The photo of Emil Sick
(left) and two unidentified men
holding a Seattle Rainiers banner and the photo of the front exterior of Sick's
Stadium are part of the Museum of
History and Industry's Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection.
Emil Sick with 1946 manager Jo Jo White -
photo (left) courtesy of
Museum of
History and Industry (MOHAI). At President of Seattle Historical Society,
Emil Sick chaired the fundraising drive to build
MOHAI.
Martha White Gardner who married Emil Sick in 1963 shared his love of history
and was a member of the ways and means committee to build
MOHAI.
Emil G. SICK was born in Tacoma, Washington on June 3,1894. Emil's father, Fritz SICK was born in Freiburg, Germany in 1859. Fritz Sick spent 24 years learning the copper and barrel smithing trades and came to America in 1883 where he began a career in the brewing industry. In 1918, Emil SICK married Kathleen Thelma McPHEE. Kathleen died in 1962. Emil and Kathleen SICK's family included their children and Emil's nephew, Alan Ferguson. In 1963, Emil SICK married Martha White Gardner (1899-1992), widow of Raymond Locke GARDNER.
The photo of Emil Sick
(left) and two unidentified men
holding a Seattle Rainiers banner and the photo of the front exterior of Sick's
Stadium are part of the Museum of
History and Industry's Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection.
Emil G. Sick, owner of the Rainier Brewery, bought the Seattle Indians late in 1937 and renamed them the Rainiers. The team won three straight pennants in the Pacific Coast League in 1939, 1940, and 1941, and two more in the 1950s. The Rainiers were very popular with their loyal Seattle fans. He also started work on a new steel and concrete baseball stadium in Rainier Valley, south of downtown. Sick's Seattle Stadium opened in June 1938. For years, fans crowded the stadium or watched from the slopes overlooking the outfield.
Rainier Beer
dates
back to 1878, when German immigrant Andrew Hemrich founded Seattle Brewing &
Malting. After prohibition, Canadian brewers Fritz and Emil Sick licensed
the name, which had been sold to a California company, and eventually acquired
full ownership. For a time Sicks' Breweries Ltd. was a part of Canadian beer
giant Molson; later it was a publicly traded company that included the Robert
Mondavi winery.
Before he wound up his business career, Emil SICK controlled the largest number of breweries under single management in the world.
Many remember Emil SICK's stadium, Rainier Brewery and the Rainiers baseball team but Emil Sick was a dynamic civic booster and a man who could get things done. Emil chaired the committee that raised $100,000 to save St. Mark's Cathedral. As president of the Seattle Historical Society, Emil Sick led the fund-raising drive that resulted in the construction of the Museum of History and Industry. Seattle Scottish Highland Games Association. Emil was founder of the King County Blood Bank. He was Washington State Chairman for the March of Dimes. He was greater Seattle's "First Citizen in Sports" in 1963. He was president of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and an honorary life member of that organization. In 1949, Emil Sick became the first Washingtonian to receive the Disabled American Veterans award for outstanding civic leadership.
Emil Sick died on 10 Nov 1964 at age 70.
Fritz Sick (1859 - 1945)
http://collections.ic.gc.ca/arctic/prairie/inchpt4.htm has some interesting pictures that illustrate this information.
Fritz Sick (Emil's father) was born in Freiburg, Germany in 1859 and spent twenty-four years learning the copper and barrel smithing trades. Fritz Sick came to America in 1883 and began a career in the brewing industry. When Sick heard of the mining boom in British Columbia, he quickly moved to establish himself in that province. He failed in Trail B.C., but was later more successful with the Fernie-Fort Steele Breweries. The chance to open a brewery in Lethbridge resulted in Sick to selling his shares in the Fernie-Fort Steele brewery and moving to Lethbridge. Large-scale brewing operations in Lethbridge began after the arrival of Fritz Sick.
In 1901, Sick set up the Alberta Brewery in Lethbridge. Three years later, he changed the name of the brewery to the Lethbridge Malting Company Ltd. In the first year, the brewery produced 3 000 barrels of beer. Ten years later, the Lethbridge Brewery was producing 40 000 barrels per year. The success of the brewery and its "Alberta Pride" beer allowed Sick to undertake a $200 000 expansion which allowed the brewery to produce 100 000 barrels per year.
But hard times were just around the corner for Sick. The prohibition of alcohol in Alberta, which lasted from 1916 until 1923, threatened to destroy Sick's business. He was able to keep the brewery open by producing alcohol-free beer, soda pop, and renting out his cold storage space to grocery stores.
After the end of prohibition, Fritz and his son, Emil, greatly increased the family’s brewing empire. The Sicks bought breweries in Regina (1923), Edmonton (1927), and Vancouver (1930), and constructed a new building in Prince Albert. The Sicks also began to look in the United States for new business options. They brought breweries in Great Falls, Missoula, Spokane, and Seattle. To better manage their growing empire, in 1933 they moved the corporate headquarters of the company from Lethbridge to Seattle. Fritz Sick died in 1945, at the age of 85, but the brewery in Lethbridge continued to be managed by his son Emil.
The Sicks’ long relationship with the Lethbridge Brewery ended in 1959 when Molson Western Breweries Ltd. bought the Lethbridge brewery and undertook a $300 000 expansion program. Molson again expanded the Lethbridge Brewery in July of 1973, at a cost of $2 million. This made it possible for the Lethbridge brewery to produce 400 000 barrels of beer a year. In 1989, the story of the Lethbridge Brewery ended when Molson joined with Carling O'Keefe and announced they were going to close the brewery.
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Seattle Scottish Highland Games Association
ONE OF
THE BEST PARKS IN BASEBALL
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ALAN FERGUSON, 66, BREWMASTER, BUSINESSMAN, CIVIL-RIGHTS ACTIVIST
The Seattle Times March 10, 1993
Alan B. Ferguson, civil-rights activist and former president of
one of the largest breweries in the Pacific Northwest, died Feb. 24 at his home
in Saint Helena, Calif. He was 66. During the 1960s and 1970s, Mr. Ferguson was
president and chairman of the Rainier Co., then the parent company of Seattle's
Rainier Brewing Co. The Rainier Co., which included the minor-league Seattle
Rainiers baseball team among its holdings, was founded by Mr. Ferguson's
adoptive father, In
four decades as a businessman and professionally trained brewmaster, Mr.
Ferguson directed more than a dozen breweries, wineries and businesses. In the
early 1970s, he was president of Molson's Toronto-based brewery. He was on the
board of directors of Mondavi wineries in California until his death. Friends
and family remember Mr. Ferguson for his personal integrity and grace as well as
for his business acumen. "He was bright and giving," said daughter
Beanie ____ of Bremerton. "He expected the best of himself and enjoyed
helping others find their potential." In the late 1960s, President Lyndon
Johnson appointed Mr. Ferguson to head a Seattle effort to find 2,000 summer
jobs for young low income people. Mr. Ferguson also was active in Project
Outreach of the National Business League, which enlisted white businessmen in
the development of black entrepreneurship. "He was always looking for
things to do that were positive," said his wife, Maggie Ferguson. As Mr.
Ferguson became more involved with the civil-rights movement, he tried to
reconcile his personal life with his political beliefs. He moved his family out
of Broadmoor, an exclusive Seattle community surrounded by a fence with entrance
controlled by guard stations because African Americans were not allowed to live
there. Mr. Ferguson took his two children on civil rights marches. He shared
with them his beliefs that "you always have to be true to yourself . . .
give back what you receive . . . and helping people at the bottom was more
important than helping those who were already at the top," his daughter
said. Among the upper levels of wealth in the community, Mr. Ferguson was
regarded by some as "some kind of left-wing nut," he once said. He
called his greatest source of frustration "white apathy and lack of
understanding of urban racial ills." Mr. Ferguson was born in Alberta,
Canada, and grew up on a small island off Vancouver, B.C. During his childhood,
his natural parents died. At age 13, he was adopted by his uncle,
Emil
Sick, in Seattle. Mr. Ferguson attended Lakeside
School and at 17 enlisted in the military so he could serve in World War II.
After the war, Mr. Ferguson studied journalism at the University of Washington
School of Communications, graduating in 1949. He then trained as a professional
brewmaster at the Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago. Ninety percent of
successful brewing, Mr. Ferguson once said, is keeping the floors clean. In his
early days, he scrubbed floors and tanks in the brewery. He went on to sales and
eventually rose to top jobs. Mr. Ferguson also had a busy civic life. He was
prime minister of the 1956 Seafair and active in the 1962 World Fair. Among his
many leadership roles, he was head of the Seattle-King County Convention and
Visitors Bureau, trustee of the Seattle Urban League, and active in Seattle
chapters of the American Cancer Society and the National Council of Christians
and Jews. Mr. Ferguson's son, Duncan, preceded his father in death. Both had
cancer. Besides his wife and daughter, Mr. Ferguson is survived by granddaughter
Erin last-name-known, of Bremerton, stepdaughter Jan last-name-known of
Saint Helena, Calif., stepdaughter Rod last-name-known of Vancouver, B.C., three
sisters and one brother. (Note: names of living relatives replaced with
last-name-known.)
