Lorenzo Grady
Lorenzo Grady was born on December 26, 1896 in Mississippi, and died on August 20, 1981 in Beloit, Wisconsin. He migrated with his brother, Charles Grady, from the Pontotoc area in Mississippi to Beloit in order to find better jobs. Lorenzo Grady worked at Fairbanks Morse for 44 years. His first job at Fairbanks, at very low pay, was to wheel coal into the boiler room. Grady met his wife Beatrice and got married in 1931. According to Grady in 1976, “We had three children, two boys and one girl. One boy is over at Fairbanks now and he’s a supervisor over there. He’s doing good, and he owns a little place down on the - Wisconsin [River]. I got one boy in Rockford. He’s a supervisor at Gunite and he’s doing good. He’s owned his own home over on Center Street in Rockford. He built a new home there. And my daughter is in Detroit. She’s got 4, 5 children. She’s getting along pretty good.”