Читать книгу History of Fresno County, Vol. 6 - Paul E. Vandor - Страница 34

Prominent among those who have long worked for the development and advancement of Fresno County, and a man well known for his present untiring efforts to better the conditions and increase the happiness of its people, is William Dron, not only an adopted son, but a Californian who had the good fortune, when first coming to this state in the late eighties, to settle here, in Central California, the most favored of all localities. He was born at Dollar, in Scotland, in 1883, and when four years of age came with his parents to Fresno. Here, then, he was reared and here he received his education in the excellent public schools of the neighborhood; and after he was graduated from the Fresno High School, he entered the employ of Balfour, Guthrie & Co., in Fresno, as a grain-buyer, and worked for them both in that city and in various parts of the San Joaquin Valley. In 1904 he was transferred to Oilfields and their oil company, the California Oilfields, Ltd., as a bookkeeper; and later taking up work in the operating department, he learned the drilling of wells and the actual production of oil, serving as tool-dresser and driller. He spent six years in the operating and gaging department, when he was again transferred and made head of the traffic department. About August, 1913, the Shell Company of California took over the California Oilfields, Ltd., but he did not allow the change of proprietorship to sever him from a region and activity in which he had become deeply interested. He has continued, therefore, with this concern which has more and more attained to national importance.

At Los Angeles, Mr. Dron was married to Miss Ocie Evans, once popular in social circles of Washington, Pa., and Mr. and Mrs. Dron enjoy the esteem of their many friends in Oilfields.

Such a life-story as the foregoing is worthy of record, for not alone has California been in need of just such men, in her development as one of the greatest commonwealths, but some of the sturdiest, brainiest and highest-principled of her adopted sons and daughters have come from bonnie Scotland, bringing with them valued gifts for the making of a new and an ideal land.