Charles F. Kettering - Personal Life

Personal Life

Kettering married Olive Williams of Ashland, Ohio, in 1905. Their only child, Eugene Williams Kettering, was born on April 20, 1908.

He built a house, "Ridgeleigh Terrace", in 1914. According to local sources, this house was the first in the United States to have electric air conditioning. Ridgeleigh Terrace was the home of his son, Eugene Kettering, until his death. Eugene's wife, Virginia Kettering, lived in the house for many years, restoring and redecorating it. In 1994, the house was seriously damaged in a fire, but Virginia Kettering, then in her 80s, rebuilt it according to the original blueprints. She continued to live there until she moved to a suite in the nearby Kettering Medical Center when in her 90s.

Read more about this topic:  Charles F. Kettering

Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:

    “... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
    —George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)

    “man’s life is thought,
    And he, despite his terror, cannot cease
    Ravening through century after century,
    Ravening, raging, and uprooting that he may come
    Into the desolation of reality....”
    —William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)