Were it not for Robert Gabrick, much of the important information about the Four Wheel Drive (FWD) company would have been lost and perhaps gone forever.
In 2000 Gabrick came to the FWD museum on 11th Street to do research for two books he wrote about FWD trucks and fire trucks.
The following year he began creating an archive for FWD.
Gabrick began by going through photographs in paper sleeves stored in filing cabinets in a back room of the museum.
He salvaged more than 300 glass plate negatives and thousands of photographs and film negatives. Kept in a room where other chemicals were stored, many of the photos were deteriorating.
“I give Jim Green, at the time the FWD Foundation president, credit for buying the special archival supplies to store the priceless material,” Gabrick said.
Archived materials are now kept in special containers, or “Hollinger boxes,” named for the company that created them, constructed of materials that resist the chemical changes that can destroy old photographs and documents.
In addition to the glass plates, photographs and negatives, Gabrick also has archived a great variety of print materials, including letters, FWD sales brochures, and advertising and promotional information. Most of the boxes contain a neutralizing sheet to keep chemicals from destroying the documents.
“This is too important a time in history. Do it now or it will be lost. This is American history,” said Gabrick, who was in Clintonville during the recent Firemen’s Festival.
Gabrick has spent many hours working in the museum since 2000 and at times has been assisted by his son.
“This entire effort is a labor of love,” Gabrick said.
A retired teacher, Gabrick, who lives in Somerset, is now a writer, researcher, and an archival and educational consultant. He has written 11 books and two magazine articles on the history of transportation. He has also traveled and written extensively on World War II subjects, including the first atomic bomb test site in New Mexico.
He spent time in Pennsylvania researching books he wrote prior to his two FWD books, but he wanted to find something closer to home and decided to come to Clintonville to research FWD.
“Rick Goodell, an FWD Seagrave employee, provided the initial assistance for my research efforts,” said Gabrick, who praised FWD, not Seagrave, for establishing the museum. In addition to the records, several of the early FWD vehicles are stored in the museum.
“We have to preserve and protect these vital records. … We really have to give Walter Olen credit for buying this building, or this museum wouldn’t exist,” Gabrick said.
Gabrick’s research found that bothers-in-law Otto Zachow and William Besserdich developed a four-wheel-drive automobile with a patented ball and socket that allowed the front wheels of a vehicle to be powered and steered. In 1909, the men collaborated with local attorney Walter A. Olen and founded the Badger Four Wheel Drive Auto Company.
In 1912, the company switched their focus to trucks. Their truck would become the first four-wheel-drive vehicle ever mass-produced.
Gabrick is a contributing editor for a magazine named America in WWII. He recently wrote an article, “Manufacturing Victory,” that tells the story of FWD during the war.
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