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Harlan, Edgar Rubey.
A Narrative History of the People of Iowa.
Vol III. Chicago: American Historical Society, 1931
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p. 340
KALMAN SPELLETICH, who bears a name long
honored and respected in Scott County, Iowa, where his
grandfather, a Hungarian patriot, was one of the pioneer
settlers, is a Davenport industrial leader, one of the heads
of one of the largest organizations in the city's industrial
life, the Gordon-Van Tine Company. The Gordon-Van Tine Company
is a national organization, specialists in building material
and ready cut materials for houses, and the corporation
operates mills at Saint Louis, in Mississippi, and Washington,
and ships material not only throughout the United States, but
even to distant foreign lands. Gordon-Van Tine homes are found
as far away as Japan and South Africa.
The Gordon-Van Tine Company was established in 1865, when
Davenport was one of the largest saw mill centers in the
Mississippi Valley, receiving the logs after a short transport
down the Mississippi and its tributaries from the pine forests
of Wisconsin and Minnesota. The company has maintained its
business and executive headquarters at Davenport long since
the city ceased to be an important center of practical lumber
manufacturing.
Mr. Kalman Spelletich, the vice president of the company,
was born on a farm in Scott County, Iowa, January 25, 1885,
son of Michael and Isabelle (Stevens) Spelletich. He is a
grandson of Felix Spelletich, a native of Hungary, a follower
of the great Kossuth in the disastrous revolution of 1848 and
at one time a governor general of a southern province in
Hungary. Felix Spelletich after the collapse of the liberal
movement in Central Europe came to America and in 1851 settled
on the farm in Scott County, Iowa, where his grandson Kalman
was born. He had endured imprisonment and other indignities as
a result of his participation in the revolutionary movement
and finally escaped and in disguise went to England. He came
to America with a large group of cultured and prominent
Hungarian families who were refugees. Another member of the
same group was Nicholas Fejervary, who for many years was a
leading citizen of Davenport. After his death his daughter
gave their beautiful home and several acres of land to the
city, and it is now one of Davenport's beauty spots and is
called Fejervary Park. Davenport for three quarters of a
century has owed much to the character and activities of these
Hungarian colonists and their descendants.
In 1867 Felix Spelletich returned to Hungary, after the
old factional enmities had subsided and reared his family
there. His son Michael had remained in America, on the farm in
Scott County, and became a highly respected and prominent
citizen, serving as justice of the peace and as a member of
the school board. His brother Stephan Spelletich was a member
of the old Second Regiment of Iowa in the Union army, and
because of an act of bravery on his part in the siege of Fort
Donelson became known as the hero of Fort Donelson and was
given special recognition by Governor Kirkwood of Iowa.
Mr. Kalman Spelletich was educated in the grade and high
schools of Davenport, had his preparatory work in Chicago and
in 1906 graduated Bachelor of Science from Princeton
University. He has been with the Gordon-Van Tine Company for
over twenty years, practically ever since leaving the
university, and has been in every department of the plant, a
training that has stood him in good stead as the present
executive head of this great business. He was promoted to
sales manager and vice president, and is also vice president
of the U.N. Roberts Company, manufacturers of mill work and
lumber at Davenport. Kalman Spelletich married, in 1917, Hilda
Von Korff, a native of Davenport. Her grandfather, Jacob
Nabstedt, came to Davenport in 1870 and for many years was in
the jewelry business. The Von Korffs were a family of German
nobility. Mr. and Mrs. Spelletich have four children, Hilda
Kaye, Kalman, Jr., Madeline and Stephan Michael.
Mr. Spelletich's business activities are centered in the
Gordon-Van Tine Company and its allied organizations, one of
which is the McClellan Company of which he is secretary. He is
a member of the Davenport Chamber of Commerce, Outing Club, as
one of the founders and first secretary of the Country Club,
is on the vestry of Trinity Cathedral, Episcopal, and a
trustee of Saint Katherine's School of Davenport. |
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