*This post was originally an episode of the short-lived podcast, 1000 Words, and has been adapted for reading rather than listening.*
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This entry will be about a regular everyday kind of photo. This is the first in what I’m calling Ordinary Citizens of the Inland Northwest.
This week we are going to talk about a man who was not a criminal. We’re going to talk about his life before, during and after Spokane. This photo can be found in the Charles Libby Collection in the Joel E. Ferris Archives at the Museum of Arts & Culture in Spokane.
The Libby Studio, founded by Charles Libby Sr., took photos of many things: houses, streets, people, commercial buildings, local businesses, company parties, children’s birthday parties, school groups, and much, much more between 1901 and 1969.
The caption of the photo just reads, “Cyril Mee with Hupmobile, 1925.” We have a lot to cover here. What’s a Hupmobile? Who was Cyril Mee? Who was the unidentified woman? Why are they posing with the car?
Let’s get started with what a Hupmobile was. The Hupp Motor Car Company operated out of Detroit from 1908 until 1941. It was founded by Robert C. Hupp, a former employee of Olds Motor Works and Ford Motor Company, and his brother Louis Hupp. Their first model, the Model 20, sold for $750, which if you have faith in online inflation calculators, would be just over $11,000 today.
Robert left the company in 1911 to pursue other endeavors within the automotive industry. Hupp Motor Company went on to produce the first American car to be used by the military, and one of the first two companies that produced all steel body automobiles.
This photo was actually printed in The Spokane Chronicle on May 7, 1925, so we know, thanks to the caption that the automobile with Cyril Mee was a Hupmobile Four.
The “four” indicated the number of cylinders. Cyril’s was one of the last Fours produced as Hupp stopped making 4-cylinder models in 1925. The Fours were replaced with Sixes and the company also began making Eights and sales took off.
Back to the photo. Who was the unidentified woman? Unsurprisingly, it’s Cyril’s wife, Martha.
Why are they posing with the car?
If you’ve ever purchased a car, the dealer may have taken a photo of you with it. I imagine it was something like that. They had just purchased their Hupmobile Four. It could have also been part of an advertising deal as it was featured just above an advert for the Hupmobile at Ahren’s and Ahren’s Distributors, which is where the Mees purchased theirs and it was already mentioned that Charles Libby and his studio took many photos for local businesses. That is the short story of this photo.
So, who was Cyril Mee?
Cyril James Clark Lee was born in Adelaide, South Australia, in 1889. He arrived in British Columbia in 1912, but there are few details that I could find in my short research time of how he ended up there. Cyril joined the British Army and fought in World War One. In 1914, he married Martha Isabel Kaiser in New York.
In 1922, Cyril gave a talk at a Rotary Club luncheon in Anaconda, Montana. He regaled them with a story of romance that would make the hardest of hearts swoon and the only problem with this story is that the timelines do not match up with reality.
The story goes that in 1917, while campaigning in Gallipoli, he met up with two of his acquaintances who were in the provincial volunteer service. They had been sent to France via the United States. While in the US they met a woman in Hannibal, Missouri. They both fell in love with her and they both proposed. She rejected them both. Cyril expressed a great interest in someday visiting the United States and was planning on making that trip after the signing of the Armistice. The two friends each wrote a letter of introduction for him to present to their mysterious woman. When he finally met her, he presented the letters, and they opened the door to a deep friendship which quickly progressed to matrimony.
A wonderful story, but I’m not entirely convinced of the validity of it, or at least of the actual details. You may recall that Cyril and Martha were married in 1914. By the time Cyril told this romantic tale in 1922, the couple already had two daughters.
In fact, their first daughter was born in 1915. Their second arrived in 1919. For a while, I wondered if it was a different Cyril Mee, but after much more searching, I am confident that wasn’t the case. Either Cyril got his story a little mixed up, or the reporter who recounted his speech got the details wrong or…who knows? This will have to remain a mystery for someone with a more vested interest in it to solve.
In 1923, Cyril moved to Spokane. He was initially hired as a sales manager for Spokane Gas and Fuel. Within two years, he was the head of public relations for the company. Cyril’s real claim to fame seems to have been his singing and community song leading, however. Even before he relocated to Spokane from Portland, he was leading singers for the Committee of Ten on Community Development. This was an organization founded by Spokanite Harlan Payton with the goal of driving interest in the Inland Northwest by putting on shows and lectures. Cyril and his family were not in Spokane for long, however. They arrived in 1923. The photo was taken around May of 1925, and in December of 1925, his office mates were throwing him a farewell party. He had been transferred to Danbury Gas and Electric Company in Connecticut.
The family remained in Spokane until June 1926. Cyril and his family moved around a fair bit after that. A search for his name on newspapers.com shows that he was still leading musical groups for various organizations for years after he left our area. In 1944, he played the piano and led the crowd in a song for a joint meeting of Lions, Kiwanis and Rotary in Maryland. He was identified as the new manager of the Opera House. Cyril died in 1967 in Winchester, Virginia. Martha died in 1981.
Both of their daughters died within months of each other in 2004, only one was married. It appears neither had children.
That is the story of ordinary citizens, Cyril Mee. There are likely many more stories of Cyril’s life in Spokane that I did not uncover. He may not have been a dangerous criminal on the run from the coppers (said in my best Transatlantic impression), and his story may not have had you on the edge of your seat, but he was a part of the fabric of a young Spokane, and now you know of him.
Sources:
https://ferrisarchives.northwestmuseum.org/Item/Index/1043
Quotes and other details are from The Spokesman-Review and The Spokane Chronicle accessed via newspapers.com.
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