Mike Spicka's Untimely End

Mike Spicka and Leo Kapitan
Photo from ancestry.com

My grandmother Mildred Spicka Quaid had a twin brother named Millard. They were born July 21st, 1908 in Timken, Kansas. He would come to be known as Mike.

Mike quit high school after one year, presumably to go to work. In 1929 he married Helen Esther Kapitan. In the 1930 census they were living in Chicago, and Mike was a chauffeur for a sausage factory. That sounds like a euphemism, but I think it’s census shorthand -- chauffeurs and truck drivers were in the same occupational category. They were living with Helen’s parents and two of their children, but Mike was listed as head of the household.

6840 S. Laflin St.
Home to the Spickas in 1940.

In the 1940 census Mike and Helen were still living in Chicago, and Mike was now a chauffeur at a box factory called Maxwell Brothers. Helen's brother Leo Kapitan, by now a divorced father of three and also working at the box factory, lived with them. Mike had worked all the previous year, and estimated his income for the year at $1,500. It's hard to get a feel for what that figure represented, but it's the fourth-highest income among the 80 people listed on these census pages, so the Spickas were doing well relative to their neighbors. Leo brought in $900 working as a loader.

The Spickas rented rooms for $20 a month from a widow named Marie Schwartz, who lived there with her two grown sons. The house was estimated to be worth $2,000.

To digress a bit, Maxwell Brothers, Inc. appears to have been a longstanding box manufacturer, according to a few minutes of Internet searching. A 1905 Who's Who for James Maxwell says that he started manufacturing boxes in 1878, was joined by his brother Henry, and incorporated in 1901 (and incidentally that Maxwell Street was named for their father). The address of the factory is given as 21st and Loomis. When they incorporated they had kicked out a brother, who went on to found a rival box company. In 1902 there was a settlement via arbitration of a union jurisdiction dispute. To give a sense of the size of the company, a story about the resolution of a strike in 1904 reports that 160 workers were returning to work. A list of registered corporations in 1909 shows the company on the southeast corner of 21st and Loomis, but The Wood-Worker, a trade journal, notes that in 1911 the factory suffered a destructive fire. A newspaper story in 1904 noted a fire destroyed the dry kiln and with estimated damages of $75,000; I'm guessing fires weren't uncommon at this kind of place. In 1922 the corporation was registered nearby at 2300 S. Morgan Street. Clearly an epic story of box manufacturing in the making here.

Mike Spicka, father-in-law August Kapitan and brother-in-law Ted Kapitan
Photo from ancestry.com

In his registration for the draft in October 1940, Mike described himself as 5'9", 185 pounds, and bald. Based on the photos here, I think he may have overestimated his height and underestimated his hairline.


On November 30, 1961 farmers near Crete, Illinois saw Mike’s car run off the road, crash through a fence and a telephone pole, and finally burst into flames. None of that killed him, though, because as it turns out he had shot himself first.

Chicago Tribune, page 35, December 1, 1961 Mattoon, Illinois Journal Gazette, page 2, December 1, 1961

Chicago, Illinois Suburbanite Economist, page 1, December 3, 1961

My Mom passed along some family theories:

There are several stories as to just why he took his own life, in a farmer’s field, in full view of the farmer.  Your Dad tells me Mike was a numbers runner for the mob, and he had been called upon to testify.  The mob said either you take care of this dastardly deed, or we will so he took his life.  Aunt Helen [Spicka Haaga, Mike’s sister] thinks it happened because he found out his wife was not necessarily faithful to him.  Whatever.  He did die of a gunshot wound to the head.  It is my understanding that Mike inherited the house in North Judson after Grandpa died in 1958.  Unknown what was done with that property since that time.  Could have been that Mike was the one that put up the money for this home in North Judson.  Mike ‘financed’ your Grandma & Grandpa Quaid’s first home (852 N. 86th St.).

Mike Spicka was 53 when he died, and his children were largely grown. His widow Helen married Edward Hlavac, another child of Bohemian immigrants, a few years later.