By his loving family, 808 Elm Street, Sandwich, Illinois
60548.
JAMES B. MAY, of Sandwich, Illinois, passed away May 5, 1998, at
his home. He was 65. Surviving are his wife Pat, son Jim Jr.,
daughter Brenda Moss, and eight grandchildren.
May served an as alderman, a police commissioner, consultant to
the Indian Valley Vocational Center, a board member of the Sandwich
Historical Society, and a charter member of the Sandwich Early Day
Engine Club. He was decorated for his service in the Korean War as
an airplane mechanic.
He enjoyed building 1/5 scale working
models of gasoline engines such as Sandwich, International
Harvester Famous, Fairbanks-Morse, Chanticleer, and his own design
which he called the May engine. He drew up the plans, made all the
patterns and machined the castings which had to fit precisely to
make the engines operate properly. He built 10 more engines of the
Sandwich model for friends. The original is stored at the Sandwich
Historical Museum.
May was working on a new engine, a 1.5 HP Sandwich, which would
have been his piece-de-resistance before he fell ill. He loved
showing off his ‘family’ of engines at the De Kalb County
Fair for 27 years, and he and his wife attended several gas engine
and model shows each year.
Jim believed in the four ‘R’s’ replace, rebuild,
refurbish, restore. When he retired from Caterpillar in 1986 after
35 years, he decided to test his engineering talents and devoted
his time to designing the scale model gas engines.
He was an advocate of education and gave lectures at a
Vocational Center regarding machinery and he was able to make the
small engines, hoping to get the students interested in modeling
and to show them how things were in the days long past.
He will be missed by all who knew him and appreciated his
knowledge of antique engines and models.
