My wife’s mother, Billie Ehrlich, born in 1933, was the daughter of a barber in Owosso, Michigan. She attended Owosso High School, graduating in June of 1952. A year later she married Jim Bartlett, also an Owosso native, who’d just returned from a four-year stint with the U.S. Navy.
My wife, however, mentioned that Billie was engaged to another man when she met Jim Bartlett. That got us to wondering who the jilted lover was, and how he fit into that short time span between Billie’s graduation and marriage. There’s no one around to ask anymore, so this appeared to be an unsolvable mystery. That is, until . . .
Searching through old Owosso newspapers, I came across Billie’s engagement announcement in October, 1952, when she was four months out of high school. Our mystery man turned out to be LaMott Fair Bates, Jr. LaMott was born in 1931 in Durand, Michigan, the son of a physician and grandson of a dentist. His father died when LaMott was 10 years old and the family moved to Owosso, where LaMott was a 1950 graduate of Owosso High School. LaMott — or “Bear”, his apparent high school nickname — was active in football, the choir, school plays, and the yearbook.
The announcement shows that after high school LaMott joined the Army and at the time of his engagement was stationed in Alaska. The announcement also mentioned that a spring, 1953, wedding was planned.
Billie got her spring wedding all right . . . just not to the man she was engaged to.
Because that spring Jim Bartlett, who was honorably discharged from the Navy on 30 March 1953, returned to his home town. And within three months, on June 20th, he married Billie Ehrlich.
Billie and Jim went on to raise a family of six children in suburban Detroit and Alpena, Michigan. Jim worked as a CPA with an accounting firm in Detroit and later with the electric company in Alpena. He died at the age of 56 and Billie remarried a year later.
But, you may wonder, what happened to LaMott? Where did his road lead?
LaMott, informally known as Monte, went to Michigan State University (MSU) after serving in the Army. (Ironically, Jim Bartlett was also a student there at the same time). Monte married in 1955 and worked in progressively higher levels of management in MSU’s personnel department while he and his wife Sandra raised their family of two children in East Lansing. He continued exercising his singing chops through participation in a barbershop quartet, becoming the president of the Lansing chapter of the Barber Shop society .
He and his wife’s 50th wedding anniversary announcement, giving a thumbnail bio, ran in the Lansing State Journal in 2005. His wife died in 2022.
All indications are that LaMott is still alive, well into his 90s.
Family stories frequently address turning points in our lives: the roads taken or not taken. This story is one of Billie’s roads not taken.