My Grandfather's Education and Career

Columbian Quartette
R.P. Kerr, K.S. Mesick, H.H. Savereide, and M.E. Kerr
(click to enlarge)

When I found the photo above, taken by a photographer in Valparaiso, Indiana, it raised a question in my mind. Had my grandfather and his brother gone to college there? On a driving trip in the spring of 2002, I stopped briefly at Valparaiso University, where I hoped to find some records indicating my grandfather's attendance there as a student. I was not disappointed.

The archivist brought me a large record book of students' credits for 1911-1912, and on page 355 I found Rosmer P. Kerr listed as a student in the Commercial program. During second term, December 12-March 2, his grade for Actual Business was 80, and in Spelling he earned a 93.

Rosmer's brother Milton E. Kerr was a student in the Commercial program also. I found his record on p. 346. During the first term, he studied 1st Rhetoric (85), Mental Arithmetic (99), 3rd Type [typing, I presume], Parliamentary Law (80), and Debate (9N [I don't know what that means--possibly it was an illegible two-digit grade?]). Second term Milton studied III Phonography (94) and II Rhetoric [in my notes I've written "8 wks?" after this entry].


In April 1910, at the age of 17, Rosmer worked as a hotel clerk in Topeka, Kansas. His brother worked at the same hotel as a steward. After college, Rosmer lived in Detroit with his mother. In 1916 he was a clerk at Michigan Malleable Iron Company. That was the year he married my grandmother, Evelyn Hauer.


Rosmer was working as a metal polisher for Burroughs Adding Machine Company by 1917.


The following year, according to the Detroit City Directory for 1918, he was a stock tracer. But he soon settled into the career he would eventually retire from, that of purchasing agent for the City of Detroit.

In the foreground, Rosmer P. Kerr,
purchasing agent for the City of Detroit.
Dig those crazy socks!

Interestingly, in the early 1950s after his retirement, Rosmer returned to the hospitality industry in which he'd found his first job. He and my grandmother managed a motel for a time near Lexington, Michigan. I remember visiting them there. The motel was up on a bluff beside the highway, a block or two from a stony Lake Huron beach. There were Adirondack chairs, which I'd never seen before. They must have seemed odd to me, and very intriguing, as I remember little else about the place or our visits there.