George Edburn 'Bus' Eesley

George Edburn Eesley — “Bus” to family, “George E.” in newsprint — was born c. 1903, son of R. Albert Eesley of 1310 Hayes Avenue, Fremont, Ohio (the same R. Albert who appears in William Eesley’s c. 1916 obituary as “A. R. Eesley Jr.,” one of the six miller-brothers in Albert Robert Sr’s generation).

He graduated from Fremont Ross High School and from Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, where — as his daughter Jane’s 1950 obituary recalled — he had been an all-star high-school and college football player. By 1942 he was employed in an airplane factory near Buffalo, New York — given his Kenmore-area location and the timing (the U.S. was six months into WWII; aircraft production in the Buffalo-Niagara region was scaling rapidly), the likely employers were Curtiss-Wright (which had a major plant at Kenmore producing P-40 fighters and others) or Bell Aircraft in Buffalo (P-39 and P-63 production).

His death

On Thursday, 4 June 1942, age thirty-nine, he died in a Kenmore, New York hospital during what the next day’s Fremont News-Messenger called “a major operation.” The body was cremated; the funeral was held the following Sunday at Kenmore. His parents Mr. and Mrs. R. Albert Eesley, accompanied by their daughter Bess, traveled from Fremont, Ohio to attend.

His death five months into the U.S. war effort, while working in wartime aircraft production, on the operating table rather than on a battlefield, is the kind of loss the obituary form of the era recorded matter-of-factly. “Buy War Savings Bonds” runs as banner text across the top and bottom of the clipping.

Family

George married Edna Scaise of Cleveland — her name as it appeared in the 1942 obituary; recorded in her son Dan’s 2018 obituary as “Edla ‘Eddie’ Scaife.” (The 1942 newspaper spelling appears to be a typographic or transcriptional drift.)

Together they had three children:

• Richard Eesley — predeceased his brother Dan (mentioned in Dan’s 2018 obituary as “a brother, Richard,” in the predeceased list).
• Jane Elda Eesley (21 March 1938 – 15 June 1950) — killed at twelve in a bicycle accident at Lakewood, Ohio, when she rode into the side of a truck. Born in Buffalo, she was the first girl to captain the safety patrol at her Lakewood elementary school. The “died tragically in her youth” of Dan’s 2018 obituary; alive and unnamed-as-to-age in her father’s 1942 obituary, she outlived him by eight years.
• Daniel Edburn “Dan” Eesley (29 November 1931 – 7 January 2018) — the San Francisco computing-industry engineer and 50-year SF Symphony donor whose 2018 obituary is also in this archive.

George carried the distinctive middle name “Edburn,” and passed it to his son Daniel Edburn Eesley — the name threading two generations of this branch. Its own origin (a family surname carried in as a middle name, in the common 19th-century pattern) is not yet documented in this archive.

George “Bus” Eesley, c. 1940 — with one of his children (Richard, Dan, or Jane) at the edge of the frame. The only known photograph of him in this archive, taken within a few years of his death at thirty-nine; the source of his page portrait.

Family at the time of his death

The 1942 obituary lists, in addition to his wife and three children:

• Two sisters: Miss Bess Eesley (Fremont, Ohio) and Mrs. Jack Cassel (Toronto, Canada).
• A brother: Albert (of Youngstown, Ohio).
• The parents: Mr. and Mrs. R. Albert Eesley.

That his sister married a Cassel in Toronto continues the Albert Robert Sr. line’s strong Toronto connection — his grandfather’s adult life was in Toronto, his uncle Dr. George Eesley was a Toronto physician, his aunt Anna (Eesley) Scoon and aunts Mrs. Jennie Baxter and Mrs. George Sinclair were all in Toronto per the William Eesley obituary. The Toronto Eesleys were a substantial extended family across this generation.

He is Chuck’s first cousin twice removed on the paternal side — the son of his great-great-uncle R. Albert.

Sources: George E. Eesley obituary, Fremont News-Messenger, 5 June 1942; Daniel Edburn Eesley obituary, 2018; William Eesley obituary, c. 1916.