Yolo County
Biographies
J. E. DEEGAN
One of the leading automobile distributors of the Sacramento valley is J. E. Deegan, who handles the full line of Ford products at Woodland, where he has built up a large and prosperous business. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on the 2d of February, 1892, and received his public school education in various places. For that reason he holds diplomas from the grammar schools at Ogden, Utah, Kirksville, Missouri, and Boston, Massachusetts, and high school diplomas from Newton, Massachusetts, and Portland, Oregon. He was for a time connected with the wholesale lumber business, and later was with Standard Oil Company in Portland, Oregon. For two years he was in San Francisco, where he became a concert singer, possessing a splendid tenor-baritone voice, of wide range and appealing quality. He studied voice for six years with Professor Louis Grauvere, of San Francisco.
Later, Mr. Deegan entered the employ of the Ford Motor Company in San Francisco, and was with that concern for seven years, being advanced to the responsible position of wholesale branch manager. He had taken a thorough technical training in the Ford factory in San Francisco, and in April, 1930, he came to Woodland, where he has achieved a distinctive success as the authorized Ford distributor. During one calendar month in Woodland he made a fine record, in that for the first time in six years he made better than branch average in car sales, forty seven and seven-tenths per cent in passenger cars and sixty-three and one-third percent in commercial cars. He sold in one order a fleet of eight cars to the River Farm Corporation of Yolo county, and has shown an aggressive and effective business system and method.
Mr. Deegan is a veteran of the World war, during which he taught in the gas engine school for submarines at Seattle, Washington. He is a member of the Free and Accepted Masons and Al Kader Temple, A. A. O. N. M.S., at Portland, Oregon. While living in Portland, with his fine voice he entertained at various Shrine festivities, his work being greatly appreciated. He has shown himself worthy of the uniform respect which is accorded him and is one of Woodland’s progressive and successful business men.
Transcribed
by Craig Hahn.
Source: Wooldridge, J.W. Major History of the Sacramento Valley
California, Vol. 2 pgs. 56-57. Pioneer Historical Publishing Co. Chicago
1931.
© 2005 Craig Hahn.
Golden Nugget Library's El Dorado County Biographies