9. The Great Depression

The Great Depression of the 1930’s began with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929. Many people assume that the crash of the stock market was the cause of the depression. This is not correct. Nearly all economists agree that the stock market is not the cause, but only an indicator of economic conditions. The real cause of the depression was the reduction in the money supply.

The amount of money in circulation is under the control of the Federal government through the Federal Reserve banks. In 1928 and 1929 the government decided to reduce the money supply. The stock market is a very sensitive indicator of economic conditions. When money is tight, people stop spending on nonessential and luxury items and stop investing in the stock market. Their money is needed to pay for housing, clothing, food and other necessities. The situation is compounded by the stock traders who try to anticipate what the market will do. When they see a downtrend developing, they sell as quickly as they can. The stock market goes down first, unemployment goes up, many businesses fail, and we have a depression.

Erick Kyro entered Cass Tech in 1930 when the depression was just beginning. He was mechanically inclined and majored in Aeronautics. During his years at Cass Tech, Erick became friends with a fellow Aeronautics student named Neal Loving . Neal later became a well-known aircraft engineer, designer, builder and pilot. His life is described in his autobiography, “Loving’s Love: A Black American’s Experience in Aviation” (Smithsonian History of Aviation Series, 1994). They remained friends until Neal’s death in 1998.

Before the depression Kyro Music and Jewelry Company had sold many radios on credit, utilizing commercial finance companies for with-recourse financing of the sales. When the depression continued, many customers were forced to stop making payments and the radios had to be repossessed. The financial losses mounted and Kyro Music and Jewelry Company closed its doors in 1932.

The Kyros then started a pasty business on Linwood Avenue in Detroit. The pasty was brought to the United States by the British Cornish miners who were encouraged to come to the United States and to northern Michigan because of their mining skills. The Finnish miners learned of the pasty -- a meat, potato, onion, carrot and rutabaga filling baked in a pastry crust -- and adopted it as a desirable and easily-carried food item. William Kyro invested in an electric potato peeling machine to abrade the skin from the potatoes. The eyes had to be removed from the potatoes with a knife by hand. Anna Kyro baked the pasties in a used commercial baking oven. William Kyro created a trade name "Vita-Seal" for the pasties. He hired sales people to pack the freshly-baked, hot pasties into baskets and sell them to workers outside the auto plants at lunch times. The bakery also had walk-in customers.

At this time William met Messrs. Nickolai and Dancey who were developing a new kind of snack food: the potato chip. They invited Mr. Kyro to invest in the new business. But William, unfortunately, did not see the potential. The Nickolai-Dancey company proved very successful and later became part of Frito-Lay. William regretted his lack of foresight.

The pasty business was moderately profitable and allowed the Kyro family to ride out the Great Depression without going on welfare. In 1933 they moved the business to Pasadena Avenue near Woodward Avenue in Highland Park. Highland Park is an independent city entirely inside the city of Detroit.

In 1932 Laura Kyro and Leonard Dixon were married at a church in Detroit. Their first child, David Erick Dixon was born in 1933, but died at the age of two months. Due to the depression, Leonard lost his job as an auto parts salesman and opened a small gift shop in northwest Detroit. The small family lived in the back room of the store to economize on rent. Leonard and Laura were able to survive the Great Depression by means of the gift shop.

In 1934 William closed the pasty business and moved on to (hopefully) greener pastures as a new car salesman for a Ford dealer in Dearborn. The Kyro family relocated to an apartment on Forest Avenue near Wayne State University in Detroit.

One morning Laura Dixon, pregnant with her second child, began to have labor pains. Leonard began to drive her to the hospital. But the birth was progressing too quickly. Leonard gave up trying to reach the hospital and parked near the Kyro apartment. Laura ran into the building. It was in this apartment that William Kyro’s first surviving grandchild, John Kent Dixon (co-author of this biography) was born on September 1 1934.

William was at work. Anna Kyro became hysterical and was not able to help with the birth. Helen Kyro, then a 20 year old college student, acted as midwife and Erick Kyro assisted. Erick was then 18 years of age. Since medical supplies were not at hand, Helen tied off the umbilical cord with a yellow ribbon. The doctor was summoned by telephone and arrived a few hours later to pronounce the mother and baby in good shape.

With Detroit's automobile manufacturing business still in the doldrums of the Great Depression, William tried his luck selling new cars in Waukegan, Wisconsin, where unemployment was not as severe as in Detroit and where there was a large population of Finnish people.

William was always an optimist. He kept looking in the business opportunity sections of the newspapers for new ventures but frequently fell back on the insurance business. At one time he took on a line of medical instruments to sell to surgeons. He maintained his interest in politics and served as a challenger at voting locations. For having actively worked to help an aspirant campaigner to succeed in an election, he was rewarded with a job as a clerk at a Michigan state-owned liquor store. However, he missed the freedom and challenge of being his own boss and soon left the clerk's position.

At one time during the depression, Anna Kyro worked in the Mariposa Beauty Shoppe at 9844 12th Street. Her small income helped to make ends meet.