by honest, intelligent work. A combination like that can't be beaten. Men who have accumulated large fortunes by more or less doubtful methods may sneer at results achieved in this way, but take out of the life of the country the men and women of that sort and the land would soon decay. It is the quite humble toilers of this sort that have really made the country great, and when they no longer occupy the stage of action, society will be declining to its fall. But it was not hard work and honest methods alone that built up the fortunes of Frank McGuire. He had really superior intelligence, the kind of most uncommon good sense that made the most of everything that came his way. He always knew how to make an advantageous trade, and as his word was always as good as his bond, his credit was always good and his neighbors were not afraid to trade with him. They could rely upon his promises and trust to his honor. He never made the mistake of getting out more paper than he could redeem, and made no enemies by false representation. People came to know that what he said went, and he never wasted his time by fooling with people that were of no use to him. Sincere himself, he demanded sincerity in those with whom he dealt, and the constantly increasing circle of friends he built up were of the kind that man can afford to tie to. For with all his unceasing business activities, he always found time for the amenities of life and success did not bring sordidness or increasing selfishness. While he made no more fuss about his charities than he did his accumulations, he never lost his human interest and, looking over the surging tide of humanity, he was always aware of the presence of the submerged, and there is many a man who got his head above water because Frank McGuire reached out a helping hand in the nick of time. The writer is indebted to him for many a kindly word when he felt oppressed and the cares of life rested heavily upon him. During the period in which most of his active business life was passed, there were two classes of men in the city - those who believed in its future and staked their all upon that belief, and those who were always seeing the shops moved or some other dire calamity that would sweep it off the face of the earth, looming above the horizon. Whenever Frank McGuire got a dollar ahead of the game, he employed someone to build a house, thereby increasing the volume of trade and making it a better town to live in. Any lot that he came in possession of did not long remain vacant. If the owner of the stone team was idle, Frank had him haul some stone on the lot and paid him in groceries and horse feed. Then the laborer out of a job could dig a cellar and the stone mason could build a wall, and the carpenter could raise a building, and the plasterer and painter and tinner and all the rest of them got busy, and there was another house for some one to live in, and the children of the men who did the work were fed and everybody satisfied except the improvident and chronic loafer who bit his finger nails with envy and wondered how Frank McGuire prospered so. Heaven send us more like him. He is no longer in the heyday of his youth, and he has pretty much given up the harder tasks of life to younger hands, but his genial face is still visible on the streets, the kindly light still shines in his eyes and his hand-clasp is as warm as ever. When he shall have heard the last beating of Time's tattoo, and walked the final path of earth's pilgrimage, there will loom up before many of his associates points of a fine character that were not so obvious to them while they marched with him in the flesh. #