From Donald H. Phillips:

His uncle Mellan Thorne and Frank Wilcox got together and started the dairy. Mellan had been peddling small quantities of milk around the neighborhood. The dairy was located on Franklin Street, south of town up on the hill, before the city dump and across the street. Fort Farms came and took over the dairy and Donald's buddy Meryl Wilcox was running deliveries.

Donald was in the CCC during the depression and later got a job working for Bently Dadmun at the Dadmun Feed Mill, bagging all the chicken feed, which was sold all over. The feed would go up a hopper to be mixed and then dumped in the baggin machine. Donald would tie them with wire ties and load them on train cars, working 10 hour days for fifteen cents an hour, making $15 a week. That would buy the best suit of cloths (Donald had one). Most grits and oats were brought in on carts from the farmers. Sometimes the carts would be lined up clear down the street waiting to unload (at which point the farmers would be over across the street in the taverns). After Dadmun, Donald took Bud Wilcox's place running the milk truck after he crashed the truck delivering (he recuperated for quite a while). Then Donald went into the service. He went in in March 1943, serving in the Pacific in the Navy, RMC3 (radio man third class), serving on the USS Pierce APA 50. This was an attack transport, bringing troops to the islands.


Donald with his Healthway Dairy delivery truck in about 1951, in front of his house on the corner of Whiton and Highland.







After the war, Donald returned to his milk route and went to the university in Madison for a year for dairy school. He worked for 15 years at the UWW, working at the power plant, until mandatory retirement at 65 in 1978. Donald was born in Whitewater on May 13, 1913. Donald later worked at McDonalds and now lives Mulberry Glan. Donald married to Esther in 1945 and they had three children: Sue, Jeff, and David. Esther passed away on May 12, 2004, which was also their anniversary. (May 3, 2007)