The Dexter Leader
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Local author looks at the tasty history of the Chelsea Milling Co.
By Lindy Stevens, Special Writer
PUBLISHED: July 3, 2008
Local author Cynthia Furlong-Reynolds has managed to cook up corporate history with a twist in her new book, "Jiffy: A Family Tradition."
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Reynolds' account of the Chelsea Milling Co.'s 104-year history mixes one part business with two parts homegrown family values to read like a recipe for success.
After moving to Dexter with her husband and three children in 1999, Reynolds was hired by Sleeping Bear Press to write a history of Chelsea known as "Our Home Town."
When that book was published in 2001, Reynolds was hired by the company to work full-time.
Today, the author mostly writes a mixture of children's books and personal histories, but when Chelsea Milling President Howdy Holmes contacted her to write a history of his family's business in 2003, she jumped at the chance.
"For somebody who loves history and loves writing about history and loves interviewing people, this was as good as it gets," Reynolds said.
"Especially when it comes to epic histories of a company and a town and all the people associated with it in one way or another."
With chapters that range from "An Eye on the Bottom Line," to "Laughter and Tears," Reynolds' book takes a look every milestone in the company's history, including all the personal triumphs and tragedies that lie in between.
The book begins in the home of Mabel Holmes, where the wife of founder Howard Holmes developed the first batch of Jiffy Mix in her own kitchen.
The book's final chapter takes a turn toward the future of the company and explains how the Holmes family has continued to remain competitive in an increasingly global economy.
To fill in the blanks for the rest of the company's past, Reynolds interviewed 59 people, including former owners and identical twin brothers Howard and Dudley Holmes.
She said the goal of the interviews was to try and get a perspective from every era in Chelsea Milling's history before it was gone.
Reynolds also suspects that the company's potentially fading past was part of what prompted the current company president to solicit her help.
"I think Howdy knew that time was marching on and that a lot of voices from the past in his company as well as in the town were beginning to disappear," Reynolds said.
To track down the rest of her information during the book's two-year completion process, Reynolds worked with local historians to find the facts and photographs that fill the book's 248 pages.
Reynolds said information from the Chelsea Area Historical Society, help from local historian Donna Lane and some previous history she had collected during her work in 2001, helped round out the rest of what she needed.
For the years from the Great Depression to World War II, Reynolds said the book recounts not just the ups and downs of a single company, but also the successes and failures felt by the people of Chelsea, whose deep ties to the milling industry reach back through generations.
"There's just so much going on in this book and when a corporate history is good, it brings out all of those human characteristics," Reynolds said.
"It has everything from love to loyalty to greed to passion."
The company's history does mirror the history of Chelsea, a place that has also managed to preserve its integrity over the years.
Reynolds added that the legacy of the Jiffy brand is one that brings back childhood memories for people outside the city and across the country.
"People who would never pick up a corporate history have asked me when this book is coming out because they love the Jiffy product so much," Reynolds said.
"Their mothers used it and they can remember their grandmothers cooking in the kitchen with it."
For Howdy Holmes, who gave the book as a gift to his nearly 500 past and present living employees, that sense of loyalty isn't just a feeling felt by faithful customers with memories of their mother's corn muffins.
It's also a sentiment that he said has created a genuine bond between all the individuals who have connections to the mill.
"This is not the story of a brand and it's not the story of a company," Holmes said. "It's the story of two families, the Holmes family and the employee family with lots of different last names."
Holmes added that those close family ties are what have helped the company to stick to old-fashioned values and still remain competitive over the years.
He added that the strong sense of loyalty would continue to be the company's most important ingredient for years to come.
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